CHAPTER XVIII

AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON

A review of Marie Corelli’s life from the time she left her convent-school to the present day, shapes as a record of intellectual activity rather than one of movement or incident of an anecdotal nature. But although the novelist has never actually gone out of her way to study local color, she has traveled all over Europe; as, during her stepfather’s long illness and the constant strain of anxiety entailed upon her by his condition, it was necessary for her to take at least one month’s rest and change of air in the course of each year. These annual holidays were spent in various parts of Europe--in France, Italy, Holland, Switzerland, and Germany--and during her travels she was never idle, but always at work recording notes of scenes, seasons, and events. The _locale_ of Combmartin was carefully studied by her before she ever wrote “The Mighty Atom”; and, as the many tourists who have visited the neighborhood since on account of the story can testify, both that village and Clovelly have been faithfully represented. But some of the scenery in her other books, though correct in detail, has never been visited by the novelist at all. “Thelma,” which is a frequent companion-volume to travelers in Norway, has certain scenes depicted which are now shown by local guides as associated with the novel, but the writer herself has never visited Norway.

It may be remembered that in “Anne of Geirstein” Walter Scott gives an exact description of Switzerland; but at the time he wrote the novel he had never seen that country. We have already told how Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, a great authority on Persia, called on Miss Corelli shortly after the publication of “Ardath” to inquire personally where she had resided in the East, to be so familiar with Eastern color and surroundings; and he was very much surprised to learn that she had never visited the East at all, nor had any idea of going there. In the same way, though “Vendetta!” is an essentially Neapolitan story, she has never seen Naples. Nor does she “read up” for her local color. When asked to explain how she manages to convey herself in spirit to countries with which she is entirely unacquainted, she replies: “I _imagine_ it must be so, and I find it generally _is_ so.” As she stated in her lecture at Edinburgh on “The Vanishing Gift,” she thinks Imagination is a decaying faculty in the present day. “People seem unable to project themselves into either the past or the future,” she says, “and yet that is the only way to gauge the events of the present.”

Marie Corelli is a fair linguist, having a thorough knowledge of French and Italian. She can read Balzac and Dante as readily as she can read Walter Scott--these three, by the way, being particular favorites of hers.

Marlowe describes a library as containing “infinite riches in a little room.” Though no millionaire in her possession of this kind of wealth, Marie Corelli has gathered about her a set of volumes which is representative without being cumbersome. Her books are not stored in a stately room that is held sacred to them and them alone, but they are here, there, and everywhere, in drawing-room, working-den, and bedroom. She is not a bookish woman--in the reading sense--but she reads discreetly, and has many widely different friends between covers. Nor is she a miser in this respect, for she gives and lends as readily as she buys or borrows.

Many of those interested in the novelist’s movements have wondered what attraction drew Miss Marie Corelli to Stratford-on-Avon so greatly as to persuade her to settle there. The cause is a very simple one. From her earliest childhood she had been encouraged by her adopted father, Dr. Charles Mackay, to entertain a great adoration for the name and the works of Shakespeare, and before she was nine years old she used to recite, at his request, whole passages from the plays of the great Master. When she returned from school, he promised to take her for a “pilgrimage,” as he termed it, to all the places made notable by Shakespeare’s association with them, and to this pilgrimage she had looked forward with the greatest expectation. But it was never to be, for Dr. Mackay’s illness came on and prevented all such plans of pleasure from being fulfilled.

When the aged poet died, and his adopted child, broken-hearted at his loss, and feeling herself utterly alone in the world, knew not how to endure the weary days following immediately on his death, she suddenly bethought herself of the “pilgrimage” she and the dear one she had loved so well had arranged to make together. She determined to carry out the plan, and her friend Miss Vyver (who lost her mother in the same year as that of Dr. Mackay’s death) accompanied her, as did her stepbrother, Mr. Eric Mackay. With sorrow as well as interest, she went over every scene her early teaching had made her familiar with, and was so charmed with Warwickshire, and Stratford in particular, that she was anxious to leave London then at once, and take up her residence in Shakespeare’s town. This was in 1890, when only four of her books had been published.

Her wishes in this respect, however, she subordinated to those of her stepbrother, who preferred London; but from that time she always cherished the memory of Stratford-on-Avon, and hoped she would be able to return thither. Finally, in 1898, when Eric Mackay’s death deprived her of her last remaining link with her childhood, save her ever-faithful friend Miss Vyver, and when she was extremely ill from the effects of long sickness, followed by the nervous shock of Eric’s sudden end, she turned her thoughts to the old town again, and decided to take a furnished house there, to see if the place agreed with her health. She rented “Hall’s Croft” for a few months, then “Avon Croft” (where the “Master-Christian” and “Boy” were finished), and, finding that the soft, mild air did wonders for her, and gradually reestablished her strength, she decided to remain.

The only house available in the town for a permanency was “Mason Croft,” a very old place

in a sad state of disrepair, its last “restoration” bearing the date of 1745, but, as it was all there was to be had, she risked taking it on trial. Gradually improving and restoring it, she has now brought it back to look something like it must have been in the fifteenth century, when it was quite an important house, requiring a “watch-tower,” wherein a watchman was set to guard the property, and which still stands in the garden, having been transformed into a cozy summer “study” for the novelist. Every month sees some new addition to the charming oak-panelled rooms, which are essentially home-like, and Miss Corelli’s love of flowers, which amounts to a passion, shows itself in the mass of blossom which in winter, equally as in the summer, adorns her “winter-garden,” leading out from the drawing-room.

She is very fond of the home she has made, and fond of the town in which it stands, and her reason for living in Stratford arises simply out of the old cherished sentiment of her childhood’s days when she was taught to consider the little town as the real “Heart of England,” where the greatest of poets had birth, and where her idolized stepfather had promised to “pass many happy days with her.” She takes the keenest interest in all the joys and sorrows of Stratford’s townspeople, and grudges neither trouble nor expense in anything that may bring them pleasure or good.

It is well-known that she thinks it regrettable that the Memorial Theatre should be so little used, owing to the high fees asked for it, and that good actors should find it impossible to risk going down to perform there, unless their expenses are guaranteed, particularly as it is the only “self-endowed” theatre in England! She possesses an interesting letter from the late Charles Flower, who gave the largest share of the money required to build the place, in which it is plainly set forth that his idea of the theatre was to let it at a merely “nominal fee,” in order that the best actors might go to Stratford and play Shakespeare’s works, in the best manner, to the Stratford townspeople, who were only to be asked “popular” prices for admission. But, since that estimable benefactor’s death, things have not been exactly on the footing he thus suggested, and for more than half the year the theatre is empty and useless, which seems a pity. “How much better,” says Miss Corelli, “it would be to see the theatre full, and the public-houses empty!” In which most people will agree with her. But though her opinions are very strong on these and other points concerning some matters at Stratford, she never interferes or puts forward any suggestions that she considers might be resented. The only time she did put her foot down was when Sir Theodore Martin wanted to break into the antique sanctity of Shakespeare’s resting-place in the Church of the Holy Trinity, and in that campaign all the world was with her, as well as Stratford itself. She does all the good she can in the neighborhood; she has quite revivified the Choral Society; she gives short, simple addresses to workmen and schoolchildren; she opens bazaars and sales of work, and by her presence at such functions brings much-needed pecuniary help to institutions which always feel, to a greater or less extent, the pinch of poverty.

The desire to do good to one’s fellow-creatures must animate every writer whose work is not solely the product of intellect. When there is “heart” in a book, there must be a heart that can throb for others in the author of it. Pass the lives of eminent authors before you in rapid mental review, and you will find that most of these authors were constantly performing kindly actions. The great souls of Dickens and Thackeray--of the latter especially--prompted them to do many generous things. It is said that when, as an editor, Thackeray found a letter with a manuscript telling a tale of pathetic circumstances, he would sometimes (when obliged to return the manuscript) scribble out a check on his own account and send it back with the rejected story. Turning to women writers, has not Mrs. Gaskell, in her touching life of Charlotte Brontë, told us how she and the poor Yorkshire clergyman’s daughter paid sundry afternoon calls in the Haworth district, and how welcome was the novelist’s “quiet presence” in many humble homes? Ruskin’s kindness and open-handed charity, as one who visited him has told us, were proverbial in the Brantwood neighborhood. The history of Dr. Johnson’s home life proves amply the tenderness which lay behind his pompous and dictatorial manner. Poor Goldsmith’s generosity amounted almost to a vice, for he would borrow a guinea to give to a friend in need and empty his pockets for a whining mendicant. His philanthropy was wholesale, and quite lacked any sense of proportion. Scott worked himself to death to pay off the debts of the publishing firm in which he was concerned;--turn where you will, you find that the men and women whose work in life has been the making of songs and dramas and novels, have ever been keenly alive to the distress prevalent among their fellow-creatures, and have seldom been guilty of anything approaching selfishness.

It would not be meet in the present work to touch in any but the most passing way on Miss Corelli’s practical philanthropy. But it is only due to her, in a biographical work published mainly to explain what she _is_--as opposed to what so many malicious paragraphists have declared her to be--to pay a tribute to her consideration for others, and her desire to make the best use of such worldly possessions as the extensive sale of her works has naturally brought her.

Those, however, who accuse her of “self-advertisement” will do well to remember that by such an absolutely false clamor they are depriving many in need from assistance which they might obtain were the novelist certain that her actions would not be misrepresented and misconstrued. For nothing makes her happier than to see others happy. She has helped many strugglers in the literary profession, too, and literary men and women who disparage her may be surprised to hear that she has herself never been known to say an injurious word with regard to any one of her fellow-authors.

It may be asked--what is Marie Corelli’s life-programme? Most writers have a definite object in view--this one to achieve immortality; that one to make money. What is Marie Corelli’s?

Briefly, she writes,--has always written,--to reach the hearts and minds of those thinking people of to-day who are striving to combat the subtleties of the Agnostic and Atheist; to strengthen their faith in the truth, the reality, the goodness of God and Christianity; the people who have hearts that throb with tenderness, hope, love and sincerity. She would purify society. She would exalt everything that is noble and good. She would destroy the rule of unbelief and insincerity, and raise in its place ideal characters and conditions strongly built upon a foundation of faith and truth. Such is Marie Corelli’s programme.

The interest taken by the novelist in social questions has led her to correspond with workingmen’s clubs in America and the colonies, and not a few papers have been written by her to serve as subjects for discussion in such institutions.

But what of that self of which so much has been heard? It is a personality striking in its simplicity and in its power. Marie Corelli is a woman of women, simple in her tastes, strong in her faiths and her aims, with a heart full of sympathy for others, living a busy life that from its productiveness in the world of literature is a constant influence for good in the hearts and homes of thousands the world over, and, in its private relationships, a source of help, inspiration, and benefit to those with whom she comes in contact.

That she is not merely a lover of Shakespeare, but a Shakespeare enthusiast, is known to all her friends; she would see the day come, if possible, and help to speed its coming, when the whole town of Stratford-on-Avon shall be a Shakespeare memorial. She would exclude steam-launches and all similar misplaced modernities from the peaceful Avon; she would have every new building that is erected in the birthplace of Shakespeare constructed in accordance with the architecture of the Master’s day; she would sacredly and lovingly guard every old building and the form of all Stratford’s old streets; she would have the storehouse, that exists there, of never explored sixteenth-century records, thoroughly ransacked and reported upon, as it should be, by competent and national authorities, and given an adequate place and publicity. We should hear little more then, we venture to assert, of Baconian theories. Miss Corelli would have, moreover (and perhaps the statement may help to further the object), a great development of the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford. She would like it to be the Bayreuth of Literature. She would establish a central Shakespearean Society, with branches all over the world, which would circulate notes of interest among all Shakespeare lovers, and hold annual conferences in connection with the April Shakespearean celebrations.

Now, as to Marie Corelli’s “public.” The great sale of her works proves it to be a vast one, and the fact that her publishers have not found it advisable to issue her in sixpenny form is clear proof that she commands the purses of those who are able to afford six shillings. And although the possession of money is no guarantee of literary taste, yet it stands to reason that the upper and middle classes, taken in the mass, are the chief supporters of literature, and afford the best criterion of worth in their selection of books owing to the fact that their education is superior to that of people who are commonly designated as “poor.” But for the latter there are the free libraries, and the Corelli novels are in as constant demand wherever books are to be obtained for nothing, as at railway bookstalls, where there is not a halfpenny abatement of the full published price. Miss Corelli, then, being read by people of all classes, may certainly be said to have won over a considerable majority of the bookreading portion of the British race.

And it must not be forgotten that she is perhaps the most extensively read of living novelists in Holland, Russia, Germany and Austria, where translations of her books are always to be obtained, or that her “Barabbas” and “A Romance of Two Worlds,” in their Hindustani renderings, command a wide following among the native peoples of India. She is extremely popular in Norway and Sweden, and “Vendetta!” in its Italian translation is always the vogue in Italy, as is the French version of “Absinthe” (“Wormwood”) in France. There is no country where her name is unknown, and no European city, where, if she chances to pass through, she is not besieged with visitors and waylaid with offerings of flowers. Were she to visit Australia or New Zealand she would receive an almost “royal” welcome, so great is the enthusiasm in the “New World” for anything that comes from her pen.

Marie Corelli’s acquaintances are many in number, but her circle of friends is a small and carefully selected one. Shakespeare’s “He that is thy friend indeed” can be applied, even in the case of a popular novelist, to but few persons. Where Miss Corelli is, there always is her devoted friend Miss Vyver. Between these two there is perfect understanding and absolute sympathy. It goes without saying that, until the day of his death, Dr. Mackay held chief place in his adopted daughter’s heart, and, though dead, holds it still. The kind old publisher, George Bentley, was, perhaps, owing to his unceasing sympathy and delicate appreciation of her nature, the best friend Marie Corelli ever had outside her own family circle.

But many of the social and artistic world’s great personages are among her most frequent guests and correspondents. The numerous letters she has from famous men and women would almost make a journal of contemporary history. Many eminent persons appear to set considerable value on her opinions, judging from the questions they ask of her, and the urgency with which they press for an answer.

During the South African War, representatives of all ranks at the front kept her informed of all that was going on, batches of letters reaching her from “fighting men” who were personally utter strangers to her, and whose names she had never heard. The gallant Lord Dundonald, who has long been a friend of hers, found time to write her one of the first letters that left his pen after he entered Ladysmith. And this kind of general confidence in her friendship runs all along the line. No one who has known her once seems inclined to forget her, while those who have really read her books become her friends without any personal knowledge of her.

At Stratford this celebrated novelist lives a very quiet life. Of course she cannot escape the attentions of the curious, for Fame has its penalties; the Stratford cabmen, taking visitors round the old town, often pull up opposite Mason Croft to allow

their fares to gaze upon the residence of the popular writer. Sometimes her admirers, although absolute strangers, venture to call upon her; but there is an astute and diplomatic butler at Mason Croft who takes very good care that his mistress is not unnecessarily disturbed when she is working.

It is this resolute working of hers that--coupled with her extraordinary gifts--has made the name of Marie Corelli one to conjure with. Week in, week out, she toils at her desk for several hours every morning, and it is by such methods of regularity and application that she has succeeded in writing such long, as well as such successful, novels.

The following sketch, contributed to the _Manchester Chronicle_ last summer by the editor, Mr. J. Cuming Walters, affords a very complete picture of Marie Corelli as she is to-day:--

In the old-world town of Stratford-on-Avon stands an Elizabethan red-brick house, its windowsills brightened with flowers which hang down in profusion and impart gaiety of aspect to the ancient and time-worn edifice. Here, near the Guild Church and the school that Shakespeare knew, in the quietest part of the town, dwells, with her loyal companion and friend, Miss Marie Corelli.

What manner of woman is this most popular novelist of the hour, who has the reading world at her feet, and who has conquered the hearts of millions? Until lately she was thought to be a mystery. One has only to know her to marvel why. For Marie Corelli does not shroud herself in obscurity, does not affect the life of the recluse, does not pretend to be other than she is--a winsome, warm-hearted, sunny-natured woman, who enjoys life to the full, and would have others enjoy theirs, who has ideals and tries to live up to them, and who asks only to be freed from vulgar intrusion and the slanderous shafts of unseen enemies. In her delightful Stratford home she lives in a serene atmosphere; she regards the spot as hallowed; she has the artist’s love of the beautiful Warwickshire scenery, and the woman’s tenderness for all around her; the cottagers know her charity, and all good causes enjoy her aid and patronage. Here she dwells in a happy environment, and works with ardor, for her day’s labor begins at sunrise; yet she has always a spare hour for a friend, or a spare afternoon in which to act the gracious hostess towards visitors.

What first strikes one on meeting Miss Corelli is her intensely sympathetic nature. She will be found in all probability amid her choice flowers in the spacious Winter Garden, and her face irradiates as she advances to meet you with outstretched hands and smiling lips. A small creature, with a mass of waving golden hair--“pale gold such as the Tuscan’s early art prefers”--with dimpled cheeks and expressive eyes, almost childlike at first glance but with immense reserves of energy--that is Marie Corelli; but her chief charm is perhaps the liquid softness of her voice. She began life as a singer and musician, and as one hears her speak it is easy to understand that had she not been a force in literature she might have been a controlling influence in the world of song. In the hall her harp still stands, but more often her fingers stray over the notes of a piano, perchance making the instrument give forth a melody of her own composing.

A visitor is soon quite at ease. Formality is dispensed with. The keynote in Miss Corelli’s house is Sincerity. She is a brilliant conversationalist, but a good listener too. She talks freely and without conscious effort, and one’s faith in her is speedily inspired. What does she talk about? Just enough about herself to make her auditor wish for more; yet, with a condescension that is all grace, she is eager to hear all that her visitor has to say on the subjects nearest his own heart. Particularly does she like the theme to be the old loved authors, and whatever one has to tell of Dickens, or Thackeray, or Tennyson--and even if one should have a theory about Shakespeare--in Miss Corelli he will find not only the ardent listener but a woman whose quick and well-stored mind enables her to take up readily a debatable point, to help to resolve some doubt or mystery, or to add profitably to one’s own stock of knowledge. No one can converse with her for an hour and come away unenriched.

Yes, she not only writes enchantingly, but she herself enchants. In her presence you are under a spell. “There’s witchcraft in it.” Her youth and her artlessness disarm you--you are left wondering how this fair young creature could have fought her way alone in the world (her life has been a battle), how she could have conquered opposition, and how she could have attained to her present supremacy. It may verge upon extravagance to say it, but there is something to marvel at in the fact that at an age long before that at which George Eliot had written her first story Miss Corelli had given us a dozen remarkable and original romances of world-wide fame, and there is no guessing what achievements yet lie before her and what position she may gain. Her powers are waxing rather than waning, and a month or two ago when the last two chapters of “Temporal Power” were in her hand, we heard her say she hoped that in this book she had reached a higher stage than in any she had previously written.

But it is not only as a writer, as a necromancer with a magic pen, that one may admire Marie Corelli. She is a very woman, too, with a woman’s likes and dislikes, a woman’s feelings, a woman’s impulses, a woman’s preferences and prejudices--and she is quite frank concerning all. You like her the better for being so purely human. She is never happier than when arranging a maypole dance for the children or organizing Christmas festivities for the poor and helpless. Look round her charming rooms, and behold the evidence of the feminine hand there. Observe the taste of her dress--dress, by the way, which, with all its elegance, does not come from France, is not the “creation” or the “confection” of a Paris costumer, but is English in every detail. For there is no truer, more loyal, more patriotic soul than Marie Corelli, and she will tell you, with a touch of quiet pride, that every servant she has about her is English, that the cloth she wears is English, that the furniture of her rooms is English, and that she will endure none but an English workingman about her house. “England for the English” is her motto, and she lives up to it herself, and loses no opportunity of trying to get others to adopt it.

There are some who imagine that Miss Corelli is nothing if not caustic and critical, and they imagine that she is always running atilt against some person or other. Never was a greater delusion. Her chief fault is that she is too generous and her good nature too easily imposed upon. She will spend an afternoon in writing her name for the autograph-hunters; she will gladly address a gathering at a Pleasant Sunday Afternoon service; she will distribute prizes to children and make a felicitous speech; she will open a Flower Show; or she will lecture a huge throng in a public building on questions of the day. Yet she does these things at some sacrifice, too, for wondrously calm as she may be at the critical moment of action, her nerves are sorely shaken both before and afterwards. She taxes her memory greatly also. It may perhaps scarcely be credited that the address she delivered at Glasgow, which occupied an hour and a half, was learned off by heart and spoken without a slip.

But it is not our intention to reveal further of her private life; we know full well it would be displeasing to herself if we did so, and an unwarrantable breach of confidence. She is no notoriety-hunter. She does not cultivate the personal paragraph, and would no more tolerate the prying busybody than she does the camera-fiend who waylays her in the hope of obtaining snapshots. Why, she asks, should the veil be lifted merely to satisfy a vulgar and idle curiosity? Her private life is as sacred as that of any other person, and it is merely pandering to a depraved modern taste to lay bare “the poet’s house,” as Browning put it.

Outside should suffice for evidence: And whoso desires to penetrate Deeper, must dive by the spirit-sense.

One remark only need be added: Miss Corelli has been the victim of much misunderstanding in the past, of some injustice, and--alas, that it should have to be said--of deliberate malevolence. Those who are privileged to enjoy her friendship best know her admirable qualities, and entertain none but the kindest sentiments towards her and the best wishes for her continued triumphs. Her influence is vast and far-reaching. She writes with a purpose, she has used her gifts as she best knows how, and her fiery crusade, stern and determined as that of John Knox, against social evils and human follies, must make for lasting good. May this valiant woman, standing alone, battling for the right, yet add to her conquests!

Here, then, let us leave her, with the parting benediction which fell from the lips of Mr. Gladstone: “It is a wonderful gift you have, and I do not think you will abuse it. There is a magnetism in your pen which will influence many. Take care always to do your best. As a woman, you are pretty and good; as a writer, be brave and true. God bless you, my dear child! Be brave! You’ve got a great future before you. Don’t lose heart on the way!”

THE END

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Meaning, what terms for a new edition.

[B] As this was obvious the remark was unnecessary.

[C] The former of these works is published by Mr. Arrowsmith, and the latter by Messrs. Skeffington.

[D] “Temporal Power.”