The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-12-06
oUIDA.
The Ramhler.I

~reeAsS1 esAs& AGA AOaA4Cp @8 GNG4V0UuV
 knows. is in Florence. She comes of an
 old Huguenot family which emigra,ed to England after the edict of Nantes, and
 hence, although her race is French and
 her residence in Italy, her own tongue is this English which she uses with such force and prodigality. Her villa stands
 about eight miles out of Florence, on a
 little hill on the way toward Pistoja. The
 house is stucco, like all the Fioren- tine villas, and is two stories in height,
 with a broad veranda at the front en- trance from the door one enters into a
 high, square hall, which reaches to the top of the house. Around this open the various apartments. On the left side is the reception-room, out of which opens the dining-room. In this reception-room she sits on Monday afternoons and re-
 ceives her visitors, the few people who
 now come to see her. This little recep- tion-room is not furnished at all in the
 Fiorentne manner, as we would have supposed. -.,...,.
 The cool summer palaces are usually
 hung in brilliant old brocades-fiiled
 with etageres full of antiq uities-per-
 tuned by great decorated jars of flower
 ing plants and beauti6ed with old pie
 lures and tapestries. Strangely enough, in the house of this passionate lover of
 beauty and luxury there is no trace of
 her own taste, nothing gathered 1Tum in-
 numerable curiosity shops in Florence,
 which are rich with the rare and beauti-
 full things she loves. It is all tho heavy,
 comfortabls, Aupid English furnishing,
 as unsuggestiye, as unartistic, as the Fog fish beef and fogs and heavy skies which
 she derides. You would find just as
 great a discrepancy between her looks and her books she is little and thin; her hair is So scanty that she is forced te cut 1t short, parting it in straight line over her forehead. Her complexion is
 sallow her figure is naught, and ohi horror! she has large and obtrusive tooth. This is all which can be said of her looks, and it seems, indeed, to be
 quite enough. She is about forty, and always dresses in white. She is full of eccentricities, one of which is very great fondness for dogs, of which she keeps a dozen, who swarm about her as she sits in the receptioa-room, licking her hands
 and begging for the delicious little cakes which she gives with tea to her visitors.
 When she first came to Florence she was very popular, and drove every day to the Casino dressed in white-an interesting
 and curlous figure in society, in spite of the fact that she had always had the rep utation of saying but little and keeping her ideas for her books. Of these she writes as funds are wanting, and writes in early morning hours, beginning with five o'clock, and receives from f2 900 to 13yoOo for each novel she publishes. '' Uoder Two Flags" has been consid- cred by some to be the most dramatic and telling piece of work which she has done. Others say it is overdrawn, but her knowledge is known to have been gained under the auspices of a certain celebrated Eoglish colonel, whose very friend she was af the time. Many of her books haye been justly criticised, and that severssy, both for their undoubted mistakes in language, dates and facts, and for their very decided lack of moral tone; but no one can deny that she has marvellous sense of the beauti- tul and wond >-:ully powerful, rich and rhythmic prose. One must remember, too, that the society which she sees about her deserves to very great extent the portraiture she makes of it, glaring as it may be, although its women may not always wear white velvet and its men look like old Van Dyke portraits. Some of them do, however, and for one of these heroes of her pen the ugly little genius has homeless passion-the Marchese della Scala by name and the Prince-loris of her " Friendship "-her book in Florence, in which she poses as the beautiful and inspired Etoile, with objectionable egotism one would think if she did not say so many clever and bit Ter things by reason of it. For Etoile lost her lover through prolonged friend ship with Lady Joan of the book-the Mrs. Ross, of Florence-and "Ouida," we make no doubt, for that cause or some other, never got him. The book set Florence by the ears, and hence the paucity of her visitors at her villa on the hill. There was tune when it was con- sidered almost doubtful indulgence to read her books but now she has held her place so long by the strength and originality of her work that the people who know aboct her books admire their power and their talent, and read hers more, as they deserve less in her advanc.
 ng years the heavy blame they have re- ceived. Even now the quality of her work is so heavy and perfumed and in-
 that if one takes more than .he small glass in which this intellectual iqueur should be served, the mind is heavy with it, and sort of stzpor comes and the book is thrown away. Such work as this is artistic in sense, and las its place in the world, be its influence what 1t may, and when all the specula- ion and discu ssion is over there is won- fer still remaining that from this poor md meager little earthly frame there 'hould come pouring out to us in such a molten stream the experience and thought md loves of such passionate and luxu-
 ious soul