Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/342

 *ing the motives of action, are all the more loyal to Marie Corelli and her work. Britishers are famed for their love of "fair play," and the spectacle of several able-bodied men engaged in steadily "hounding" a woman who has made her way without their assistance by the fuel of her own brain and energy, does not appeal to the majority. They see no fun in it, but only an exhibition of cowardice.

While on this subject, it may be mentioned that as soon as certain sections of the Press discovered that Marie Corelli was among the favored few who had received an invitation from the King to be present in the Abbey at the Coronation on August 9th, she was bombarded with letters and telegrams from several newspapers entreating her to write for them her "impressions" of the great ceremony. To all these applications she gave no answer. Her silence on such an occasion rather discounts her supposed "love of notoriety"! Truth to tell, her presence at the Abbey, as a guest of the King, created in some quarters quite a riot of fury.

"We hear," said one paper, "that Miss Marie Corelli was among the King's guests in the Abbey! Marvelous! No doubt she wore a gown as gorgeous as her love of self-advertisement could make it!" Poor Miss Corelli! In the very simplest attire