The unholy wedding of the selfish millionaire and Lady Sibyl Elton takes place. Prince Rimânez acts as master of the ceremonies, and calls to his aid a devil’s own army of imps who work marvelous musical and picturesque effects—their identification as creatures of hell being, of course, hidden. Even thunder and lightning are called down to add to the remarkable scene. And so the marriage bargain is completed. Disillusionment quickly follows, and we find the husband and wife mutually disgusted with one another, and on the verge of hate. Lady Sibyl, however, finds passion at last, passion for the husband’s friend, Lucio Rimânez, Prince of Darkness.

To such an extent does this fever of love possess her that she seeks out Rimânez one night and declares her love, only to be scorned by him:

She falls upon her knees. And the scene thus continues:

After further passages of this description, concluding with some passes with a dagger, the scene ends, the hidden but listening husband coming forth and blessing the friend for his upright conduct. The inevitable follows. Lady Sibyl commits suicide; and the husband, finding the corpse seated in a chair before a mirror, carries out a plan for an awful midnight interview with the dead, turning on a blaze of lamps, and sitting down there in the death-chamber to read a document left by his wife, in which she gives a pitiful picture of the training that has made her character so repellent. She describes, in a remarkable and appalling letter, of which an extract follows, how the death-giving poison is taken and the agonizing thoughts of the last moments.

Here the manuscript ends,—incomplete and broken off abruptly,—and there is a blot on the last sentence as though the pen had been violently wrenched from the dying fingers and flung hastily down.

From this terrible incident the story hastens to its close, remarkable alike for the discourses of the Prince of Darkness, for the experiences of Tempest, for his final severance from the evil genius and his return to honest work. And here it is necessary to consider the conception of his Satanic Majesty with which the author presents us. She states that the idea came to her in the first place from the New Testament: “There I found that Christ was tempted by Satan with the offer of thrones, principalities and powers, all of which the Saviour rejected. When the temptation was over I read that Satan left Him, and that angels came and ministered to Him. I thought this out in my own mind and I concluded that if man, through Christ, would only reject Satan, Satan would leave him, and that angels would minister to him in the same way that they ministered to Christ. Out of this germ rose the wider idea that Satan himself might be glad for men to so reject him, as he then might have the chance of recovering his lost angelic position.” In fact, the writer would have it that Satan becomes on terms of intimacy with man, and man then becomes consequently evil, only if man shows that he wishes to travel an evil course; that man may never redeem the devil, but that when man has become as perfect as, through Christ, he may, then the devil may again become an angel—a Doctrine of universal salvation for sinners and for Satan too. No other writer has given such a conception of the devil’s character and position.

The central conception of “The Sorrows of Satan,” Marie Corelli further says, is that as the possession of an immortal spirit must needs breed immortal longings, Satan, being an angel once, must of necessity long for that state of perfection; and that God, being the perfection of love, could not in His love deny all hope of final redemption even to Satan. Truly she here gives a conception of the God of Love more attractive than the pitiless readings of the Divine character which some theologians would have us accept.

There are the two conflicting influences in the novelist’s conception of the devil—Satan endeavoring to corrupt and destroy man, yet knowing that if man rejects him he is nearer to his own redemption. And so in this book we find Prince Lucio Rimânez often giving utterance to thoughts and principles which the man enslaved by him refuses to adopt and practice, as if he longed for Tempest to repel him, though helping forward all his selfish schemes. And we are given, too, the picture of this Prince of Darkness, finding that Mavis Clare could not be tempted, begging for her prayers—“you believe God hears you.... Only a pure woman can make faith possible to man. Pray for me, then, as one who has fallen from his higher and better self; who strives, but who may not attain; who labors under heavy punishment; who would fain reach Heaven, but who by the cursed will of man, and man alone, is kept in hell! Pray for me, Mavis Clare; promise it; and so shall you lift me a step nearer the glory I have lost.”

Rimânez and Tempest go on a long yachting cruise together,—to Egypt,—and during this journey the discourses of the Prince are numerous and of intense interest. In one he states that if men were true to their immortal instincts and to the God that made them,—if they were generous, honest, fearless, faithful, reverent, unselfish, ... if women were pure, brave, tender, and loving,—then “Lucifer, Son of the Morning,” lifted towards his Creator on the prayers of pure lives, would wear again his Angel’s crown. There is for a brief period after this a vision of the devil,—“one who, proud and rebellious, like you, errs less, in that he owns God as his Master”—as an Angel. And then the yacht, steered by the demon Amiel, crashes on through ice with a noise like thunder, to the world’s end. Tempest catches a passing glimpse of his dead wife, and feels remorse and pity at last. A few moments pass and Tempest’s hour has come, an hour for a great decision:

The choice is made. Tempest realizes with shame his miserable vices, his puny scorn of God, his effronteries and blasphemies; and in the sudden strong repulsion and repudiation of his own worthless existence, being, and character, he finds both voice and speech. “God only! Annihilation at His hands, rather than life without Him! God only! I have chosen!” From the brightening heaven there rings a silver voice, clear as a clarion-call,—“Arise, Lucifer, Son of the Morning! One soul rejects thee,—one hour of joy is granted thee! Hence, and arise!” And with a vision of the man fiend rushing for a brief hour to celestial regions, because of one soul that rejected Satan, Geoffrey Tempest finds himself tied to a raft on the open sea, and remembers the promise, “Him who cometh unto me will I in no wise cast out.”

The late Rev. H. R. Haweis, preaching on this book, said: “‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you,’ is the grand moral carried out,” and that is an opinion, notwithstanding the ban of the Romish Church, which is entertained of the book by many Christian men, by a large number of Christian clergy. It is a declaration of the Nemesis of everything that opposes itself to the will of God. The book teaches the softening influences upon mankind of good deeds done, of good words spoken. It teaches, in brief, that there are two contending powers at work upon mankind—the evil and the good; and the book is an eloquent, beautiful, effective contribution to the victory of the Good. The sensuality, the evil imagination, the prostitution of the marriage sacrament to commercial bargains, the infidelity, in thought and intention, though not in deed, of Lady Sibyl Elton, are stripped of their pretty dressings and shown in their detestable reality. “The acts of selfishness in man,” Mr. Haweis added, “are exhibited in the person of Geoffrey Tempest in a garb that repels and with results that horrify; and the pure influence of Mavis Clare is shown on the other side of the picture, bright and attractive, the spirit of peace, contentment, and love in a glorious and glorified conquest of the spirit of evil.”

Miss Corelli has suffered in a peculiar way from the deficiencies of the law of copyright which allows perfect protection to a mechanical patent, but which gives an author no adequate protection over rights such as the dramatization of a book. “The Sorrows of Satan,” as everybody knows, was dramatized, and this is how it came about: In the year of the publication of “The Sorrows of Satan,” 1895, Mr. George Eric Mackay introduced to his stepsister a lady of his acquaintance, a sculptress, who, so he said, was anxious to make a study of his head. This lady, in her turn, introduced Captain Woodgate, who expressed his enthusiastic admiration for “The Sorrows of Satan” to Miss Corelli, and said it would make a very fine play, and followed up his praise by asking whether he might try his hand at dramatizing it, as he had already had some experience in the writing of plays. Miss Corelli replied that she had not thought of it at all as a play, but that she had no objection to his trying, on condition that nothing was produced without her authorization and permission. Captain Woodgate readily consented to this, but the whole subject was talked of so casually that (so Miss Corelli declares) she did not think he really meant to undertake it.

Miss Corelli was very ill at the time, and went to Scotland for her health. During her absence, Captain Woodgate went to work, and called in the assistance of Mr. Paul Berton. Between them they wrote a play, and “The Grosvenor Syndicate” was formed for the purposes of its production.

Miss Corelli was then invited to hear the play read in the Shaftesbury Theatre green-room. Miss Evelyn Millard, selected to play the part of “Lady Sibyl,” was present. After the first act had been read by Mr. Paul Berton, Miss Corelli informs us that she very decidedly expressed her objection to it, and said that it would never do. Mr. Eric Mackay, who was also present, said that, on the contrary, he thought it “admirable.” Miss Corelli, hearing this, remained silent while the second act was proceeded with by Mr. Berton, to her increasing distaste. Her feelings in the matter (so Miss Corelli declares) met with complete sympathy from Miss Evelyn Millard, who, rising from her place, begged Miss Corelli to give her a few words in private. Miss Corelli followed her out of the room, and Miss Millard then said: “My dear Miss Corelli, I was ready and glad to think of playing your character of ‘Lady Sibyl Elton’ in ‘The Sorrows of Satan,’ but I cannot possibly consent to act in this.”

Miss Corelli thanked Miss Millard very heartily for her plain speaking and her decision, and then, informing the joint authors that she would have nothing whatever to do with the play, the meeting at the Shaftesbury broke up. Mr. Lewis Waller, who had been selected for the part of “Lucio Rimânez,” wrote a letter to Miss Corelli in which he cordially sympathized with her on the treatment her work had received.

“The Grosvenor Syndicate” paid her five hundred pounds for the use of her name, but this sum she offered to promptly return if they would as promptly withdraw the play. Upon this the shareholders met together at the office of Miss Corelli’s lawyer to discuss the matter, and Miss Corelli again proposed to give them back at once the five hundred pounds, and to write a play on her book herself. It may be added that, if she had been allowed to do this, Mr. Beerbohm Tree would have been ready and glad to consider the part of Prince Lucio. She said to those who had invested their money in the syndicate: “Gentlemen, if you will withdraw this work, I will guarantee to write you a play which shall be a success.” They, however, after consideration, refused, saying that shares were issued and they could not go back. Miss Corelli, therefore, withdrew her “authorization” altogether, and only allowed the simple use of her name on the programmes to this effect: “Dramatized from the novel of that name by Marie Corelli.” The play was therefore produced for the first time at the Shaftesbury Theatre on the evening of January 9th, 1897, in the presence of H. R. H. the Duke of Cambridge and suite, the Duke, audibly expressing agreement with Miss Corelli’s views of the work. She herself was not present. She was lying ill in bed, suffering acute pain, having that very day gone through a trying ordeal of surgical examination by Sir John Williams, who had bluntly informed her that she had not, perhaps, six months to live unless she went through a grave operation. It will be owned that this was a singular situation for any author, as she herself says, “to have the work of her brain dealt with in a way to which she took obvious exception, and herself threatened with death both on the same day.”

The play of The Sorrows of Satan was produced, Mr. Lewis Waller playing the part of Lucio. Miss Millard remained staunch to her opinion, and wrote to Miss Corelli, saying how sincerely sorry she was that the play had been brought out, notwithstanding the protest. Since that time several dramatic versions of the book have been played, including Mr. C. W. Somerset’s version, which Miss Corelli has described as a combination of her novel and the late George Augustus Sala’s “Margaret Foster.” Mr. Somerset is himself the author of this production, and we are told that he informed Miss Corelli that he put the two books together in this work “to strengthen both!”

Miss Corelli would much like to put a stop to the various stage renderings of “The Sorrows of Satan” if the law would give her the power to do so; and she would greatly like to see the law altered so as to give her and other authors such power. As it is, she now, to secure her titles, whenever she writes a book, has a play, bearing the title of her book, produced before a paying audience.

In order to secure such dramatic copyright, authors have to pay to have their “sham” play performed before a “sham” audience with “sham” actors! And the law compels it!

CHAPTER X

“THE MIGHTY ATOM” AND “BOY”

The greatest of novelists have generally told their stories with an object other than mere story-telling. Charles Reade brought about asylum reform by publishing “Hard Cash,” while in “Foul Play” he made clear the injustice of preventing a prisoner from giving evidence in his own behalf—a state of things which has been only recently remedied; Dickens showed up villainous schoolmasters, receivers of stolen goods, the delays of the Law, Bumbledom, emigration frauds, and a hundred other abuses; Thackeray preached against cant; Wilkie Collins broke a lance with the vivisectionists; and Clark Russell, in “The Wreck of the Grosvenor,” told a harrowing story of the rotten food provided for the helpless merchant sailor.

Miss Corelli has grappled with human wrongs just as great, even though they may not be amenable to jurisdiction.

In the two books before us she deals, in hard-hitting, thought-compelling terms, with the criminally mistaken up-bringing of children. Her object in writing “The Mighty Atom” she tersely explains in her dedicatory note to “those self-styled ‘progressivists’” who support the cause of education without religion. The short and pathetic history of Lionel Valliscourt is placed before us as typical of the fate which so often befalls the overwrought child-brain: the horrible end to the young life is depicted with the idea of manifesting in what the absence of religion even from a boy’s mind may result. Had Lionel learned to say his prayers at his mother’s knee; had he trotted off to Church every Sunday morning, his hand within his father’s, and at eventide listened to the sweet old Bible-stories which so appeal to a child’s imagination, the Christian precepts thus implanted in his heart would surely have stayed his hand when he conceived the idea of taking his own life.

This most sad story fully brings home to the reader the evils attendant on the entirely godless teaching bestowed on a young and exceptionally bright boy, who has an instinctive yearning for that “knowledge and love of God” of which our authoress is the strenuous champion.

Lionel, the small centre of the picture, is introduced as a boy who “might have been a bank clerk or an experienced accountant in a London merchant’s office, from his serious old-fashioned manner, instead of a child barely eleven years of age; indeed, as a matter of fact, there was an almost appalling expression of premature wisdom on his pale wistful features;—the ‘thinking furrow’ already marked his forehead,—and what should still have been the babyish upper curve of his sensitive little mouth was almost, though not quite, obliterated by a severe line of constantly practiced self-restraint.”

Mr. Valliscourt has hired tutor after tutor to assist him in forcing Lionel’s intellect: by turns each tutor has thrown up his task in disgust. At last comes William Montrose, B. A., a breezy Oxonian, who refuses point-blank to go through the “schedule of tuition” which Mr. Valliscourt “formulates” for his son’s holiday tasks. Montrose is angrily dismissed, and Professor Cadman-Gore, “the dark-lantern of learning and obscure glory of university poseurs,” is engaged in his place to squeeze the juice out of poor little Lionel’s already wearied brains.

Very early in his holiday term of coaching the Professor has to submit to some cross-examination from Lionel on the subject of the Atom. “Where is it?—that wonderful little First Atom, which, without knowing in the least what it was about, and with nobody to guide it, and having no reason, judgment, sight, or sense of its own, produced such beautiful creations? And then, if you are able to tell me where it is, will you also tell me where it came from?”

It appears that Lionel has imbibed atheistic principles not only from his father, but from a former tutor, and he is determined to thrash the matter out with the Professor, whom he takes to be the cleverest man in the world. The Professor’s replies, however, are unsatisfactory, and Lionel goes on wondering.

The work continues, and he grows yet wearier. Manfully he struggles to accomplish his allotted tasks, each effort sapping his strength still further and adding to the pains which fill his head and drive sleep from his tired eyes. The Professor, acting according to orders, continues to grind the young brains to powder.

At last the crisis arrives. Under dishonorable circumstances Lionel’s mother leaves her husband: over-work, sorrow, too little exercise—all these combined bring about Lionel’s collapse. The plain-spoken village doctor orders him away for rest, and so the Professor and his young charge go to Clovelly, where they spend some bewilderingly delightful weeks of absolute idleness. The Professor’s eyes have been somewhat opened by Lionel’s break-down to the real state of the child, whom thereafter he treats with a certain rough kindness which wins him the boy’s whole heart. Lionel cannot quite make it out—but he is grateful.

“He used to show his gratitude,” we are told, “in odd little ways of his own, which had a curious and softening effect on the mind of the learned Cadman-Gore. He would carefully brush the ugly hat of the great man and bring it to him,—he would pull out and smooth the large sticky fingers of his loose leather gloves and lay them side by side on a table ready for him to wear,—he would energetically polish the top of his big silver-knobbed stick,—and he would invariably make a ‘buttonhole’ of the prettiest flowers he could find for him to put in his coat at dinner.”

One can imagine the grim old gentleman being by turns astonished and touched by such attentions: the Professor indeed warms to the lad, and, when they return to Combmartin, bids him go and play instead of returning to his investigation of “The Advance of Positivism and Pure Reason,” which formed part of that schedule of study which his father had previously insisted upon.

Before his illness Lionel had become close friends with the village sexton, Reuben Dale, and that worthy’s little daughter, Jessamine. It had been the boy’s keenest joy to romp and talk with Jessamine, and so, on being afforded a holiday by the Professor’s thoughtfulness, he proceeds with a light heart in search of his former playmate. He finds Reuben at work in the churchyard, and “the significant hollow in the ground was shaped slowly in a small dark square, to the length of a little child.”

The old man’s sobs betray the truth—during Lionel’s absence his baby sweetheart has fallen a prey to diphtheria. The boy’s anguish is terrible: the sexton’s simple faith in God’s way being the best way has no comfort for the helpless little pagan who has been taught that such faith as this is sheer nonsense. “No, no!” he cries; “there is no God; you have not read,—you have not studied things, and you do not know,—but you are all wrong. There is no God,—there is only the Atom which does not care.”

Distracted with grief, Lionel tears away into the woods, his bewildered and weary head full of strange thoughts. At last a firm resolve takes possession of him. “I know!—I know the best way to discover the real secret,—I must find it out!—and I will!”

And he does. With the cool deliberation that is often a distinguishing attribute of one bent on self-destruction, he goes to bed in the usual way. When the house is quite still, and all its other inmates are slumbering, he steals down to his schoolroom, where he carefully pens some letters—one to his father, another to the Professor, and a third to Mr. Montrose. This done, he falls upon his knees by the open window and prays to that Being whom he feels “must be a God, really and truly,” in spite of the many learned theories to the contrary by which his child-mind has been distracted.

A little later “there came a heavy stillness, ... and a sudden sense of cold in the air, as of the swift passing of the Shadow of Death.”

One may reasonably contend that such passages as these are unnecessarily distressing, and certainly there are several of Miss Corelli’s works which should not be left in the way of weak-minded persons. The authoress, it is clear, wishes to drive home her arguments in a manner that will be remembered. Chapter XIV. of “The Mighty Atom” is not one that is ever likely to be forgotten by those who have read this book.

People who object to such methods as Miss Corelli employs in “The Mighty Atom” must bear in mind that the motive underlying each of her stories is to show up a certain evil and suggest remedial measures, themselves as powerful as the disease requiring their application.

The lesson taught so startlingly in “The Mighty Atom” must have brought home the truths of its straightforward doctrines to a multitude of readers. Thus can a book drop seed which is destined to flourish abundantly for a great length of time and in widely separated places. If a book be good, it will have a long life: living, its effects will be felt by more than one generation of readers. Such is the power of literature—such the strength of a mere pen when wielded by one whose principal stock-in-trade is knowledge combined with sincerity and a determination to speak out for the general weal at all hazards, critics notwithstanding.

“Boy,” a book about equal in length to “The Mighty Atom,” is less picturesque in its setting than the latter, but, on the other hand, is lightened by considerable humor and happy characterization. It is a sermon to parents. The boy, as we know, is father of the man; consequently, if you bring a boy up badly, the complete growth of him when he reaches man’s estate is hardly likely to be satisfactory.

“It is a dangerous fallacy,” says the author of “Boy,” “to aver that every man has the making of his destiny in his own hands: to a certain extent he has, no doubt, and with education and firm resolve, he can do much to keep down the Beast and develop the Angel; but a terrific responsibility rests upon those often voluntarily reckless beings, his parents, who, without taking thought, use God’s privilege of giving life, while utterly failing to perceive the means offered to them for developing and preserving that life under the wisest and most harmonious conditions.”

The career of the particular “boy” under notice is traced from the time when, a crawling babe, he gravely surveys his father’s drunken antics and ascribes them to attacks of illness. Hence his frequent references to the “poo’ sing” whose too close attentions to the bottle have earned him this mistaken infantile sympathy. “Boy’s” especial admirer is a maiden lady of ample means, who has an ardent desire to adopt him, but whose wishes are invariably thwarted by “Boy’s” mother, a “large, lazy, and unintelligent” woman with limited and peculiar ideas on the rearing and educating of children. The maiden lady herself has a devoted cavalier, in the shape of an elderly Major, who proposes to her regularly, only to be met with a gentle but steady negative. The lady’s heart is buried with a former lover, who, years before, went to India and died there; and although the Major knows that the object of his attachment is burning perpetual candles before a worthless shrine—for the dead man was a sad rascal in his day, and was, moreover, false to her—he prefers to let her live with her illusion rather than profit by acquainting her with the true facts of the case.

As the Major is generally in attendance on Miss Letitia Leslie we see a good deal of the bluff old soldier, for “Boy” is occasionally allowed to go and stay with “Miss Letty.” These are the golden periods of the good maiden lady’s life—and, too, of “Boy’s,” for while Miss Leslie cares for him properly, his mother exploits her ideas of motherhood by feeding the little fellow “on sloppy food which frequently did not agree with him, in dosing him with medicine when he was out of sorts, in dressing him anyhow, and in allowing him to amuse himself as he liked wherever he could, however he could, at all times, and in all places, dirty or clean.”

Meantime, Captain the Honorable D’Arcy Muir rolls in and out of the house—more often than not in that state of drunken combativeness which finds a vent in assaulting mantelpiece ornaments and the lighter articles of furniture—and Mrs. D’Arcy Muir reads novels, or, studying personal ease before appearance, slouches about the house in soft felt slippers and loosely fitting garments which frequently lack a sufficiency of buttons and hooks.

In spite of such surroundings “Boy” remains a very lovable little fellow until he goes to school. Then Miss Letty and the Major lose sight of him for a long period, for he is sent to a school in Brittany. The Major deplores the fact: “You must say good-bye to ‘Boy’ forever!... Don’t you see? The child has gone—and he’ll never come back. A boy will come back, but not the boy you knew. The boy you knew is practically dead.... The poor little chap had enough against him in his home surroundings, God knows!—but a cheap foreign school is the last straw on the camel’s back. Whatever is good in his nature will go to waste; whatever is bad will grow and flourish!”

As it happens, “Boy” stays in France only a year, but during that period Miss Letty, the Major, and the Major’s niece go to America and settle down there for a time. “Boy” reappears at the age of sixteen, when he is being educated at an English military school. One of the best-written scenes in the book describes the meeting of “Boy” with Miss Letty, who returns from America about this time. “Boy” has grown into a slim, awkward youth, getting on to six feet in height, callous, listless, and cynical. He has lost his old frankness; he is not, as the Major predicted, the “boy” that Miss Letty knew in the days gone by.

The description of the luncheon party when the four sides of the table are occupied respectively by Miss Letty, the Major, the latter’s niece, and “Boy,” is exceedingly well done, “Boy’s” stolid, blasé replies to the many questions he is asked being exceedingly diverting, although one feels sorry to see into what an automaton he has grown.

“Are you glad you are going to be a soldier?” the Major asks him. “Oh, I don’t mind it!” says “Boy.” “Are you fond of flowers?” the girl demands of him a little later. “I don’t mind them much!” replies “Boy” indifferently. “Well, what do you mind? Anything?” puts in the Major. “Boy” laughed. “I don’t know.”

This scene—from which we have merely extracted a few remarks—is in its way an excellent bit of comedy, but on behalf of public schoolboys generally we must say that we don’t think “Boy” would have put his hat on—as he is reported to have done—while still in the room with the ladies.

“Boy” passes into Sandhurst, but is expelled therefrom for drunkenness; he gets a clerkship, incurs card debts, alters the amount on a check which Miss Letty has sent him, repents of the fraud, returns the whole amount, with a manly apology, to Miss Letty, enlists, and is killed by the Boers. That, then, is the sad end of “Boy.”

In addition to the characters mentioned there are others of subsidiary importance, and there is, threading in and out of the “Boy” episodes, a love-story which ends tragically, at the time, for the Major’s niece, though she eventually meets the man Fate has decreed she shall marry, on a South African battle-field.

In no other book has Miss Corelli favored us with so many smile-provoking passages. There is, for instance, a good deal of grim humor about “Rattling Jack”—the salt-dried veteran of whom “Boy” makes a friend when the D’Arcy Muirs move from their London home in Hereford Square to cheaper quarters on the coast.

Rattling Jack doesn’t sympathize with the elementary methods of the young student of natural history. He doesn’t see why beetles and butterflies should be trapped and carried home for the “museum.” One day “Boy” brings for the old sailor’s inspection a beautiful rose-colored sea-anemone which he had managed to detach from the rocks and carry off in his tin pail.

This weary-wise old fellow must be credited to Miss Corelli as one of her best portraits in miniature. His observations are full of sage and seasoning, and we could do with more of him.

Did Miss Corelli’s themes allow of it, we might have been treated to a good deal more humor in her works, but she is too good an artist to intrude comic relief when such relief would merely be an annoying interruption. But various passages in her books show her to be the possessor of a considerable sense of the laughable, and it is to be hoped that she will some day find time to write a story dealing with the lighter side of existence.

CHAPTER XI

“THE MURDER OF DELICIA” AND “ZISKA”[C]

In the former of these works Marie Corelli has much to say about men that is very disagreeable and, as it appears to us, only partially true. It would seem that the novelist is too prone to seize upon a particular instance of “man’s ingratitude,” laziness, cruelty, and general worthlessness, and set it up as a frequently occurring type.

In “The Murder of Delicia,” for example, a handsome guardsman, nicknamed by his fellow-officers “Beauty Carlyon,” marries a lady novelist who is equally gifted in brain and person, and, after spending her money for a considerable period, finally breaks her heart—in short, “murders” her—by his neglect and infidelity.

The keynote of the story—which is, we are assured by its writer, a true one—may be found in an introductory note, which contains the following: “To put it plainly and bluntly, a great majority of the men of the present day want women to keep them.”

Now surely this is an over-statement which will not strengthen Marie Corelli’s case. We grant that a certain number of men marry for money, and that the women they so marry are only too glad to be married on those or any terms; but the social conditions of this era have not become so cankered as to lead the “great majority of men” to seek a livelihood at the altar steps! Would it not be altogether more reasonable to substitute “a certain minority” for “a great majority”? In fairness to the novelist, we must add that her remarks on this subject apply principally to the aristocracy. The worthy lover or husband of the middle classes may therefore breathe again.

Nevertheless, we will venture to present the other aspect of this matter of marrying for money. It is well-known that many a wealthy woman languishes in virgin solitude on account of those very shekels of gold and shekels of silver which she possesseth, while her penniless girl-friends are donning their marital veils and going through the sweet old business of marrying and being given in marriage. This applies to the upper as well as to the lower ranks of society.

Many a man—aye, many a guardsman—would now be a happy Benedict had a certain girl of “once upon a time” been possessed of no riches save the inestimable wealth of a loving heart, no diamonds except those shining in her eyes, no pearls but what one might see when her lips parted in shy smile or merry laughter.

For the average man—be his rank high or low—loves a woman, as the saying is, for herself. While recognizing the value and usefulness of money, while raising no objection should his father-in-law allow the young wife pin-money, the average man who marries in the ordinary way sets little store on what his bride brings him in the shape of earthly dross.

It is, however, incumbent on a writer of contemporary biography to be in the main courteous and commendatory, else we might apply a harsher criticism to “The Murder of Delicia” than a mere statement to the effect that this book is the least worthy of all the books Marie Corelli has written. It is far too full of railing against men; it is far too one-sided and far too bitter. Granted that a novelist must put his or her case strongly, in order to drive conviction home to the reader’s mind—granted this, it must be at the same time pointed out that there are generally two sides to every question. Given that a certain number of men marry for money—for money and nothing else—it must be recollected that there are at the present moment thousands of Englishwomen devoting whatever powers of mental arithmetic they may be endowed with to reckoning up exactly what pecuniary advantages shall accrue to them if they marry Jack Jones, or, failing Jack Jones, John Smith! And a cross-Channel père de famille would tell you that they are quite right to do this, that, indeed, if they were his daughters, he would do it for them, and have the whole thing put down in black and white at a notary’s office.

But—thank heaven!—we are a little more sentimental on this side of the narrow strip of silver sea. We still believe in the love marriage, and so an approving Dame Nature gives us healthy sons and daughters for the regular renewal of the nation’s strength. Whereas in la belle France, with her businesslike matrimonial alliances, they have to offer prizes for babies! Truly a pathetic endeavor to stem a national decay!

“The Murder of Delicia” is a short story, soon told. Lord Carlyon takes a strong fancy to Delicia Vaughan, the popular and beautiful lady-novelist, and his liking is returned tenfold. They marry, and Delicia supplies him with money for his clothes, club expenses, cabs, and card games. Were it not that we are aware that even the wisest of women may, in spite of their wisdom, love unwisely, we should marvel at a woman of Delicia Vaughan’s intellectual gifts (which were coupled, we may presume, with the keen insight into human nature that a novelist should possess) marrying a man of the Lord Carlyon type—a big, handsome animal, whose conversation must have afforded her very little entertainment. She loved him because to her (to quote the book) he was a “strong, splendid, bold, athletic, masterful creature who was hers—hers only!” Is it possible that a woman of Delicia Vaughan’s alleged intelligence would have fallen so completely in love with a man who “was absolutely devoid of all ambition, save a desire to have his surname pronounced correctly”? Truly, a dull dog—yet Delicia worshiped him. She disregarded the apostolic command to little children not to take unto themselves idols. She doted on this man of inches. She housed and fed him, pampered him, showered money on him, and he repaid her by indulging in a low intrigue with a music-hall dancer.

Marie Corelli almost laughs at her heroine. But, even while the smile hovers on her lips, she explains poor Delicia’s phantasy. It was “the rare and beautiful blindness of perfect love”—squandered on an entirely worthless object. And this is quite a true touch, for even lady-novelists are only human.

Delicia had to pay the penalty of her passion. Her eyes were opened all in good time, and from showering the wealth of her hand and all the treasures of her heart upon Carlyon, she came, in the end, to threatening him with a revolver when he would have healed their differences with a kiss.

The book, as its title implies, ends sadly. How sadly, those who have read it will know, and those who may read it hereafter will soon discover, for it is quite a little book, and its price but a florin.

“These are the people,” writes Marie Corelli in “Ziska,” alluding to the tourists assembled in Cairo, “who usually leave England on the plea of being unable to stand the cheery, frosty, and in every respect healthy winter of their native country—