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Through reading such stuff my mind was necessarily ridiculously conventional, but being very lonely I read everything that came my way, and was greatly impressed by Ouida's story "Signa," which I devoured regularly for a couple of years.
Of living writers it is not safe, I suppose, to speak except, perhaps, of those who have been with us so long that we have come to forget they are not of the past. Has justice ever been done to Ouida's undoubted genius by our shallow school of criticism, always very clever in discovering faults as obvious as pimples on a fine face? Her guardsmen "toy" with their food.
And so Ouida's heart went out in sympathy and condolence to the two Faustinas, who wedded the only two men mentioned in Roman history who were infinitely wise and good. In one of his essays, Richard Steele writes this, "No woman ever loved a man through life with a mighty love if the man did not occasionally abuse her." I give the remark for what it is worth.
In an unclouded harmony of tastes and interests they cultivated ferns in Wardian cases, made macrame lace and wool embroidery on linen, collected American revolutionary glazed ware, subscribed to "Good Words," and read Ouida's novels for the sake of the Italian atmosphere.
'Ouida's' are my delight, only they are so long, I get worn out before I 'm through." "I have n't read anything but one of the Muhlbach novels since I came. I like those, because there is history in them," said Polly, glad to have a word to say for herself. "Those are well enough for improving reading; but I like real exciting novels; don't you?"
She opened the gilt-edged copy of Tennyson that, together with a calf edition of Ouida's Moths, had stood for years as guard over the literary pretensions of the household, and thrust the money midway between its covers.
"It sounds like a hero out of one of 'Ouida's' novels," she remarked, as listlessly as before. But behind her lowered lids her eyes were shining with a singular brightness. Howard turned to her delightedly. "My dear Miss Falconer, if you were a man I should ask to shake hands with you. It so exactly describes him. That's just what he is.
Charles Reade had a habit of hitting the nail on the head, and never showed it more pithily than when he answered "Ouida's" application for a name for her new pet poodle: "Call it Tonic, for it is sure to be a mixture of bark, steal, and whine." As to poodles and pugs, it is difficult for the masculine "man of letters" to write.
The mention of banquets reminds me that she was blamed for preferring the society of duchesses and diplomats to that of the Florentine literati, as if there were something reprehensible in Ouida's fondness for decent food and amusing talk when she could have revelled in Ceylon tea and dough-nuts and listened to babble concerning Quattro-Cento glazes in any of the fifty squabbling art-coteries of that City of Misunderstandings.
Finally, he was an Italian Prince rescued from a novel of "Ouida's," whom she had found living in exile, having to suffer punishment for some fiendish crime perpetrated in the days of his youth.
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