DOI Artikel:
Street, George Slythe: An appreciation of Ouida
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0173
By G. S. Street 169
he does not swagger. His one affectation is, that if by chance he
has done something great in the ways of sport or war, he looks as
if nothing had happened. There are things in life which he puts
before the main chance. Such, more or less, is the sort of man in
question, virile certainly, and one whom only the snobbery of intel-
lect can despise. His is not a very common type in a materialised
age,when even men of pleasure want their pleasure,as it were,atstore
prices, and everybody is climbing pecuniary and social ladders ; it
is a type that, I confess, I respect and like. At least it is indis-
putable that such men have done much for our country. Now
Ouida, as I have admitted, has made many mistakes in her deal-
ings with this type of man : who has altogether avoided them ?
They are many who find the pictures of him in Mr. Rudyard
Kipling, superficially at least, far inferior to Mr. Kipling’s
“ natives,” and his three immortal Tommies. Ouida has made
him ridiculously lavish, inclined to translate his genuine emotions
into terms of sentimentalism, and to say things of his social
inferiors which such a man may sometimes think, but is careful
not to say. To affirm that the subject is good and the treatment of
it bad, would be to give my case away. My contention is that
the treatment, with many imperfections, leaves one assured that
the subject has been, in essentials, perceived.
But her guardsman belongs to Ouida’s earlier manner, and it is
most unfair, in estimating her, to forget that this manner has been
mellowed and quieted. In “Princess Napraxine” and in
“Othmar”—the two most notable books, I think, of her later
period—there are types of men more reasonably conceived and ex-
pressed more subtly. Geraldine, the cosmopolitan, but charac-
teristic Englishman ; Napraxine, the amiable, well-bred savage ;
Des Vannes, the calculating sensualist; Othmar himself, the dis-
appointed idealist, these are painted, now and then, in somewhat
glaring
he does not swagger. His one affectation is, that if by chance he
has done something great in the ways of sport or war, he looks as
if nothing had happened. There are things in life which he puts
before the main chance. Such, more or less, is the sort of man in
question, virile certainly, and one whom only the snobbery of intel-
lect can despise. His is not a very common type in a materialised
age,when even men of pleasure want their pleasure,as it were,atstore
prices, and everybody is climbing pecuniary and social ladders ; it
is a type that, I confess, I respect and like. At least it is indis-
putable that such men have done much for our country. Now
Ouida, as I have admitted, has made many mistakes in her deal-
ings with this type of man : who has altogether avoided them ?
They are many who find the pictures of him in Mr. Rudyard
Kipling, superficially at least, far inferior to Mr. Kipling’s
“ natives,” and his three immortal Tommies. Ouida has made
him ridiculously lavish, inclined to translate his genuine emotions
into terms of sentimentalism, and to say things of his social
inferiors which such a man may sometimes think, but is careful
not to say. To affirm that the subject is good and the treatment of
it bad, would be to give my case away. My contention is that
the treatment, with many imperfections, leaves one assured that
the subject has been, in essentials, perceived.
But her guardsman belongs to Ouida’s earlier manner, and it is
most unfair, in estimating her, to forget that this manner has been
mellowed and quieted. In “Princess Napraxine” and in
“Othmar”—the two most notable books, I think, of her later
period—there are types of men more reasonably conceived and ex-
pressed more subtly. Geraldine, the cosmopolitan, but charac-
teristic Englishman ; Napraxine, the amiable, well-bred savage ;
Des Vannes, the calculating sensualist; Othmar himself, the dis-
appointed idealist, these are painted, now and then, in somewhat
glaring