Although I had been twice to America and knew that the best of the culture and learning in the United States emanated from Boston and Harvard, I had not then realised that the famous University was three hundred years old—contemporaneous with our own Will Shakespeare—nor that its founder had been christened in our little old English Mecca.
Miss Marie Corelli had a bright word for everyone; flitted hither and thither like a bee, made speeches charmingly, and yet it must have been a day of great nervous strain for this little lady. A woman of taste and refinement, a woman of organisation—as the occasion revealed, with all its details of a luncheon for a hundred and fifty people, as well as an opening ceremony—and withal, what a strangely imaginative mind! Almost a seer, a mystic, a religious dreamer, a hard worker, a strange but lovable personality—such is Marie Corelli.
Many men and women who attain great ends are egotistical—and why not? What others admire they may surely be allowed to appreciate also.
It is the conceit of ignorance that is so detestable. The assurance of untutored youth that annoys.
The American Ambassador was, as ever, gentle, persuasive, eloquent, delightful. We had a long conversation on Harvard, whose virtues he extolled; but then Mr. Whitelaw Reid is at heart a literary man and would-be scholar, besides having enough brains to appreciate brains in others.
Mason Croft is Miss Marie Corelli’s home. Probably no writer of fiction—not plays, mind you, but pure fiction—ever made so much money, or has been so widely read, as Marie Corelli. The little girl without fortune—by pen, ink, and paper and her own imaginative mind—has won a lovely home. It is a fine old house, charmingly furnished, and possesses a large meadow (the “croft“) and an enticing winter garden. The châtelaine keeps four or five horses and is a Lady Bountiful. Yes, and all this is done by a woman with a tiny weapon of magic power.
So came the end of a delightful gathering—
But stop!
As Marie Corelli wrote the story of that day in a few pithy words, let me be allowed to repeat her message to the Evening News:
“To-day, October 6th, America owns for the first time in history a property of its own in Shakespeare’s native town.