OUIDA, THE NOVELIST.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2325, 4 June 1887, Page 2

OUIDA, THE NOVELIST.

In feeling the sympathies Ouida is ardently Italian, and she has also a very strong liking for Russian society, as may be noticed by her later works. She is nob especially fond of her own country people, and she frankly detests all Americans, never letting slip an opportunity of rebutting or snubbing them. Often, however, she gets as good as she sonde from her trans-Atlantic opponents. It chanced one evening, for instance, that she met at a party a young Anidrican girl who wore an eye-glass, and who, being spprised by the hostess of the arrival of the celebrated Ouida, naturally looked at the new comer with her eyes and her eyeglass as well. She was presented to that personage later in the evening, when Ouida remarked : "I know your were an American, Miss X , as soon as 1 caught sight of you." "And how so?" was the query. ''Because," retorted the novelist, "you were behaving as though you were in a theater.". "I did think I was in a theater," responded Mrs X , " till I saw you enter, and then I thought I was; in a menagerie." It is, in fact, the: refusal of Americans in general to put up with Ouiua's impertinences of speech and rudeness of action that has made our country people unpopular with the dashing authorses, and has impelled her to the creation of such characters as Fuschia Leach in " Moths " and Mrs Henry V. Clams in " Friendship." By the way, the original of the latter character acted with great tact and intelligence when that very scurrilous hovol was first published. Everyone of the personages were portraits, and everybody in Florence were talking about the work. So " Mrs Henry V. Clams" afe once ordered out her carriage, went to cail upon Ouida, congratulated her publicly and effusively on the success of her new book, and, in fact, so completely ignored the fact thub oho was bold up to reprobation therein, that all her friends followed her lead, and the vicious attack of the novelist lost half its force.—Chicago Mail.