But the paramount importance of social etiquette in sexual relationship is most effectively illustrated in His Hour. This novel deals with the mutual physical passion between a barbaric and dissolute Russian prince and a typical and refined modern Englishwoman. Matters reach a crisis when the prince lures the lady by night to the sinister solitude of a deserted hut. "His splendid eyes blazed with the passion of a wild beast"; the lady faints, and when she wakes up in the morning of course assumes that she has been ravished. Not unnaturally she is quite upset that she should have been the victim of such insulting behaviour, "she, a lady, a proud English lady." The commands of society, however, are inexorable in such matters and she consequently writes proposing marriage with dignified irony to that bestial nobleman, who had, according to her own theory, put her own status as a gentlewoman into such delicate jeopardy: "I consent—I have no choice—I consent. Yours truly, Tamara Lorane."
So far as mere erotic description and dialogue is concerned, there is very little to choose between our authoresses. The following passages are fair examples of Mrs. Glyn's conception of romantic love-making:
"Then, sweet Paul, I shall teach you many things, and
among them I shall teach you how to LIVE."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"Beloved, beloved," he cried, "let us waste no more
precious moments. I want you, I want you, my sweet."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"My darling one," the lady whispered in his ear, as she
lay in his arms on the couch of roses, crushed deep and
half-buried in their velvet leaves, "this is our soul's
wedding, in life and in death they can never part us more."
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
If, however, we would make any distinction between the respective techniques of the two ladies, we would say that while Mrs. Glyn tends to exhibit the practical modernity of Mayfair or Continental society, Miss Corelli is at times more exotic and luxuriant, at times more explicit and direct, for blunt, plain woman that she is, she never even once dabbles in those mystic messages of the stars which Mrs. Glyn interprets with so facile and consummate a felicity. We search in vain, for instance, in the works of Mrs. Elinor Glyn for a passage like the following, which but for the pendent nominative might quite well have come out of the Aphrodite of M. Pierre Louys or the Mafarka le Futuriste of M. Marinetti:
"This done, they rose and began to undo the fastenings of her golden domino-like garment; but either they were too slow, or the fair priestess was impatient, for she suddenly shook herself free of their hands, and loosening the gorgeous mantle herself from its jewelled clasps it fell slowly from her symmetrical form on the perfumed floor with a rustle as of fallen leaves."
Again, the delicious sachets of Mrs. Elinor Glyn's diction never somehow exhale such whiffs of unadulterated English as the following:
"With the seduction of your nude limbs and lying eyes you make fools, cowards, and beasts of men."
We may, perhaps, conclude this portion of our comparative analysis by suggesting for the erotic crest of Mrs. Elinor Glyn a Debrett and an Almanach de Gotha enveloped in a silk and scented "nightie"; for that of Miss Marie Corelli, a volume of the Self-and-Sex series lying open between a doffed domino and a crinoline.
It is also noticeable that while Miss Corelli, with whatever detail she may feel it her duty to portray their erotic sins, is always primarily concerned with her characters' ethical significance for good or for evil, Mrs. Glyn devotes herself more specifically to their physical qualifications. Miss Corelli's typical hero, for instance, is the Rev. John Walden, that middle-aged God's Good Man whose ripe dignity of manhood is subordinated to the description of his more spiritual qualities. Mrs. Glyn's typical hero is the Paul of Three Weeks, "a splendid young English animal of the best class."
We thus find that the space which Mrs. Elinor Glyn will devote to telling us that her heroine's skin "seemed good to eat," or that her hero had "fine lines" and "velvet eyelids," will be devoted by Miss Corelli to the description of the corresponding attributes of her hero or heroine's soul. Miss Corelli, however, is by no means obtuse to the baleful effect on the spiritual life exercised by physical blandishments. She will thus explain the precocious corruption by senile perversity of a young girl in a remarkable passage whose stark realism certainly succeeds in portraying fully an important ethical and physiological truth: