Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/372



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 dis