Moths

628 Pages·2005·2.78 MB·English

by  Ouida

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COMMON SENSE
OR, FEIGN’D INNOCENCE DETECTED
MOTHS
AN APOLOGY FOR THE LIFE OF
SHAMELA
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series editor:L.W.Conolly
MEMOIRSOFMODERNPHILOSOPHERS 1
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Black-and-white crayon drawing executed when Ouida was 39.
Morris L.Parrish Collection.Department of Rare Books and
Special Collections.Princeton University Library.
Reprinted with permission.
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MOTHS
Ouida
edited by Natalie Schroeder
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©2005 Natalie Schroeder
All rights reserved.The use of any part of this publication reproduced,transmitted in any form
or by any means,electronic,mechanical,photocopying,recording,or otherwise,or stored in a
retrieval system,without prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopy-
ing,a licence from Access Copyright (Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency),One Yonge
Street,Suite 1900,Toronto,Ontario M5E 1E5—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ouida
Moths / Ouida ;edited by Natalie Schroeder.
(Broadview editions)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-55111-520-4
I.Schroeder,Natalie,1941- II.Title. III.Series.
PR4527.M68 2005 823’.8 C2004-905691-3
Broadview Editions
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together texts long regarded as classics with valuable lesser-known works.
Advisory editor for this volume:Michel Pharand
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Contents
Acknowledgements • 7
Introduction • 9
Ouida:A Brief Chronology • 37
A Note on the Text • 41
Moths • 43
Appendix A:Contemporary Reviews of Moths
1. The Athenæum 7 (February 1880) • 545
2. The Saturday Review 49 (28 February 1880) • 546
3. The Westminster Review 113 (April 1880) • 550
4. The North American Review 285 (July 1880) • 550
Appendix B: The Novels of Society
1. From Vincent E.H.Murray,“Ouida’s Novels,”The Contemporary
Review 22 (1878) • 555
2. From “Contemporary Literature,”Blackwood’s Edinburgh Maga-
zine 125 (March 1879) • 556
3. From Harriet Waters Preston,“Ouida,”The Atlantic Monthly 58
(1886) • 558
4. From [Oscar Wilde],“Ouida’s New Novel,”Pall Mall Gazette
(May 1889) • 561
5. From Ouida,“The Sins of Society,”Views and Opinions
(1895) • 561
Appendix C:Contemporary Responses to Ouida
1. From Ella,“Ouida,”The Victoria Magazine 28 (March
1877) • 565
2. From “The ‘Whitehall’Portraits.XCVIII.—Ouida,”The White-
hall Review (5 October 1878) • 566
3. From Marie Corelli,“A Word about ‘Ouida,’”Belgravia 71
(March 1890) • 567
4. From G.S.Street,“An Appreciation of Ouida,”The Yellow Book
6 (July 1895) • 570
5. From Willa Cather,“The Passing Show,”The Courier (23
November 1895) • 573
6. From Max Beerbohm,“Ouida,”More (1899) • 575
7. Obituary,The Times (27 January 1908) • 577
Appendix D:Marriage and Divorce in the Nineteenth Century
1. Ouida on The Marriage Market and her “Philosophy of
Marriage”
a. From Granville de Vigne (1863) • 583
MOTHS 5
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b. From Princess Napraxine (1884) • 584
c. From Guilderoy (1889) • 585
2. From George H.Lewis,“Marriage and Divorce,”The Fortnightly
Review 37 (1885) • 585
3. From Charles Dickens,Hard Times (1854) • 589
4. Reports of Divorce Cases,1884
a. Cranfield v.Cranfield,The Times,4 April 1884 • 590
b. Wilson v.Wilson,Grille,and Morley,The Times,10 May
1884 • 591
c. Stent v.Stent and Low,The Times,19 June 1884 • 593
5. From Mona Caird,“Marriage,”The Westminster Review
(August 1888) • 594
6. From Marie Corelli,“The Modern Marriage Market,”
The Lady’s Realm (April 1897) • 597
Appendix E:Ouida and the New Woman Debate
1. From Eliza Lynn Lynton,“The Shrieking Sisterhood,”
The Saturday Review (12 March 1870) • 599
2. From Sarah Grand,“The New Aspect of the Woman Question,”
The North American Review 158 (March 1894) • 601
3. From Ouida,“The New Woman,”The North American Review 158
(May 1894) • 605
4. From Mrs.M.Eastwood,“The New Woman in Fiction and in
Fact,”The Humanitarian 5 (1894) • 612
5. From Ouida,“Female Suffrage,”Views and Opinions (1895) • 615
6. From Mrs.Morgan-Dockrell,“Is the New Woman a Myth?”
The Humanitarian 8 (1896) • 619
Select Bibliography • 625
6 CONTENTS
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people for their help and sup-
port.My husband Ronald A.Schroeder for all around assistance—
answering questions,making suggestions,and checking translations.
My mother Mollie Antler for proofreading. My research assistants
Lorraine Dubuisson and Corrie Cattlett for typing and final manu-
script preparation. J.R. Hall, Michael Danahy, Gregory Heyworth,
and Karen Raber for help with translations and answering annota-
tion queries.Jane Jordan for supplying information on the publish-
ing history of Moths.Cheryl Coleman,Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV,
and Shari Hodges Holt for help editing my introduction. Joe Urgo,
for his encouragement. The staff of the University of Mississippi
Department of Interlibrary Loan for their efficiency and promptness.
The Department of English at the University of Mississippi.
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8 INTRODUCTION
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Introduction
Ouida’s Life
Ouida was born 1 January 1839,in Bury St.Edmunds,Suffolk.Her
mother Susan Sutton was the daughter of a wine merchant.Her elu-
sive father Louis Ramé may or may not have been the son of a tai-
lor and a secret agent for the then exiled Louis Napoleon.While he
never totally abandoned his wife and child until his final disappear-
ance in 1871,Ramé did not often live with them.1
The name “Ouida”derived from an infant attempt to pronounce
Louisa. Her generally happy childhood was marred only by her
father’s frequent mysterious absences.When he was present in the
Ramé household,he taught French to Ouida and other young ladies
in Bury St.Edmunds.He also instructed Ouida in literature,history,
math,and politics.From him she developed her love for reading.
At age eleven,Ouida began acting out stories with painted card-
board figures as characters.Her vibrant imagination led her to live in
a narcissistic fantasy world,a world she occupied for the rest of her
life.She believed,for example,that every man she met was in love
with her.In 1857,when Ouida was 18,she moved to London with
her mother, her 85-year-old maternal grandmother, and her dog
Beausire.Their new conventional neighbors in Hammersmith gos-
siped about the three women who lived alone without a man in the
house.To make matters worse,Ouida’s long walks with only her dog
as a companion raised Victorian eyebrows.
Inspired by her new surroundings,Ouida determined to support
her mother and grandmother by writing short stories.Their family
doctor and neighbor, Francis Ainsworth, introduced Ouida to his
cousin,William Harrison Ainsworth,the editor of Bentley’s Miscellany.
When Ouida sent him her stories,Ainsworth promptly published
Dashwood Drag;or the Derby and what came of it in the April and May
1859 issues of the Miscellany.For the next few years he continued to
publish her “society stories,”peopled with rich aristocrats and set in
foreign places like Bohemia,Vienna,Germany,and France.
1 The material in this section derives from Ouida’s two most recent
biographies:Monica Stirling’s The Fine and the Wickedand Eileen
Bigland’s Ouida:The Passionate Victorian.
MOTHS 9
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When Ouida was twenty-two,Ainsworth serialized her first full-
length novel, Granville de Vigne; a Tale of the Day, along with Ellen
Wood’s East Lynne in The New Monthly Magazine.When her novel
was published in three volumes in 1863,she changed the title to Held
in Bondage.At first reviewers classified Ouida as a sensation novelist
like Wood and Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Most of Ouida’s novels,
however, focus mainly on romance and on foibles of fashionable
society rather than mystery and intrigue.Readers devoured her sto-
ries,an escape from stuffy middle class morality.Her first novel was
immediately followed by Strathmore in 1865 and Chandos in 1866.
Fueled by Ouida’s unorthodox behavior, rumors spread about the
“mysterious”new best-selling author.
Ouida’s love and pampering of animals—especially dogs—was
excessive throughout her life.When Beausire died in 1866, both
Ouida and her mother grieved as much as they did at the death of
Mrs.Sutton later that year.After her period of mourning,the young
author moved to the luxurious Langham Hotel where she spent
money recklessly,behaved outrageously,and hosted elaborate dinner
parties and evening receptions,often smoking cigars with the men.
With the exception of her mother and Lady Burton (wife of the
explorer and writer,Sir Richard Burton),all her guests were male.
What’s more, Ouida was often coarse and rude. Her voice was
unpleasantly rasping and her appearance eccentric.She demanded to
be addressed as Madame de la Ramée or Madame Ouida.Although
Ouida was nearly thirty years old,Bigland states that she “persisted in
wearing her hair down her back,and whether it was the mode or not
M.Worth had to design her gowns with shortish sleeves so that she
might show off her tiny wrists and hands,and with shortish skirts so
that she might display her incredibly small feet which were always
shod in satin slippers”(53).
Under Two Flags (1867), featuring the unconventional heroine
Cigarette, mascot of the French Foreign Legion, became Ouida’s
greatest success to date.That same year,Mario,a sixty-one year-old
tenor,came to London.He was the first of the three passionate infat-
uations of Ouida’s life.This first one,however,was with a man whom
she never even met. In an essay written later in her life,“O Beati
Insipientes!,” Ouida describes Mario as “a man of genius in every
way,apart from the art in which he was unsurpassed ...yet,he was a
singularly handsome man, and possessed of magical seduction for
women”(Views and Opinions74).At Mario’s farewell performance at
Covent Garden, Ouida threw a bouquet of flowers onto the stage
containing an ivory cigar-case with her card and a note in it.When
10 INTRODUCTION