CHAPTER XVII
SOME PERSONAL ITEMS
The Helen Faucit Memorial—Marie Corelli's Successful Campaign in Behalf of Shakespeare's Burial Place—Portraits of the Novelist—Marie Corelli Declines to Review "The Eternal City"—An Introduction to Mr. Labouchere—Use made of a "Private and Confidential" Letter—"Self-advertisement": Some Comments on Accusations of this Character brought against Marie Corelli by certain Sections of the Press—The Invitation to the Abbey on the Occasion of the King's Coronation—An Invitation to open a Nonconformist Bazaar at Brighton, and why it was Declined—Letters from Dr. Parker and the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes—"The Ethics of Criticism": a letter by E. Rentoul Esler—"To the Quarterly": Some Verses by Marie Corelli 311
CHAPTER XVIII
AT STRATFORD-ON-AVON
The "Local Color" in Marie Corelli's Books—"I Imagine it must be so, and I find it generally is so"—Why the Novelist went to live at Stratford—"Hall's Croft," "Avon Croft," and "Mason Croft": her Successive Residences—Her Affection for Stratford and her Regret that the Memorial Theatre is so little used—Her Benefactions—Instances of Kind-heartedness in Other Writers—Marie Corelli's "Life-Programme"—Her Personality "Striking in its Simplicity and in its Power"—The Novelist as a Shakespeare Enthusiast—Her Desire to see Stratford become the "Bayreuth of Literature"—The Novelist's "Public": the Vastness of her Constituency—Her Friends—A Character Sketch of Marie Corelli by Mr. J. Cuming Walters—Mr. Gladstone's Parting Benediction 332
Of the above Chapters, II, V, VIII, IX, XII, XIII, XVI, and XVII are by Thomas F. G. Coates; and Chapters I, III, IV, VI, VII, X, XI, XIV, XV and XVIII by R. S. Warren Bell.
