EXOTIC ROMANCE

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 109, 4 November 1939, Page 21

EXOTIC ROMANCE

OUIDA CENTENARY

SENSATIONS FOR THE

SIXTIES

(Written for the "Evening Post" by

"Quest.")

lii 1839 at the home of her mother in the.placid little town of Bury St. Edmunds, the pretty young wife of Louis Rame gave birth to an infant daughter. The baby was christened Maria Louisa, and it was because of her difficulty with the latter name that the "childish compromise of "Ouida" was evolved, .later to become the famous pseudonym of more than two §' score of notable books. ■At first blush I-think most readers would have said that "Ouida" was read but little in this generation, but I was interested to find that many of her books are. still in print, and enjoy a steady though modest demand. It is a tribute to an author who is today little known, but whose influence on .the fiction of the new century was appreciable, and on. her own times tremendous.1 I cannot help thinking that her importance has been neglected: hot tEat the merit of her work necessarily Reserves a better fate, but that subsequent writers owe her a debt of which they are scarcely aware. 'Louisa's childhood was marked by precocious and omnivorous reading tastes. She wrote extensively in her diary, transcribed great extracts from, h^r favourite writers, and even compiled, at the age of 14, a History\ of England. In her twentieth year Miss Rame submitted her , first stories to "Bentley's Miscellany," through the mediation of her physician, Dr. Francis Ainsworth. The periodical was then edited by his cousin, William Harrison • Ainsworth, who made haste to accept "Ouida's" contributions, serialising the : : first in the April and May numbers ;of the "Miscellany" for 1859. Ainsworth was delighted with Ouidajs daring contributions: They ; made] their authoress one of the chief I attractions, of the magazine, and he ", wrote, jofi her: ". . . few periodical have suddenly achieved a greater success than 'Ouida,' whose of society, both in England and on the Continent, are as graceful as they are accurate." This accuracy 'is open to question, but whether she p were accurate or not meant little to , her so long as she could impart a sense of the scene and the actors. Ouida was inaccurate as long as she lived, and this very failing was pos- ., sibly .responsible for defeating her own ends. " f Ainsworth, thus stimulated, asked for :more, and in the "New Monthly Magazine" for 1861. he began serialising ;. "Granville .de Vigne," the first fulllength novel to come from the pen of I Ouida. For two years this continued, jafter which it was published in three by iTinsley- Brothers under the title '.'HeldE in Bondage." For the **ookright^ o*ui3a \vas glad to accept ■ ■"Lhe low figure of £50. ..Chapman and Hall had previously refused jCthough -later they found it to 4heirl;advantage >to handle many of her books. CHARACTERISTIC QUALITIES. \ In the sixties the book trade was as was shown by the vast ■ success of Mudie's circulating libraries, and W. H. Smith's railway book-stalls: Such factors probably contributed to the fact that Ouida's novel "went over big." Despite a plot of preposterous improbability . and unblushing exagj geration, the story as it stands is still 1 extraordinarily readable, and quite exciting. ■>• ' -~.. • Ouida.had "arrived," but" several , more novels were yet to come from ' her hand before "Under Two Flags" appeared, "Strathmore," 1865, and ."Qecjl Castelmaine's Gage," 1867, were successful'stages between. But the eminence of "Under Two Flags," by which, she is best remembered, merits some mention.: She had once asserted that she wrote for "les militaires," and this was designed for barrack-rooms and masculine tastes generally. Despite the claims to greater scholarship and nicety of style of her envious contemporaries, they failed to realise that .in; sacrificing vitality to correctness, they lacked precisely the quality that,.made -Ouida so forceful and attractive.'. No other novelist could so well as she impress by sheer force of strong feeling the passion and the fire, the. pathos and sincerity, the splendid -touches <of extravagance that amazed a-susceptible public. No wonder'ifte Victorian father, hesitating to bring such books home, read them at his club; no wonder his wife, calling at the library herself rather than send fer "maid, read them in mid-afternoon in her boudoir; no wonder their daughter smuggled them furtively into jher Tbifidrobm to read with fearful delight by Candle-flame in the still hours of ifte/night/ . , tfsv«': SUCCESS AND FAILURE. And so^it went: on the swift stream of--success she sped along, and with i&creasing wealth Ouida's social amMtions soared. Her social affairs gradually became tremendous gatherings at the Langham Hotel, now her regular quarters. Her income at its best in these years must have been considerably over £5000 a year, yet with the same careless disregard of ritoney-evinced by her characters, she Was generally in difficulties. '-Throughout her life, a love of dogs, and indeed of all animals, was a fana-tical-element in her make-up. She never, went out without one or two great beasts at her heel; she. supported at times as many as 30 dogs, and has even been known to rent a cottage solely, for the care of one or two special pries. Her novels frequently conr tain animals,, and she wrote considerably in her later years in the cause of . animal protection. In her last pov-erty-stricken years, when she pould scarce afford to feed herself, her dogs received first attention. A strange trait in so .self-centred a personality 3|y 1871 London ceased to have attraction for her, wtio had not spared it pvith her opinions and her egregious vanity. As her vogue on the' Continent was considerable and in the ascendant, she, decided to travel, and visited Belgium, a visit that bore fruit next year in "A Dog of Flanders." Travelling through Germany and Austria, Ouida, accompanied by her mother, came to Italy, where Florence so delighted them that they decided to remain, and after this the city of the Arno was her home for many years. Here she

flung herself into the social life of the English colony, among whom she made some true friends, and anon some uncomfortable enemies. "Friendship," published in 1878, dealing with this same circle, contributed thereby to th - latter category. But between the appearance in 1872 of "Pascarel," and that of "A House Party" in 1887, Ouida produced eighteen books, of which the most important were her five Italian novels—"Pascarel," "Signa," "Ariadne," "In Maremma," and "A Village Commune." Others enjoyed sensational notice at the time—"Two Little Wooden Shoes," "In a Winter City," "Moths," "A:Rainy June," and "Friendship," already mentioned. DECLINING YEARS. j But by the end of the eighties Ouida was' in sore straits. Her love affair i with the Marchese > della Stufa had been a ridiculous failure, the wooing j being done'mainly by Ouida herself. Her great earnings could not keep pace with her fantastic spending, her expensive litigious excursions, and her open-handed prodigality. Her magnificent villa at Farinola, outside Florence, was lost to her, a visit to London had ended in ignominious debt, and failing health dogged her. Her beloved mother died in 1893, the market for her type of books was shrinking, and Ouida became a failing old woman, barely maintaining health, and never at rest over money. Though she continued publishing sporadically, the years hereafter are full of misfortune, aggravated by her pride and obstinacy. In 1907 she accepted a Civil List pension of £100, but enjoyed it only till her death.early in 1908. It is an ironical coincidence that at the same time Sir Francis Burnand received^ similar pension. In 1878 he had, through eighteen numbers of "Punch," published a parody of Ouida's "Strathmore," under the title of "Strapmore, a Romance by Weeder." It was clever, amusing, and most advantageous to her sales. It may be here observed that a similar salubrious result followed a very critical notice by Lord Strarigford in the Pall Mall in 1867. In summing up, one cannot deny the gifts of Madame De La Ramee—emotional energy, narrative power, the sense of .action, a concept of heroism and fidelity, an eye for beauty of scene whether qf the warm luxuriance of Italy, or the cooler flower-haunted spaces of Brabant. Her vivandiere Cigarette, in "Under Two Flags," comes near to poetry in her last ride and death; as does the deserted Italian child Musa in "In Maremma," in her innocence, devotion, arid suffering. When she. curbs her extravagance, Ouida has command of moving pathos and of a purer style, as in the, idyllic "Two Little Wooden Shoes," in the best of her animal stories "A Dog of Flanders," and in some of the children's stories in "Bimbi." Though her flamboyant style is now out of date, Ouida's outspokenness, rebellious instinct, and not altogether specious cosmopolitanism played some part in widening the scope of the novel.