An altruist — A Closer Reading

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In Category - England London Nineteenth Century Fiction

Authors: Ouida, 1839-1908 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2024 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: London (England) -- Fiction; Rich people -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Laundresses -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 29,438

Reading time 128 min

Text sections 8

An altruist — A Closer Reading can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 29,438 words, 2 hr 8 min estimated reading time, and 8 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 13.3 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “London (England) -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #73201

Ouida's 1897 novel opens with a society gathering where Wilfrid Bertram's earnest lecture on altruism bores his guests. The narrative traces his principled but awkward engagement to a laundress, Annie Brown, exposing the gap between his ideals and his discomfort with her speech and appearance.

Editorial Edition Score 4.7/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg73201

Read the Text

_Paper, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s._

=1.= =THE UPPER BERTH.= By F. MARION CRAWFORD. Fourth Edition.

=2.= =MAD SIR UCHTRED OF THE HILLS.= By S. R. CROCKETT. Fourth Edition.

=3.= =BY REEF AND PALM.= By LOUIS BECKE. Preface by the EARL OF PEMBROKE. Third Edition.

=4.= =THE PLAYACTRESS.= By S. R. CROCKETT. Fifth Edition.

=5.= =A BACHELOR MAID.= By MRS. BURTON HARRISON.

=6.= =MISERRIMA.= By G. W. T. OMOND.

=7.= =TWO STRANGERS.= By MRS. OLIPHANT.

=8.= =ANOTHER WICKED WOMAN.= By S. DE PENTHENY.

=9.= =THE SPECTRE OF STRATHANNAN.= By W. E. NORRIS.

=10.= =KAFIR STORIES.= By W. C. SCULLY.

=11.= =MOLLY DARLING!= By MRS. HUNGERFORD.

=12.= =A GAME OF CONSEQUENCES.= By ALBERT KINROSS.

=13.= =SLEEPING FIRES.= By GEORGE GISSING.

=14.= =THE RED STAR.= By L. MCMANUS.

=15.= =A MARRIAGE BY CAPTURE.= By ROBERT BUCHANAN.

=16.= =CHRONICLES OF AN EMINENT FOSSIL.= By W. DUTTON BURRARD.

=17.= =AN IMPOSSIBLE PERSON.= By CONSTANCE COTTERELL.

=18.= =WHICH IS ABSURD.= By COSMO HAMILTON.

_Uniform with this Volume._

=A GENDER IN SATIN.= By RITA. =THE MAKING OF MARY.= By JEAN FORSYTH. =DIANA’S HUNTING.= By ROBERT BUCHANAN. =SIR QUIXOTE.= By JOHN BUCHAN. =FOR HONOUR OF THE FLAG.= By CLARK RUSSELL. =LE SELVE.= By OUIDA.

=LE SELVE.= (In the Half-crown Series). Cr. 8vo, cloth, 2s. 6d.

=THE SILVER CHRIST and A LEMON TREE.= (In “The Pseudonym Library.”) Paper, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s.

=TOXIN.= (In “The Century Library.”) Illustrated. Paper, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s.

LONDON: T. FISHER UNWIN.

AUTHOR OF “TOXIN,” “LE SELVE,” “THE SILVER CHRIST,” ETC.

LONDON T. FISHER UNWIN 1897

The scene is Wilfrid Bertram’s rooms in Piccadilly, facing the Green Park. The time is six o’clock in the afternoon. The audience is a goodly number of men and women of that class which calls itself Society. The rooms are small and the guests are many. A few look contemptuously amused. A great many appear excruciatingly bored.

“It’s all rot!” says one gentleman in confidence to his walking-stick.

It is the general opinion, though it has but one spokesman.

“What a shame, when he is so much in earnest!” says a pretty girl.

“Bores always are awfully in earnest,” replies the critic. “If he’d only give us something to drink----”

“You can get plenty to drink in the street,” says the young lady, with a withering glance.

Meantime, Wilfrid Bertram, who has been speaking for more than an hour without contradiction, except such as he read on his friends’ faces, perceives at last that he has been wearying them; a knowledge which is always slow to steal upon the teacher of mankind.

He stops in the middle of a very fine peroration.

“My dear people,” he remarks, a little irritably--“I mean, ladies and gentlemen--if you are so soon weary of so illimitable a subject, I fear I must have failed to do it justice.”

“So soon?--oh, hang it!” says the man who has wished for something to drink. “We came upstairs at half-past four, and you’ve had all the jaw to yourself ever since, and it’s past six now, and we’re all as thirsty as dogs.”

An expression of extreme disdain passes over the lecturer’s face.

“I did not invite _you_, Lord Marlow,” he says, very coldly. “If I had done I would have provided beer and skittles for your entertainment.”

“Oh, I say Wilfrid, come, finish your address to us; it’s extremely interesting,” observes, in amiable haste, a much older man, with a bald head and pleasant, ruddy countenance, who is his uncle, Lord Southwold.

“Immensely interesting!” echo everybody: they can say so with animation, almost with veracity, now that they are aware it is drawing to an end.

“I ask your pardon if my infirmities have done injustice to a noble theme. I fear I have failed to make myself intelligible,” says Bertram, in a tone intended to be apologetic, but which is actually only aggressive, since it plainly implies that his pearls have been thrown before swine. He closes the manuscript and note-books which are lying before him with the air of a person who is prepared for anything from the obtuseness and ingratitude of humanity.

“Nothing could be clearer than what you’ve said,” says the gentleman who wanted a drink. “Nobody is to have anything they can call their own, and everybody who likes is to eat in one’s plate and bathe in one’s bath.”

“At theatres the buffoon in the gallery is usually turned out, with the approval of the entire audience,” Bertram remarks, with sententious chilliness. “Were I not in my own chambers----”

Lord Marlow laughs rudely.

“I don’t think you could throw me downstairs. Your diet of brown bread and asparagus don’t make muscle.”

Continue Reading →

The novel begins not with a private meditation but with a public performance: Wilfrid Bertram holds forth in his Piccadilly rooms on the subject of altruism, while his audience of fashionable men and women grows visibly restless. One gentleman mutters “It’s all rot!” to his walking-stick; a pretty girl defends Bertram’s earnestness, only to be told that “Bores always are awfully in earnest.” The scene establishes a central tension between high-minded principle and social reality, a conflict that will play out in Bertram’s personal life as he attempts to put his theories into practice.

The Stage and Its Audience

The opening pages read almost like a stage direction: “The scene is Wilfrid Bertram’s rooms in Piccadilly, facing the Green Park. The time is six o’clock in the afternoon.” Ouida immediately establishes a theatrical frame, with the guests as an audience that is largely hostile or bored. The narrator notes that Bertram “has been speaking for more than an hour without contradiction, except such as he read on his friends’ faces.” This emphasis on visible reaction—the faces, the muttered asides, the walking-stick confidences—creates a sense of performance under scrutiny. The room is small, the guests many, and the atmosphere thick with unspoken criticism. Ouida uses this cramped, overheated setting to dramatize the gap between Bertram’s abstract ideals and the concrete social world he inhabits.

The Weight of a Single Word

Bertram’s altruism is tested not by grand moral dilemmas but by small, grating details. When he contemplates his fiancée Annie Brown, his thoughts fix on her pronunciation: “And why will she say ‘liberry’ and ‘umberellar’? and her ankles certainly are thick!” The narrative voice, closely aligned with Bertram’s consciousness, registers these irritations with painful precision. He tries to compare Annie to Disraeli’s Sybil, but “he cannot conceal from his mind that Annie is not in the very least like Sybil.” The novel’s structure repeatedly returns to such moments of cognitive dissonance, where theory meets the stubborn particulars of class and habit. Bertram’s discomfort is rendered through physical details—the grating sound of a word, the sight of thick ankles—rather than abstract argument.

Echoes and Interruptions

Ouida builds the narrative through a series of interrupted conversations and repeated revelations. Bertram confesses his engagement to Marlow, who responds with incredulity: “Are you sure you aren’t jokin’? chaffin’? humbuggin’?” The scene then shifts to Fanshawe, who has observed Bertram with Annie from his window and remarks, “I wished for a Kodak. The Torch should have had an illustrated Easter number.” Each retelling of Bertram’s decision is met with a different shade of mockery or disbelief, creating a cumulative effect. The novel’s movement between these encounters—from Piccadilly to the street to the French Embassy—mirrors Bertram’s own restless attempts to justify his choice. The recurring image of the “budding April boughs” under which he walks suggests a natural world indifferent to his social calculations.

The Unseen Laundress

Annie Brown herself remains largely offstage, glimpsed only as “the figure of Annie Brown going down the almost-deserted roadway of the drive.” She is an object of observation rather than a speaking subject; her voice is reported only through Bertram’s irritated recollection of her pronunciation. This structural absence is telling: the novel’s focus is not on Annie’s experience but on the reactions she provokes in the men around her. Fanshawe’s comment about the Kodak reduces her to a potential photograph for a satirical paper. The narrative thus enacts the very objectification that Bertram’s altruism supposedly opposes. Readers are left to infer Annie’s perspective from the gaps in the text, a silence that speaks as loudly as the dialogue.

Ouida’s novel is best approached as a study in social performance and self-deception. Pay attention to the recurring motifs of observation—the walking-stick, the Kodak, the staring eyes—and to the way Bertram’s internal monologue undercuts his stated principles. The brevity of the work (under 30,000 words) means that every scene carries weight; the shifts between public and private spaces are especially revealing. Readers may find that the most telling moments are not the speeches but the silences, the gestures, and the things left unsaid.

Reading about Wilfrid’s awkward kindness to Annie, I remembered my own failed attempt at good intentions—the way my gestures outran my courage. Then I found myself drifting to the quiet exchanges in The gray brotherhood — Reading Notes, where help arrives without words. Both left me with that same ache: how love stumbles when it tries too hard to be understood.