Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/186

168 One may write directly of "Ouida" as of a familiar institution, without, I hope, an appearance of bad manners, using the pseudonym for the books as a whole. The faults alleged against her are a commonplace of criticism: it is said that her men and her women are absurd, that her style is bad, that her sentiment is crude or mawkish. It is convenient to make those charges points of departure for my championship.

Everybody has laughed at Ouida's typical guardsman, that magnificent creature of evil life and bitter memories, sumptuous, reckless, and prepared withal to perform heroic feats of physical strength at a moment's notice. Nobody, I admit, has met a guardsman like him; I admit his prodigality to be improbable in its details, and the insolence of his manners to be deplorable. But if you can keep from your mind the unlikenesses of his superficial life, you come upon an ideal which is no doubt falsely elaborated, but which, too, is the reverse of despicable. With all his faults, Ouida's guardsman is a man, and a man of a recognisably large nature. The sort of man whom Ouida has set out to express in him, often with unhappy results, is a man of strong passions and a zeal for life. He grasps at the pleasures of life, and is eager for all its activities; he will endure privations in the cause of sport and discomforts in the cause of friendship and risks in the cause of love. His code of honour may not keep him out of the Divorce Court, but, except in that connection, it saves him from lying and trickery. His social philosophy, that of the essential male in a position of advantage, is not enlightened, and his sense of humour is elementary; but his habit of life is clean and active; he is ready to fight, and he