“Lotys!” he said; “Are you so cold, so frozen in an icewall of conventionality that you cannot warm to passion—not even to that passion which every pulse of you is ready to return? What do you want of me? Lover’s oaths? Vows of constancy? Oh, beloved woman as you are, do you not understand that you have entered into my very heart of hearts—that you hold my whole life in your possession? You—not I—are the ruling power of this country! What you say, that I will do! What you command, that will I obey! While you live, I will live—when you die, I will die! Through you I have learned the value of sovereignty,—the good that can be done to a country by honest work in kingship,—through you I have won back my disaffected subjects to loyalty;—it is all you—only you! And if you blamed me once as a worthless king, you shall never have cause to so blame me again! But you must help me,—you must help me with your love!”
She strove to control the beating of her heart, as she looked upon him and listened to his pleading. She resolutely shut her soul to the persuasive music of his voice, the light of his eyes, the tenderness of his smile.
“What of the Queen?” she said.
He started back, as though he had been stung.
“The Queen!” he repeated mechanically—“The Queen!”
“Ay, the Queen!” said Lotys. “She is your wife—the mother of your sons! She has never loved you, you would say,—you have never loved her. But you are her husband! Would you make me your mistress?”
Her voice was calm. She put the plain question point-blank, without a note of hesitation. His face paled suddenly.
“Lotys!” he said, and stretched out his hands towards her; “Lotys, I love you!”
A change passed over her,—rapid and transfiguring as a sudden radiance from heaven. With an impulsive gesture, beautiful in its wild abandonment, she cast herself at his feet.
“And I love you!” she said. “I love you with every breath of my body, every pulse of my heart! I love you with the entire passion of my life! I love you with all the love pent up in my poor starved soul since childhood until now!—I love you more than woman ever loved either lover or husband! I love you, my lord and King!—but even as I love you, I honor you! No selfish thought of mine shall ever tarnish the smallest jewel in your Crown! Oh, my beloved! My Royal soul of courage! What do you take me for? Should I be worthy of your thought if I dragged you down? Should I be Lotys,—if, like some light woman who can be bought for a few jewels,—I gave myself to you in that fever of desire which men mistake for love? Ah, no!—ten thousand times no! I love you! Look at me,—can you not see how my soul cries out for you? How my lips hunger for your kisses—how I long, ah, God! for all the tenderness which I know is in your heart for me,—I, so lonely, weary, and robbed of all the dearest joys of life!—but I will not shame you by my love, my best and dearest! I will not set you one degree lower in the thoughts of the People, who now idolize you and know you as the brave, true man you are! My love for you would be poor indeed, if I could not sacrifice myself altogether for your sake,—you, who are my King!”
He heard her,—his whole soul was shaken by the passion of her words.
“Lotys!” he said,—and again—“Lotys!”
He drew her up from her kneeling attitude, and gathering her close in his arms, kissed her tenderly, reverently—as a man might kiss the lips of the dead.
“Must it be so, Lotys?” he whispered; “Must we dwell always apart?”
Her eyes, beautiful with a passion of the highest and holiest love, looked full into his.
“Always apart, yet always together, my beloved!” she answered; “Together in thought, in soul, in aspiration!—in the hope and confidence that God sees us, and knows that we seek to live purely in His sight! Oh, my King, you would not have it otherwise! You would not have our love defiled! How common and easy it would be for me to give myself to you!—as other women are only too ready to give themselves,—to take your tenderness, your care, your admiration,—to demand your constant attendance on my lightest humor!—to bring you shame by my persistent companionship!—to cause an open slander, and allow the finger of scorn to be pointed at you!—to see your honor made a mockery of, by base persons who would judge you as one, who, notwithstanding his brave espousal of the People’s Cause, was yet a slave to the caprice of a woman! Think something more of me than this! Do not put me on the level of such women as once brought your name into contempt! They did not love you!—they loved themselves. But I—I love you! Oh, my dearest lord, if self were concerned at all in this great love of my heart, I would not suffer your arms to rest about me now!—I would not let your lips touch mine!—but it is for the last time, beloved!—the last time! And so I put my hands here on your heart—I kiss your lips—I say with all my soul in the prayer—God bless you!—God keep you!—God save you, my King! Though I shall live apart from you all my days, my spirit is one with yours! God will know that truth when we meet—on the other side of Death!”
Her tears fell fast, and he bent over her, torn by a tempest of conflicting emotions, and kissing the soft hair that lay loosely ruffled against his breast.
“Then it shall be so, Lotys!” he murmured at last. “Your wish is my law!—it shall be as you command! I will fulfil such duties as I must in this world,—and the knowledge of your love for me,—your trust in me, shall keep me high in the People’s honor! Old follies shall be swept away—old sins atoned for;—and when we meet, as you say, on the other side of Death, God will perchance give us all that we have longed for in this world—all that we have lost!”
His voice shook,—he could not further rely on his self-control.
“I will not tempt you, Lotys!” he whispered—“I dare not tempt myself! God bless you!”
He put her gently from him, and stood for a moment irresolute. All the hope he had indulged in of a sweeter joy than any he had ever known, was lost,—and yet—he knew he had no right to press upon her a love which, to her, could only mean dishonor.
“Good-bye, Lotys!” he said huskily; “My one love in this world and the next! Good-bye!”
She gazed at him with her whole soul in her eyes,—then suddenly, and with the tenderest grace in the world, dropped on her knees and kissed his hand.
“God save your Majesty!” she said, with a poor little effort at smiling through her tears; “For many and many a long and happy year, when Lotys is no more!”
This beautiful passage alone is a literary tour-de-force. “Temporal Power,” in short, shows no abatement of Marie Corelli’s energetic and varied genius, and the public will await her next work with all possible interest.
Miss Marie Corelli’s career as a public speaker has been a short one, but, so far as it has gone, full of promise. She has a good enunciation and a sweet, penetrating voice; she takes the platform with the whole of her address clearly mapped out in her mind, her only aids to memory being a few notes scribbled on slips of paper, which at first glance look like a number of broad spills. Consulting these occasionally by way of mental refreshment, she says what she has to say with easy self-possession, never hesitating for lack of a suitable word or phrase.
The novelist’s first speech in public was made in connection with a bazaar at Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire, in July, 1899. The announcement that Miss Corelli was to open the proceedings attracted a large number of people to this picturesque little town, which is situated some eight miles from Stratford-on-Avon, on the high road to Birmingham.
When Miss Corelli had mounted the improvised platform, she first thanked the organizers of the bazaar for the compliment that had been paid her in their invitation, and then proceeded as follows:
“I think we all know very well what a bazaar is. It is peculiar and distinctive; it is a way of charming the money out of our pockets. We wish it to be charmed to-day, because we always know when such money is obtained it is for a good purpose. Sometimes it is for a hospital, frequently it is for the restoration of a parish church. That is our object this afternoon. Now, there are some people who say that a parish church does not always require repair, but in this special case you cannot possibly offer that as an excuse for not spending your money. The parish church of Henley-in-Arden is in a very sad state; indeed, there are holes in the wooden floor through which rats and mice, quite uninvited, may come to prayers. Also the pavement of the central aisle is so broken up that it has literally risen in wrath, and become divided against itself. I hope this day you will come forward with your money and make the parish church a thing of beauty and a joy forever. It is a very old building. It is, I believe, five or six hundred years old, and all that time it has been a place of prayer and praise. I am sure you will not allow it to suffer, or fall into neglect and ruin at your hands. Now, I want you to set your hearts to the tune of generosity this afternoon, and I want you to spend regardless of expense; I want you to be absolutely extravagant and reckless. The bazaar is full of very pretty things, some useful, some not useful, but all ornamental; and I can only recommend you to buy everything in the place. In the words of the Immortal Bard, whose very spirit permeates the whole of your beautiful county,
Set your hearts to the task, your wills to the deed, spend your money, and make the whole thing a great and triumphant success. Ladies and gentlemen, may your purses to-day be like this bazaar, which I have now the honor to declare open!”
An excellent example of what an address to workingmen should be, was delivered by Miss Corelli, at Stratford-on-Avon on January 6th, 1901. The lecture was entitled, “The Secret of Happiness.” After some preliminary observations on the birth of the New Century, Miss Corelli said:
“The twentieth century finds us all on the same old search, asking the same old question: How to be happy? Some of the distinguished persons who have written in the newspapers on this subject declare we have lost the art of being happy in the old simple ways, and that all the brightness and mirth which used to make our England ‘Merry England’ have gone forever. I think there is some little truth in these statements, and the reason is not very far distant. We think too much of ourselves and too little of our neighbors. There is nothing so depressing as a constant contemplation of one’s self, and the greatest moral cowardice in the world’s opinion comes from consulting one’s own personal convenience. It is just as if a man were asked to look at a beautiful garden full of flowers, and, instead of accepting the invitation, sat down with the Röntgen rays to look at his own bones. His bones concern no one but himself, and are a dull entertainment at best. To be truly happy we must set ourselves on one side, and think of all the good we can do, all the love we can show to our neighbors. This is our work and our business, and, by performing that work thoroughly well, we shall not lose the secret of happiness; we shall find it. The harming, the slandering, the over-reaching, the plucking down of our neighbors is not our business, and if we indulge in that kind of thing we shall never be happy. It is to a great extent true, as some of the newspapers tell us, that the twentieth century still finds us very far from the best ideals and hopes. War still hangs like a cloud across the country. Drink is still a curse, and large sections of trade are being taken from us by American and foreign rivals. This, if it goes on, will mean much ruin and misery and want to many of our English artisans and workmen, and this brings me to another point in the secret of happiness, which is Work. Not what we call scamp work; not work which drops its tools at the first sound of the dinner bell and runs across to the public-house, but good, conscientious, thorough work, of which the workman himself may be justly proud. Why should Americans take work which Englishmen, if they like, can do infinitely better? Simply because they are smart, cute, up to time, and take less early closing and fewer bank holidays. I am a very hard worker myself, and I am not speaking without knowing what I am talking about, and I say from my own experience—and I have worked ever since I reached my sixteenth year—that work is happiness. No one can take my work from me and therefore no one can take my happiness from me. I defy any one to upset, worry, or put me out in the least so long as I have my work to do. Take away my work, and I am lost. Show me a lazy, loafing person, man or woman, and I will show you a discontented grumbler, who is a misery in his or her home, and a misery to him or her self. Nothing is idle in God’s universe; the smallest observation will prove that. If there were early closing up there (pointing upwards) there would soon be an end to us all. The flower works, as it pushes its way through the soil to bud and blossom; the tree works as it breaks into beautiful foliage; the whole earth works incessantly to produce its fruits. The sun works; it never rests; it rises and sets with perfect regularity. In fact, everything we see about us in nature is in constant, steady, splendid, perfect work. The idle person is, therefore, out of tune with the plan of God’s creation and action. A great millionaire whom I know said to his son: ‘If you can’t find anything to do I will disinherit you, so that you may work as hard as I did. That will make a man of you.’ In this beautiful world, with a thousand opportunities of doing good every day and all day, and with the light of the Christian faith spread about us like perpetual sunshine, no one should be really unhappy. To your society, which has done so much good already, which is doing so much good, and will continue to do so much good, I would say, if I may be permitted to offer any advice: Cultivate among yourselves a spirit of cheerfulness, light-heartedness, and content, which shall spread the influence of moral and mental sunshine all through this dear little town in which you dwell. Let those who don’t belong to your society see that you can be merry and wise without needing any other stimulant than your own cheery natures, and that the Christian faith is to you a healthy and active working daily principle, the heart, life, and soul. Show all your friends—and enemies too—that you have the secret of happiness by holding up a firm faith in the goodness of God; by keeping the welfare of others always in sight, and loving your neighbor not only as yourself, but even more than yourself; and by carrying out whatever you have to do, no matter how trivial it be, so thoroughly and so perfectly that you can feel proud of it. Such pride is true pride, and thoroughly justifiable, and the independence that comes from work thoroughly well done is a noble independence. I would not change such independence as that to be a king and be waited on by courtiers all day long. To me the honest workman is a thousand times better than the king. The king can do no work. It is all done for him,—poor king! He can hardly call his soul his own. He is not allowed to put his own coat on, and do you call him an independent man! I call him a slave! I would rather have a man here in Stratford, who could do something of his own accord, turn out a piece of work, perfect—carving, finishing, or anything of that sort—and say, ‘That is mine! The king can’t do that, but I can!’ Money is nothing; pride, independence, and self-respect are everything; and money gained by bad work is bad money. You can’t make it anything else. Good work always commands good money, and good money brings a blessing with it. We are told that the danger of the twentieth century is greed of gold. Our upper classes are all craving for yet still more money, and as much money is spent in a single night on a dinner in London as would keep nearly all Stratford. We are told that England will lose her prestige through the money-craving mania of her people. More than one great empire has fallen from an excessive love of luxury and self-indulgence, but we will hope that no such mischief will come to our beloved England. At any rate, in this little corner of it—Shakespeare’s greenwood—where the greatest of thinkers, philosophers, and poets was born, and to which he was content to return, when he had made sufficient means, and die among his own people—here, I say, let us try and keep up high ideals of mutual help, love, and labor. Let us keep them up to their highest spirit. The secret of happiness is to hold fast to such simple, old-fashioned virtues as love of home, a life of simplicity, and appreciation of all the beautiful things of Nature, which are so richly strewn about us in Warwickshire, and never to lose sight of the best of all things—the great lesson of the pure Christian faith, the lesson which teaches us how the Divine sacrifice of self for the sake of others was sufficient to redeem the world! A happy New Year and a century of hope and good to all of you.”
In November, 1901, Miss Corelli delivered her first lecture in Scotland. It was called “The Vanishing Gift: an address on the Decay of the Imagination,” and was listened to with the greatest appreciation by a crowded audience of the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, and their friends, numbering some four thousand persons.
Scotland has ever been a more literary country than England. A novel that fails in England often sells well in Scotland. Scotch people are very loyal to the magazines they like, and they always display a keen interest in literary ventures. Thackeray was a great favorite up there. “I have had three per cent. of the whole population here,” he wrote from Edinburgh in November, 1856, “If I could but get three per cent. of London!” Both Dickens and Thackeray received tangible tokens of regard from Edinburgh people, Thackeray’s taking the form of a silver statuette of “Mr. Punch,” designed as an inkstand.
It would seem that to-day, as then, Edinburgh is anxious to give substantial proof of its appreciation, for, a few days after Miss Corelli delivered her lecture, whilst ill-health detained her at the Royal Hotel, a deputation from the Philosophical Institution called and presented her with a massive silver rose-bowl.
The Chairman of the deputation, in asking her to accept the gift, made a very eloquent little speech, in which he laid emphasis on the fact that the last time a similar token of appreciation had been presented by the Philosophical Institution to any novelist had been in the case of Charles Dickens. Since then, no one, save Miss Corelli, had received the unanimous vote of the Committee as meriting such a tribute. The rose-bowl bears the following inscription:—
“Presented to Miss Marie Corelli by the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, in grateful recognition of the Brilliant Address delivered by her on 19th November, 1901.”
It is worthy of note that the leading journal of Edinburgh, The Scotsman, made no allusion whatever to this presentation. The omission caused considerable annoyance to the Committee of the Philosophical Institution, and the Secretary made inquiry as to why their special compliment to Miss Marie Corelli had been passed over. The reply was that they “did not think it was necessary to mention it”; a particularly lame and inadequate answer, seeing that if such a handsome presentation on the part of a great Institution had been made to any well-known male author, the probabilities are that considerable importance would have been attached to the incident. As it was, The Scotsman was judged to have committed itself to a singular error of prejudice in the omission, as also by stating that Miss Corelli’s crowded audience at the Queen’s Hall were “mostly women,” a perfectly erroneous statement, as by far the larger half of the assembly was composed of the sterner sex.
Miss Corelli, in the course of the lecture referred to, attributed the gradual dwindling of Imagination to the feverish unrest and agitation of the age in which we live. The hurry-skurry of modern life, the morbid craving for incessant excitement, breed a disinclination to think. Where there is no time to think, there is less time to imagine; and when there is neither thought nor imagination, creative work of a high and lasting quality is not possible. In the world’s earlier days, conceptions of art were of the loftiest and purest order.
“The thoughts of the ‘old world’ period are written in well-nigh indelible characters. The colossal architecture of the temples of ancient Egypt, and that marvelous imaginative creation, the Sphinx, with its immutable face of mingled scorn and pity; the beautiful classic forms of old Greece and Rome,—these are all visible evidences of spiritual aspiration and endeavor; moreover, they are the expression of a broad, reposeful strength—a dignified consciousness of power. The glorious poetry of the Hebrew Scriptures, the swing and rush of Homer’s ‘Iliad,’ the stately simplicity and profundity of Plato—these also belong to what we know of the youth of the world. And they are still a part of the world’s most precious possessions. We, in our day, can do nothing so great. We have neither the imagination to conceive such work, nor the calm force necessary to execute it. The artists of a former time labored with sustained and passionate, yet tranquil, energy; we can only produce imitations of the greater models with a vast amount of spasmodic hurry and clamor. So, perchance, we shall leave to future generations little more than an echo of ‘much ado about nothing.’ For truly we live at present under a veritable scourge of mere noise. No king, no statesman, no general, no thinker, no writer is allowed to follow the course of his duty or work without the shrieking comment of all sorts and conditions of uninstructed and misguided persons....”
Imagination is an artist’s first necessary. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, or the musician must be able to make a world of his own, and live in it, before he can make one for others. When he has evolved such a world out of his individual consciousness, and has peopled it with the creations of his fancy, he can turn its “airy substance” into reality for all time.
“Shakespeare’s world is real; so real that there are not wanting certain literary impostors who grudge him its reality, and strive to dispossess him of his own. Walter Scott’s world is real; so real that you have built him a shrine here in Edinburgh, crowded with sculptured figures of men and women, most of whom never existed save in his teeming fancy. What a tribute to the power of Imagination is that beautiful monument in the centre of Princes Street, with all the forms evoked from one great mind, lifted high above us, who consider ourselves ‘real’ people!”
The lecturer proceeded to deplore acts of vandalism such as that which caused “the pitiful ruin of Loch Katrine” in supplying Glasgow with water. Further on she lamented the gradual disappearance of “that idealistic and romantic spirit” which has helped to make Scotland’s history such a brilliant chronicle of heroism and honor.
In her powerful peroration the novelist graphically told of modern wonders which were imagined when the world was young.
“What, after all, is Imagination? It is a great many things. It is a sense of beauty and harmony; it is an instinct of poetry and prophecy. A Persian poet describes it as an immortal sense of memory which is always striving to recall the beautiful things the soul has lost. Another fancy, also from the East, is that it is ‘an instructive premonition of beautiful things to come.’ Another, which is perhaps the most accurate description of all, is that it is ‘the sundial of the soul, on which God flashes the true time of day.’ This is true, if we bear in mind that Imagination is always ahead of science, pointing out in advance the great discovery to come. Shakespeare foretold the whole science of geology in three words—‘sermons in stones’; and the whole business of the electric telegram in one line—‘I’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.’ One of the Hebrew prophets ‘imagined’ the phonograph when he wrote, ‘Declare unto me the image of a voice.’ As we all know, the marks on the wax cylinder in a phonograph are ‘the image of a voice.’ The airship may prove a very marvelous invention, but the imagination which saw Aladdin’s palace flying from one country to another was long before it. All the genii in the ‘Arabian Nights’ stories were only the symbols of the elements which man might control if he but rubbed the lamp of his intelligence smartly enough. Every fairy-tale has a meaning; every legend a lesson. The submarine boat in perfection has been ‘imagined’ by Jules Verne. Wireless telegraphy appears to have been known in the very remote days of Egypt, for in a very old book called ‘The History of the Pyramids,’ translated from the Arabic, and published in France in 1672, we find an account of a certain high priest of Memphis, named Saurid, who, so says the ancient Arabian chronicler, ‘prepared for himself a casket, wherein he put magic fire, and, shutting himself up with the casket, he sent messages with the fire day and night, over land and sea to all those priests over whom he had command, so that all the people should be made subject to his will. And he received answers to his messages without stop or stay, and none could hold or see the running fire, so that all the land was in fear by reason of the knowledge of Saurid.’ In the same volume we find that a priestess, named Borsa, evidently used the telephone; for, according to her history, ‘she applied her mouth and ears unto pipes in the wall of her dwelling, and so heard and answered the requests of the people in the distant city.’
“Thus it would seem that there is nothing new under the sun to that ‘dainty Ariel’ of the mind—Imagination.”
Early in 1902 Miss Corelli again gave an address in Scotland—this time at Glasgow, where one of the largest audiences ever known in that city assembled to hear her lecture on “Signs of the Times.” Every seat was occupied, and up to the last moment numbers were clamoring for only standing room. All reserved seats had been booked for nearly three weeks beforehand, and the extraordinary number of applications received proved that double the accommodation available could have been taken up.
The Address was undeniably daring and spirited, touching on various social aspects of the hour. The apathy of Parliament on certain pressing matters of home interest, the new rules of Procedure in the House, the inrush of undesirable aliens, the traitorous attitude of the pro-Boers, the crowding out of British industries by an excess of foreign competition, the German slanders upon our army, the change in the British uniform to the German model, and the flattering attentions of Germany towards America, were all touched upon by the novelist with a force and satire that were entirely new and unexpected. One of her best points was made in alluding to the words uttered by the Prince of Wales, on his return from his Colonial tour, in the course of his famous speech at the Mansion House, i. e., “The old country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in her Colonial trade against foreign competition.”
She continued:
“I believe it is the first time in all the annals of English History that any Prince of Wales has deemed it necessary to tell the old country, which gave him his birth and heir-apparency, to ‘wake up’! It has been called a ‘statesmanlike utterance’ in many quarters of our own always courteous Press, but by our Continental neighbors it has been simply taken as a royal and official statement of British incompetency. It has even been said that no Prince of Wales should ever have admitted any possible likelihood of weakness in his own country. We must remember, however, that the warning of his Royal Highness was directed against foreign competition, and may have been intended to prepare British trade for the impending commercial designs of Germany upon South Africa.... If the British Lion is indeed sleeping, it is time to wake, but to some of us the Great Creature seems never to have slept, but to have been caught unsuspectingly in a trap of restrictive legislation and vested interests, and so bound hand and foot unawares. The Lion is a generous animal, but in certain old fables he is represented as being no match for the Fox. If, as the Prince of Wales says, the old country is to maintain her position of pre-eminence against foreign competition, she has some right to demand that she be not swamped and throttled by it under the very shelter of her own sea wall.”
Referring to what she satirically termed the evidence of our “love” for Germany, she pointed out that though Germans were guilty of one of the grossest insults ever recorded in history against our brave army, we, nevertheless, had clothed that army in the German uniform, and had made free and independent Tommy Atkins turn himself into a copy of his Teuton conscript brother. Not only that, we have accepted a German design for the new postage stamps. She also alluded to the rumor that the Coronation medal was to be struck from a German design.
Miss Corelli concluded with the following words:—
“The greatest, strongest, most splendid and hopeful ‘sign of the times’ is the advancing and resistless tide of Truth, which is approaching steadily—which cannot be kept back, and which in the first breaking of its great wave shall engulf a whole shore of weedy shams. A desire for Truth is in the hearts of the people: Truth in religion, Truth in Life, Truth in work. We are all aiming for it, pushing towards it, and breaking down obstacles on the way. And, because God is on the side of Truth, we shall obtain it; more speedily, perhaps, than we think—especially if we are not too weakly ready to be led away by the first Anti-Christ of religious, political, or social example.
Such are a few examples of Miss Corelli’s utterances in public. It is hardly necessary to add that these speeches were liberally punctuated with applause by those who had the privilege of listening to them.
If those who condemn the novelist so readily will only take the trouble to study what she has said, they cannot, if they wish to be regarded as honest men, deny her possession of many of the qualities that make for greatness. There are people who fear and dislike this lady because the attitude she takes up, on many questions, is significant of Battle. She hits very hard; her enemies wince beneath her blows, and revile her in wholesale terms because they cannot overcome her in fair combat. But newspaper sneers will do little to affect the judgment of the Public, which is, after all, the critic whose opinion is abiding and final.
Marie Corelli seems to think that the present generation is one in which hypocrisy cumbers the face of the globe. “Never,” she says, “was the earth so oppressed with the weight of polite lying, never were there such crowds of evil masqueraders, cultured tricksters, and social humbugs, who, though admirable as tricksters and humbugs, are wholly contemptible as men and women. Truth is at a discount, and if one should utter it the reproachful faces of one’s so-called ‘friends’ show how shocked they are at meeting with anything honest.” That is a very sweeping assertion for which Marie Corelli has been abused. If the world had in it more sincerity than sham, the truth of her condemnation of present systems and practices would have been frankly admitted. Because what she says is true to an unhappy degree. The authoress is severe in her criticisms of the marriage “bargains” which are, we think, mainly the possession of what she would call “smart” society. The Divorce Court record is certainly a proof that a good many of the weddings that are “arranged” are certainly not made in Heaven. Marie Corelli thinks, indeed, that many women have forgotten what marriage is, and she declares it to be an absolute grim fact that in England many women of the upper classes are not to-day married, but merely bought for a price.
“Marriage is not the church, the ritual, the blessing of clergymen, or the ratifying and approving presence of one’s friends and relations at the ceremony; still less is it a matter of settlements and expensive millinery. It is the taking of a solemn vow before the throne of the Eternal—a vow which declares that the man and woman concerned have discovered in each other his or her true mate; that they feel life is alone valuable and worth living in each other’s company; that they are prepared to endure trouble, poverty, pain, sickness, death itself, provided that they may only be together; and that all the world is a mere grain of dust in worth as compared to the exalted passion which fills their souls and moves them to become one in flesh as well as in spirit. Nothing can make marriage an absolutely sacred thing except the great love, combined with the pure and faithful intention of the vow involved.”
Amongst all classes a very large number of marriages mean all that. Amongst the poorer classes—not the lowest classes—the proportion is probably the largest, and amongst the middle and higher classes it is so to a large though diminishing degree. Nevertheless, Marie Corelli states, and we agree, that it is the cash-box that governs the actions of far too many in entering upon the most serious duty of life; and if the man and wife do not realize the importance and sacredness of the tie, the result must be, as the novelist says, that the man and wife will drag down rather than uplift each other.
In a magazine article which Marie Corelli wrote some time ago, she drew a delightful picture of an artist and his wife in Capri who live on £100 a year in perfect bliss. When one views the picture she draws of their life it is easy to think one has found something like the lost paradise. Still, if we all tried love on £100 a year in Capri the housing problem would soon become as serious a matter there as it is to-day in our great cities. Love on £100 a year, or less or more, must be tried by most of us under less favorable geographical circumstances; but under whatever circumstances true it is, as Miss Corelli insists, that God’s law of love will make of marriage a successful and happy undertaking.
Marriage on very moderate means is not attractive. And why? According to Marie Corelli, because Love is not sufficient for the average girl; because in the rush of our time we are trampling sweet emotions and true passion under foot, marriages being too seldom the result of affection nowadays. They are too often merely the carrying out of a settled scheme of business. Mothers teach their daughters to marry for a “suitable establishment”; fathers, rendered desperate as to what they are to do with their sons in the increasing struggle for life and the incessant demand for luxuries which are not by any means actually necessary to that life, say: “Look out for a woman with money.” The heir to a great name and title sells his birthright for a mess of American dollar-pottage;—and it is a very common, every-day business to see some Christian virgin sacrificed on the altar of matrimony to a money-lending, money-grubbing son of Israel. Bargain and sale,—sale and bargain,—it is the whole raison d’être of the “season,”—the balls, the dinners, the suppers, the parties to Hurlingham and Ascot,—even on the dear old Thames, with its delicious nooks fitted for pure romance and heart betrothal, the clatter of Gunter’s luncheon-dishes and the popping of Benoist’s champagne-corks remind the hungry gypsies who linger near such scenes of river revelry that there is not much sentiment about,—only plenty of money being wasted. Marie Corelli well says that there can be nothing more hideous—more like a foretaste of hell itself—than the life position of a man and woman who have been hustled into matrimony, and who, when the wedding fuss is over and the feminine pictorial papers have done gushing about the millinery of the occasion, find themselves alone together, without a single sympathy in common, with nothing but the chink of gold and the rustle of the bank-notes for their heart music, and with a barrier of steadily increasing repulsion and disgust rising between them every day.
We have seen something of such a picture in Marie Corelli’s character of “Sybil Elton”; that it is no more nor less than a crime to enter upon marriage without that mutual supreme attraction and deep love which makes the union sacred, may be, in fact, allowed. The question is, how to avoid such evils? Marie Corelli gives the answer in this advice: “In a woman’s life one love should suffice. She cannot, constituted as she is, honestly give herself to more than one man. And she should be certain—absolutely, sacredly, solemnly certain, that one man is indeed her preelected lover, her chosen mate; that never could she care for any other hand than his to caress her beauty, never for any other kiss than his to rest upon her lips, and that without him life is but a half-circle waiting completion.... Love is the last of all the mythical gods to be tempted or cajolled by lawyers and settlements, wedding-cake, and perishable millinery. His domain is nature and the heart of humanity,—and the gifts he can bestow on those who meet him in the true spirit are marvelous and priceless indeed. The exquisite joys he can teach,—the fine sympathies,—the delicate emotions,—the singular method in which he will play upon two lives like separate harps, and bring them into resounding tune and harmony, so that all the world shall seem full of luscious song,—this is one way of Love’s system of education. But this is not all—he can so mould the character, temper the will, and strengthen the heart, as to make his elected disciples endure the bitterest sorrows bravely,—perform acts of heroic self-sacrifice and attain the most glorious heights of ambition,—for, as the venerable Thomas à Kempis tells us,—‘Love is a great thing, yes, a great and thorough good; by itself it makes everything that is heavy, light—and it bears evenly all that is uneven. For it carries a burden which is no burden, and makes everything that is bitter sweet and tasteful. Though weary it is not tired,—though pressed it is not straightened,—though alarmed it is not confounded, but as a lively flame and burning torch it forces its way upward and securely passes through all. Is not such divine happiness well worth attaining?’”
The answer to that rests with the women mainly, and to them Marie Corelli says:
“I want you to refuse to make your bodies and souls the traffickable material of vulgar huckstering,—I want you to give yourselves, ungrudgingly, fearlessly, without a price or any condition whatsoever, to the men you truly love, and abide by the results. If love is love indeed, no regret can be possible. But be sure it is love,—the real passion, that elevates you above all sordid and mean considerations of self,—that exalts you to noble thoughts and nobler deeds,—that keeps you faithful to the one vow, and moves you to take a glorious pride in preserving that vow’s immaculate purity,—be sure it is all this,—for if it is not all this you are making a mistake and you are ignorant of the very beginnings of love. Try to fathom your own hearts on this vital question—try to feel, to comprehend, to learn the responsibilities invested in womanhood, and never stand before God’s altar to accept a blessing on your marriage if you know in your inmost soul that it is no marriage at all in the true sense of the word, but merely a question of convenience and sale. To do such a deed is the vilest blasphemy,—a blasphemy in which you involve the very priest who pronounces the futile benediction. The saying ‘God will not be mocked’ is a true one; and least of all will He consent to listen to or ratify such a mockery as a marriage-vow sworn before Him in utter falsification and misprisal of His chiefest commandment,—Love. It is a wicked and wilful breaking of the law,—and is never by any chance suffered to remain unpunished.”
Marie Corelli is a great friend of children, loving them and beloved of them. It may be regarded as probable that the children of those who form the ideal unions which the novelist so eloquently describes will be sure to train their own offspring on good and intelligent lines. But there are others—so many of them. There is much in the writings of Marie Corelli that bears upon the question, and her text is the dedication of the “Mighty Atom”—“To those self-styled ‘Progressivists’ who by precept and example assist the infamous cause of education without religion, and who, by promoting the idea, borrowed from French atheism, of denying to the children in Board schools and elsewhere, the knowledge and love of God, as the true foundation of noble living, are guilty of a worse crime than murder.” That is her view. She regards the teaching of simple Christian truths—the love of God, and the instruction which is the basis of all Christian creeds, i. e., to do unto others as you would be done by—as an essential element in the education of children. She would regard it as the most heinous of crimes to take from our English elementary schools that religious instruction which was agreed to in the 1870 Compromise, the Compromise which happily has survived a violent attack made upon it not long since in the elementary educational Parliament of London, the Metropolitan School Board.
Whatever be the general scheme of elementary, secondary, higher, and technical education and training, Marie Corelli would have the people insist, as for life itself, upon the children being taught “the knowledge and love of God.”
She would have that knowledge imparted in the spirit of which Queen Victoria wrote: “I am quite clear,” said the Queen, speaking of her eldest daughter, then a child, “that she should be taught to have great reverence for God and for religion, and that she should have the feeling of devotion and love which our Heavenly Father encourages His earthly children to have for Him, and not one of fear and trembling.” In “The Master Christian” we see incidentally brought out the evil results of the unhappy law of France which excludes religious education from the schools, the consequence of which is the enormous increase of agnostic thought in that country, and, built upon it, the views and practices which are eating into the heart of that great nation like a foul disease, weakening its numerical strength and its moral and intellectual force. For the guidance of parents in this matter we would commend them to those two most interesting books, “The Mighty Atom” and “Boy.” They are volumes which all parents should read and study. They have already given pause to many callous men and women who were neglecting to bestow that thought on the children’s training which the subject demands. There are many Christian parents who for want of thought neglect this matter and sometimes have only themselves to thank for dissolute sons and impure daughters. On the other hand, to their credit it is the fact that many who are not Christians, who are careless and neglectful of religion, or are even agnostics, insist upon their children receiving that religious education which they themselves once received, with the just and broad-minded idea that, though they have become careless, cynical, or entirely agnostic, the children shall start as they did with the same training and have the same opportunity of forming their own judgment on these matters.
Parents will think deeply over “The Mighty Atom” and “Boy.” Different as the two stories are, they deal essentially with this great question. They both teach serious lessons to the fathers and the mothers of English boyhood. The stories, as such, have been already dealt with. Here we will just give a few of those lessons which it is the object of the works in question to teach.
The author would have children’s bodies educated as well as their minds. She regards the former as the more important for the reason that a healthy body is the most suitable habitation for a healthy mind, and that a keen intellect developed by ruining the physical strength is not calculated to benefit either the individual, or the community to which the individual belongs. Lionel Valliscourt, the little hero of “The Mighty Atom,” has a father and also a tutor, one Montrose. The father is an atheist and anxious to educate the son on a system, part of which is the exclusion of religion from the curriculum. Montrose, a level-headed, clear-brained Scotchman,—no “preacher,” but possessing a simple belief in God—is dismissed from his position because he does not approve the father’s system. This he describes as child-murder; and in the remarks he addresses to the father at their last interview Marie Corelli’s opinions about child-training are indicated: