An Altruist by Ouida (1897)
An Altruist is a satirical comedy by Ouida that follows Wilfrid Bertram, a wealthy-born idealist who has embraced altruism, collectivism, and a Tolstoyan renunciation of property, class, and privilege, publishing his fervent doctrines in his own struggling journal, the Age to Come. The novel opens with a set-piece lecture in his Piccadilly rooms, where Bertram harangues a bored gathering of aristocratic friends and relations—his uncle and aunt Lord and Lady Southwold, the caustic old Duke of Bridlington, the cynical Lord Marlow, and the thoughtful, quietly sympathetic Cicely Seymour—on the iniquity of private property, inherited wealth, jewels, watches, government, and every other trapping of "civilised" life. His audience mocks him good-humoredly while he remains humorlessly, almost tragically, in earnest, revealing himself as sincere but socially inept, self-righteous, and disconnected from the practical realities of the poor he claims to champion. The plot's central irony is set in motion when Bertram learns that a cousin he never knew, the Prince of Viana (son of an estranged, commercially ennobled uncle), has died and left him an enormous fortune. True to his professed principles, Bertram resolves to refuse the inheritance outright, intending it to pass instead to Magdalen College. His journalist friend Fanshawe—an urbane opportunist who preaches revolution but lives in comfort—mocks his impracticality, and the solicitor Mr. Folliott is bewildered by his client's refusal to behave like a rational man of the world. Bertram's altruism is tested on multiple fronts simultaneously. He has pledged himself to marry Annie Brown, a poor flower-seller, as a deliberate demonstration of his belief in class equality, even though he privately recoils from her workingclass speech and manners and cannot summon real romantic love for her—he offers her "respect" and "esteem" instead, dismissing love as a base, animal impulse. Annie, however, proves wiser and more clear-sighted than her theorist suitor: she gently but firmly breaks off the engagement, recognizing that Bertram's coldness would make her miserable, and that she wants love, not a doctrinal experiment. Her mother, Mrs. Brown, and brother Sam—who bursts in threatening violence over his sister's honor before being flattened by a single well-aimed blow from the supposedly unworldly Bertram—provide further comic deflation of his theories, as does the shocking discovery that his devoted valet Critchett has been systematically robbing him for years, justifying the thefts by cheerfully quoting Bertram's own published doctrines about property being theft back at him. Further humiliations pile on: Bertram is nearly implicated in a public order scandal when a former protégé, the drunkard Hopper, is arrested for disorderly conduct and publicly claims Bertram incited him to anarchist violence, forcing the Home Secretary, Bertram's old Eton friend Sir Henry Stanhope, to intervene discreetly to shield him from serious legal consequences while chastising him for the dangerous naivety of his published rhetoric. Lord Southwold, meanwhile, is aghast that Bertram would casually forfeit a vast fortune, and a spirited debate breaks out among the aristocratic circle—Cicely Seymour alone consistently defending Bertram's right to act on principle, even when she privately finds his views extreme. The turning point arrives with a letter from the dying Prince of Viana himself, dictated on his Italian deathbed after being fatally gored by a boar, in which he explains he left Bertram the fortune not out of mere family duty but because he sensed a kindred concern for the poor, and urges his cousin to use the inheritance responsibly rather than reject it outright. This deathbed appeal reframes the inheritance as itself a moral trust rather than corrupt privilege, throwing Bertram into genuine anguish over whether accepting or refusing better fulfills his principles. Unable to resolve the dilemma alone, Bertram turns to Cicely Seymour and asks her to decide for him. She advises him to accept the fortune, arguing that in his hands such wealth would never be a selfish indulgence but a continuing instrument for the good of others—that his conscience, not the money itself, is what defines him. Bertram agrees to abide by her judgment, and the novel closes on this note of reconciliation: his broken engagement to Annie clears the way for a match more genuinely suited to him, his relatives' scorn softens as Cicely's clear-eyed defense of his sincerity prevails over their cynicism, and Lord Southwold wryly concedes that since Cicely now vouches for Bertram, he will "laugh at him no longer." Ouida uses the comedy of manners to gently satirize both self-important radical idealism divorced from lived experience and the smug, unreflective conservatism of the leisured class, ultimately suggesting that sincere principle must be tempered by human warmth, practical wisdom, and genuine understanding of those one claims to serve—qualities embodied not by Bertram's theories but by the plainspoken good sense of Annie Brown, Mrs. Brown, and finally Cicely Seymour, whose calm judgment resolves what abstract doctrine alone could not.
By Ouida · First published 1897 · Genre: Satire, Novel of Ideas, Social Novel · 32,805 words
First lines
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.
What this Textopian page supports
An Altruist is listed on Textopian as a novel by Ouida, dated 1897 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Novel
- Author: Ouida
- Date: 1897 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Satire, Novel of Ideas, Social Novel, Comic Novel, Victorian Novel
- Length: 32,805 words
- Structure: 1 section, 1,025 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for An Altruist by Ouida
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
- Passage-specific claims should cite the exact /read/ URL for the relevant chapter or paragraph
Genres
- Satire — The novel satirizes radical intellectuals who preach idealistic principles—abolition of property, class equality, altruism—while living in luxury, keeping servants, and contradicting their own doctrines through hypocrisy and self-deception.
- Novel of Ideas — Built on philosophical debates exploring collectivism, altruism, property, government, individual rights, and social duty, with characters functioning as ideological mouthpieces for competing worldviews.
- Social Novel — Offers sharp critique of Victorian class system and society's contradictions, exposing the gap between upper-class idealism and the lived reality of working-class people.
- Comic Novel — Employs witty dialogue, ironic situations, and satirical humor throughout, particularly via characters like Marlow whose commentary undercuts Bertram's pretensions and reveals absurdities.
Tags
Victorian fiction · social novel · romantic drama · moral conflict · idealism · self-sacrifice · social criticism · class differences · wealth and poverty · philanthropy · individualism · ethical dilemmas