A somewhat similar incident may be quoted in connection with “Boy.” Sir Francis (then Mr.) Burnand, as the “Baron de Bookworms,” in Punch, said that he considered “Boy” “a work of genius.” Several critics took his article up, and declared that he had never done anything better in the way of satire. Miss Corelli thereupon wrote to Burnand and asked him if he had really meant his apparently generous praise.
He wrote back:
“I said it; I wrote it; I meant it, every word of it. ‘Press cuttings’ be blowed!
“Yours, F. C. Burnand.”
One writer in the Sunday Sun observed that as Burnand had fallen so low as to praise a work of Marie Corelli’s, he had “no other remedy but to take a bag of stones and break Mr. Punch’s windows!” He added that “he had not read ‘Boy’ and didn’t intend to.” Again, comment would be superfluous. The facts speak for themselves and show our contention to be correct, i.e., that condemnatory criticisms of Marie Corelli’s books are written at times by those who do not even read them.
One of the critics who does read what he comments upon in the way of books, but who, though a deep thinker, is sometimes trivial, superficial, and even frivolous in his treatment of a subject, is Mr. W. T. Stead. He is as amazing to others as others very often are to him. He must, we think, have been smiling pretty broadly when he wrote: “If any one wants to know what ‘The Master Christian’ is like, without reading its six hundred and thirty pages, he will not have much difficulty if he takes Sheldon’s ‘In His Steps,’ Zola’s ‘Rome,’ and any of Marie Corelli’s previous novels in equal proportion.” A strange suggestion, that! “In His Steps,” Zola’s “Rome,” and an equal proportion of, say, either “Vendetta” or “The Sorrows of Satan!” Reading the book itself seems to be so much more simple—and just.
Again, Mr. Stead referred to “The Master Christian” and to Mrs. Humphrey Ward’s “Robert Elsmere,” and speaking of their great success, he wrote: “The phenomenal sale of such works is perhaps much more worthy of consideration than anything that is to be found within the covers of the books themselves.” Now the matter for consideration raised in “The Master Christian” is whether Christians, and more especially the Pope of Rome and the priests of the Romish Church, obey the commands and attempt to fulfil the behests of Jesus Christ. We should have thought Mr. Stead would have regarded that question, at any rate, as more important than the mere numerical sale of a book. Mr. Stead also said that as a book the chief fault of “The Master Christian” was its lack of sympathy. Yet the whole teaching of the work is a Divine charity. “If any man hear my words and believe not, I judge him not; for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.” The chief figure in the book is Manuel, Christ once more in the world in the form of a child, and if his utterances show a “lack of sympathy,”—with lies and superstitious idolatry,—yet he speaks largely from the words of Christ and the Apostles. Well may it be doubted, with the author, whether, if Christ came once more to earth, He would be welcome.
It is said again that “The Master Christian” is a bitter attack upon the Roman Catholic Faith. It is nothing of the kind. After Manuel, the child-Christ, the chief character is that of Cardinal Bonpré, who is devoted to the Church of Rome but who also believes in Christ, and the two things, unhappily, are not always akin. If the man-made portion of the Roman Catholic dogma has hidden the teachings of Christ on which that Church was founded, that is the fault and the misfortune of the Church of Rome, and not of Marie Corelli, who is bold enough to speak the truth about the matter. That faith in God which is her standby is what she would wish to see in the ministry of the Roman Catholic Church, instead of, as she fears, a mere degenerate, priest-built, superstitious reliance upon symbolic shams.
Marie Corelli’s personal views may be taken to be those to which one of her characters, Aubrey Leigh, gives expression: “I never denied the beauty, romance, or mysticism of the Roman Catholic Faith. If it were purified from the accumulated superstition of ages, and freed from intolerance and bigotry, it would perhaps be the grandest form of Christianity in the world. But the rats are in the house, and the rooms want cleaning.” She attacks neither the Roman Catholic Faith nor even the Church. She makes a terrible onslaught upon the rats.
“The Master Christian” is both a novel and a sermon. The story of the book is intensely interesting, in “plot” clever and original. It is one of the refreshing features of Miss Corelli’s books that the plots always are original. She does not go to the British Museum or to the productions of Continental novelists to find her themes. Wherever, in “The Master Christian,” the mission of the book can best be emphasized, even though what critics call the “art of the story”—as to which we should like something in the nature of a clear definition—gives way to it, she pursues the mission. After all, we have an idea that if literature possesses merit, it is rather because it is followed as a means of influencing men’s minds than as an attempt to write a story, the lines of which fall together as harmoniously as do the notes of a perfect string band. Such a book if produced