Marie Corelli
'Roam was nothing petty about Marie Corelli except her stature, indeed there was something superb I Her vanity was colossal, but humility itself was not further from spite or envy. Her delight in her own success was like the delight of a child, running a race and crying out, "Look at me! I'm winning !" After all she did score a great victory, of a kind. Who could mind the hisses of the critics when the public cheered so loud ? Not she !—and were there not some highly distinguished and even Royal voices to be heard amid the cheering? Gladstone took her seriously, Tennyson read some of her books, George Meredith she heard had closed one of them with tears in his eyes, Edward the VIlth flattered her, the Empress Frederick and Carmen Sylva delighted in her, Oscar Wilde did not pass her novels by. "Mr. Matlock," she was able to say, "is one of the leading writers of the time and he is a very great admirer of mine." Lord Haldane wrote her a nice letter and Mr. Asquith asked for an autograph copy of one of her works. All this was surely enough to turn any young woman's head, and some of the sermons preached about her, anyone's stomach ! As to the professional critics, she snapped her fingers at them. She knew—Mr. Cecil Grenfell wrote and told her—what Ninon dc L'Enclos had said about them :
"A few days ago I came across the following written by 'Ninon do L'Enclos,' it made made melaughand think of you. Les enfants, ma chixe, savant tout de suite fouetter les chevaux; mais pour lea conduirs cost autre chose. Eh bien les critiques sent comma les enfants, d8 fouettent lea auteurs,mais no les dirigent pas." Part III.
Besides, this "people's own novelist," looked upon books from the people's point of view. "We should," she lectured, "take our books as we take our friends—prepared not to find fault, but to enjoy their company." It was one of the shrewdest things she ever said. Those who take her advice will find Miss Bertha Vyver's life of her adored friend very goodcompany indeed.
Corelli" was, of course, a pen name. Marie was the daughter of Charles Mackay, LL.D., who wrote some forgotten prose and well remembered songs, including "Cheer, boys, Cheer" and "There's a good time coming." The future novelist spent a serene if somewhat lonely childhood in a house near to George Meredith's, on Box Hill. Her early education was conducted by visiting governesses, who used to come for half the week only—the Sunday half. She has left an account of her relations with these ladies, whom one by one she "worsted," beginning with a certain Miss Knox who was afraid of her. " Somehow she could not meet the full gaze of my deep eyes which were grey as a clouded sea, with a changeful sapphire light in them, like occasional reflections from the blue of the sky." "Perhaps you do not understand me very well," said this beautiful child. "Perhaps you are not really clever— they say it takes a very clever person indeed to understand a child." The poor lady quailed before the sea-blue eyes. "You see," went on the pupil, "all the world is new to me— it's quite old to you, but to me it's a novelty, and you can't imagine how much I think about it." Concerning this 'novelty" she is able to instruct her teacher. "it is a place where there are thousands of beautiful and clever people, all working, all striving, all loving, all creating" Miss Knox was dumb, waiting her chance, "Can you make me out, you poor dear thing?" went on the little girl. "You must control your- self and learn to behave," said the pedagogic critic. The snub knocked the little creature off her high hotrte (later she learned to stick on whatever happened). "I'm already thinking of asking pa to let me go to a finishing school," she said lamely.
It is obvious from this childish scene that Marie's vanity was of the congenital sort. It was, no doubt, nourished, but cerbtinly not thrust upon her, by her triumphs. In Marie, though it precluded humour and made her tactless, it never destroyed reverence. What she tells us of her childish Prayers is touching and pleasant. "Dear God, be my friend," she used to pray. "1 am such a little creature . . . don't let me lose my way." She never did lose it. She went through life full of faith and happiness and without a doubt she diffused it—her melodranuttic castigations of the accre- dited exponents of Christianity notwithstanding.
It is impossible to doubt, after reading Miss Vyver's book, that Marie Corelli's personality counted for a good deal in her success. Unexpected people took great fancies to her, her servants adored her, her enemies (if one may cull her critics enemies) became her friends. We are not surprised to hear how Ella Wheeler Wilcox knelt at her feet the first time she saw her but when we see Edmund Yates writing to her as "My dear little chap," and taking out of his pocket one of his slashing criticisms of Marie and waving it to her saying, "Never again, little chappy," we do gasp with astonishment. There was something about her as there is about her books which is engaging—incomprehensibly so—something com- panionable and disarming. How many of the educated world, who despise her writing have read them ? Let any conscience-stricken critic take up The Alaster Christian and read the first few pages. The scene in the French inn, the delightful innkeeper and his wife, their naughty children, the plaster-saint of a Cardinal, the bogy of a bad priest soon to be hurled over a cliff in the arms of the woman he has seduced, will somehow or other hold his attention without the slightest effort. He will enjoy the acting of this mixed company of real people, marionettes and shadows and that is all that their creator asks of him. True, she would like to do him good, but she will not press the point. Anyhow, it is possible that he may modify a verdict based on hearsay, even if he cannot, like Edmund Yates, make a gesture of recantation.
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