The Cheyenne daily leader. [volume] (Cheyenne, Wyo.) 1870-1884, 1883-11-27
ON MODERN FICTION.
''Ouida" Relates a Little Episode
from Real Life.
She sharply CritIcIses the "FictItious
Realism OF h spIneIess
Commonplace"


Letter to London Times.
I think the following story may interest
your readers 1 will not give the names of
the persons concerned in it, but / will vouch
for the absolute truth of the narrative. In
deed, the little drama has been acted within
a stones throw of my gates. A cantatrice of
obscure position had a lover in a Genoese
gentleman, who not only had many claims
on her fidelity by reason of his devotion to
her, but also to the education which he had
given her when a poor girl, and the liberality
which he had shown to her family; neverthe-
less, she betrayed this generous lover, md
carried on an intrigue with a young noble of
the neighborhood, a youth much younger
than herself and very rich. For some time
the Genoese gentleman, only able to visit her
at intervals in the Tuscan village where she
lived, was without much difficulty deceived,
and, when he did see the young noble, was
assured that he was a relation of his be-
trothed. At last, however, his suspicious
were fully aroused; instead of going back to
Genoa he one day unexpectedly returned and
had full proofs Of the worthlessness of his
siren.
He pursued his rival TO his villa, and fail
ing to provoke him to a duel, swore that he
would kill him The carabineers interven-
ing, he found himself deprived Of his just
vengeance, and, in the dine of his des-
pair and agony, shot himself by the rivers
side, while his faithless mistress jeered at
him from hor open window, in the lovely
stiffness of the moonlit September eve. This
was but a few nights ago; he Is not dead, but
still lies in great peril in a cottage near where
he fell. The sympathy of tho whole rural
population is with this man, who ut loast
knew how to love and how TO avenge his
honor. The village populace were with
trouble prevented from Iynching his worthless
coquette; and the veteran brigadier of the
guard wept like child at the fate of this Wit
TINA d'amore. This Is only one out of q
thousand tragedies which yearly occur In
this, the home of Romeo and Juliet, where
love Is not a dead letter. Why are not those
who can love and suffer thus as deserving of
portrayal in fiction as the epicene beings who
know no woes but a passing hysteria of con-
science or disillusion before the melting of a
foggy and impalpable ideali
Because passion has never touched with its
lire and its glory the prim life of the aesthetic
prig or the rotund Philistine, it is not for
that reason persisted off the face of the earth.
1t exists in the same force and the same
favor as in the days of Othello and Stradella:
and, | confess, seems to me much more fifty
n subject of the novelist or the dramatist
than the fictitious realism Of the spineless
commonplace. After all, there is no more
vivid reality than love. The Genoese lover
lying here now, shot through the chest by his
own hand because his generous faith had been
deceived by a heartless mistress, is every
whit as legitimate a centre of interest as An
thouy Trollope's g~ossiping bishops or Henry
James heroines ~perplexed by n plethora or a
paucity OF proposals.
| remember when George Lawrence was
told that the end of Sword and Gown was
improbable. He answered.: "Improbablei
oh, very likely; only you see, 1t was true
Thu afaRna1 anpNtr-..N -. -
finite prosaic. L believe / ann sometimes ac-
cused of writing fairy stories" but is not
life itself very often a fairy story, If too
often, alasl one in which tho evil genius pre-
ponderates, and the wishing cap is foolishly
used by the unwisel To some Of us, Mt least,
a dreary and insipid story Of an uneventfui
and unimpassioned life seems much more
"unreaT q. e., unlike our own experiences
than the most romantic narrative conceived
by tho widest fancy. To many OF us-to
myself, l confess, among the number-the
world seems a marvellous union of tragedy
and comedy, which run side by side like twin
children; like a web of Tyrian looms" with
the gold threads crossing and recrossing on
the dusky purple of its intricate meshes.
The amorous, magnificent, heroic life OF
Skobeleff would, no doubt, seem Incredible to
the London litterateur, with his prim domes-
ticities bound up in a duodecimo suburban
villa, papered by Morris, or the rural clergy
man solemnly pacing his treadmill OF weekly
monotonies. At this moment, fighting for
the French fng at Tonquin, is a young man,
the fame Of whose nom de plume (were l to
give 1t here you would at once recognize as
that of one Of the masters of French fiction;
this gallant sailor is also a great musician
And an admirable artist, and he may very
likely die in a barborous country las Henri
Rlviere died. burying with him his genius. his
youth and his marvellous and multitudinous
powers. Well, is not this man every whit rs
real as Mr.. Precisian Dulle, passing his life
between a civil service desk and a house in
South Kensington, or Mr.. Smalle Joker PEN
ming his blameless fiction, which never
brings a blush on the Cheek etc, with his
six daughters playing lawn tennis in his back
garden, and his physical and mental vision
limited to the chimney potsi
No doubt, all the world over, character
creates circumstances; and the tortoise is not
to blame IL it cannot leap, only 1t need not
disbelleve in the greyhound and the horse.
Nodoubt adventures are TO the adventurous
in the most extended sense of the word; and
romantic and brilliant lives will not fall to
the lot of the dull and the mediocre. But
such lives exist, nevertheless, and it Is not
true that a pale uniformity extends like a
pail over the whole of the human race.
A novel is not necessarily any the more
like real life because it is n story about moth
ing, leading to nowhere, which might mean
der on through half a century for any climax
that 1t ever reaches. > . . cannot sun
pose that my own experiences can be wholly
exceptional ones, yet have known very
handsome people, l nave known very fine
characters, l have also known some very
wicked ones, and l have also known many
circumstances so romantic that were they
described in fiction they would be ridiculed
as exaggerated aud impossible. In real life
there are condolences so startling, mysteries
30 singular, destinies so strange, that no wise
novelist could ventuie TO portray them for
fear OF making his work appear too bizarre
and too melodramatic. That ''truth Ia
stranger than fiction is round at every turn
in life. The world is not exclusively com
posed OF the English middle class, varied
with a few American young ladies. Would
IL not be well II lecturers or reviewers, before
calling everything which seems strange to
themselves unreal or unnatural, were visited
with a wholesome doubt as to whether it
might not be their own experiences which
were limitedi
Don't eat in less than two hours after bath.
ing.
Don't battle In less than two hours after
eating.
Lord Coleridge remarks that 1.-THE indie
pendence and prosperity OF the middle classes
IL the chief glory o. the United States