It would not be meet in the present work to touch in any but the most passing way on Miss Corelli’s practical philanthropy. But it is only due to her, in a biographical work published mainly to explain what she _is_--as opposed to what so many malicious paragraphists have declared her to be--to pay a tribute to her consideration for others, and her desire to make the best use of such worldly possessions as the extensive sale of her works has naturally brought her.
Those, however, who accuse her of “self-advertisement” will do well to remember that by such an absolutely false clamor they are depriving many in need from assistance which they might obtain were the novelist certain that her actions would not be misrepresented and misconstrued. For nothing makes her happier than to see others happy. She has helped many strugglers in the literary profession, too, and literary men and women who disparage her may be surprised to hear that she has herself never been known to say an injurious word with regard to any one of her fellow-authors.
It may be asked--what is Marie Corelli’s life-programme? Most writers have a definite object in view--this one to achieve immortality; that one to make money. What is Marie Corelli’s?
Briefly, she writes,--has always written,--to reach the hearts and minds of those thinking people of to-day who are striving to combat the subtleties of the Agnostic and Atheist; to strengthen their faith in the truth, the reality, the goodness of God and Christianity; the people who have hearts that throb with tenderness, hope, love and sincerity. She would purify society. She would exalt everything that is noble and good. She would destroy the rule of unbelief and insincerity, and raise in its place ideal characters and conditions strongly built upon a foundation of faith and truth. Such is Marie Corelli’s programme.
The interest taken by the novelist in social questions has led her to correspond with workingmen’s clubs in America and the colonies, and not a few papers have been written by her to serve as subjects for discussion in such institutions.
But what of that self of which so much has been heard? It is a personality striking in its simplicity and in its power. Marie Corelli is a woman of women, simple in her tastes, strong in her faiths and her aims, with a heart full of sympathy for others, living a busy life that from its productiveness in the world of literature is a constant influence for good in the hearts and homes of thousands the world over, and, in its private relationships, a source of help, inspiration, and benefit to those with whom she comes in contact.