Solitude
storm of Rabelaisian laughter which would sweep the press—what, the author of Poems of Passion posing as a shy maiden approaching her first experience of love? And the man—what sort of fool was he?
“Were I to live my life over again,” says Mrs. Wilcox in her autobiography, “with the wisdom of years and knowledge of the world to start with, I surely would not publish Poems of Passion.” However, on the other side of the ledger it should be recorded that financially the book was a great success and the proceeds enabled her to put a new roof on the house, to buy her father a new suit of clothes, and to help the family generally.
It seems strange now, looking through the book, to remember what forbidden fruit it was thirty years ago, how it was excluded from the shelves of public libraries, and read surreptitiously by young Lydia Languishes, who thrust it hastily under a cushion when any one entered; how daring it was considered to mention it at all, and what a zest it gave to any entertainment if somebody recited something from it. The sensation was precisely the same as it is to-day when the cocktails are passed around. Cocktails created no sensation then; but Bayard Taylor’s “Bedouin Love Song” and Shelley’s “Lines to an Indian Air” and anything from Poems of Passion were considered so daring that
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