  A very Woman among Men! Her pÆans, sung in ev’ry quarter, Almost persuade Le Gallienne To go and get his hair cut shorter; When Kipling hears her trumpet-note He longs to don a petticoat. Her praise is sung by old or young, From Happy Hampstead to Hoboken, Where’er old England’s mother-tongue Is (ungrammatically) spoken: In that supremely simple set Which loves the penny novelette. When Anglo-Saxon peoples kneel Before their literary idol, It makes all rival authors feel Depressed and almost suicidal; They cannot reach within a mile Of her sublime suburban style. Her modest, unobtrusive ways, In sunny Stratford’s guide-books graven, Her brilliance, lighting with its rays The birthplace of the Swan of Avon, Must cause the Bard as deep a pain As his resemblance to Hall Caine. Mere ordinary mortals ask, With no desire for picking quarrels, Who gave her the congenial task Of judging other people’s morals? Who bade her flay her fellow-men With such a frankly feline pen? And one may seek, and seek in vain. The social set she loves to mention, Those offspring of her fertile brain, Those creatures of her fond invention. (She is, or so it would appear, Unlucky in her friends, poor dear!) For tho’, like her, they feel the sway Of claptrap sentimental glamour, And frequently, like her, give way To lapses from our English grammar, The victims of her diatribes Are not the least as she describes. To restaurants they seldom go, Just for the sake of over-eating; While ladies don’t play bridge, you know, Entirely for the sake of cheating; And husbands can be quite nice men, And wives are faithful, now and then. Were she to mingle with her ink A little milk of human kindness, She would not join, I dare to think, To chronic social color-blindness An outlook bigoted and narrow As that of some provincial sparrow. But still, perhaps, it might affect Her literary circulation, If she were tempted to neglect Her talent for vituperation; Since work of this peculiar kind Delights the groundling’s curious mind. For while, of course, from day to day, Her popularity increases, As, in an artless sort of way, She tears Society to pieces, Her sense of humor, so they tell us, Makes even Alfred Austin jealous! Yet even bumpkins, by and by, (Such is the spread of education) May view with cold, phlegmatic eye The fruits of her imagination, And learn to temper their devotion With slight, if adequate, emotion. ····· Dear Miss Corelli:—Should your eyes Peruse this page (’tis my ambition!), Be sure that I apologize In any suitable position For having weakly imitated The style that you yourself created. I cannot fancy to attain To heights of personal invective Which you, with subtler pen and brain, Have learnt to render so effective; I follow dimly in your trail; Forgive me, therefore, if I fail! “Were she to mingle with her ink |
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