If her novels are somewhat faded, the same cannot be said of her letters
and articles and critiques. To our rising generation of authors - the
youngsters, I mean; those who have not yet sold themselves to the
devil - I should say: read these things of Ouida's. Read them
attentively, not for their matter, which is always of interest, nor yet
for their vibrant and lucid style, which often rivals that of Huxley.
Read them for their tone, their temper; for that pervasive good
breeding, that shining honesty, that capacity of scorn. These are
qualities which our present age lacks, and needs; they are conspicuous
in Ouida. Abhorrence of meanness was her dominant trait. She was
intelligent, fearless; as ready to praise without stint as to voice the
warmest womanly indignation. She was courageous not only in matters of
literature; courageous, and how right! Is it not satisfactory to be
right, when others are wrong? How right about the Japanese, about
Feminism and Conscription and German brutalitarianism! How she puts her
finger on the spot when discussing Marion Crawford and D'Annunzio! Those
local politicians - how she hits them off! Hers was a sure touch. Do we
not all now agree with what she wrote at the time of Queen Victoria and
Joseph Chamberlain? When she remarks of Tolstoy, in an age which adored
him (I am quoting from memory), that "his morality and monogamy are
against nature and common sense," adding that he is dangerous, because
he is an "educated Christ" - out of date? When she says that the world is
ruled by two enemies of all beauty, commerce and militarism - out of
date? When she dismisses Oscar Wilde as a cabotin and yet thinks that
the law should not have meddled with him - is not that the man and the
situation in a nutshell?
No wonder straightforward sentiments like these do not appeal to our age
of neutral tints and compromise, to our vegetarian world-reformers who
are as incapable of enthusiasm as they are of contempt, because their
blood-temperature is invariably two degrees below the normal. Ouida's
critical and social opinions are infernally out of date - quite
inconveniently modern, in fact. There is the milk of humanity in them,
glowing conviction and sincerity; they are written from a standpoint
altogether too European, too womanly, too personally-poignant for
present-day needs; and in a language, moreover, whose picturesque and
vigorous independence comes as a positive shock after the colourless
Grub-street brand of to-day.
They come as a shock, these writings, because in the brief interval
since they were published our view of life and letters has shifted. A
swarm of mystics and pragmatists has replaced the lonely giants of
Ouida's era. It is an epoch of closed pores, of constriction. The novel
has changed. Pick up the average one and ask yourself whether this
crafty and malodorous sex-problem be not a deliberately commercial
speculation - a frenzied attempt to "sell" by scandalizing our
unscandalizable, because hermaphroditic, middle classes?
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