It would not be meet in the present work to touch in any but the most passing way on Miss Corelli’s practical philanthropy. But it is only due to her, in a biographical work published mainly to explain what she is—as opposed to what so many malicious paragraphists have declared her to be—to pay a tribute to her consideration for others, and her desire to make the best use of such worldly possessions as the extensive sale of her works has naturally brought her.

Those, however, who accuse her of “self-advertisement” will do well to remember that by such an absolutely false clamor they are depriving many in need from assistance which they might obtain were the novelist certain that her actions would not be misrepresented and misconstrued. For nothing makes her happier than to see others happy. She has helped many strugglers in the literary profession, too, and literary men and women who disparage her may be surprised to hear that she has herself never been known to say an injurious word with regard to any one of her fellow-authors.

It may be asked—what is Marie Corelli’s life-programme? Most writers have a definite object in view—this one to achieve immortality; that one to make money. What is Marie Corelli’s?

Briefly, she writes,—has always written,—to reach the hearts and minds of those thinking people of to-day who are striving to combat the subtleties of the Agnostic and Atheist; to strengthen their faith in the truth, the reality, the goodness of God and Christianity; the people who have hearts that throb with tenderness, hope, love and sincerity. She would purify society. She would exalt everything that is noble and good. She would destroy the rule of unbelief and insincerity, and raise in its place ideal characters and conditions strongly built upon a foundation of faith and truth. Such is Marie Corelli’s programme.

The interest taken by the novelist in social questions has led her to correspond with workingmen’s clubs in America and the colonies, and not a few papers have been written by her to serve as subjects for discussion in such institutions.

But what of that self of which so much has been heard? It is a personality striking in its simplicity and in its power. Marie Corelli is a woman of women, simple in her tastes, strong in her faiths and her aims, with a heart full of sympathy for others, living a busy life that from its productiveness in the world of literature is a constant influence for good in the hearts and homes of thousands the world over, and, in its private relationships, a source of help, inspiration, and benefit to those with whom she comes in contact.

That she is not merely a lover of Shakespeare, but a Shakespeare enthusiast, is known to all her friends; she would see the day come, if possible, and help to speed its coming, when the whole town of Stratford-on-Avon shall be a Shakespeare memorial. She would exclude steam-launches and all similar misplaced modernities from the peaceful Avon; she would have every new building that is erected in the birthplace of Shakespeare constructed in accordance with the architecture of the Master’s day; she would sacredly and lovingly guard every old building and the form of all Stratford’s old streets; she would have the storehouse, that exists there, of never explored sixteenth-century records, thoroughly ransacked and reported upon, as it should be, by competent and national authorities, and given an adequate place and publicity. We should hear little more then, we venture to assert, of Baconian theories. Miss Corelli would have, moreover (and perhaps the statement may help to further the object), a great development of the Shakespeare Festival at Stratford. She would like it to be the Bayreuth of Literature. She would establish a central Shakespearean Society, with branches all over the world, which would circulate notes of interest among all Shakespeare lovers, and hold annual conferences in connection with the April Shakespearean celebrations.

Now, as to Marie Corelli’s “public.” The great sale of her works proves it to be a vast one, and the fact that her publishers have not found it advisable to issue her in sixpenny form is clear proof that she commands the purses of those who are able to afford six shillings. And although the possession of money is no guarantee of literary taste, yet it stands to reason that the upper and middle classes, taken in the mass, are the chief supporters of literature, and afford the best criterion of worth in their selection of books owing to the fact that their education is superior to that of people who are commonly designated as “poor.” But for the latter there are the free libraries, and the Corelli novels are in as constant demand wherever books are to be obtained for nothing, as at railway bookstalls, where there is not a halfpenny abatement of the full published price. Miss Corelli, then, being read by people of all classes, may certainly be said to have won over a considerable majority of the bookreading portion of the British race.

And it must not be forgotten that she is perhaps the most extensively read of living novelists in Holland, Russia, Germany and Austria, where translations of her books are always to be obtained, or that her “Barabbas” and “A Romance of Two Worlds,” in their Hindustani renderings, command a wide following among the native peoples of India. She is extremely popular in Norway and Sweden, and “Vendetta!” in its Italian translation is always the vogue in Italy, as is the French version of “Absinthe” (“Wormwood”) in France. There is no country where her name is unknown, and no European city, where, if she chances to pass through, she is not besieged with visitors and waylaid with offerings of flowers. Were she to visit Australia or New Zealand she would receive an almost “royal” welcome, so great is the enthusiasm in the “New World” for anything that comes from her pen.

Marie Corelli’s acquaintances are many in number, but her circle of friends is a small and carefully selected one. Shakespeare’s “He that is thy friend indeed” can be applied, even in the case of a popular novelist, to but few persons. Where Miss Corelli is, there always is her devoted friend Miss Vyver. Between these two there is perfect understanding and absolute sympathy. It goes without saying that, until the day of his death, Dr. Mackay held chief place in his adopted daughter’s heart, and, though dead, holds it still. The kind old publisher, George Bentley, was, perhaps, owing to his unceasing sympathy and delicate appreciation of her nature, the best friend Marie Corelli ever had outside her own family circle.