The Enduring Enigma of Mrs Humphry Ward

My guest today shares some of the real life inspiration for her historical novel, White Feathers, which takes place during World War I. I appreciate stories of women like Mary Ward, whose thinking challenges us and encourages us to consider different ways of thinking about issues.

Welcome, Susan!

~ Samantha

The Enduring Enigma of Mrs Humphry Ward

Guest Post by Susan Lanigan

White Feathers has many real-life historical references included in its pages. The priest Samuel Knapp who wrote about the WWI battle he was involved in was a historical person and a Discalced Carmelite. Sir Laming Worthington Evans also existed in real life, and I used him solely because of his name. The pigeon van Sybil and Roma have their bumpy journey in was based on one I saw in the Musée de la Grande Guerre in France. The Links in Eastbourne was a real school and I accidentally stumbled across it when journeying there in 2015!

But of all the historical curiosities, one that particularly engages my interest is the life and times of the novelist and anti-suffragist, Mary Ward, otherwise known as Mrs Humphry Ward, who is depicted in the book making a fevered speech in favour of shaming men out of uniform during WWI.

As a novelist, Ward has long sunk into obscurity, but in the early 1900s her novels were bestsellers, both in the United Kingdom and across the water in the United States. She wrote them early in the morning and late at night, after the children were in bed. Her husband, the aforementioned Humphry, was a tutor in an Oxford college and lived until 1926, but is chiefly known for being Mary Ward’s husband. She herself came from a very distinguished family, her father Tom Arnold being the famed headmaster of Rugby school, and her uncle Matthew being the author of “Dover Beach”, and the sea of faith quote.

She went on to be instrumental in the founding of Somerville women’s college in Oxford, where Vera Brittain and Winifred Holtby were later to attend (and which Eva, in the book, has aspirations to go to) and also managed to establish an institution somewhere between a community centre and a library, with resources for the poor. It still exists today; look up the Mary Ward Centre.

So far, so feminist. So what caused this admirable woman to do a 180 and become a screeching anti-suffragist?

Well the truth is, Mary Ward had held these opinions for a long time. She saw many of the suffragists’ arguments as classist and naïve, formed by people who had no vision of foreign policy or events, and who never had to work for a living or take part in real activism other than the campaign for votes for women. She was well-enough known for these views for Lord Curzon, the leader of the House of Lords, to approach her in 1908 to ask if she would be interested in joining an anti-suffrage campaign.

But the white feather movement, which she enthusiastically supported, also attracted suffragist campaigners like the Pankhursts, so a brief and unlikely alliance was formed. But Ward suffered for holding on to her beliefs – her son, a Unionist MP, was unselected by his party because of his mother’s prominence in the movement and Somerville College disowned her entirely. Two years after the Representation of the People Act 1918 ended the anti-suffrage movement by granting women over 30 who owned property the vote, Mary Ward died, her legacy almost forgotten – though the Mary Ward Centre still stands.

"Anti-war and anti-patriarchy without ever saying so - a bravura performance of effortless elegance" - Irish Echo in Australia

SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROMANTIC NOVEL OF THE YEAR AWARD 2015

In 1913, Irish emigrée Eva Downey receives a bequest from an elderly suffragette to attend a finishing school. There she finds friendship and, eventually, love. But when war looms and he refuses to enlist, Eva is under family and social pressure to give the man she loves a white feather of cowardice. The decision she eventually makes will have lasting consequences for her and everyone around her.

Journey with Eva as she battles through a hostile social order and endeavours to resist it at every turn.

Get your copy of White Feathers.

Connect with the Author

Susan Lanigan’s first novel White Feathers, a tale of passion, betrayal and war, was selected as one of the final ten in the Irish Writers Centre Novel Fair 2013, and published in 2014 by Brandon Books. The book won critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the UK Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2015. This edition is a reissue with a new cover and foreword.

Her second novel, Lucia’s War, also concerning WWI as well as race, music and motherhood, was published in June 2020 and has been named as the Coffee Pot Book Club Honourable Mention in the Modern Historical Book of the Year Award.

Susan lives by the sea near Cork, Ireland, with her family.

Connect with Susan on her website, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, Book Bub, Amazon Author Page, and Goodreads.