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Higher up I could see among the crowd the high forehead of Sir Walter Scott, the masculine features of George Eliott, and the flattened nose of Thackeray; while amongst the living I recognised James Payn, Walter Besant, the lady known as "Ouida," Robert Louis Stevenson, and several of lesser note. Never before, probably, had such an assemblage of choice spirits gathered under one roof.
And if he would go about simply and naturally, without developing a self-consciousness as vast and unhealthy as the liver of a goose intended for pate, he would be happier and wiser, and secure the inattention he yearns for. Moreover, while Ouida is rightly intolerant of the abuse of genius by the bourgeois, the dictionary scarcely affords her own genius sufficient vituperation for the bourgeois.
She often wondered as to what dear sort of a woman that tender-eyed, pink-cheeked mother of the old miniature had been the mother who had died when she was two years old. She loved the idea of her, vague as it was. And, just now, somehow, the notion of two grown people reading Ouida did not strike her as being especially ridiculous. "Was she very beautiful?" she asked, softly.
The story of The Nürnberg Stove, by Ouida, is a good example of the latter kind; Ruskin's King of the Golden River will serve as an illustration of the former. The problem in one case is chiefly one of elimination; in the other it is also in a large degree one of rearrangement. In both cases I have purposely chosen extreme instances, as furnishing plainer illustration.
"Such an outlandish story, no love story in it, and so coarse, so brutal, and then so improbable. I couldn't get interested." But abruptly Landry uttered an exclamation: "Well, what do you call this? 'Wanda, by Ouida. How is this for modern?" She blushed to her hair, snatching the book from him. It's hers." But her confusion betrayed her, and Landry shouted derisively.
Odd, the poor opinion a man always has when he is in love of his personal attractions. There were times when I thought of Grace Bates, Heloise Miller, and Clarice Wembley, when I felt like one of the beasts that perish. But then, I'm nothing to write home about, whereas the smallest gleam of intelligence should have told Wilton that he was a kind of Ouida guardsman.
Byron's Grandson and Shelley's Son The World of Balls The "Great Houses," and Their New Rivals The Latter Criticized by Some Ladies of the Old Noblesse Types of More Serious Society Lady Marian Alford and Others Salons Exclusive and Inclusive A Clash of Two Rival Poets The Poet Laureate Auberon Herbert and the Simple Life Dean Stanley Whyte Melville "Ouida" "Violet Fane" Catholic Society Lord Bute Banquet to Cardinal Manning Difficulties of the Memoir-writer Lord Wemyss and Lady P Indiscretions of Augustus Hare Routine of a London Day The Author's Life Out of London
Some will eagerly devour every novel of Miss Braddon's, or "The Duchess," or the woman calling herself "Ouida," but they cannot appreciate the masterly fictions of Thackeray. I have known very good people who could not, for the life of them, find any humor in Dickens, but who actually enjoyed the strained wit of Mrs. Partington and Bill Nye.
The present standard of excellence in prose fiction seems to be the conformity of character and incident to what is actually seen in life. It is a good test for all mere stories, but is manifestly not the test by which to gauge the recent works of "Ouida." She does not aim at this pre-Raphaelite delineation of men and things as they are.
She scanned the country, even considering old Ouida, who had been living in a shack over beyond the fort ever since her cabin had been raided; but old Ouida was too notorious. Mrs. Tanner would keep Margaret from going with her, even if Margaret herself did not know the old woman's reputation.
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