I met Marie Corelli at a small dinner party in Germany fifteen years ago, and took a dislike to her at once—a dislike which expanded and hardened with each successive dinner-courseⒶtextual note until,Ⓐtextual note when we partedⒶtextual note at last, the original mere dislike had grown into a very strong aversion. When I arrived in England, two months ago,Ⓐtextual note I found a letter from her awaiting me at Brown’s Hotel. It was warm, affectionate, eloquent, persuasive; under its charm the aversion of fifteen years melted away and disappeared. It seemed to me that that aversion must have been falsely based; I thought I must certainly have been mistaken in the woman, and I felt a pang or two of remorse. I answered her letter at once—her love-letter I may say; answered it with a love-letter. Her home is in Shakspeare’sⒶtextual note Stratford. She at once wrote again, urging me in the most beguiling language to stop there and lunch with her when I should be on my way to London, on [begin page 99] the 29th. It looked like an easy matter; the travel connected with it could not amount to much, I supposed, therefore I accepted by return mailⒺexplanatory note. I had now—not for the first time, nor the thousandth—trampled upon an old and wise and stern maxim of mine, to wit: “Supposing is good, but finding out is better.” The supposing was finished, the letter was gone; it was now time to find out. Ashcroft examined the timetablesⒶtextual note and found that I would leave Oxford at eleven o’clock the 29th, leave Stratford at mid-afternoon, and not reach London until about half pastⒶtextual note six. That is to say, I would be seven hours and a half in the air, so to speak, with no rest for the sole of my foot, and a speech at the Lord Mayor’s to followⒺexplanatory note! Necessarily I was aghast; I should probably arrive at the Lord Mayor’s banquet in a hearse. Ashcroft and I then began upon a hopeless task—to persuade a conscienceless fool to mercifully retire from a self-advertising scheme which was dear to her heart. She held her grip; any one who knew her could have told us she would. She came to Oxford on the 28th to make sure of her prey. I begged her to let me off, I implored, I supplicated; I pleaded my white head and my seventy-two years, and the likelihood that the long day in trains that would stop every three hundred yards and rest ten minutes would break me down and send me to the hospital. It had no effect. By God I might as well have pleaded with Shylock himself! She said she could not release me from my engagement; it would be quite impossible; and added—

“Consider my side of the matter a little. I have invited Lady Lucy and two other ladies, and three gentlemen; to cancel the luncheon now would inflict upon them the greatest inconvenience; without doubt they have declined other invitations to accept this one; in my own case I have canceled three social engagements on account of this matter.”

I said—

“Which is the superior disaster: that your half-dozen guests be inconvenienced, or the Lord Mayor’s three hundred? And if you have already canceled three engagements, and thereby inconvenienced three sets of guests, canceling seems to come easy to you, and it looks as if you might add just one more to the list, in mercy to a suffering friend.”

It hadn’t the slightest effect; she was as hard as nails. I think there is no criminal in any jail with a heart so unmalleable, so unmeltable, so unphazeableⒶtextual note, so flinty, so uncompromisingly hard as Marie Corelli’s. I think one could hit it with a steel and draw a spark from it.

She is about fifty years old, but has no gray hairs; she is fat and shapeless; she has a gross animal face; she dresses for sixteen, and awkwardly and unsuccessfully and pathetically imitates the innocent graces and witcheries of that dearest and sweetest of all ages; and so her exterior matches her interior and harmonizes with it, with the result—as I think—that she is the most offensive sham, inside and out, that misrepresents and satirizes the human race to-day. I would willingly say more about her, but it would be futile to try; all the adjectives seem so poor, and feeble, and flabby, this morning.

So we went to Stratford by rail, with a car-changeⒶtextual note or two, we not knowing that one could save time and fatigue by walking. She received us at Stratford station with her carriage, and was going to drive us to Shakspeare’sⒶtextual note church, but I canceled thatⒺexplanatory note; she insisted, but I said that the day’s program was already generous enough in fatigues [begin page 100] without adding another. She said there would be a crowd at the church to welcome me, and they would be greatly disappointed, but I was loaded to the chin with animosity,Ⓐtextual note and childishly eager to be as unpleasant as possible, so I held my ground, particularly as I was well acquainted with Marie by this time and foresaw that if I went to the church I should find a trap arranged for a speech; my teeth were already loose from incessant speaking, and the very thought of adding a jabberⒶtextual note at this time was a pain to me; besides, Marie, who never wastes an opportunity to advertise herself, would work the incident into the newspapers, and I who could not waste any possible opportunity of disobliging her, naturally made the best of this one.

She said she had been purchasing the house which the founder of Harvard College had once lived inⒺexplanatory note, and was going to present it to America—another advertisement. She wanted to stop at that dwelling and show me over it, and she said there would be a crowd there. I said I didn’t want to see the damned house. I didn’t say it in those words, but in that vicious spirit, and she understood; even her horses understood, and were shocked, for I saw them shudder. She pleaded, and said we need not stop for more than a moment, but I knew the size of Marie’s moments, by now, when there was an advertisement to be had, and I declined. As we drove by I saw that the house and the sidewalk were full of people—which meant that Marie had arranged for another speech. However, we went by, bowing in response to the cheers, and presently reached Marie’s house, a very attractive and commodious English home. I said I was exceedingly tired, and would like to go immediately to a bed-chamberⒶtextual note and stretch out and get some rest, if only for fifteen minutes. She was voluble with tender sympathy, and said I should have my desire at once; but deftly steered me into the drawing-room and introduced me to her company. That being over, I begged leave to retire, but she wanted me to see her garden, and said it would take only a moment. We examined her garden, I praising it and damning it in the one breath—praising with the mouth and damning with the heart. Then she said there was another garden, and dragged me along to look at it. I was ready to drop with fatigue, but I praised and damned as before, and hoped I was through now and might be suffered to die in peace; but she beguiled me to a grilled iron gate and pulled me through it into a stretch of waste ground where stood fifty pupils of a military school, with their master at their head—arrangement for another advertisement. She asked me to make a little speechⒺexplanatory note, and said the boys were expecting it. I complied briefly, shook hands with the master and talked with him a moment, then—well then we got back to the house. I got a quarter of an hour’s rest, then came down to the luncheon. Toward the end of it that implacable woman rose in her place, with a glass of champagne in her hand, and made a speech! With me for a text, of course. Another advertisement, you see—to be worked into the newspapers. When she had finished I said—

“I thank you very much”—

and sat still. This conduct of mine was compulsory, therefore not avoidable; if I had made a speech, courtesy and custom would have required me to construct it out of thanks and compliments, and there was not a rag of that kind of material lurking anywhere in my system.

[begin page 101] We reached London at half pastⒶtextual note six in the evening in a pouring rain, and half an hour later I was in bed—in bed and tired to the very marrow; but the day was at an end, at any rate, and that was a comfort. This was the most hateful day my seventy-two years have ever known.

I have now exposed myself as being a person capable of entertaining and exhibiting a degraded and brutally ugly spirit, upon occasion, and in making this exposure I have done my duty by myself and by my reader—notwithstanding which I claim and maintain that in any other society than Marie Corelli’s my spirit is the sweetest that has ever yet descended upon this planet from my ancestors, the angels.

I spoke at the Lord Mayor’s banquet that night, and it was a botchⒺexplanatory note.