Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/238

 within our experience will serve to indicate what is a too frequent sin.

It was at the dinner of a well-known literary club, and ladies had been invited. One lady sat beside a gentleman who, years ago, was editor of a great daily newspaper, whose name is familiar to all as a notable and experienced journalist and critic, and who has arrived at an age when discretion, if not fairness, should be practiced. The lady was a friend of Marie Corelli's, and upon the works of the novelist, who was also at the dinner, the conversation turned. The critic expressed the utmost contempt for her books, and used language so bitterly sarcastic and so grossly unfair that the lady gently asked: "Have you really ever read any of her works?" The question was natural. The answer was astonishing: it was the bald admission, "No." Surely comment is unnecessary.

A somewhat similar incident may be quoted in connection with "Boy." Sir Francis (then Mr.) Burnand, as the "Baron de Bookworms," in Punch, said that he considered "Boy" "a work of genius." Several critics took his article up, and declared that he had never done anything better in the way of satire. Miss Corelli thereupon wrote to Burnand and asked him if he had really meant his apparently generous praise.