Marie Corelli: The Writer and the Woman

by Thomas F. G. Coates; R. S. Warren Bell

From Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, September 21st, 1902, we cull the following notice, which will serve as a brief resumé of the plot—no doubt already familiar to the majority of our readers—and at the same time as an example of how an entire stranger to the novelist—as the author of this article was—can disregard the prejudice which has arisen with respect to our subject, and write as he thinks, combining, as it appears to us, a happy knack of lucid expression with a calm and temperate judgment.

A text from St. Paul as follows, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places,” prefaces and in a measure explains this very remarkable book. The hero of the story is a king reigning in these latter days over a Christian country that never once throughout the book receives a name. The omission, however, is not likely to be very early noticed by the reader, so intense is the interest aroused by the narrative, so rapid and sustained is its action. The king, married to a beautiful but cold consort who has borne him three sons, suddenly awakes to the fact that he is not doing his duty to his people, and resolves to go amongst them to see things for himself. He accordingly does so in disguise, and actually joins a society of Socialists. Hearing what is said about his Ministers he tests them and vetoes a declaration of war which is being brought about in the interests of certain capitalists and through the agency of a corrupt Press. Another conspiracy he contends with and defeats is a Jesuit one, during which an attempt is made upon his life, an attempt foiled by a beautiful woman of the people, who receives the knife-thrust in his place. One of the main themes of the book is the love of the king’s eldest son Humphry for Gloria, a poor but beautiful girl. He has secretly wedded her, and the fact coming to the king’s knowledge he upbraids his son and tells him that, the marriage with Gloria being of necessity morganatic, he must make a speedy alliance with a princess of a neighboring state. Then ensues a fine scene in which the young prince firmly refuses to abandon Gloria, or to commit bigamy by another marriage. It is one of those scenes in which Miss Corelli is seen at her best. There is deep scorn in the prince’s utterance when he declines the other marriage: “Three or four Royal sinners of this class I know of who for all their pains have not succeeded in winning the attachment of their people, either for themselves or their heirs.” He further emphatically assures his royal father that he will, if needful, “make it a test case, and appeal to the law of the realm. If that law tolerates a crime in princes which it would punish in commoners, then I shall ask the People to judge me!” The whole book throughout is so arranged that Miss Corelli is everywhere enabled to give utterance to the views of life she holds, and to attack the things she considers wrong. This she does in every instance with eloquent vehemence, and there will be many who must feel that she usually has right on her side. “Of things temporal there shall be no duration—neither Sovereignty nor Supremacy, nor Power; only Love, which makes weak the strongest, and governs the proudest.” The end of the book is the abdication and death of the king, his son and Gloria sailing to happier climes, rejoicing in a pure love. In its scope and imagination this is one of the most striking volumes Miss Corelli has given us.

From this exceedingly able summing-up of the work we will now turn to the article on “Temporal Power” which was published in The Review of Reviews.

To begin with, it needs to be explained that Mr. Stead first of all wrote a private letter to Miss Corelli telling her that it was “by far the strongest book she had yet written.” He then went on to suggest that she meant her characters for certain living Royalties and celebrities. Miss Corelli wrote back to him at once, stating that he was entirely in error. He having made the suggestion that she had described Queen Alexandra as the cold and irresponsive Queen of “Temporal Power,” Miss Corelli referred him to her “Christmas Greeting,” published at the end of the previous year, for the description of the Queen as seen in “The Soul of Queen Alexandra.” The general tone of Mr. Stead’s review was to accuse Miss Corelli of “disloyalty” (though he himself, Miss Corelli complains, had long expressed views that were distinctly Pro-Boer), and to inquire sarcastically how it happened that she was invited to the Coronation? It may be stated that she was invited to the Coronation because the King knows her personally, and, knowing her, is perfectly aware that he has no more loyal subject—a conviction that is not likely to be disturbed by the casual statement even of an experienced reviewer like Mr. Stead. From certain letters and messages Miss Marie Corelli has received from both the King and Queen (if she cared to make them public), it is very evident that she is thoroughly appreciated by the Royal Family, and that they are the last people in the world to believe the numerous adverse statements circulated about her merely on account of her brilliant success.

It was in the September (1902) Review of Reviews that Mr. Stead devoted four pages to his criticism of “Temporal Power,” which was described as “a tract for the guidance of the King.”

“The fact” (continued Mr. Stead) “that her pages reflect as in a glass darkly, in an exaggerated and somewhat distorted shape, the leading personages in the English Court, and in contemporary politics, may be one of those extraordinary coincidences which occur without any intention on the part of the authoress of the book.”

The King and the Queen are then described, and attention is drawn to the position of the Heir Apparent after he has contracted what is known as a morganatic marriage.

The King and Queen (proceeds the review) insist upon ignoring the marriage, and try to compel their son to commit bigamy by marrying a woman of the royal caste. The Prince, however—and in this Marie Corelli departs from the old legend which appears to have suggested this episode—has an unconquerable repugnance to the demand that he should commit bigamy for the good of the State.

The King, at the time when the story opens, has as his Prime Minister an aged Marquis, who is a dark, heavy man of intellectual aspect, whose manner is profoundly discouraging to all who seek to win his sympathy, and whose ascendancy in his own Cabinet is overshadowed by that of a Secretary of State, who bears an extraordinary resemblance to a certain Secretary of State who shall be nameless. This “honorable statesman” is hand-in-glove with an alien journalist, who is described here and there in terms which fit more or less loosely to one or two proprietors of journals of very large circulations in London town. With the aid of this supreme embodiment of the mercenary journalism of our latter day, the Secretary of State conceives the idea of working up a war for the annexation of a small State, whose conquest was certain to increase the value of various shares in which the Secretary and his friends had largely speculated, and further, to extricate them from various political difficulties in which they had found themselves involved.

We have Miss Corelli’s authority for stating, with all possible emphasis, that “Temporal Power” was written without the least intention on the part of the author to introduce living personalities under a romantic disguise. As touching the character of the defaulting Secretary of State, Carl Perousse, with which a large number of writers (including Mr. Stead) have sought to identify Mr. Joseph Chamberlain, it may be pointed out that if the author had any prominent European statesman at all in view, it was a well-known Italian minister, now deceased, as any one with judgment and knowledge of Italian affairs could testify—though Perousse is made tall and thin in the book, with the express object that he shall escape association with the said Italian minister, who was short and fat. Nothing has astonished the novelist more than the numerous letters she has received from members of Mr. Chamberlain’s party in which it is stated that the villainous Perousse is “exactly like” their leader. We have only to refer such correspondents to Miss Corelli’s public speeches in Edinburgh and Glasgow to prove that she has always spoken in high praise of the Colonial Secretary.