IN VANISHED SUMMERTIME:

MARIE CORELLI AND POPULAR CULTURE

By RICHARD L. KOWALCZYK

opular writers reorganize the facts of human

experience in order to suspend the readers
critical judgment temporarily, allowing the
emotions to sweep him into accepting the
possibility of an untainted, perfect world. Popular fiction is an imaginative return to the
garden of Eden and no writers were better
adept at creating this journey than the early
twentieth-century romanticists Hall Caine, Anthony Hope, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Rudyard
Kipling. Standing apart from this select group, in t e r m of sheer
popular appeal, was Marie Corelli, a literary phenomenon and
darling of the publishing world from 1886 until her star was
obliterated by the First World War.
Her three collections of short stories and twenty-five
romances do not outnumber the output of Anthony Hope or
E. F. Benson, but during the Edwardian period, her works outsold the combined sales of her associates. But her popularity
died after the war. On April 21, 1924 the London Times
appropriately asked in her obituary, Who Was Marie Corelli?
and thus noted what drastic cultural changes had occurred. The
moral voice in her novels relied upon the pieties of both Puritan
and Evangelical in America and England. She always rewarded
virtue and punished vice, sanctioned higher learning as a preparation for understanding divine providence-extolled the virtuous
hero in terms which implied that the divinely elected stood highest on the scale of evolutionary development.
No one questions the judgment literary history places upon
Corellis works; nevertheless one should not overlook the impact
of her ideas, her immense popularity, and sudden demise in the
publics esteem. Because Marie Corelli sustained an international
reputation with a readership whose tastes were rapidly changing,
her career allows us to understand popular culture at the turn of

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the century, its common feelings, moral preferences, and psychological needs.
Wdiam Stuart Scott, in Marie Core&: The Story of a Friendship, accw
rately pinpoints her claim to immortality, one which most contemporary novelists would wish to avoid. He said that the novelist knew her public and gave it
precisely what it wanted and deserved.2 She carved her niche in fiction as a
moralist, enhanced it with the myth of the romantic artist of mysterious origins,
and excited her audience with hermetic lore and pseudoscientific formulae
which became emblems implying that divine providence was n o longer patient
with a culture dying because of its formalism and hypocrisy. Marie Corelli
chose a dangerous arena for success, and part of her claim to remembrance lies
in her attempts to persuade a general readership to revivify the Old World
values which had survived late Victorian cynicism.
Her fiction was based on one belief, that the artists powers shaped and
sustained the existence of ideals which could not endure in modern life. This
theme is central to all of Corellis works, the key to her biography, and the
reason behind her popularity. From the milieu of aestheticism, which she
abhorred, Corelli learned that art permits one to cover darker urges with a mask
of harmony and beauty. She created a perfect mystique in the face of almost
universal condemnation by her reviewers. The nucleus of this mystique was
found in material that derives from the non-intellectual, common-sense impulses which Carlyle, Kingsley, and Maurice made fashionable in their reaction
to eighteenth-century rationalism. For example, Corellis first romance, A
Romance of Two Worlds (1886), preached a gospel of spiritual righteousness
in a mysterious, fifth-dimensional world called the Electric Ring Its dimensions were perpetually creative and perpetually absorbent, uniting the electric
spirits of God and man. As in her later works, Corelli made the best of three
worlds, appealing to the sentimental Christian who was attentive to the moral
tonics of fiction, the enthusiastic student of science or of psychic forces who
attempted to expand the boundaries of the mind, and the sober members of
the working class who would benefit from a steady fare of exotically forbidden
stories promising material rewards for virtue. A Romance of Two Worlds was
Corellis first offering in a series of imaginative adventures into psychic kingdoms bordering on the spiritual world. Its social overtones were distracting but
sufficiently muted to prevent radical feelings against established structures in
society:
The power of performing miracles, the gifts of healing and
prophesy, and the ability to see beyond the things of this
world, are all obtainable, but only through absolute faith
in Christ. The smallest hesitation, the least grain of that
insolent and foolish pride which dares to deny the existence
of the Creator, the faintest shadow of self-seeking or selflove, and the inner spiritual force is instantly p a r a l y ~ e d . ~
Ardath (1889) continued the line of instinctive piety suggested in Romance. It was preceded by Vendetta (1886) and Thelma A Norwegian Princess (1887), two melodramatic romances aimed at pleasing the public with the

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palpable subjec6 of marriage. Vendetta depicts a husbands gory scheme of

revenge when he overhears his unfaithful wifes love-talk with his best friend.
Thelma tests the artificialities of English society against the natural inclinations
of Corellis nature child. But Ar&th found the novelist within her own element
once more. The plot centers around Theos Alwyn (God-All-Wise), an agnostic
poet, who transports himself through the powerful energy of his will to a
strange, decaying civilization 5000 years B. C. After a confrontation with his
other self in this prior state of existence, the poet learns of Gods active presence in Nature, denounces immorality, and extols feminine sensibilities. As
in her other best selling novels, a mystical form of science strengthens the
heros faith in a creator whose presence is found scientifically in the world.
This faith reveals loves energy, much like an electrical force, to be at the center
of the universe and the doorway into undiscovered worlds? The Electric Ring
(often referred to as the extended personality of God) is an intermingling of
male and female attribute^.^ The fictional embodiment of Corellis ideal
scientist, Helobias, is also her spokesman in the early stories. He is a mystic,
poet, and scientist, who has discovered scientific sanctions for traditional religious beliefs. A mortal, he becomes godlike, impervious to old age and death,
and directly attuned to the spiritual telegraphy expressed by Nature in its
processes. By implication, Marie Corelli promises more than orthodox theology
can, the transormation of mere mortals into the God-head while they do not
lose natural feelings for pleasure.
Pseudo-science and mystic theories form the speculative center of The
Soul ofLilith (1892) in which Corelli suggests the frustration of mans potential union with God. The novel studies the vanity of a scientist unprepared for
the task of demonstrating how the whole majestic Universe swings round in
its appointed course . . . in fulfillment of its laws, carrying out the Divine command with faithful exactitude.6 Helobias warns El-Rami, the novels protagonist, against damaging natures balance for selfish purposes. El-Ramis experiments with the dead Lilith frustrate the union existing between the masculine
and feminine agencies in creation, Corellis notion of Love behind all existence:
There are two governing forces of the Universe . . . one, the
masculine, is Love; the other, feminine, is Beauty. These
Two, reigning together, are God-just as man and wife are
One. From Love and Beauty proceed Law and Order. You
cannot away with it-it is so. Love and Beauty produce and
reproduce a million forms with more than a million variations, and when God made Man in His Own image it was as
Male and Female.
The novel offers Corellis standard trademark-shocking lines of action with
salacious overtones. Her gothic theme concerns how the overbalanced will of
a scientist turns against the natural course of Love. The central pattern of
action involves the practice of necrophilism. E l - & ~ n iconducts experiments
on a young girl, Lilith, who has been dead for four years. Lilith passively receives marvelous powers which transport her into unimagined universes and

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states of existence far beyond mans present stage of evolution. She is ultimately transformed into Nature itself, In the flowers, in the trees, in the winds,
in the sound of the sea, in the silence of the night, in the slow breaking of the
dawn and identified with the essence of God in the transcient shape of an
El-&mi fails to discover the meaning of Liliths experiences. When
she momentarily returns to him, his mind becomes seared with the knowledge
she brings and he lives out the remainder of his days with the vacant mind of
an idiot.
Corellis scientific novels are attempts to revive older fictional structures
and with them traditional attitudes. In practice, Corelli favored the romance
genre. She attacked in theory the school of naturalism, an exclusive set . .
sworn to put down virtue and extol vice. Corelli called such writers the members of the Ishbosheth cult of which Zola was the chief spokesman:

Capable of fine artistic work he prostituted his powers to the

lowest grade of thought. From the dust-hole of the frail
worlds ignorance and crime he selected his olla-podrida of
dirty scraping, potato-peelings, candle-ends, rank fat, and
cabbage water, and set all to see them in the fire of his brain,
till they emitted noxious poison, and suffocating vapours
calculated to choke the channels of every aspiring and idealistic
The naturalists lacked second sight of imaginative scope and failed to produce
dramatic surroundings or circumstances which reflected the writers eye-witness
reports o n the spiritual world. Modern journalists, her sons of the inkpot,
belonged to the school of naturalism because they greatly contributed t o the
cynical temper of the times by exploiting both an apathetic readership and the
parasites of the Old World. The Silver Domino (1892), the novelists most concentrated attack upon contemporary literature and only piece of satirical wit,
indicts both manners of society and the literary taste bred of this languid,
listless indifference to God and man.
Marie Corellis indiscriminate critiques point generally to a type of fiction
which metaphorically kissed the cow-boots of Buffalo Bill. According to
Corelli, its exemplarsfailed as artists because they focused on lifes pettiness
and disappointments. Art supposedly uplifted man by moving him to experience something beyond the ordinary. For this reason, Corelli felt that Hardys
Tess contained no art. Hall Caine had a bow-wow style which was utterly
incapable of change. Kiplings intellect and wit worked like a hydraulic pump;
his men characters were coarse bears, and women mere trifles. Bret Harte
found a new groove for popularity but filled his audience to satiety with it.
Corelli called her own works one of our newest inflictions because they
treated heaven and hell as though she had seen and enjoyed both experiences.
But Corellis whimsicality appears only in The Silver Domino, because it did
not fit public image. Marie Corelli hoped her public would accept the voice in
her novels to be the direct result of personal experiences revealing the Truth
behind the veil of phenomena. Only William Shakespeare, who joking news-

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men said w a s the only man perfect enough for Corelli to marry, fulfilled the
romance writers notion of high art.
Marie Corellis theory of romance is a refraction of the Romantic vision.
Byron dramatized for her the individual daring of the artist, Keats was admirable
for his ability to focus the senses upon one state of revery piled upon another,
but Ruskin provided the moral-aesthetic principles for her art. Though not
systematized, Corellis theory of fiction contains a certain boldness for insisting
upon Romantic values long after the wave of this movement had reached its
crest. In the main, her romantic theory of fiction centers in the belief that the
artists consciousness is unique. His imaginative perception of reality and his
sense of love and beauty coerce the writers poetic instincts for prophecy. The
primary obligation of art, as well as the basis by which it is to be judged, questions how successfully the artist stimulates his readers into experiencing his perception of higher truths. The obligation of art was clear.
In a lecture delivered to the Edinburgh Philosophical Society (1901) the
novelist argued for the revival of imaginative works of art. She claimed that the
death of the imagination was a symptom of a corrupt agnostic culture. Invitations to lecture before the Philosophical Society were considered a rare honor
and this suggests the extensive influence Marie Corelli possessed as a moralist.
A time-honored tradition inspired her. Aware that Macaulay, Emerson, Thackeray, Dickens, and Kingsley preceded her, Corelli associated writers of romance
(herself by implication) with poets of high seriousness. She borrowed more
from John Ruskin than from Arnold in assuming that a revitalization of imaginative art brings about the rebirth of a cultures spiritual energy:

No king-no statesman, can do for a country what its romancists and poets can-for the sovereignty of the truly inspired
and imaginative soul is supreme, and as far above the conquests of Alexander. And when the last touch of idealistic
fancy and poetic sentiment has been crushed out of us, and
only the dry husks of realism are left to feed swine withal,
then may we look for the end of everything that is worth
cherishing and fighting for in our much boasted civilization.
The possession of creative skills is a magic talisman making life beautiful, intensifying and transfiguring incidents into history and philosophy.2
Mane Corelli was a long time popularizer of evolutionary theories and
believed that without proper leadership, men tended to return to the stage of
a savage. Though his violent qualities were necessary for survival as he evolved
from a state of animalism to higher stages of development, man became semiapathetic to these higher roads of progress and to the steady unfolding of that
endless perspective of order and beauty intended for the individual happiness
of every individual soul.
. .13 The romance genre engages the readers
willing suspension of disbelief to a high degree. Since this act is a form of release from the Self, the readers mental and psychological activities, while he
is engrossed in a story, instigate higher experiences:

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They cannot realize the unspeakable delight and charm of

giving ones self up to ones author, sum prejudice, sum
criticism, sum everything that could possibly break or mar
the spell, and being carried on the wings of gentle romance
away from Self, away from the everyday cares and petty
personalities of social convention, and observance, and living
with the characters which have been created by the man or
woman whose fertile brain and toiling pen have unitedly done
their best to.give this little respite and holiday to those who
will take it and rejoice in it with gratitude.I4
For Corelli, one escapes through art and returns to reality with a keener perception of its higher truths. The subject matter which most successfully soothes
mans savagery is love. Love was the keynote of Art and the cohesive force
of a healthy culture: With all its [Loves] folly, sweetness, piteousness and
pathos . . . its fool musings take shape in exquisite verse, in tales of romance
and adventure, in pictures that bring nations together to stand and marvel, in
music that makes strong men weep.15 While imaginary love can be considered an exciting premise for popular writers, Corellis use of its various themes
strongly argue that her publishing successes were attributed primarily to the
moral sanction her writing gave to this most supersensual of all delicate sensations.6 In the scheme of her art, love provided the basis of Corellis carefully
constructed allegories which highlighted universal moral truths and feelings.
The ingenious allegorical system in her fiction uses as its point of reference
contemporary data and scientific theories found in English magazines and
journals appealing to the DuiZy Illustrated mentality. Hermetic and scientific
images within the stories supported the authors values. Instead of appealing to
an ordered body of ideas to make her allegories work successfully, Corelli referred to the vague and amorphous feelings surrounding Christian myths as an
area of consensus between author and reader. Basically, Spirit is a radiant force
emanating from Gods mind, giving birth to the eternal energies of creation. One
universe links with another and at its center we find Love directing the process,
as electrical charges control electrons. Altogether the universe is somposed of
an Electric Ring or extensions of Gods personality. This Ring is ever expanding
and evolving. But instead of evolving without interruption into higher forms,
the cycle can be aborted by mans will. The will, itself, is a faculty which receives the atomistic impulses of Loves electricity. However, the natural inclination of the will toward the Good and the Beautiful may be overbalanced by
the impulse of evil stemming from ones selfish behavior. Evil also causes mans
afflictions, sickness, old age, and death. The central force in creation, then, is
love. It guides mans destiny as long as self-love does not negate its influences.
Man is governed by psychic impressions from preexistent states and these indelible qualities influence the will in its moral decisions. Corelli compares these
psychic impressions to the superior characteristics of an organism which evolves
into a higher stage of life. in the case of mans development, growth is circuitous
until he becomes one with the will of natures Creative Force and is identified

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with it. At this stage, the spirit of man may move freely through the
barriers of time and space in numerous forms of existence.
To use Corellis imagery, the power of God is a masculine agency, ever
active and yet incomplete. Mankind, the female element in creation, can
potentially develop an infinite number of psychic and spiritual identities and
so may be considered an essence, either complementary or essential, to Gods
eternal nature. Mans receptivity to this eternal power or grace depends
entirely upon the total identity of his will with Gods, as for example a musical
chord must harmonize with an entire symphonic arrangement. Most importantly, this relationship between God and man is never more clearly possible
than in dream-like revery or highly emotional states. Art is a cultures way of
producing this intense state of feeling.
While art for Corelli produces this intense feeling, at the same time it
could morally instruct. Her fiction, when judged as social criticism, emphasizes a panorama of ethical misfits, creatures who failed in Corellis system, because they represented conventional values of society. Just as Corelli opposed
naturalism in her statements on art, she reinterpreted the theory of evolution
for her popular readers and adopted its language to condemn the behavior of
men whom the Electric Ring of Nature (Gods personality) would destroy
because of their inferiority. Few areas of social behavior and manners escaped
her pious vengeance.
Wormwood (1890) anticipated by fifteen years the European controversy
to abolish the Swiss production of absinthe. The main protagonist, Gaston
Beauvais, narrates the tragedy of his own addiction and the decline of his character until he cannot accept life except on its primary level:
Oh, if there is one thing I rate at in the Universe more than
another, it is the uncertainty of Creations meaning. Nature
is a great mathematician, so the scientists declare-then why
is the chief number in the calculation always missing? Why
is it that no matter how we count and weigh and plan, we
can never make up the sum total? There is surely a fault
somewhere in the design-and perchance the great unseen,
silent, indifferent Force we call God, has, in a dull moment,
propounded a vast Problem, to which He Himself may have
forgotten the Answer!

The burden of the plot shows that the design is indeed perfect, but man has
distorted its meaning. Thus, Beauvais philosophy is erroneous and he finally
confesses that absinthe had killed the last vestige of my flickering conscience
in me with a final blow-and I became-what I am! As a moral outcast, the
absintheur descends the scale of creation to a lower form of evolution: I
am a slinking, shuffling beast, half monkey, half man, whose aspect is vile. . .
Wormwood drew the attention of prohibition groups and it was in response to their requests that Marie Coreui wrote Holy Orders (1906). The
romances subtitle, The Tragedy of a Quiet Life, suggests the extent of
the evil wrought on these rural populations by the tyranny of the Drink-

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Traffic.* The author attempts to draw open sympathy with the arduous task
of some of the best and most hard-working clergy, demonstrated in this case
by the Rev. Richard Everton who struggles to improve working conditions and
move the common workers of Shadbrook t o daily Christian behavior. The
towns economy is controlled by a local distiller whose angry orders are m i s interpreted by an intoxicated guard. The result is the murder of Evertons
wife. Deprived of this underlying strength to his ministry, Everton eventually
learns to experience a new kind of love in Christian dedication to his duties.
The process of Evertons re-entry into the life of simple piety continues after
evil has been dealt with. The distillery is destroyed by fire and its monstrous
owner with it. The heroic minister continues his crusade, but he rejects honors
and titles in his own church, believing that it is infected by the high-criticism
of pigmy scholars. Like Corellis other social novels, HuZy Orders fails to
question the novelists own implied overview. The narrator continually interrupts the action; his comments are often repeated in the Everton speeches.
This one-to-one reference from narrator to hero, and back again to author,
makes for grim dogmatizing. The overview is a calcified version of earlier
themes, demonstrating the lack of moral cohesion in the culture. Evertons
rapid ascent on the imaginary scale of spiritual evolution implicitly highlights
his antagonists descent to primitive stages of savagery.
In contrast to the simple goodness of an Everton, and remarkable in their
own right for Corellis ability to give spatial density to abstract evil, stand
Lucifer and Josiah McNason. Lucifer appears first in the guise of Lucio
Rimanez, a being who consciously seeks to be defeated by mans goodness.
God has decreed that in this way he may learn the meaning of salvation. Lucios
will to be destroyed is paralleled by Lady Sibyl Eltons desire for damnation.
Lucifers hope of being conquered is frustrated by Lady Elton who represents
the indifference, selfishness, and viciousness of modern society. In The Devils
Mutur, Lucifer comes to claim the twentieth-century as his own, when The
forests dripped like broken reeds, the mountains crumbled into pits and quarries,
the seas and rivers, the lakes and waterfalls dried up into black and muddy
waters, and all the land was bereft of b e a ~ t y . Lucifers
~
judgment of modem
man, All Creation shall rejoice to be cleansed from the pollution of your presence, fittingly condemns men, Eke Josiah McNason, who participate in a money
morality which infects their will with a cancer of selfishness.
Corellis social criticism is strongest when she submerges her rigid base
of judgment to permit the reader a glimpse into the struggle of a burdened
humanity utterly deprived of the promises it feels life owes to it. This more
sophisticated vantage point appears frequently in her short stories and in romances which were published after the war, when, perhaps, she was retreating
more deeply into her own fictional world to escape values formed under a different manner of perception. At her best as a reformer of English culture,
Corelli used characters who were doomed to the bitterest phases of human
experience. Because they could not feel the touch of divine love in their own
lives, their diplomatic gestures to society, their brittle philosophical insights
and conventional platitudes indict a culture which incorporated these values.

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Humor and half-serious ambivalence had no place in the characterization of

Corellis moral outcasts, because the novelist w a s in earnest when she wished
her readers to accept them as the biggest Fraud nature and art ever perpetuated. Society suffers because the religious attitudes and scientific concerns of
figures, like Claude Ferrers in Holy Orders and Diana May in The Young DMm,
or the fervent artistic visions of young Jocelyn in Innocent: His Fact and Her
Fancy, mask a degeneracy which Corelli believed threatened English and American culture.
The composition of Corellis allegories depends upon a tableau of actions
involving two types. On the positive side, we find heroes and heroines who
mirror the authors notion of the Divine Will. They have, in brief, mastered the
complex issues of life. Cast into various degrees of villainy are those characters
whose source of action is contradiction, negation, or defiance. If life was, as
Corelli claimed, a bogie tale, its tragedies were not necessary. Heroes, like
Barrabas, C a r d i d Bonpr; in The Master Christian, Morgana Royal in The Secret
Power, or Mary Deane in The Treasure of Heaven, possessed inner serenity, because their independent minds and strong d s pursued the vast knowledge
which Corelli intimated existed in the universe. The cosmos was composed of
&mensions of reality which went far beyond the illusions of time and space.
In gaining this knowledge, the heroes discovered an unending peace. Their search
for Love in the cosmos promised perpetual development along higher stages of
existences. They were heroic in so far as they were receptive to the personality
of God surrounding them in the objects of nature. Coincidentally, the Corelli
hero and heroine were rich and successful enough not to be affected by materidistic goals. As the novelists spokesmen, these figures confronted the realities of
the Spiritual World in face of societys effete snobbery, foolish dissensions, and
universal pettiness. The Corelli hero survived all tests of established convention
because he could match his inferiors dissipation with astonishing insights into
lifes problems. He had experience totally under control, but his behavior disrupted established norms of conduct. Like the operation of higher organisms
in evolution, the heros actions necessarily destroyed corrupt social values in
order to prepare the way for something higher and nobler. The outcome of the
conflict between hero and society was readily predictable and when the fiber of
Corellis plots stretched too much, she resorted to an emphasis on character
portrayals which borrowed from evolutionary theories. In her character depiction, Marie Corelli contrasted her hero with a large fictional population of mord
misfits. She thus implied the range of potential development i n man by giving
the reader illustrations from her stratified scale of moral conduct, from its lowest forms to the highest ideals found in the hero. The misfit was to Corelli an
unnatural creature who could never survive in her psychic, suprasensual world.
Since Corellis first intention was to move her readers attitudes in line with her
own rigid overview, her fictional misfits showed, in a negative way, dramatic
evidence of men who failed the ideals of Christianity. The romanticist could
reaffirm her own values by creating an imaginative world where one viewed an
evolutionary system of ethics in which were placed Christian hybrids as well as
natures immoral freaks. A survey of a few romances, which Corelli considered

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central to her role as social and theological reformer, demonstrates how the
mixture of Christian tradition and nineteenth-century evolutionary theories
appealed to the popular mind.
Gods Good Man (1904) attacks the upper classes for hypocrisy, the
lowest type of modern decadence, by placing in opposition to it, the simple
values of a country parson. John Walden dedicates his life to serving ignorant
farmers who reside in the community of St. Rest. He turns this parish into a
community where the ideals of Christianity organically develop from the villagers simple and harmonious lives. The philosophical commentary of Corellis
narrator argues, as he frequently interrupts the flow of action, that St. Rest is
a microcosm of modern society about to be invaded by the alien forces of
materialism. John Walden is successful because his world-view has been inspired by the past. He spends his fortune in restoring his fifteenth-century
church, improving its gardens, and redistributing his land to the country folk.
Waldens special world allows him TO use the innermost eyes of his soul in
. . .looking backward down the stream of Time, as well as in looking forward
to that crystal sea of the unknown future.21 Walden finds it possible to
move across time and space because he is a member of a highly selected group,
a man whose potential g o w t h ultimately leads him to a state which approximates total will for the Good. Yet, Waldens vision is incomplete. He and his
parishioners must face the invasion of Londons upper classes as well as the
threat of a greedy tourism which had already infected a neighboring city.
Walden finds an ally in Maryllia Vancourt, who has forsaken international
society to return to her childhood home. Their mutual attraction and admiration develop into intense love after Maryllia barely escapes death and the
couple become aware of a higher existence. In this case, the thinking of the
clergyman and of his decorous, agnostic lover has moved their consciousness
to a point where sectarian divisions disappear, because the lovers experience
the Love behind the cosmos. At the end, Waldens act of faith, I accept Him
as the true manifestation of the possible Divine in Man, and Maryllias desire
for love, only found in poems and story books, provide a marriage of spirits
actuating the felt presence of God. Like Richard Everton in Holy Orders
(1908), they were cramped by conventions and sought higher responsibilities which benefited the common good of society.
The heros responsibility to a larger unit in society raises the question
of how one can find a vigorous spiritual climate when the structures of modern society encourage artificiality and corruption. Corelli never probes deeply
enough to suggest a resolution, but The Treasure of Heaven: A Romance of
Riches (1906) optimistically illustrates how the Corelli hero and heroine survive the dilemma. This novel focuses upon David Hemsleys first process
o f . . . evolution . . . the awakening of conscience, and the struggle to rise
from his mere Self to a higher ideal in life-from material needs to intellectual
development.22 Hemsley, a divorced millionaire, discovers o n the remote
highlands of Scotland an innocent way of life taught by Mary Dean, a child
of instinct. Hemsley decides to rid himself of all his wealth, the cause of his
former distress and spiritual distemper. Though he mistakenly believes that

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someone else might be able to use the money well, Hemsleys decision is the
fkst important step in the growth of his character. Hemsleys development is
analogous to stages of evolutionary progress. He feels, while in London controlling his business empire, like an inhuman mechanism. While fleeing from
society, he lives with the wild elements of nature among the animals. His last
act of self-denial prepares him for a final ascent into heaven after death. However, Hemsleys denial of self, ironically tests the love which his new friend,
Mary Dean has for Angus Reay, a poet. She inherits the Hemsley fortune and
with it a taint that threatens her coming marriage. Reay cannot accept an
inferior role, since, besides his male vanity, such a relationship would stifle the
poets creative powers. Fortunately, Mary never has to make the choice between fortune and love, because the poet returns to his beloved in time to prevent her suicide. Nothing is, nor need be, said about Hemsleys millions or the
artists creativity, because the lovers have found a greater treasure.
The atrocities of the First World War did not abate Corellis intense idealism, though she no longer would insist upon the possibility of returning her
public to the Old World. This significant shift in attitude gave her romances a
tone of cynicism. In technique, Corelli altered her practice of polarizing conventional systems against the values of her heroes. The Young Diana (1918)
and The Secret Power (1921) indicate that these less clear distinctions between
hero and moral outcast implied the impossibility of reviving Old World virtues.
These last novels show an abandonment of her former ideas and a deeper retreat into art.
In The Young Diana, Corellis most pessimistic statement of art, the
heroine is an awkward numeral in a sum, not knowing why she came in and
how she was to be got out of existence. Diana May forsakes her well-to-do
life in England and searches with a Doctor Dimitri for the way to master the
secrets governing chemical atoms in man. This discovery promises eternal life
and, unlike Tithonus, great beauty and youth. However, Diana Mays willingness to be Dimitris subject is traced back to her hatred of life. Dimitris experiments shame and humiliate his protege(. She feels as dehumanized as when she
faked suicide to escape the boredom and neglect of her parents. Diana receives
the sift of beauty and eternal life, but Corelli clearly signifies that her protagonist has not benefited from hermetic science. Diana is a being warped by both
convention and psychic studies alike. The novelist describes her as an ice
queen, a goddess of the moon hunting her prey. The story also adapts Corellis
principle of psychic impressions from the past influencing the will of the protagonist, but here Diana is the reincarnation of Queen Rajuna, who disapproves
of her lover, slowly hacks him to pieces, and keeps him alive as long as possible
in her terrifying presence. Dianas rebirth is a triumph of psychic science, but
she is not the familiar Corelli heroine who embodies the glories of womanhood.
Diana May returns to England and uses that beauty, which transformed her
into a maiden goddess moulded from a dream, to humiliate and destroy all
persons who violated her individuality. The first victim is her former fiance,
but Dianas sexual triumph over him is only a prelude to more horrible vengeance.
She sets out next to destroy her father, Captain Cleve, by arousing his passions

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so that he may each day be more aware of his age and approaching death. As
the impersonal object of psychic investigation, Diana will live forever to be an
instrument of vengeance upon modern man. In the early works of Mane Corelli, beauty was identified with Gods feminine attributes and it complemented
the virtue of wisdom, thus affording man the means of raising himself in Corellis
scale of spiritual evolution. Here, knowledge and beauty are instruments of
terror. They are inflicted upon a society which fully deserves punishment.
CoreUis apocalyptic vision recedes without a saving view of order:

She [Diana] Eves as the light lives-fair and emotionless-as

all may live who master the secret of living, a secret which
. . . shall yield itself to those, who before very long, will
grasp the Flaming Sword and take and eat of the fruit of
the Tree of Life. The Sword turns every way-but the
blossom is behind the blade. And in this Great Effort
neither the love of man nor the love of woman have any
part, nor any propagation of an imperfect race, for those
who would reach the goal must relinquish all save the realization of that new heaven and new earth, of splendid and
lasting youth and vitality when old things are passed away. 23
Interestingly enough, when Corellis fictional methods changed, her
simplistic opposition of crass materialism to a noble, romantic idealism became
more ambiguous and her writing came closer to acceptable art. The Secret
Power dramatically uses the broad background of American and English life
as an atmosphere to render practical science and hermetic lore in their most
dangerous aspects. Roger Seaton conducts experiments with radium in the
desert of California to discover the source of all power. He feels that by harnessing this source he will be able to dictate peaceful policies to the major
nations-of the world. Seatons noble plan is motivated by a deep cynicism.
In pursuing the Great Secret he totally isolates himself from any feelings of
community. His plan to end all wars forever almost destroys the world. Also
implicit in the novels design is Corellis attack upon politicians who had vowed
that World War I was a necessary risk in order to end war forever. At the same
time Seaton revels in his bitter, self-imposed exile, Morgana Royal, a fey,
magic person, conducts experiments on a flying machine (whose energy source
is more mystical than mechanical) and searches for a legendary place called the
Golden City. This mystic abode is inhabited by psychic spirits which have
reached the highest stage of evolution. Morgana receives telepathic messages
from these beings, inviting her to enter into this form of existence. However,
she is warned that no one may ever return to twentieth-century society after
entering the citys gates. After rescuing Seaton from an earthquake which his
experiments caused, Morgana journeys to the fabled city and passes through
its walls. Morganas journey symbolically represents the perspective of hermeticism and its power to convey one to a higher state of consciousness, one
that surpasses the dreams of philosophy and science. The promising conclusion of the novel is questionable. Morgana dwells with the secret Maker

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of the New Race . . . the Gods of the Future but can never return to the
modern world. For his part, Seaton endures a vegetable existence, one in which
he vacantly cries with no comprehension, There shall be no more wars. There
can be none! I say it! It is my Great Secret! I am master of the world. Both
characters possess the secret to societys ills but are powerless. Morgana leaves
her own friendly group of followers with a sense of failure and may indicate
Corellis own awareness of her failure to alter the direction of her readers values.
Morgana, like the artist, departs alone, conscious of the fact that her union with
and love for Seaton will be unfulfilled.
Just as The Young Diana indicts psychic investigations and finds them as
misleading as conventional beliefs, The Secret Power reveals Corellis final retreat into the magical garden of her writing, a necessarily lonely exile because
modern life cruelly contradicted her system with more valid scientific facts. By
this time in CoreLlis career, she was a forgotten artist, living among the curios
and prizes given to her by an appreciative public, and perhaps an embarrassment
to a nation which once placed her name next to Shakespeare and Dickens. Her
early works, which were personal efforts to halt the direction of English attitudes
at the turn of the century, would find their way from the clergymans pulpit
and the parlors of the elite to used bookstore shelves containing naughty literature. If Corellis works were simplistic, their charm is contained in an intense
idealism, because the light in her universe was centered in the efficacy of divine
love. As the possibility of reestablishing the firm values of an older order
waned, the heat of her romanticism dissipated and its light extinguished.
NOTES
Advertising lists for Corellis novels indicate that The Muster Christian
(1900) sold 185,000 copies; Temporal Power (1902), 150,000; and Gods Goad
Man (1904), 160,000. In addition to these sales, The Sorrows ofSatan (1895)
reached 200,000 and The Treasure of Heaven (1906) exhausted 100,000 copies
on the first day. These figures combine the sales from England and North
America, but do not include receipts from continental publishers.
See his chapter, Apologia, in Marie Corelli: The Story of a Friendship (London: Hutchinson, 1955). Consult George Bullocks Marie Corelli:
The Life and Death ofu Best-seller (London: Constable & Co., 1940) for a
completely unsympathetic treatment of Corellis vogue among popular readers.
LLIntroductionto the New Edition, A Romance of Two Worlds (New
York: Collier & Son, 1887), p. 12.
4Donald A. Wollheim regards such an approach into other worlds as a
central premise for science fiction writing. He calls this technique the Gate
Between Worlds but cannot trace its source. See The Universe Makers (New
York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 10-15. Only 3. Cuming Walters in A Personal Tribute by Way of Epilogue notes this neglected aspect of Coreuis
fiction: In the realm of speculative science Miss Corelli followed Lytton and
preceded Wells. See Bertha Vyver, Memoirs of Marie Corelli (London: Alston
Rivers, Ltd., 1930), pp. 257-86.
Though the novelist disapproved of the women suffrage movement

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863

many of her pamphlets supported the view of female superiority as, Coward
Adam and Accursed Eve in Free Opinions Freely Expressed on Certain
Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct (London: Archibald Constable &
Co., 1905); Woman or Sufragette? A Question ofRatiom2 Choice (London:
C. A. Pearson, Ltd., 1907); and This Amazing War: A Womans Point of
View in My Lit& Bit (New York: George Doran Co., 1919).
6(1892); rpt. London: Methuen, 1966), p. 402.
7The soul of Lilith
*The Soul of Lilith, p. 380.
Strong Book of Ishbosheth in Free Opinions Freely Expressed,
p. 249.
Corellis apologia for her fiction is found in the Prologue t o The Life
Everlasting (London: Methuen, 1911).
The lecture is reprinted in Free Opinions Freely Expressed as The
Vanishing Gift, p. 287.
12The Power of the Pen in Free Opinions Freely Expressed, p. 295.
13The Great Unrest in M y Little Bit, p. 32.
I4A Vital Point of Education in Free Opinions Freely Expressed, p. 6.
5lrnaginary Love in Free Opinions Freely Expressed, p. 165.
160verall, Corelli sentimentally treats loves social value in her collected
short stories: Grneos (London: Hutchinson, 1895): The Song ofMiriam and
Other Stories (New York: George Muros Sons, 1898); and The Love of Long
Ago and Other Stories (London: Methuen, 1920).
l7 Wormwood: A Drama of Puris (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, n.d.),
pp. 377-78.
Quoted from Marie Corellis introductory comments to the American
edition of Holy Orders (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1908), p. vi.
lgThe Prince of Darkness is the central figure in The Sorrows cfSutan
(London: Methuen, 1895) and The Devils Motor (London: Hodder &
Stoughton, 1910). The Strange Visitation oflosiah McNason is not listed nor
mentioned in any Corelli biography. It was published by George Newnes and
appeared as a Christmas companion to the Strand Magazine in the United States
in 1904.
D e d s Motor has no pagination. Its purpose was to highlight six
interpretative water-colors by Arthur Severn. The work was not too popular,
but it cannot be considered a work of fiction since it resembles a sermon in its
form.
2Gods Good Man (New York: A. L. Burt, 1904), p. 5.
n(New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1906), p. 164.
23The Young Diana, p. 320.
Professor Kowalczyk is on the faculty at the University of Detroit,
College of Arts and Sciences.