Set your hearts to the task, your wills to the deed, spend your money, and make the whole thing a great and triumphant success. Ladies and gentlemen, may your purses to-day be like this bazaar, which I have now the honor to declare open!”
An excellent example of what an address to workingmen should be, was delivered by Miss Corelli, at Stratford-on-Avon on January 6th, 1901. The lecture was entitled, “The Secret of Happiness.” After some preliminary observations on the birth of the New Century, Miss Corelli said:
“The twentieth century finds us all on the same old search, asking the same old question: How to be happy? Some of the distinguished persons who have written in the newspapers on this subject declare we have lost the art of being happy in the old simple ways, and that all the brightness and mirth which used to make our England ‘Merry England’ have gone forever. I think there is some little truth in these statements, and the reason is not very far distant. We think too much of ourselves and too little of our neighbors. There is nothing so depressing as a constant contemplation of one’s self, and the greatest moral cowardice in the world’s opinion comes from consulting one’s own personal convenience. It is just as if a man were asked to look at a beautiful garden full of flowers, and, instead of accepting the invitation, sat down with the Röntgen rays to look at his own bones. His bones concern no one but himself, and are a dull entertainment at best. To be truly happy we must set ourselves on one side, and think of all the good we can do, all the love we can show to our neighbors. This is our work and our business, and, by performing that work thoroughly well, we shall not lose the secret of happiness; we shall find it. The harming, the slandering, the over-reaching, the plucking down of our neighbors is not our business, and if we indulge in that kind of thing we shall never be happy. It is to a great extent true, as some of the newspapers tell us, that the twentieth century still finds us very far from the best ideals and hopes. War still hangs like a cloud across the country. Drink is still a curse, and large sections of trade are being taken from us by American and foreign rivals. This, if it goes on, will mean much ruin and misery and want to many of our English artisans and workmen, and this brings me to another point in the secret of happiness, which is Work. Not what we call scamp work; not work which drops its tools at the first sound of the dinner bell and runs across to the public-house, but good, conscientious, thorough work, of which the workman himself may be justly proud. Why should Americans take work which Englishmen, if they like, can do infinitely better? Simply because they are smart, cute, up to time, and take less early closing and fewer bank holidays. I am a very hard worker myself, and I am not speaking without knowing what I am talking about, and I say from my own experience—and I have worked ever since I reached my sixteenth year—that work is happiness. No one can take my work from me and therefore no one can take my happiness from me. I defy any one to upset, worry, or put me out in the least so long as I have my work to do. Take away my work, and I am lost. Show me a lazy, loafing person, man or woman, and I will show you a discontented grumbler, who is a misery in his or her home, and a misery to him or her self. Nothing is idle in God’s universe; the smallest observation will prove that. If there were early closing up there (pointing upwards) there would soon be an end to us all. The flower works, as it pushes its way through the soil to bud and blossom; the tree works as it breaks into beautiful foliage; the whole earth works incessantly to produce its fruits. The sun works; it never rests; it rises and sets with perfect regularity. In fact, everything we see about us in nature is in constant, steady, splendid, perfect work. The idle person is, therefore, out of tune with the plan of God’s creation and action. A great millionaire whom I know said to his son: ‘If you can’t find anything to do I will disinherit you, so that you may work as hard as I did. That will make a man of you.’ In this beautiful world, with a thousand opportunities of doing good every day and all day, and with the light of the Christian faith spread about us like perpetual sunshine, no one should be really unhappy. To your society, which has done so much good already, which is doing so much good, and will continue to do so much good, I would say, if I may be permitted to offer any advice: Cultivate among yourselves a spirit of cheerfulness, light-heartedness, and content, which shall spread the influence of moral and mental sunshine all through this dear little town in which you dwell. Let those who don’t belong to your society see that you can be merry and wise without needing any other stimulant than your own cheery natures, and that the Christian faith is to you a healthy and active working daily principle, the heart, life, and soul. Show all your friends—and enemies too—that you have the secret of happiness by holding up a firm faith in the goodness of God; by keeping the welfare of others always in sight, and loving your neighbor not only as yourself, but even more than yourself; and by carrying out whatever you have to do, no matter how trivial it be, so thoroughly and so perfectly that you can feel proud of it. Such pride is true pride, and thoroughly justifiable, and the independence that comes from work thoroughly well done is a noble independence. I would not change such independence as that to be a king and be waited on by courtiers all day long. To me the honest workman is a thousand times better than the king. The king can do no work. It is all done for him,—poor king! He can hardly call his soul his own. He is not allowed to put his own coat on, and do you call him an independent man! I call him a slave! I would rather have a man here in Stratford, who could do something of his own accord, turn out a piece of work, perfect—carving, finishing, or anything of that sort—and say, ‘That is mine! The king can’t do that, but I can!’ Money is nothing; pride, independence, and self-respect are everything; and money gained by bad work is bad money. You can’t make it anything else. Good work always commands good money, and good money brings a blessing with it. We are told that the danger of the twentieth century is greed of gold. Our upper classes are all craving for yet still more money, and as much money is spent in a single night on a dinner in London as would keep nearly all Stratford. We are told that England will lose her prestige through the money-craving mania of her people. More than one great empire has fallen from an excessive love of luxury and self-indulgence, but we will hope that no such mischief will come to our beloved England. At any rate, in this little corner of it—Shakespeare’s greenwood—where the greatest of thinkers, philosophers, and poets was born, and to which he was content to return, when he had made sufficient means, and die among his own people—here, I say, let us try and keep up high ideals of mutual help, love, and labor. Let us keep them up to their highest spirit. The secret of happiness is to hold fast to such simple, old-fashioned virtues as love of home, a life of simplicity, and appreciation of all the beautiful things of Nature, which are so richly strewn about us in Warwickshire, and never to lose sight of the best of all things—the great lesson of the pure Christian faith, the lesson which teaches us how the Divine sacrifice of self for the sake of others was sufficient to redeem the world! A happy New Year and a century of hope and good to all of you.”
In November, 1901, Miss Corelli delivered her first lecture in Scotland. It was called “The Vanishing Gift: an address on the Decay of the Imagination,” and was listened to with the greatest appreciation by a crowded audience of the members of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, and their friends, numbering some four thousand persons.
Scotland has ever been a more literary country than England. A novel that fails in England often sells well in Scotland. Scotch people are very loyal to the magazines they like, and they always display a keen interest in literary ventures. Thackeray was a great favorite up there. “I have had three per cent. of the whole population here,” he wrote from Edinburgh in November, 1856, “If I could but get three per cent. of London!” Both Dickens and Thackeray received tangible tokens of regard from Edinburgh people, Thackeray’s taking the form of a silver statuette of “Mr. Punch,” designed as an inkstand.
It would seem that to-day, as then, Edinburgh is anxious to give substantial proof of its appreciation, for, a few days after Miss Corelli delivered her lecture, whilst ill-health detained her at the Royal Hotel, a deputation from the Philosophical Institution called and presented her with a massive silver rose-bowl.
The Chairman of the deputation, in asking her to accept the gift, made a very eloquent little speech, in which he laid emphasis on the fact that the last time a similar token of appreciation had been presented by the Philosophical Institution to any novelist had been in the case of Charles Dickens. Since then, no one, save Miss Corelli, had received the unanimous vote of the Committee as meriting such a tribute. The rose-bowl bears the following inscription:—
“Presented to Miss Marie Corelli by the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution, in grateful recognition of the Brilliant Address delivered by her on 19th November, 1901.”
It is worthy of note that the leading journal of Edinburgh, The Scotsman, made no allusion whatever to this presentation. The omission caused considerable annoyance to the Committee of the Philosophical Institution, and the Secretary made inquiry as to why their special compliment to Miss Marie Corelli had been passed over. The reply was that they “did not think it was necessary to mention it”; a particularly lame and inadequate answer, seeing that if such a handsome presentation on the part of a great Institution had been made to any well-known male author, the probabilities are that considerable importance would have been attached to the incident. As it was, The Scotsman was judged to have committed itself to a singular error of prejudice in the omission, as also by stating that Miss Corelli’s crowded audience at the Queen’s Hall were “mostly women,” a perfectly erroneous statement, as by far the larger half of the assembly was composed of the sterner sex.
Miss Corelli, in the course of the lecture referred to, attributed the gradual dwindling of Imagination to the feverish unrest and agitation of the age in which we live. The hurry-skurry of modern life, the morbid craving for incessant excitement, breed a disinclination to think. Where there is no time to think, there is less time to imagine; and when there is neither thought nor imagination, creative work of a high and lasting quality is not possible. In the world’s earlier days, conceptions of art were of the loftiest and purest order.