A paradox often ends conversation, the listener is so busy trying to unravel its meaning. But a paradox in a book often stimulates the reader, and Mrs. Craigie was a master of paradoxes.
No one could honestly wish her back. Her death was ideal. At the zenith of her power, in the prime of her life and looks, with the happiness of unfulfilled dreams still before her, she lay down quietly to rest and passed away. She was a handsome woman, with wit and charm; her parents were rich, she acquired position, and she commanded respect by her work. She did not live to grow old or grey, she just slipped the cable when all the world was rose-colour and the sun shone.
Mrs. Craigie’s face when in repose had a melancholy aspect, her tongue was often bitter. Like all Americans, she loved titles and craved for social success; for, clever and brilliant writer as “John Oliver Hobbes” was, Mrs. Craigie was undoubtedly a woman of the world.
To a certain extent her life was dwarfed. An unhappy marriage, in which she early divorced her husband, kept the woman in her nature from expanding; she imposed restraint upon all her actions, all her thoughts. She never—even in her writings—let herself go.
Mrs. Craigie was of medium height, with a slight figure, piercing eyes, and dark hair, which she wore very simply. She was an excellent raconteur, and a delightful neighbour at a dinner-table. She certainly showed to greater advantage in the company of men than of women, in which characteristic she was somewhat un-American.
Knowing this want of sympathy with her own sex, she rarely appeared at women’s functions.
Mrs. Craigie’s name appeared in many papers as attending dinners or committees, and making speeches; but in reality Mrs. Craigie herself came seldom, ill-health or retirement into a convent being a frequent excuse at the last moment for her non-appearance. She spoke well when she did speak, although it was not really a speech at all, but a carefully prepared little treatise which she read word for word to her audience. She delivered it well, the matter was always worth listening to, and she was pleasing to look upon.
“John Oliver Hobbes” was a weird pseudonym. The titles of her books were equally incongruous. Imagine such anomalies as Some Emotions and a Moral, The Gods, Some Mortals and Lord Wickenham, The Herb Moon, or the latest—The Dream and the Business. Mrs. Craigie will be remembered as a novelist, not as she aspired to be—a dramatist.
None of her plays achieved any real success except The Ambassador, which had a considerable run at the St. James’s Theatre, ably helped by that excellent manager, Sir George Alexander. Smart epigrams, pretty setting, and French frocks won’t make a play. Her characters lacked blood and sinew; they meant well and generally began well, but they were not healthy, living beings. In a novel that lack of characterisation was not so obvious as on the stage, and her smart lines, her epigrams, and ironic thoughts, or rather the irony of “John Oliver Hobbes” (her double), covered the lack of plot and thinness of character more satisfactorily.
As years rolled on and the sentimental woman was lost in the thoughtful religionist, swayed by the Romish Church, the philosopher found satisfaction, and her later books became deeper in tone, stronger in handling, and likely to be more lasting on the shelves of time. She was a literary personality, with high aims where her art was concerned, and had she lived she might some day have rivalled George Meredith, whose style she so much admired. Much mystery surrounded her death; she was barely forty when she suddenly and swiftly passed, as it were, like a person going out of a house without a good-bye.