Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Ward, Wilfrid Philip
WARD, WILFRID PHILIP (1856–1916), biographer and Catholic apologist, was born 2 January 1856 at Old Hall House, Ware, Hertfordshire, the second son of William George Ward [q.v.], ‘Ideal’ Ward, of the Oxford Movement. His family was of old standing in the Isle of Wight and noteworthy in the cricketing world. Ward was brought up in an ultramontane atmosphere before proceeding to Ushaw College, Durham, and the Gregorian University at Rome. He lectured on philosophy at Ushaw College in 1890, was an examiner in mental and moral science for the Royal University of Ireland 1891–1892, and a member of the royal commission on Irish university education (1901). In 1906 he became editor of the Dublin Review, which he raised to a commanding standard of thought and influence. His vocation to the Catholic priesthood was not realized, but his younger brother, Bernard Nicholas (1857–1920), was ordained priest in 1882, and afterwards became president of St. Edmund's College, Ware, and bishop of Brentwood.
Educated outside the influences of Oxford or a public school, Wilfrid Ward developed into a thinker and a controversialist after an individual and tolerant manner. As a young man he crossed swords with Herbert Spencer and Frederic Harrison. His first work, The Wish to Believe, appeared in the Nineteenth Century (1882), and was followed by The Clothes of Religion (1886), a reply to popular positivism, and Witnesses to the Unseen (1893). But he found his most congenial field in biography, and it was here that he displayed an original talent. In 1889 he published the first volume of his father's life, William George Ward and the Oxford Movement, the second volume appearing in 1893, William George Ward and the Catholic Revival. The Life and Times of Cardinal Wiseman, which Cardinal Vaughan requested him to write, occupied him for five years and appeared in 1897. The first edition was sold in a week, but an interesting chapter was omitted in subsequent editions. He then wrote a memoir of Aubrey Thomas de Vere [q.v.], the poet-convert (1904). Seven years' unremitting work led to his Life of Cardinal Newman (1912), a work of 1,300 pages into which he wove about 1,000 of the Cardinal's letters. In it he said the last word on Newman, and identified himself with Newmanism even to the extent of opposing his father's opinions.
The Life of Newman was written during the Modernist controversy, when many Catholic thinkers, such as George Tyrrell [q.v.], Lagrange, the Abbé Duchesne, and Baron von Hügel, were incurring the suspicion of the Holy See. More than any single man Ward held the balance and kept comparative peace among the thinkers of English Catholicism. His apologetic was based on his axiom that since the Reformation the Catholic Church was in ‘a state of siege’. He was a liberal without being found guilty of liberalism by authority. The balance which Ward held amongst his fellow Catholics corresponded with his position amongst non-Catholics. He understood and appreciated Anglicanism, enjoying the friendship of Lord Halifax, George Wyndham [q.v.], and John Neville Figgis [q.v.]. Richard Holt Hutton [q.v.] had also deeply influenced him. He helped to revive the old Metaphysical Society under the name of the Synthetic Society. He was elected to the Athenæum Club honoris causa. His genius for friendship and portraiture found its fulfilment in a series of books, Problems and Persons (1903), Ten Personal Studies (1908), and Men and Matters (1914). The Life of Newman led to two successful lecturing tours in America in the course of which he delivered the Lowell lectures at Boston (1914). His last days were spent in preparing for publication the letters of his friend Father Basil Maturin [q.v.]. In 1916 he retired to Hampstead, where he died on 9 April. He was buried at Freshwater in the Isle of Wight. He married in 1887 Josephine Mary, second daughter of James Robert Hope-Scott Q.C. [q.v.], of Abbotsford, and left two sons and two daughters.
[Last Lectures (1916) edited by Mrs. Ward; obituary notices in The Times, 10 April 1916, Dublin Review, and Tablet; private information.]