Popular Culture Review Vol. 4, No. 2, June 1993 | Page 39
Ouida*s Family Romance:
In Maremma
In 1899 Max Beerbohm wrote that Ouida (1839-1908) was "one of
the miracles of modern literature" (115) and that only Meredith
rivaled her in "sheer vitality" (107). Today her forty-six novels and
other books are virtually unknown, and if she is read at all, it is
because of the interest in the history of popular culture and feminist
criticism. The MLA Bibliography for 1980-90 lists half an article on
Ouida. Yet while her language does not stand up well to close
reading, her storytelling often reads convincingly, and one strategy
suited to her strengths is to map the psychological plot beneath the
romance narrative.
She was bom Maria Louise Rame, the only child of a French
father and an English mother, and grew up in Bury St. Edmunds. She
later referred to herself as De la Ramee, which sounds like a
pseudonym; paradoxically, her own pseudonym "Ouida," derived
from the sound she made as a child in trying to say Louisa, was to her
mind a sign of uniqueness and essentiality, "my very own as children
say" (qtd in Stirling 215). The choice of this strange, ugly-sounding
baby name is the private fantasy of a writer who remained fixed in a
childhood Family Romance that found abundant, if veiled,
expression in her creative work. Louis Ram4, her father, was a
mysterious figure who pretended friendship with Louis Napoleon and
who was rumored to be connected with secret political societies. More
likely something of an adventurer, he ran through his wife's dowry in
a year. Although he was absent for long stretches of Ouida's
childhood and disappeared after 1871 (he was believed to have died
in the Paris Commune, but this is possibly another family myth), she
idolized him, and he instilled in her the love of nature so evident in
her novels. Ouida preferred her foreign background and looked down
on her English roots. Her mother, who had endured a "mercurial"
husband, acted as chaperone, secretary, and accountant for a
"capricious" daughter: Ouida was deeply attached to her and
brought her to Italy, "never appearing anywhere without her
mother-an unassuming if sombre ghost draped in black" (Bigland 67).
Ouida's fictional formula emerged in Held in Bondage (1863) and
Under Two Flags (1867): high life, exotic locales, charismatic and