In view, no doubt, of the high moral tendency of most of the comedies of Molière, who in Tartuffe, for instance, satirises hypocrisy almost as effectively, if with a less palpable directness than does Miss Corelli herself, and in view of the essentially religious or at any rate mystical spirit that animates so many of the poems of the author of Les Fleurs de Mai, it must be reluctantly confessed that Miss Corelli is more impressive as a moralist and as a psychologist than as a woman of letters and an expert in French literature. It is possible, however, that this slight error may be explained by the fact that her acquaintance with these authors may only be second-hand, that she was involuntarily misled by the rhyme in the two names, and that her unimpeachable principles have debarred her from even hearing the names of such refined exponents of the Gallic spirit as M. Abel Hermant and M. Octave Mirbeau.
It is, of course, highly characteristic of our authoress's simplicity of vision that all her characters are either very, very, very good or very, very, very bad. Realising that complexity of temperament is but too frequently the mere euphemism for dissoluteness of life, she is content that her young heroes should be immaculate with all the immaculacy of the jeune premier, that her middle-aged heroes should be those strong silent men who have contributed so largely to make England what she is, and that her heroines should be all equally typical and equally sweet flowers of our English womanhood. Her villains invariably smile with all the depraved and diabolical cynicism of Drury Lane, and her villainesses are branded as degenerate super-women of intrigue and lust. And if the authoress by thus delineating her characters in the two primary colours of black and white thus denies herself the intellectual pleasure of minutely analysing some ultra-modern soul torn a myriad ways by unnumbered and unmentionable emotions, she has the consolation that she certainly points her moral with a more obvious precision.
The only character who in any way suffers from a complex temperament is Maryllia, the sweet-named heroine of God's Good Man. By nature as white and pure a specimen of Anglo-Saxon girlhood as ever spent to some good moral purpose her fragrance in the pages of the prettiest novelette, Maryllia is so corrupted by the fashionable whirl of smart society, "where without mincing matters it can be fairly stated that the aristocratic Jezebel is the fashionable woman of the hour, while the men vie with one another as to who shall best screen her from their amours with themselves," that she becomes addicted to the vice of smoking. God's Good Man, however, in the person of that high-minded clergyman the Rev. John Walden, has the courage to rebuke her at a dinner-party with an incivility which is, fortunately, more than counterbalanced by the fundamental kindness of his intention:
"I have always been under the impression that English ladies never smoke."
Maryllia, it is true, at first bridles at this essentially well-meant reprimand, only, however, to return finally repentant and converted to her prospective husband.
It is, consequently, not surprising to find that Miss Corelli's attitude to modern problems is one of a rugged and uncompromising conservatism. Thus she disapproves not merely of smoking but also of the bridge-party and the motor-car and of the décolleté dress which she so severely satirises in the phrase, "the brief shoulder-strap called by courtesy a sleeve which keeps her ladyship's bodice in place."
Consistently enough, also, in the sphere of philosophy she chaffs the agnostic dilettantism of Mr. Balfour with the most delicate of badinage: "His study of these volumes is almost as profound as that of Mr. Balfour must have been when writing The Foundations of Belief," and flicks with a deadly though gentle irony the "sort of cliquey reputation and public failure attending a certain novel entitled Marius the Epicurean."
True Englishwoman that she is, Miss Corelli yields to none in her reverence for established institutions, and does not shrink from attacking boldly the complex questions of contemporary royal and political life. Thus, in the 600-page romance, Temporal Power, apparently disapproving of that democratic shuffling of the classes which is so marked a feature of our ultra-modern age, she treats with exquisite taste of the problems of the sinister Semitic capitalist, the intriguing politician who was once a manufacturer, and of the morganatic marriage of a sailor-prince.
For our authoress has at bottom a true respect for the social order of England. What though the monarch masquerade as an anarchist in Temporal Power and sign his name in the red letters of a woman's blood? Does not the repeated insistence on the title "Sir Philip," in referring to the virile and delectable hero of Thelma, show that it is less society per se than the abuses and perversions of society which constitute the target of the Corellian invective? Does not again the following passage show the bias of a soul which inclines with the sincerest sympathy to that innate munificence which forms the chief petal in the "fine flower" of the English gentry: "They got their overcoats from the officious Briggs, tipped him handsomely, and departed arm in arm?" Does not similarly such a phrase as "a dignified grande dame clad in richest black silk" show that most generous of loyalties which will not allow the true majesty of the aristocracy to be imperilled through the stinting of an extra adjective or the lack of a superlatively appropriate dress.