Читать книгу Marie Corelli: The Writer and the Woman - R. S. Warren Bell - Страница 8

“Thou art a bee, a bright, a golden thing

With too much honey; and the taste thereof

Is sometimes rough, and somewhat of a sting

Dwells in the music that we hear thee sing.”

Again, there are such pretty fancies as:

“Phœbus loosens all his golden hair

Right down the sky—and daisies turn and stare

At things we see not with our human wit,”

and

“A tuneful noise

Broke from the copse where late a breeze was slain,

And nightingales in ecstasy of pain

Did break their hearts with singing the old joys.”

There are scores of passages like these. The great gifts displayed in the volume certainly afforded some justification a few years afterwards for the strenuous efforts which Marie Corelli made to get her stepbrother made Poet Laureate.

The “Love-Letters of a Violinist,” great as was their success as poems, did not prove lucrative. Miss Corelli had provided for the first issue; afterwards Mr. Eric Mackay made a free gift of the book to the publishers of the Canterbury Poets series. The sales have since been considerable, but the arrangement made by Mr. Mackay was one which, of course, did not benefit him financially.

Shortly after the publication of “The Love-Letters of a Violinist,” there were serious developments in Dr. Charles Mackay’s illness. He was stricken down with paralysis, and the pinch of poverty was being felt, for there was very little coming into the home. Marie Corelli had now a great responsibility upon her young shoulders. The completion of her musical training it was impossible to afford. What should she do? She determined to try to write a novel. More articles and essays were contributed anonymously to newspapers and magazines; and, meanwhile, the plan of “A Romance of Two Worlds” had been prepared and the book was being written. Finally it was submitted to and accepted by a great publisher, who came to see Miss Corelli, and stared with amazement to find that the young lady to whom he was introduced as the author was a personal friend of his. Yet so it was, and the story of the publication and reception of the book is instructive.