Marie Corelli: The Writer and the Woman

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

“The thoughts of the ‘old world’ period are written in well-nigh indelible characters. The colossal architecture of the temples of ancient Egypt, and that marvelous imaginative creation, the Sphinx, with its immutable face of mingled scorn and pity; the beautiful classic forms of old Greece and Rome,—these are all visible evidences of spiritual aspiration and endeavor; moreover, they are the expression of a broad, reposeful strength—a dignified consciousness of power. The glorious poetry of the Hebrew Scriptures, the swing and rush of Homer’s ‘Iliad,’ the stately simplicity and profundity of Plato—these also belong to what we know of the youth of the world. And they are still a part of the world’s most precious possessions. We, in our day, can do nothing so great. We have neither the imagination to conceive such work, nor the calm force necessary to execute it. The artists of a former time labored with sustained and passionate, yet tranquil, energy; we can only produce imitations of the greater models with a vast amount of spasmodic hurry and clamor. So, perchance, we shall leave to future generations little more than an echo of ‘much ado about nothing.’ For truly we live at present under a veritable scourge of mere noise. No king, no statesman, no general, no thinker, no writer is allowed to follow the course of his duty or work without the shrieking comment of all sorts and conditions of uninstructed and misguided persons....”

Imagination is an artist’s first necessary. The poet, the painter, the sculptor, or the musician must be able to make a world of his own, and live in it, before he can make one for others. When he has evolved such a world out of his individual consciousness, and has peopled it with the creations of his fancy, he can turn its “airy substance” into reality for all time.

“Shakespeare’s world is real; so real that there are not wanting certain literary impostors who grudge him its reality, and strive to dispossess him of his own. Walter Scott’s world is real; so real that you have built him a shrine here in Edinburgh, crowded with sculptured figures of men and women, most of whom never existed save in his teeming fancy. What a tribute to the power of Imagination is that beautiful monument in the centre of Princes Street, with all the forms evoked from one great mind, lifted high above us, who consider ourselves ‘real’ people!”

The lecturer proceeded to deplore acts of vandalism such as that which caused “the pitiful ruin of Loch Katrine” in supplying Glasgow with water. Further on she lamented the gradual disappearance of “that idealistic and romantic spirit” which has helped to make Scotland’s history such a brilliant chronicle of heroism and honor.

In her powerful peroration the novelist graphically told of modern wonders which were imagined when the world was young.

“What, after all, is Imagination? It is a great many things. It is a sense of beauty and harmony; it is an instinct of poetry and prophecy. A Persian poet describes it as an immortal sense of memory which is always striving to recall the beautiful things the soul has lost. Another fancy, also from the East, is that it is ‘an instructive premonition of beautiful things to come.’ Another, which is perhaps the most accurate description of all, is that it is ‘the sundial of the soul, on which God flashes the true time of day.’ This is true, if we bear in mind that Imagination is always ahead of science, pointing out in advance the great discovery to come. Shakespeare foretold the whole science of geology in three words—‘sermons in stones’; and the whole business of the electric telegram in one line—‘I’ll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.’ One of the Hebrew prophets ‘imagined’ the phonograph when he wrote, ‘Declare unto me the image of a voice.’ As we all know, the marks on the wax cylinder in a phonograph are ‘the image of a voice.’ The airship may prove a very marvelous invention, but the imagination which saw Aladdin’s palace flying from one country to another was long before it. All the genii in the ‘Arabian Nights’ stories were only the symbols of the elements which man might control if he but rubbed the lamp of his intelligence smartly enough. Every fairy-tale has a meaning; every legend a lesson. The submarine boat in perfection has been ‘imagined’ by Jules Verne. Wireless telegraphy appears to have been known in the very remote days of Egypt, for in a very old book called ‘The History of the Pyramids,’ translated from the Arabic, and published in France in 1672, we find an account of a certain high priest of Memphis, named Saurid, who, so says the ancient Arabian chronicler, ‘prepared for himself a casket, wherein he put magic fire, and, shutting himself up with the casket, he sent messages with the fire day and night, over land and sea to all those priests over whom he had command, so that all the people should be made subject to his will. And he received answers to his messages without stop or stay, and none could hold or see the running fire, so that all the land was in fear by reason of the knowledge of Saurid.’ In the same volume we find that a priestess, named Borsa, evidently used the telephone; for, according to her history, ‘she applied her mouth and ears unto pipes in the wall of her dwelling, and so heard and answered the requests of the people in the distant city.’

“Thus it would seem that there is nothing new under the sun to that ‘dainty Ariel’ of the mind—Imagination.”

Early in 1902 Miss Corelli again gave an address in Scotland—this time at Glasgow, where one of the largest audiences ever known in that city assembled to hear her lecture on “Signs of the Times.” Every seat was occupied, and up to the last moment numbers were clamoring for only standing room. All reserved seats had been booked for nearly three weeks beforehand, and the extraordinary number of applications received proved that double the accommodation available could have been taken up.

The Address was undeniably daring and spirited, touching on various social aspects of the hour. The apathy of Parliament on certain pressing matters of home interest, the new rules of Procedure in the House, the inrush of undesirable aliens, the traitorous attitude of the pro-Boers, the crowding out of British industries by an excess of foreign competition, the German slanders upon our army, the change in the British uniform to the German model, and the flattering attentions of Germany towards America, were all touched upon by the novelist with a force and satire that were entirely new and unexpected. One of her best points was made in alluding to the words uttered by the Prince of Wales, on his return from his Colonial tour, in the course of his famous speech at the Mansion House, i. e., “The old country must wake up if she intends to maintain her old position of pre-eminence in her Colonial trade against foreign competition.”