George Moore: Across Borders : Across Borders [1 ed.] 9789401209076, 9789042036376

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George Moore: Across Borders

51 DQR

STUDIES IN LITERATURE

Series Editors C.C. Barfoot - A.J. Hoenselaars W.M. Verhoeven

George Moore: Across Borders

Edited by

Christine HUGUET and Fabienne DABRIGEON-GARCIER

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013

Cover image: Letter to Edouard Dujardin, George Moore, 28 May 1929. Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet, Paris. Cover design: Aart Jan Bergshoeff The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of ‘ISO 9706: 1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence’. ISBN: 978-90-420-3637-6 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-0907-6 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2013 Printed in The Netherlands

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Christine Huguet and Fabienne Dabrigeon-Garcier Introduction

1

I. EXPLORING ARTISTIC BORDERS

13

Christine Huguet The Prima Donna and the Convent: Border Crossings in Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa

15

Stoddard Martin George Moore and Literary Wagnerism: A Revisitation

33

Fabienne Gaspari Painting and Writing in Moore’s Confessions of a Young Man, Lewis Seymour and Some Women, and A Drama in Muslin

43

Isabelle Enaud-Lechien Moore and Whistler: Writer and Painter at Loggerheads

57

Marie-Claire Hamard Max the Caricaturist and Moore: Crossing the Boundaries of Friendship

73

II. AUTHORSHIP AND AUTHORITY

83

Adrian Frazier George Moore and Collaborative Authorship

85

Eamonn R. Cantwell Crossing Borders: Moore and Yeats in the Theatre

99

Alain Labau George Moore: A Man of Letters on the Margins of Reality

113

Michel Brunet “Mais qui voudrait me lire en français?”: Reading George Moore’s Letters to Edouard Dujardin

125

III. GRAFTS AND TRANSPLANTS

137

Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn The Quest for Female Selfhood in Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa: From Wagnerian Künstlerroman to Freudian Family Romance

139

Mary Pierse “No More than a Sketch”

161

Konstantin Doulamis Ancient Greece and the Art of Storytelling in George Moore’s Aphrodite in Aulis

177

IV. SPACES AND THE SUBJECT

191

Elizabeth Grubgeld Framing the Body: George Moore’s “Albert Nobbs” and the Disappearing Realist Subject

193

Nathalie Saudo-Welby “The Soul with a False Bottom” and “The Deceitful Character”: Analysing the Servant in the Goncourts’ Germinie Lacerteux and George Moore’s Esther Waters

209

Michele Russo Spatial Metaphors and Liminal Elements in Esther Waters

227

Fabienne Dabrigeon-Garcier “A Letter Came into His Mind”: Fictional Correspondence in The Lake

239

Select Bibliography

255

Notes on Contributors

267

Index

273

ILLUSTRATIONS

1.

Reappearance of Mr George Moore in Chelsea, Sir Max Beerbohm, pencil study (c. 1912), inscribed with title and signed. From the collections of Mrs Robin Lutyens and Phyllis Lutyens Baldwin, The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, The Morris Library, University of Delaware Library.

77

2.

Gaffer George, Sir Max Beerbohm, ink and watercolour (c. 1909). Caricature of George Moore, inscribed and signed, with additional caption inscribed on separate leaf. From Nancy Cunard’s autograph album, The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, The Morris Library, University of Delaware Library.

78-79

3.

Some Persons of “the Nineties” Little Imagining despite their Proper Pride and Ornamental Aspect, how much they will interest Mr Holbrook Jackson and Mr Osbert Burdett, Sir Max Beerbohm, 1925. Ashmoleum Museum, University of Oxford.

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4.

Letter to Edouard Dujardin, George Moore, 28 May 1929. Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet, Paris.

128

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks are due across borders to a considerable number of institutions, research groups, associations and individual scholars. Without their unflagging dedication and commitment, this volume, George Moore: Across Borders, would never have seen the light of day. The original impetus for this collection of essays came from the vibrant conversations and scholarly exchanges that took place at the first International George Moore Conference organized at University College Cork, Ireland, in 2005 and from the rich insights and novel materials collected in the volume of essays edited by Mary Pierse, George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds (2006). In 2007, a second International George Moore Conference was hosted by the University of Lille 3, in France, Moore’s second homeland. The conference received invaluable support from the Research Centre of the University of Lille 3 for the study of Foreign Languages and Cultures (CECILLE), from the Conseil Régional du Nord-Pas de Calais and from the Ireland Fund of France. A four-year programme for the development of an Irish Studies network, funded by the French Ministry for Research and Higher Education, made available a generous grant for the publication of a number of selected essays from the Lille Conference. We also express our deep gratitude to the Cultural Division of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin for their financial contribution, and to Cyril Brennan, then Head of the Cultural Department in the Irish Embassy in Paris for his helpful commitment. We offer most sincere thanks to Colin Smythe, Literary Executor of the George Moore Estate for giving us free permission to use unpublished letters and other material, to the London Management of the Max Beerbohm Estate and to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford for permission to reproduce some Beerbohm caricatures, to the Centre for Whistler Studies, University of Glasgow, as well as to Mark Samuels Lasner, Senior Research Fellow at the University of

Delaware Library, for generously providing scanned copies of two Beerbohm caricatures from his private collection. Further thanks are due to the Curator of The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature in the New York Public Library and to the National Library of Ireland for allowing free access to manuscripts. Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris provided transcripts of Moore’s letters and graciously gave permission for their publication. We are much indebted to Victoria Bridges-Moussaron and Valerie Burling for their expert assistance with proof-reading and translation, as well as to Manuel Huguet for giving so generously of his technological expertise. The publication of the present volume would never have been possible without the critical acumen and unfailing support of the Advisory Board members, the late Professor Bernard Escarbelt (University of Lille 3), Professor Ann Heilmann (University of Cardiff), Dr Alain Labau (Research Centre in Irish Studies of the University of Caen-Basse Normandie) and Dr Mary Pierse (University College Cork). Last but not least, our warmest thanks go to Cedric Barfoot, who tactfully helped us surmount all editing hurdles and wisely advised us along the way.

INTRODUCTION CHRISTINE HUGUET AND FABIENNE DABRIGEON-GARCIER

A one-time significant, if controversial, figure in the cultural world of Paris and London, then of Dublin, George Moore lost pre-eminence long before his death in 1933. He became largely extra-canonical in the following decades and had, until fairly recently, only a residual group of readers in Victorian and Irish studies, despite the impressive bibliographical work undertaken by Edwin Gilcher, Helmut Gerber, and Robert Langenfeld. This trend is rapidly changing, even though, to a large extent, Moore continues to illustrate the vagaries of literary reputation. He is not currently accorded the literary stardom bestowed on his compatriots, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce, and it will no doubt take some time before his finest novels become integrated into the body of major turn-of-the-century works to be discussed within the universities. However, it now seems clear that Moore is fast ceasing to be considered the author of a single canonical, often anthologized and republished novel, Esther Waters (1894). A seminal collection of essays, George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds, edited by Mary Pierse in 2006, as well as sundry essays devoted to Moore, published over the past few years by the younger generation of endof-the-century specialists, first signalled a conspicuous renewal of scholarly interest in the fiction which Moore’s realist masterpiece once put into the shade. The present volume, reflecting as it does upon the latest developments in Moore scholarship, fully confirms this tendency. In providing a critical reconsideration of the fiction and personal writings of George Moore, the seventeen specialists collaborating to the present collection do not merely spotlight the instability of the canon and the changing tastes of readers and literary critics. The comeback George Moore: Across Borders definitely indicates is largely inspired by three major contributions to Moore scholarship in the past twenty years or so, which testify to the heightened awareness of the writer’s

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multidimensional œuvre and personality. Elizabeth Grubgeld’s groundbreaking study of Moore’s fiction and fictive autobiographies, George Moore and the Autogenous Self: The Autobiography and Fiction (Syracuse UP, 1994) was followed in 2000 by Adrian Frazier’s masterly biography, George Moore, 1852-1933 (Yale UP). More recently Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn engaged in massive recuperative work with their Collected Short Stories of George Moore in five volumes (Pickering and Chatto, 2007). And in our technological age, another unsurprising proof of renewed interest in Moore is his arrival in cyberspace. An electronic journal, Moorings: A Bulletin of All Things George Moore, a quarterly edited by Mark Llewellyn, was started in the summer of 2007 before it was temporarily relaunched in May 2009 as Moorings: The Labyrinth of George Moore (1852-1933), edited by Tiffany Perala – a further indication that Moore’s “role, along with Hardy, as a sort of Grand Old Man of letters”1 is being increasingly reappraised. Moorings is posted at THE OSCHOLARS, a website created in 2007 for a group of journals and webpages devoted to exploring the literature and arts of the fin de siècle, including Oscar Wilde. Originating from the second international George Moore conference which convened in March 2007 at the University of Lille, George Moore: Across Borders mirrors a fruitful working relationship between scholars from across the UK, Ireland, France and further afield, notably the US. An avowed aim of the Lille conference was to address a major challenge raised by the Moore corpus and examine the distinctive trait which, already in the writer’s lifetime, generated heated controversy, and after his death helped for decades to damage his reputation as an artist – his unabashed eclecticism. Indeed, Moore’s name is readily associated with a number of disparate movements and -isms: Naturalism in the novel and the theatre; Impressionism in painting; Paterian aesthetics, Decadence and avantgarde; Literary Wagnerism; the Irish Literary Revival; New Woman culture. In many respects, this kind of neatly compartmentalized, thematic-generic approach has helped to stereotype Moore in a lasting way: it has engendered a lopsided, incomplete account of him as the 1

John MacRae, “John MacRae on George Moore: An Interview”, in Moorings: The Labyrinth of George Moore (1852-1933), I (May 2009), ed. Tiffany Perala, 20 June 2009: http://oscholars.1852moorings1933.wordpress.com/#_ftnref.

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self-confessed chameleon, the unclassifiable artist switching cultural and linguistic allegiances with alarming facility – a man, in short, who could have done better than to obey so closely his friend Manet’s celebrated motto (“Be ashamed of nothing but to be ashamed”), at least where his art was concerned. The collaborators in George Moore: Across Borders seek to provide a balanced, dispassionate re-assessment of Moore’s writings. In particular, in looking at the way the writer not only practised, but also promoted and facilitated significant intermeshing of the arts, aesthetic trends and national literary movements, the present volume draws new attention to Moore, the influential rather than the versatile artist, the precursor rather than the disciple. No in-depth exploration of the collision between old and new in an arguably volatile fin-de-siècle landscape, literary and cultural, can afford to leave Moore out of the picture, many of the essays in this collection suggest. Beyond the question of his composite, varied – and admittedly, occasionally erratic – art, what alerts today’s scholars to the cultural relevance of this very cosmopolitan Irishman is that he typifies the turn-of-thecentury European writer, a fascinating figure, moving between countries, forever exploring and promulgating a variety of artistic developments, trying to come to terms, more essentially, with the nature of the aesthetic urge and of the imagination itself. Learning from his successive homelands (Ireland, France, England), the writer naturally goes beyond genre boundaries, translates the visual into prose: it is these journeys, contacts, crossings, revisions and (re)conversions, all fraught with a sense of real possibility, that the present volume explores. Interestingly, this focused, and ultimately positive approach places Moore scholarship in line with current Victorian research, which, in rising numbers of interdisciplinary books, conferences and panel sessions, seems anxious to highlight the networks of connections readily promoted by many Victorian artists across lines of style, genre, and even medium. The present book purposely has all-encompassing scope. If English and Irish literary and cultural studies are still dominantly represented, subject specialism necessarily becomes flexible in the case of Moore scholarship. Thus, those essays looking at the writer’s awareness of late Victorian aesthetics or again at his links with contemporary big names – Thomas Hardy or W.B. Yeats – establish interesting points of contact with gender studies, sociology

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and history when, for instance, they genderize Moore’s fiction or bring medical and sociological criteria to bear on his work. It is only natural that a volume on border crossings should offer a unique opportunity to bring together researchers from an even wider range of disciplines. The sheer diversity of Moore’s body of texts, his declarations of artistic friendship, discipleship or conversely, of independence, have stimulated the interest of scholars specializing in such various fields as the classics, French Studies, and Art history. For reasons of clarity four divisions have been adopted – Exploring Artistic Borders, Authorship and Authority, Grafts and Transplants, Spaces and the Subject – but it is the editors’ earnest hope that these groupings will not prevent readers from discerning both the manifold perspectives and the close interrelatedness of the contributions. In homage to the storyteller’s early response to, and lifelong passion for, aesthetic modes other than the literary, the five essays in the first section privilege the artistic focus and coalesce around the topic of Moore’s infectious enthusiasm for the non-verbal. It is a pleasantly protean section directly illuminating the issue of Moore’s artistic development and offering multiple-point, complementary perspectives on Moore’s changeful interests in painting, music – especially Wagnerian opera – and architecture. For this reason, it seems fitting that the book should open with considerations on two of the turn-ofthe-century novels, Evelyn Innes (1898) and its continuation Sister Teresa (1901), which evidence the writer’s lasting and passionate interest in Art. In many respects, it may even be said that Moore’s leisurely account of the special bonds between a Catholic prima donna and a neo-Gothic convent best manifests how the maturing writer increasingly went out of his way to absorb non-verbal aesthetics into his fictional constructs. As has been well documented by biographical research, Moore took the first steps towards developing his own aesthetic philosophy by dabbling in painting, which was to occupy such a central place in his work in later years, as a young Irishman in Paris. He was then clumsily groping for ways to demonstrate his sincere rejection of contemporary materialism. Although he hardly knew what his real calling was, Moore was learning his trade all the time, in the tentative, circuitous way that was to mark him out so well among the writers of his generation. To the literary critic, it seems fortunate, retrospectively, that the young Moore should have had to

Introduction

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forgo painting so very officially. His failure as a painter had happy consequences on his writings, whose meaning often explicitly relies for its construction upon a unique array of crossover material. In the case of Evelyn Innes, as Christine Huguet points out, the main characters’ diverging aesthetic aspirations provide the writer with an ideal opportunity to engage in a panoramic survey of artistic contexts. The combined references to contemporary musical trends in their relation to the sister arts, painting and writing, but also, more originally, to architecture and even the less familiar artistic fields – furniture-making, ceramics, photography, jewellery, stained glass and the making of such varied artefacts as clocks, textiles and wallpaper – bespeak Moore’s eagerness to probe the complex relationship between art and reality. As Huguet concludes, if the fiction so “eagerly annexes, embraces and celebrates whatever has been built, shaped, coloured and decorated by the artist”, it is because the writer was so clearly attracted by Wagner’s ideal of total art in the final years of the century. The core of Stoddard Martin’s essay is also Moore’s own Wagnerism. In particular, Martin re-examines how Moore’s transmission in England of Wagnerian tropes and aesthetics, notably the rhythmic monologue, ground-breakingly cumulative in its power, impacted in different ways on some of his contemporaries: Arthur Symons, W.B. Yeats – whose collaboration with Moore on Diarmuid and Grania represented “a high watermark in the aspirations of both towards a frankly Wagner-like accomplishment”, Martin reminds us – as well as D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce. Although the latter was not prepared to acknowledge Moore’s literary fatherhood, the parentage did exist far beyond the superficial, easily recognizable borrowings from Hail and Farewell, and it certainly “involved, at least, Wagnerian aspiration, inspiration and adaptations”, Martin explains. The final survey of the many, notably Howard de Walden, who somehow quickened Moore’s interest in Wagnerian themes and techniques, appropriately places the ageing Irish writer in context again as one of the major literary figures of his day. The next two essays come together over the issue of writing in its relation to painting. Fabienne Gaspari shows Moore writing off his own unfulfilled aspirations as a painter in two distinct texts: the autobiographical Confessions of a Young Man and the early novel A Modern Lover, revised in 1917 as Lewis Seymour and Some Women.

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Interestingly, in positing exile as the main prerequisite for the artistic enterprise, Moore anticipates Joyce’s portrait of the artist. For obvious biographical reasons, however, Moore’s literary attempts to resurrect the past more explicitly exploit the parallel between the handling of the pen and that of the brush. As Gaspari explains, Moore uses words, both in fiction and in self-writing, not only to represent the enticing art world and to capture refined resemblances to life, but also to conceptualize fascinating pictorial issues: notably, the self seen as Other in the mirror and the opposition between transparency and opacity. No wonder then, that with painting as a conspicuous subject of the writing, Moore should deliberately blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, as Gaspari points out, and push his medium to its limits, occasionally allowing his prose to move “towards the visible”, as in A Drama in Muslin. Isabelle Enaud-Lechien also concentrates on artistic debates and reflections on art; her interest, however, is not in the fictive art history and criticism by Lewis Seymour or any other Moore hero, but in the real discussions the young Moore initiated, as a London art critic fresh from a prolonged stay in Paris. This is precisely the novel outlook the present volume seeks to achieve by bringing together researchers from a wider range of disciplines. Indeed, as a leading expert of the work of James McNeill Whistler, the art historian Énaud-Lechien best qualifies to appreciate the validity and importance of Moore’s pronouncements on paintings and artists – a terrain into which few literary scholars have so far ventured. In choosing to assess the links between Moore’s Modern Painting (1893) and Whistler’s “Ten O’Clock” (1885-1888) and The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890), Énaud-Lechien not only provides a lively account of the extremely caustic exchanges between the two men – which should hardly come as a surprise to the Moore scholar – her reconsideration of biographical elements also enables her to illuminate the supremely subjective stance in the ex-painter’s writings on art. Moore’s controversial propensity towards damaging approximations is clearly demonstrated. Énaud-Lechien’s essay nonetheless documents the aestheticist’s remarkable sense of observation and accounts for the artistic precision which is the hallmark of many descriptive passages in his fiction. Marie-Claire Hamard’s essay again resurrects Moore the multifaceted, controversial public figure: she evidences Max

Introduction

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Beerbohm’s obsessive interest in this “unpaid model” of his, from the very first days of their acquaintance in 1896 to the end of Max’s life, sixty years later. Moore has often been painted, as Hamard reminds us, but neither Manet nor any of the leaders of the New English Art Club who deemed his physique worthy of interest, seem to have disregarded their subject’s feelings so entirely as Max the caricaturist. Max’s mischievous treatment of Moore the public lover (of “Any Lady”, provided she was dead and could tell no tales) and the public writer (forever mortally offended with his latest personal enemy, for instance, William Archer) would tend to indicate that Beerbohm did not always care to remain within the bounds of friendship. However, the vacant stare and disproportionately large head and frail body which characterize Max’s best known representations of Moore do not just make the young Irishman touchingly vulnerable. They constitute what Max famously called, with a fine intuition of hidden complexities despite the jocular nature of the assertion, an “invisible suspension-bridge for the passage of his I-de-a to us”. Complex notions of what being an author ultimately signifies is also the question that the following group of essays addresses, albeit from an altogether different angle. Next to the intermeshing of the arts as a modality of border crossing, Section II analyses another modality: Moore’s ambivalence on practical questions of authorship. Far from proclaiming the author’s disappearance from the text, as his contemporary and friend Mallarmé did, Moore never clearly dissociated life from literature and the author as a real-life person and personality from the projected authorial figure in the text. Neither, as the many prefaces he wrote make it clear, was he willing to renounce his authority – the privileged position conferred by tradition on the author as originator, owner and regulator of the text. But this, in the case of collaborative authorship, could understandably lead to controversy. Adrian Frazier’s essay provides an exhaustive survey of Moore’s various ventures into collaborative authorship, with their invariable entanglements of life and literature: how he did sometimes unabashedly appropriate others’ contributions (such as W.B. Yeats’ for Evelyn Innes), or how, on the contrary, he would lend generous assistance and coaching to some friends without claiming any acknowledgments whatever. Several cases of such “ghost authorship”

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are investigated, the most titillating case being Moore’s instigation of Mrs Harter’s The Love Conference (1922). Using fresh material – manuscript letters from the Berg Collection in the New York Public Library – Frazier convincingly argues that Moore scripted the story, insidiously taking advantage of the collaboration to make a fictionalized disclosure of his real-life affair with Lady Cunard. Eamonn R. Cantwell focuses on one particular instance of literary collaboration with Yeats in the theatre (on a new play, Where There is Nothing) that ended up in controversy and bitter accusations of plagiarism. After carefully documenting the quarrel and closely examining each writer’s contribution, Cantwell comes to the conclusion that the preposterous division of labour initially agreed on – Moore providing the scenario of the play, Yeats writing the dialogue and putting style in – could not aptly settle the complex issues of artistic property and of each writer’s authority over the destiny of the collaborative project. The next two essays in this section approach “the man of letters” not so much as “a work-product in the construction of which many hands have laboured” (Frazier), but as a devoted letter-writer, the author of several thousand letters. Spanning the whole corpus of Moore’s copious correspondence, Alain Labau argues that the letters, in offering the best platform for self-expression, are without doubt central in the work of a man who thought that “literature is not a question of information but of personal expression”. Far from being mere “marginalia”, the letters were indeed the workshop in which Moore devised and experimented his writing methods: re-reading and revising his own works, grafting, recycling and recombining material of any kind, literary or not. Labau thus observes the creative process in Moore’s work from the vantage point of the correspondence and points out that, over the years, in that intermediate space between literature and reality, Moore was able to take an increasingly distanced and more critical view of his own creation. Moore’s letters to Edouard Dujardin present a most interesting case of the sundry visible and invisible connections between the correspondence and the literary production. Citing Moore’s querulous question to Dujardin, “Mais qui voudrait me lire en français?”, Michel Brunet sets out to explore the concerns it implies about the mastery of grammar – a problem that dogged Moore all his life both in the French and the English languages – about authorship (can a writer’s talent

Introduction

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counterbalance his deficiencies in the language? Can an Irishman aspire to become a French writer?), and about his indebtedness to his correspondents – notably Dujardin – whom Moore was always prone to use as informants for literary purposes. Brunet considers that writing in French, if it was in some respects a linguistically frustrating experience, was indeed emblematic of Moore’s determination to get across boundaries, to outgrow the limitations of his original Irish milieu, and to mark out his difference and his own singular, cosmopolitan identity. In many respects, the self-reflexive stance engendered by the writer’s striving for more personal modes is also one of the vexing issues over which the essays in Section III ultimately come together. The examination of under acknowledged or altogether new “grafts” and “transplants” to be traced in specific texts leads to a re-evaluation of convenient, if deceptive, divisions in Moore’s artistic career. In order to conclude on the sophisticated in-betweenness of Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa, Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn look closely at how this novel sequence escapes any neat generic definition, fluctuating as it does between a pointedly post-Darwinian exploration of the conflict between materialism and idealism, a Wagnerian, neo-Romantic, female-centred portrait of the artist, and a fine psychological enquiry into emotional instability and spiritual unrest. In Moore’s romance of a displaced quest for the mother, Heilmann and Llewellyn find evidence of how ideas which were shortly to be articulated by Sigmund Freud – notably in his 1917 essay on “Mourning and Melancholia” – considerably revivify the representation of fallenness, enabling Moore, incidentally, to extend “Daniel Deronda’s 1876 interrogation of musical performance as a marker of dysfunctional family relations”. The tension between indebtedness, discipleship and artistic independence is a topic which invites a stimulating diversity of critical approaches: looking for valuable “keys to [Moore’s] literary philosophy and clues to his novelistic practice”, Mary Pierse concentrates upon the writer’s own metafictional pronouncements to come to a better understanding of what, to him, was deemed valuable, attractive and eternal in prose. Examining closely three of Moore’s memorable declarations on the nature of art (“no more than a sketch”; “an instinctive desire to imitate nature”; “I probed my fancy, I dabbled

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in psychology”), Pierse demonstrates their centrality to the whole corpus and sheds light on the complementary nature of the seemingly diverging aesthetics advocated in these pithy statements. As Pierse further explains, although the particular opinions they voice arise in markedly different contexts, the blend of their constituent parts may be discerned in many of Moore’s strikingly memorable portraits from different periods of his writings, thus allowing a case to be made for the existence of a core recipe for his art. Taking examples from across the Moore oeuvre, Pierse shows convincingly that the primacy accorded to the sketch and the sustained use of “bare outline drawing” – a technique Moore does not restrict to short-story writing, interestingly enough – paradoxically help to “generate aura and atmosphere”, “mirror the natural” and “reflect deep psychological insight”. Konstantin Doulamis, a specialist of Classical literature, addresses the question of Moore’s transformative art from yet another original perspective. His expert examination of the strong ancient Greek texture, historical, cultural and literary, of Aphrodite in Aulis (1930) breaks new ground. Unsurprisingly, Moore’s awareness of the Classical world, his preoccupation with the Homeric epics have thus far received very little scholarly attention, as Doulamis points out. The uninitiated will probably feel relieved to have a specialist’s last word on the anachronisms in Moore’s novel; and he will gratefully welcome his conclusions on the calculated nature of some of its historical inconsistencies. However, Doulamis does not simply aim to explore the rewriting of Classical motifs and images in Aphrodite in Aulis, with a view to evidencing Moore’s awareness of their connotative value. He more fundamentally seeks to highlight the writer’s literary sophistication, notably when he examines the metaliterary asides which show Moore anxious to give new meaning to old materials. Admittedly, one might find much earlier proofs of Moore’s awareness of the complexities of portraiture and storytelling. If in the 1930s, this awareness manifested itself, notably, through the use of ancient Greek motifs in order “to create a work of art and about art” (Doulamis), a decisive trend away from realist objectification of externals towards an increasingly sophisticated apprehension of subjectivity can be traced in Moore’s works from the turn of the century onwards. Henceforth, the primary subjects of realist fiction, the body, the

Introduction

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milieu, recede to be supplanted by a growing interest in portraying the inner shape and shaping of the individual consciousness. The concluding essays explore the space of the subject and the subject in the spaces that Moore’s fiction builds around it. Starting with the frames – geographical, architectural, social, as well as narrative – which enclose the deviant body of the cross-dresser and compel it to disappear, “except as a creation of discourse”, Elizabeth Grubgeld disentangles the metanarrative complexities of Moore’s “Albert Nobbs” in the 1927 version of the story. She uses the metaphor of “a screen edged by a large multifaceted mirror” to account for Moore’s representation of the subject, surrounded with reflections of the viewer and of what lies behind the viewer. The voyeuristic textual practices – a narrator watching the body of the characters, reflexively examining his own act of watching, and letting readers observe the whole process – ultimately aim at exposing the means by which patriarchal discourses silence disruptive voices and drive into unknowability individuals of indeterminate sexual identity. The body and its representation are also issues addressed by the two following essays, which both focus on Esther Waters, Moore’s most celebrated and reputedly most naturalist novel. Nathalie SaudoWelby points out the divergences between Moore’s Esther Waters and the emblematically naturalist servant novel, the Goncourts’ Germinie Lacerteux. Esther Waters is in no way dissected and dispossessed of her body and soul as Germinie Lacerteux is by the two all-controlling Brothers Goncourt. Standing at a respectful distance from his character, Moore refuses to impose himself as a figure of authority and, through the successive revisions of the text, dispenses more and more with narratorial interventions, letting Esther speak for herself in direct and free indirect speech. Saudo-Welby’s essay also provides a thorough insight into the complex connotations, both extrinsic and intrinsic, of “character” in Moore’s novel. Equally concerned with Esther Waters, Michele Russo analyses the liminal spaces of the novel – topographical borders or limits, such as railways or thresholds, and the ideological or imaginary boundaries they set up or stand for. Special emphasis is put on wet-nursing and its class-transgressive potential, as well as on the circular structure of the novel, with the final return to Woodview remapping fictional space and symbolizing Esther actively regaining control of her womanservant’s fate.

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Christine Huguet and Fabienne Dabrigeon-Garcier

In a much-revised later novel, The Lake, Moore takes a decisive step towards literary impressionism, with its absorption into the workings of consciousness and the capacity of language to reflect them. Confessing a preference for this novel in the Preface to the 1921 revised edition, Moore attributed its “little triumph” to “the weaving of a story out of the soul substance without ever seeking the aid of external circumstances”. In a masterful attempt to render the struggle of the central consciousness (Father Oliver Gogarty’s) towards selfdiscovery and self-fulfilment, Moore crosses generic borders, interweaving fictional correspondence with the interior monologue inspired by Dujardin’s Les Lauriers sont coupés. As Fabienne Dabrigeon-Garcier shows, the letters allow the underlife of the characters to find expression while the interior monologue registers both impressions of the outside world and the impact of writing and reading letters on the priest’s consciousness. Smoothing out all disruptions between the two narrative modes, intersubjective dialogism, modulations of words, metaphors and scenes across the whole text create a continuous melodic line, the Wagner-inspired ideal Moore was striving for in the 1920s. By cooperatively probing subjectivity and intersubjectivity, the two narrative modes together achieve an unprecedented holistic apprehension of the subject. For the complex, kaleidoscopic perspective he has offered on his times, George Moore unmistakably deserves to regain pre-eminence in the familiar canon: such is the conclusion the contributors to the present book collectively suggest. Indeed, a re-examination of Moore’s art does not only bring his multifaceted œuvre more to the front again; it also seeks to provide new, alternative perspectives in the study on late nineteenth-century art and culture at large. In this respect, these essays should recommend themselves to all lovers of European culture. The varied, complementary approaches adopted here evidence a new trend in Moore scholarship, increasingly positing him as one of the major representatives of the fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century cultural scene, not only in England and Ireland, but also in France. In allowing Moore’s art to be perceived as progressive relative to turn-of-the century artistic trajectory towards modernism, the present reappraisal of the Moore corpus will, it is hoped, help to facilitate a more encompassing rethinking of the development of the novel.

I. EXPLORING ARTISTIC BORDERS

THE PRIMA DONNA AND THE CONVENT: BORDER CROSSINGS IN EVELYN INNES AND SISTER TERESA CHRISTINE HUGUET

Such all-encompassing works as Evelyn Innes (1898) and its continuation, Sister Teresa (1901), illustrate the novelist’s habit of handling crossover material to such an extent that the critic may well be disconcerted as well as stimulated by these two volumes. They would need, one feels, to be read across a wider range of disciplinary perspectives involving the historian, the sociologist and the art historian. Much has been written about Moore’s varied novelistic practices – notably, his shifting aesthetic allegiances and fascinating cross-Channel overlappings. However, when it comes to examining the text-image relationships that inform his youthful and mature works alike, it takes more than the literary scholar’s expertise to assess Moore’s constructs. Using sophisticated representational strategies, Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa seem to complicate the critic’s task further. With the Dulwich Art Gallery functioning as a key scenographic element in the opening chapters, iconographic revealers of spirituality are bound to prove essential. Nevertheless, because Wagnerian opera becomes a clear subtext in the greater part of the story, this double novel could also be accurately described as Moore’s most conspicuous attempt at a music novel. In geographically situating – and symbolically squeezing – his Catholic prima donna’s suburban home between a newly built, unfinished church and the lavishly decorated chapel of a Gothic convent, Moore clearly opts for an original shaping of “the convent attitude towards life”.1 And in combining architectural elements with countless references to the other arts – from ceramics to furnituremaking and jewellery – he seems anxious to provide yet another set of 1

George Moore, Sister Teresa (1901), London: Fisher Unwin, 1909, 303.

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Christine Huguet

original indicators of spirituality and give a complex shape to the enticements of monasticism and the conversionist ethos. Intriguingly enough, despite such an elaborate construction of meaning, Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa will perhaps never be recognized as part of the canon. In their time however, they were among Moore’s most successful novels: the surface plot could hardly fail to please the average middle-class reader, long accustomed to the tortuous intrigues provided by mass-market fiction. While Moore’s story is set in the broad context of the “naughty Nineties”, it is also reminiscent of the previous decades, when sensational fiction was in its heyday, and exhibits several of the characteristics of the genre. The eponymous heroine’s name promises an extraordinary storyline and the opening chapters introduce an expected whiff of immorality, teasingly suggesting as they do the interdependence of the domestic and the unfamiliar, the respectable and the morally questionable. Evelyn is indeed a potentially larger-than-life character, clearly committed to incompatibles: she is placed in both a secure setting (respectable Dulwich) and an exceptional position, as the beautiful daughter of a Catholic choir-master – a Mariana-like heroine endowed with her dead mother’s wonderful voice. Her subsequent choices no doubt confirmed readers’ pleasurable intuition that they were in for a risqué story that would not fail to rehearse the spicy topic of sex and religion. Evelyn and her two suitors conform to the expected pattern of deviancy throughout much of the volume: the pious young woman begins by eloping with Sir Owen Asher, Bart., a Byronic aesthete who, in Paris, initiates her into the enticements of “art and love”,2 although he fails to make an agnostic of her. With his help she becomes the greatest of all Wagnerian sopranos on the Parisian stage, before she finally chooses to return to England and face her father’s opprobrium. Her return is that of the Prodigal. She is reunited with her father and soon attains the pinnacle of her career, as an artist and a woman. Predictably, her personal charms throw her into the arms of a second lover, Ulick Dean, a young composer and Celtic mystic. At this point, it becomes obvious that Moore’s naturalist allegiances have become a thing of the past. Although the second half of the novel toys with the idea of downfall and physical degradation as 2

George Moore, Evelyn Innes, London: Fisher Unwin, 1898, 78.

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the appropriate fate of a remorseful heroine – such a fate had been duly reserved for Kate Ede, the alcoholic mummer’s wife, thirteen years earlier – Moore here discards the deterministic option. Instead, the text capitalizes on the Pre-Raphaelite motif of the “awakening conscience”: Evelyn realizes in time that, despite the life of love and chocolate in bed that she has been leading, she cannot forget the spirituality of Catholicism. Against all odds, the leonized soprano abandons her operatic career and, having found spiritual relief in the Wimbledon convent where she had once gone on a retreat, becomes “Sister Teresa”, a cloistered nun. Unsurprisingly, Moore could not long remain satisfied with such a denouement. The Ur-texts went through several revised editions, the novelist even submitting “an entirely new book”3 with a radically altered ending for the Adelphi Library edition of Sister Teresa, eight years after the first edition came out in 1901. In the first version of the story, the title unambiguously reflects the heroine’s destiny: after fighting off repeated temptations and misgivings, Evelyn takes her final vows. In the 1909 rewrite, her trajectory is from contemplative to active self-denial. The wealthy prima donna does not become Sister Teresa; instead, she makes her “great escape” from the clutches of the rapacious nuns4 and turns her back on the convent to become a social worker in the Home for crippled children that she has founded. Although the self-pampering diva opts for a life of selfless obscurity in both versions, in the 1909 rewrite Moore leaves his reader free to consider the ironical complexities of “Sister Teresa”, the provisional, and eventually unchanged, title of the second volume.5 Typically, twelve years after this radically altered version was published, Moore went out of his way to belittle his former efforts: “I shall confess to little admiration for ‘Evelyn Innes’ and ‘Sister Teresa’.” The books had met with popular success, Moore acknowledges, and the writing had been useful (“if I had not written them I could not have written ‘The Lake’ or ‘The Brook Kerith’”). However: 3

George Moore, Preface, Sister Teresa (1909), ix. Moore, Sister Teresa, 308. 5 Moore initially meant the two volumes of his novel to be presented to the public “under one name and within one cover” and perhaps, ultimately, “under the single title of Evelyn Innes” (Moore, Preface, Sister Teresa, London: Fisher Unwin, 1901, 6). 4

18

Christine Huguet They do not correspond with my aestheticism. But a writer’s aestheticism is his all; ... and the single concession he can make is that if an overwhelming demand should arise for these books when he is among the gone ... the publisher shall be permitted to print ‘Evelyn Innes’ and ‘Sister Teresa’ from the original editions, it being, however, clearly understood that they are offered to the public only as apocrypha.6

One cannot be as entirely dismissive of this convent story as the ageing artist himself, characteristically marred though it be by the occasional cheap symbol, obtrusive turnabout and bathetic digression. The artist’s poor opinion of his original storyline sheds light on its ambitious, if unattainable, scope. Although Moore acknowledges its transitional and experimental value, he pleads guilty of “aesthetic” failure, thus attracting the reader’s attention to his initial preoccupation with the process of writing itself, with the fictionality, rather than the reality, of the world he had set out to represent. Moore’s avowal of failure should not blind the critic to the novel’s intricate interweaving of Victorian literary motifs and strategies. The Protestant-minded, realist case study of religious bovarysm; the enticing, if hackneyed, topos of the diva-as-emblem-of-spiritualwaste; the frank treatment of unregulated male and female desires: all of these possible narratives are touched upon, only to become models for an untethered construct. The reason why the novel is ultimately self-sufficient, despite the aesthetic flaws which the mature artist could not condone, is that the daring, militant representation of illicit love and disturbing alternatives to the Victorian ideal of domesticity is no longer Moore’s primary concern in the late Nineties. This explains why the ostensible polarization between the cloister and the stage, the divine and the profane, seems too raw, too limited for the story. It also tells us why Evelyn does not rank among the most striking figures of New Woman fiction, why the novel’s disjunctive discourse of sexuality is hardly a groundbreaking, avant-garde one, by fin-de-siècle standards. Instead, what ultimately redeems the novel in the critic’s, if not in Moore’s, eyes is the systematic probing of the complex relationship between art and reality that informs it. In both the 1901 and 1909 versions of the story, Moore elaborates a backdrop that highlights the 6

George Moore, Preface, The Lake (1921), Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1980, x-xi.

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characters’ aesthetic aspirations. In locating the heroine’s predicament in this distinct arena, the fiction seems to take art for its main subject, with the result that the text often turns in upon itself to flaunt its own condition of artifice. Moore, as we know, never did anything lightly: the novel provides such a comprehensive, panoramic survey of artistic contexts, across the borders of the heroine’s own specialism (Wagnerian opera), that the representation of her quest is soon channelled away from conventional morals. In the text’s compelling exploration of proselytism, the dilemma which the prima donna fails to recognize is not between selfish sensualism and unwordly abnegation, but between essential aestheticism and motivated art, spelt out by Moore as art for religion’s sake. Exploring new constructions of reality The reason why Moore seems anxious to displace clichéd dilemmas to an artistic area, may be found in his heightened awareness of his own fluctuating aesthetics in the late Nineties. The transitional status of Moore’s turn-of-the-century corpus is well evidenced, in particular, by his cautious rewriting of his realist masterpiece, Esther Waters, in 1899.7 The specificity of his convent story of the same date marks it out as an equally important link to a new artistic period. Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa implicate the reader in the problem of creativity itself, if only because the main protagonists evince, at an early stage, a conspicuous and sustained interest in the arts. As a result, many of the dialogues – Evelyn’s protracted metadiscourse on modes of selfrepresentation; her lovers’ reflections on aesthetic ways and means – sound as if they had been written mainly to provide the reader with a set of self-reflexive signals, mirroring the novelist’s indecision about his own art at the fin de siècle. When the forty-six-year-old novelist embarked on his story of a cloistered diva, he had long abjured most naturalist practices, even though he felt disinclined to de-emphasize externals. The characters’ interpretative discourses show that the finicky realist is still there, exploiting his first-hand knowledge of musical matters, dabbling in 7

The 1899 version of this “rough page torn out of life” (George Moore, Esther Waters, London: Walter Scott, 1894, 231) shows the writer going to great lengths to find the perfect pitch. For a fuller discussion, see Christine Huguet, “Charting an Aesthetic Journey: Esther Waters”, in George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds, ed. Mary Pierse, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars P, 2006, 160-72.

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Christine Huguet

the psychology of religious experience, unabashedly amalgamating material from varied sources. The conscientious ex-naturalist is still painstakingly working up a variety of subjects, notably conventual mores and neo-Gothic architecture.8 However, the constrained realist discourse is clearly competing with new and more urgent concerns. “There was so much to assimilate ... music, scruples of conscience, dogma etc. etc.”, Moore explained.9 By insisting that documentary material should be properly “assimilated” before it could be put to any fictional use, Moore foregrounded his increasing concern – ever more palpable from the writing of Celibates (1895) on – for representational coherence. Evelyn Innes is yet another of Moore’s artistic laboratories. Or, as one of his oft-quoted metaphors more strikingly suggests, it is “sketches and scales”: by which the artist intends his premeditated and sustained experiment in “illumined” life, his move away from typicality to the enigma of the individual, from the descriptive to the psychological.10 Evelyn ranks as one of the most soulful and passionate characters in the Moore corpus. She has received the gift of the infinite and is endowed with an inordinate capacity for transcendent stargazing and vehement interrogation of the ultimate meaning of things. In choosing to probe the depths of convent thought and reserve his glamorous diva for a life of essential inwardness and monologic withdrawal, Moore was moving with the times. The familiar bric-abrac of sensational fiction paves the way for the emergence of a new, enhanced stance, in line with early Modernism. Moore’s innate mimetism enabled him, all his life long, to resonate with the new artistic fundamentals of the age, far from mainstream culture. In the late Nineties, these were largely articulated by Symbolism, Aestheticism and Decadence. Emulating the new strategies of representation developed by these movements, Evelyn Innes and Sister 8

To those who knew Moore in the mid-Nineties, these fields of exploration must have appeared riskily remote from his former preoccupations. How the writer hunted up authoritative informants has been well documented. Helmut Gerber points out, for instance, that Moore absorbed “as much musical knowledge as possible”, notably from friends like Edouard Dujardin (Helmut E. Gerber, George Moore in Transition. Letters to T. Fisher Unwin and Lena Milman, 1894-1910, Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1968, 135). 9 Moore, “To T. Fisher Unwin”, 15 August 1898 (ibid., 169). 10 Ibid., 176; George Moore, “A Tragic Novel” [L’Education sentimentale], Cosmopolis, VII (July 1897), 38-59.

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Teresa illustrate what Paul Devine analyses as Moore’s “increasing interest in portraying the inner perceptions of characters”.11 The narrative’s emphasis on presentiments and epiphanic spots of time is the most remarkable consequence of Moore’s sophisticated apprehension of inner reality in the final years of the century. For instance, Evelyn’s decision to elope with her first lover is presented as a moment of revelation of superior intensity: In a pensive atmosphere, a quiet day-light, his motives were revealed to her .... Suddenly the vision changed. She was no longer in Dulwich with her father. She saw railway trains and steamboats, and then the faint outline of the coast of France .... Owen was the future that awaited her.12

The text often becomes heavily analeptic or proleptic; it sees the characters’ lives from beginning to end, prophesies endings in privileged moments of anamorphic déjà vu. Owen Asher thus envisions his future: She was the kind of woman who, if she once let herself go, would play the devil. Turning from the fire he looked into the glass .... Five pleasant years they might have together, five delicious years; it were vain to expect more.13

Evelyn similarly daydreams the morrow: “Paris rose up before her, and Italy, and they were so vague that she hardly knew whether they were remembrances or dreams, and she was compelled by a force so exterior to herself that she looked round frightened ....”14 In this timesaturated novel, the Flaubertian handling of free indirect style does not always create ironic distance. The narrative voice sounds acquiescent, even complacent in places, as if the protagonists’ ethereal propensities had affected their creator.15 11

Paul Devine, “Leitmotif and Epiphany: George Moore’s Evelyn Innes and The Lake”, in Moments of Moment: Aspects of Literary Epiphany, ed. Wim Tigges, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999, 155-56. 12 Moore, Evelyn Innes, 89-90. 13 Ibid., 69-70. 14 Ibid., 92. 15 Some of their more woolly considerations on the mystery of life and other hermeneutic abstractions find uncritical echoes in Moore’s contemporary comments on his work – as when he pompously stated that he ambitioned “to unravel [life’s]

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Christine Huguet

Moore’s fin-de-siècle quest for new aesthetic directions has been convincingly discussed in terms of specific intertextual influences. The names of Balzac and Flaubert, but also Maeterlinck, Dujardin, D’Annunzio, Ibsen and, naturally, Wagner, appear in his correspondence.16 However, such “illuminations”17 do not originate exclusively in literary or musical material. The unequally controlled threads with which Moore methodically spins his imaginative web also owe much to the writer’s broader notion of numerous personality components. Of these, the privileged determinant, best illustrating the protagonist’s Bildung, becomes his/her aesthetic – rather than his/her natural or material – environment. The individual is henceforth depicted in terms of the art(s) of which he is the exponent; he is revealed through the degree and quality of his response to “the art call”18 which Moore now sees as characteristic of the age. Few contemporary reviewers were disposed to praise Moore’s new representational modalities. That dramatic and psychological interest should largely rely on long-drawn-out discussions about the nature of Art was seen as a mistake, and neither Owen Asher’s lectures on Balzac’s characters nor any of the protracted digressions concerning

mysteries,” explaining that he found himself standing on “the threshold of the deep regions of humanity – those states of eternal consciousness which are souls in a far deeper sense than we are souls” (Moore, “To Lena Milman”, 3 January 1897, in Gerber, George Moore in Transition, 136; Moore, Introduction, The Heather Field and Maeve, by Edward Martyn, London: Duckworth, 1899, ix). 16 While actively documenting himself for his new novel, Moore was also concerning himself with literary ways and means, as appears in his contemporary article on Gustave Flaubert, for instance (see Moore, “A Tragic Novel”, 38-39). 17 It used to cost Moore time to offer some kind of reasoned assessment of his artistic attempts. The concept of “illuminated” personality is best discussed in a letter written some ten years after Moore developed his new representational strategies: “For many years now I have been engaged on realistic works”, he wrote to Dujardin: “and to-day it seems to me that it is not sufficient merely to find appropriate words for them. It is necessary that from time to time they should rise beyond themselves and utter unexpected things; and it is by such illuminations that characters are really created” (Moore, “To Dujardin”, 22 July 1909, in Letters from George Moore to Ed. Dujardin, 1886-1922, ed. John Eglinton, New York: Crosby Gaige, 1929, 79-80). See also Moore’s severe judgment of Pinero’s Benefit of the Doubt, which, according to him, failed to get any of the characters “through the psychological hoop” (cited in Gerber, George Moore in Transition, 179). 18 Moore, Evelyn Innes, 78.

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the technicalities of Gregorian chant were found pertinent.19 The average reader, on the other hand, did not so much disapprove, and Moore’s revisiting of the sensational love triangle was generally liked. Today’s reader, however, tends to agree with Victorian reviewers that interest in the human drama is largely stifled by what comes across as an intrusive aesthetic taxonomy. In places, the characters are indeed barely convincing, mechanically dovetailing as they do with conflicting aesthetic theories. Sincerely striving for augmented, perfected characterization, Moore typically overreaches himself and makes his men and women stand for, and literally embody and hypostatize, the very concept of Art too neatly. When one looks at all the self-referential signals, the impression produced is one of surfeit rather than the hoped-for thoroughness. Whether the holistic apprehension of psychological processes required these countless, bewildering cross-references to Art, understood in the widest possible sense, is debatable. Many a page reads disastrously like some mixed bag of the arts, some ill-arranged encyclopaedic survey or, at best, like a clumsy exercice de style. In his anxiety to achieve cohesive portraiture, Moore eagerly annexes, embraces and celebrates whatever has been built, shaped, coloured and decorated by the artist. The expected references to music take their place alongside numerous allusions to the sister arts, painting and writing, but also to architecture and ceramics, stained glass and clocks, jewellery and furniture, textiles, wallpaper, and photography. The result is often a string of ostentatious, organically unrelated analogies between the fiction’s ongoing life and any number of artefacts, treated as superior pointers of character – from the gallant scene under the colonnade of the Watteau painting to the pure lines of a Greek vase. Thus, “She [Evelyn] thought of herself as the lady in the centre, the one that looked like the queen .... The life in this picture would be hers if she took the three o’clock train and went to Berkeley Square.”20 Or again, the mystery of the soprano’s sophisticated impulsiveness calls up “the romance of columns and peristyle in the exaltation of a calm evening”:

19

See for instance Moore’s letter to Dujardin, referring to the bad criticism of Evelyn Innes. George Moore, “To Dujardin”, 20 June 1898, in Eglinton, Letters from George Moore to Ed. Dujardin, 42; 43. See also Gerber, George Moore in Transition, 160-61. 20 Moore, Evelyn Innes, 100.

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Christine Huguet Very gradually she poured her voice into the song, and her lips seemed to achieve sculpture. The lines of a Greek vase seemed to rise before the eye, and the voice swelled on from note to note with the noble movement of the bas-relief decoration of the vase.21

Moore was clearly right to disparage such efforts in later life. An effect of clutter and disorderly accumulation does not create intensity of meaning, and The Lake is correctly analysed by the mature artist as a more successful experiment in enhanced representation. However, if neither Evelyn Innes nor Sister Teresa convincingly attain the essence and primal truth of art, the prevalence of aesthetic notions in the double novel still provides invaluable clues to understanding Moore’s artistic credo at the turn of the century. In vitalizing the conflict between the heroine’s notion of true Art and her lovers’ divergent theories, the novel ultimately places Owen Asher’s more sophisticated and sincere convictions in the limelight. Ulick Dean’s mythopoeic spirituality and picturesque esoterism offer the young diva but temporary temptation, “as by the edge of the abyss”,22 mainly because the long-faced, hollow-cheeked Irishman – humorously based on W.B. Yeats – cannot resist the “true Celtic love of exaggeration”.23 Evelyn’s view of Art is equally mistaken, the reader is led to conclude. Even as Sister Teresa, she never entirely distinguishes between the fictitious and the real: all limitations were “razed”24 when the young soprano first chose to equate life and Art “through transference of role playing into reality”25 – and vice versa. The process of metaphorical displacement that was started at the Dulwich Gallery under Owen Asher’s guidance finds its most manifest expression on the London stage. Evelyn’s “reading” of operatic art as the true medium through which her life henceforth expresses itself, “in a more intense and concentrated form”,26 may well have been the inspiration for her magnificent acting on stage. The moment the curtain rises, she indeed becomes a Wagnerian heroine, and her revitalizing of obsolete operatic conventions is widely praised. But the 21

Ibid., 450. Ibid., 242. 23 Ibid., 193. 24 Ibid., 210. 25 Devine, “Leitmotif and Epiphany”, 161. For an analysis of the analogies between Wagnerian opera and lived experience, see also 162-63. 26 Moore, Evelyn Innes, 160. 22

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diva’s trade secret also poses a threat to her moral integrity. The text suggests that, in finding direct inspiration in librettos, she has merely learnt to attitudinize through life.27 More importantly, these contrived representations of her own life blind Evelyn to the sincerity of others, notably of her first mentor, whose innate aestheticism she narrow-mindedly fails to distinguish from epicurean sensualism and “persistent worldliness”.28 She eventually stops with his – to her – painfully rational exegesis of the religious feeling, ungratefully forgetting what a genuine admirer of things beautiful her lover has always been. In particular, Evelyn never sympathizes with Owen Asher’s principle of aesthetic observation of character, which she misconstrues as mere materialistic (and Zolaesque) ethnosociology. The Paris chapters best illustrate the baronet’s superior intuition of the subtle links between artistic externals and an individual’s inner life. Where Ulick Dean would read vaporous dreams to decipher the “horoscope” of life,29 where Evelyn would force surrogate meaning into her acting, Asher, the passionate aesthete, moves across more subtle borderlines. Prompted by the sight of the quaint French balconies and suburban porticoes of Passy, he “attempted a reading of these villas”, the narrator notes approvingly.30 “You cannot understand Paris until you have read Balzac”, Evelyn’s lover explains: “Balzac discovered Paris; he created Paris.” Asher’s views and tastes coincide with Moore’s at the turn of the century. Amusingly enough, the text cannot avoid the occasional declaration of flamboyant self-approval: There is a vulgarity about those who don’t know Balzac; we, his worshippers, recognise in each other a refinement of sense and a

27

For instance, the narrative voice obtrusively underscores the contrived nature of the reconciliation between the heroine and her father, for instance: “The wonder of the scene she was acting – she never admitted she acted; she lived through scenes, whether fictitious or real – quickened in her; it was the long-expected scene, the scene in the third act of the ‘Valkyrie’ which she had always played while divining the true scene which she would be called upon to play one day” (Moore, Evelyn Innes, 210). 28 Moore, Sister Teresa (1901), 237-38. 29 Moore, Evelyn Innes, 292. 30 Ibid., 122.

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Christine Huguet peculiar comprehension of life. We are beings apart; we are branded with the seal of that great mind.31

The naïve reader may well complain that the romance threatens to be lost sight of in such passages, dangerously situated as they are at the intersection between autobiography, theory and fiction, but the novelist’s eagerness to reach aesthetic plenitude nonetheless reveals his complete dedication. And Moore the metafictionalist, anxiously scrutinizing his own art, developing oblique methods of construction of meaning, always provides an attractive figure of the artist. Wagnerian opera, ecclesiologist art and the fiction-making process To the Victorianist, Moore’s novel includes yet another enticing aspect. Of the admittedly excessive number of artistic idioms that feed the analogical analysis of character, two – the operatic and the architectural – are rarely treated simultaneously in fiction, and their conspicuous presence in the novel largely makes up for its structural deficiencies. The choice of a Catholic-born prima donna retiring to a neo-Gothic convent whose architectural specificities are going to be made so much of, testifies to Moore’s remarkable “capacity for the acquisition of ideas” and potential imagination. Keeping in mind Asher’s theory that the brain, assimilating new sets of ideas, will produce works “endowed with richer colour”,32 the reader better appreciates Moore’s handling of the “unique voice” trope. His fin-desiècle heroine is no genteel offshoot of Kate Ede, and Moore does much more than just avoid a repeat performance.33 Like Evelyn’s musical father, he intends to reach absolute art and in opera, he finds his ideal analogy. Indeed, as an art form, opera looks back to the antique choreia— the perfect alliance of the musical, the dramatic, the visual and the kinesic. “Opera”, plural, refers to several “works” brought together; its etymology points to the superlative nature of the aesthetics it achieves. As such, it is the art of arts, as the novel shows. At once a collaboration art and a sublimation of several arts, it provides both the 31

Ibid., 124. Ibid., 176 and 177. 33 Kate’s débuts in opera buffa with the Morton and Cox Opera Company offer an ironic contrast to the gilded world of grand opera in Evelyn Innes. 32

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tautological value and unreasonable limitlessness that Moore’s turnof-the-century fiction was striving for. Moore was attracted by Wagner’s idea of total art – his celebrated Gesamtkunstwerk, that strove for integral expression. The novelist’s visits to the Festival Theatre at Bayreuth had taught him that time can be made space, and music given a tangible form. Opera is a synaesthetic, three-dimensional performance, Evelyn similarly realizes, making demands on her ear, eye, throat and whole body, and appealing concurrently to her admirers’ senses: “her emotion vented itself in cries of April melody, and all the barren stage seemed in flower about her; she stood like a bird on a branch singing the spring time ....”34 By definition, successful opera “holds the minds, the eyes and the ears under an equal spell”, as La Bruyère had already remarked in 1691.35 One goes to the opera to hear, but also to see singing, to have simultaneous access to many artistic modes of expression, none of which claims absolute priority, the great question being whether opera is singing and talking, or rather, parlar cantando. Challenged in 1928 to say how he understood the link between music, words and drama, Alban Berg wittily replied: opera is “ a2 + b2 = c2 ” – without the music being necessarily the hypotenuse.36 Therefore opera’s great dilemma enlightens Moore’s metafictional double take in an original way. To some extent, this long music-novel and Wagnerian opera together raise a logical problem – how can they be at once object and comment on that object? Evelyn’s real-life reenactments of her operatic roles mirror this central interrogation as to the very nature of opera, defined as words inflected by the singing voice, as meaningful discourse raised to ritualized performance. In having Evelyn zestfully attitudinize both onstage and off, even to some measure after she has shut herself up in a late Victorian nunnery, in an oblique, parabolic way, Moore addresses the fathomless issue of the dissonance between Art and truth. 34

Moore, Evelyn Innes, 187. “Le propre de ce spectacle est de tenir les esprits, les yeux et les oreilles dans un égal enchantement” (La Bruyère, “Des ouvrages de l’esprit”, I, 47, in Les Caractères ou les Mœurs de ce siècle [1688], Paris: Garnier, 1962, 84). For an in-depth analysis of opera as collaborative art, see Jean Starobinski, Les Enchanteresses, Paris: Editions du Seuil, 2005, 9-50. 36 Alban Berg, “Operntheater”, Musikblätter des Anbruch, X/8 (October 1928), 259. On opera as total art, see also Michel Schneider, Prima Donna: Opéra et inconscient, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2001, 167-89. 35

Christine Huguet

28

Similarly, using Evelyn’s voice (and, paraleptically, her mother’s before her) as a central plot device, may be construed as Moore’s selfreflexive rendering of yet another paradoxical feature about opera: how should one view Evelyn the diva assoluta? Her singing sounded like silken raiment among sackcloth, and she lowered her voice .... Her voice, she felt, must have revealed her past life to the nuns ... she would never be able to sing this hymn with the same sexless grace as they did. Her voice would be always Evelyn Innes – Owen Asher’s mistress.37

Is she the sublime icon, whose corporeal presence in the convent chapel dissolves into a soaring voice? Or can she become a disincarnated body, endowed with purely artistic significance on the stage? Evelyn herself sees her voice as a sexful agent of destruction, in a fin-de-siècle representation of the siren motif. In the opening scenes, she also defines it as a fragile voice box, a mere bundle of unschooled vocal chords. Her metaphysical quest is expressed in concrete terms: To have or not to have a voice – such is the initial formulation of her dilemma. This soon leads to agonizing selfexamination: to be or not to be a voice – where is her destiny? Thus, Moore capitalizes with great effect upon the image of female vocality, poised between destructiveness and fragility. The soprano voice lends itself to the exalted stance his fiction increasingly strives to articulate in the late Nineties. In this respect, the Wagnerian librettos embedded in the novel are to be appreciated as more than clever palimpsests of the fiction itself. In giving Evelyn this ineffable voice, opening onto the divine, the text moves closer to total Art. Moore successfully develops an enhanced mode of representation, which consists in aestheticizing the religious interrogation and, conversely, in sacralizing music: Wagner requires either converting or abjuring, as Moore well knew. Opera is not the only realm that allows the concrete to co-exist with the metaphorical in Evelyn Innes. Moore’s sustained use of the metonymic value of ecclesiastic buildings constitutes another attractive experiment in heightened portraiture. The text exalts Gothic church spires and altars as sophisticated visual rhetoric. Ecclesiologist decorative elements (such as ornate choir-lofts, bejewelled chalices, 37

Moore, Evelyn Innes, 451.

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gold cruets, etc.) are coded as so many lyrical indicators. The text engineers gothicized twists and coincidences to deconstruct an otherwise predictable plot and recast it into an art-related drama of the soul, ironically centred around the parish Jesuit church and then, around the convent of her girlhood. This is why romantic rescue is doomed to failure. Asher does enable Evelyn to run away from a humdrum, self-sacrificial life playing the viola da gamba, exclusively aimed at subsidizing the rich carpets and fine ironwork needed for the completion of the Gothic interior of Saint-Joseph’s: seemingly, the heroine will not help foster the parochial spread of Anglo-Catholicism in Southwark. There is no escaping, however, what Asher comes to recognize, with great bitterness, as the potent, albeit childish, magnet – “the tentacles” of the Passionist Sisters.38 Evelyn’s “old convent” at Wimbledon is the original locus used by Moore to achieve this spectacular shift – a measure of his insight into Catholic emphasis on a speaking architecture in the last decades of the century. It is also Moore’s literalization of tragic motifs: the heroine’s fate is sealed once her dormant religious fervour has been “stimulated”39 by the pietistic architecture of a dim chapel: … the new chapel had been built by the celebrated Catholic architect .... Evelyn knew that the mouldings and carving and the stained glass had caused the pecuniary embarrassments of the convent .... the architect had insisted that every detail should be in keeping, ... the thirteenth century had proved the ruin of the convent; every minor decoration was faithful to it – the very patterns stitched in wool on the cushions of the prie-dieu were strictly Gothic in character. Only the lower end of the nave was open to the public; the greater part was enclosed within a high grille of gilded ironwork of an elaborate design .... And falling through the pointed windows, the long rays slanted across the empty chapel; in the golden air there was a faint sense of incense .... Evelyn’s doubts vanished, and she knelt in momentary prayer beside the two nuns.40

For all his distrust of papistry and sacramental priesthood, Moore allows his novel to reflect a fascination for the Gothic Revival and the 38

Ibid., 170. Ibid., 390. 40 Ibid., 347-48. 39

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dramatic link it created between matter and spirituality. He clearly perceives the subtle links between the Revivalists’ overwhelming art and his own symbolist-minded fiction in 1899: both express an urge to incorporate the material world and employ symbols that are instantly decipherable. Incapable of sharing Owen’s assessment of the situation (that the nuns have squandered “all their money building a [Gothic] chapel” and now have “not enough to eat”41), Evelyn believes what she sees. Her mind is dazzled, in awe of the ritualized beauty designed to inspire stagy devotionalism, even among the least sophisticated. The chapel is eventually perceived by her as the unique, safe alternative to the stage. This enclosed space and its garden, Moore’s singular hortus conclusus, symbolize the interior of the soul to be redeemed, each architectural element translated in spiritual terms. Ultimately, the master hand pompously described by Evelyn as setting us, “mere machines, ... purblind creatures”,42 in motion, happens to be, with Moore’s permission, that of the great architect and zealot Augustus W.N. Pugin (and Son). “Could anything be more grotesque?” one wants to ask with Owen Asher.43 Even concerning such a sensitive issue as Art, Moore could still handle the eminently Dickensian category of the grimly ludicrous. The penitent’s deafness to Asher’s enlightened pleading of the cause of Art as “her natural vocation”,44 her renunciation in the name of a false call, are externalized as artistically preposterous choices. The divine diva ironically converts into the Pope’s washerwoman: a broken spirit, Evelyn forswears her former musical allegiances to sing hideous Ave Marias in an inauthentic chapel to puzzled crowds of rich AngloCatholics, until narrative mercy delivers her from this desacralized voice. Thus, hardly six years after the flamboyant public confession of Moore’s Protestantism, Evelyn Innes became the text wherein Amico Moorini45 chose to express a similar challenge. An incensed 41

Ibid., 354. Ibid., 389. 43 Asher’s remark actually applies to another impossible narrative combination: “She could not go on the stage as Lady Asher. Lady Asher as Kundry!” (ibid., 69). 44 Ibid., 361. 45 A self-appointed nickname. See Moore, Preface, The Lake, xi: “the publisher shall be permitted to print ‘Evelyn Innes’ and ‘Sister Teresa’ from the original editions .... But this permission must not be understood to extend to certain books on which my 42

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declaration of artistic faith was now made through the medium of fiction. The rewrites conspicuously reinforce the provocative nature of the storyline. No longer wishing to spare the nuns, guilty of the crime of crimes – using art as artifice, as a weapon against Art – the final version of Sister Teresa depicts the Passionists as sinister fortunehunters whose clutches Evelyn escapes in time, in the same way as the novelist’s contemporary priest-hero swims across the lake to spiritual rebirth. Aesthetic literalization of Moore’s commitment to free Art then logically requires the premature death of Evelyn’s antiquarian father in his Romish exile, the defeat of the “Goths”, the triumph of utilitarian architecture with the building of Evelyn’s Home for the crippled and, most significantly, the supremacy of genuine connoisseurship in Asher’s elegant Georgian home in London’s West End.

name appears – viz., ‘Mike Fletcher’, ‘Vain Fortune’, ‘Parnell and His Island’; to some plays, ‘Martin Luther’, ‘The Strike at Arlingford’, ‘The Bending of the Bough’; to a couple of volumes of verse entitled ‘Pagan Poems’ and ‘Flowers of Passion’ – all these books, if they are ever reprinted again, should be issued as the work of a disciple – Amico Moorini I put forward as a suggestion.”

GEORGE MOORE AND LITERARY WAGNERISM: A REVISITATION STODDARD MARTIN

Thirty years after my first examination of George Moore and Wagner,1 the time seems ripe to revisit the topic. The approach is slightly different this time and the focus will be more directly on Moore, in contrast to my earlier study which concentrated on Thomas Mann,2 Joyce, T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence, all authors who were considered, in that period, to be more important than Moore. That original study also featured a less-renowned figure who, in my judgment, was utterly central to transmission of Wagnerian tropes and aesthetics in England: Arthur Symons, the friend of George Moore. The close links between Symons and Moore are evidenced by Moore’s dedication of Evelyn Innes to Symons and W.B. Yeats. Moore was Symons’ senior by thirteen years and the influence of the elder writer on the younger is a topic that was not dealt with in my earlier literary exploration but must be addressed now. When assessing Symons, I had associated a number of Symons’ characteristic obsessions with the mentality governing, or at least represented in The Waste Land: those were the obsessions that probably contributed to his breakdown in 1908 and underlay his subsequent inability to re-gather in any significant form the “fragments shored against [his] ruins”. No such fate overtook Moore. On the contrary, despite lifelong dabblings in decadence, Moore was never a full-blown poète maudit, as is demonstrated by the hearty 1

Stoddard Martin, Wagner to the Waste Land: A Study of the Relationship of Wagner to English Literature, London: Macmillan, 1982. 2 What Mann may have read of Moore deserves investigation. It is clear that from early in the 1890s, the young German novelist was aware of the work of near contemporaries in English; and it would seem remarkable that the mature author of Joseph and His Brothers would not have known of The Brook Kerith.

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temperament he celebrates through his great work – contemporary to Symons’ troubles – Hail and Farewell. What both men had in common was that they were famously Francophile and imbibed the holy essence of Wagnerism out of a symboliste grail. It cannot be said for certain that the young T.S. Eliot did, or did not, read the works of George Moore. However, it was The Symbolist Movement in Literature by Symons that Eliot discovered at the Grolier bookshop in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1908. Moreover, it was from that book and, famously, from the descriptions in it – of Mallarmé, Verlaine and Jules Laforgue – that Eliot derived the impetus and mental shaping that ultimately resulted in The Waste Land. Certainly, for a decade or more following his discovery of the Symbolist Movement, Eliot’s interests both as poet and as critic followed in the wake of Symons’ 1890s trajectory. Incidentally, such subsidy as Eliot received during and after composition of The Waste Land came, in the main, from a figure who had also been a friend and patron of Symons: John Quinn, the man who was ultimately presented with the manuscript of that work and was responsible for its forty-year disappearance into the bowels of the New York Public Library. Links between Symons, Yeats and Moore flow through Quinn. Quinn became familiar with Symons through John Yeats, father of W.B. who was confrère and flatmate to Symons at a seminal moment in their poetic careers. The key year was 1896 when Symons was the editor and W.B. Yeats a contributor to the Savoy. Moore’s dedication of Evelyn Innes to them both might be seen as related to a onetime hope that the novel might be serialized in that journal. The interest of Yeats in Wagner (such as it was) and in French symbolism coincides with this phase of close association with Symons, rather than with his connections with Moore a few years later. The collaboration between Yeats and Moore on Diarmuid and Grania for the Irish Literary Theatre may represent a high watermark in the aspirations of both towards a frankly Wagner-like accomplishment. However, for neither of them was it the most happy or successful endeavour. Arguably, Yeats would achieve his aim with The Shadowy Waters, and Moore would do so with The Lake. Overt Wagnerian aspirations in the literary theatre received a setback from their activity, as would happen with Symons’ contemporary struggle to produce symbolist plays – including a version of Tristan and Iseult – for British audiences. Few similar efforts met with success: amongst

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the exceptions are numbered Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s Axël, works of Maeterlinck, and the mystical dramas of their Alsatian contemporary Édouard Schuré and Rudolf Steiner (Schuré’s later colleague in the Theosophical Society). Their achievement was related to the ways in which Wagner stimulated the sensibilities of those of an occult tendency rather than how he influenced mainstream literature.3 Since Yeats, like Eliot, was principally a poet and Moore was no longer so inclined, it is hardly novel to suggest that the example of Symons, a coming poet-editor-critic of the day, should have had more initial impact on Yeats than had his fellow countryman. It is intriguing that one of the first introductions that the young Joyce had to the literary world was when Yeats took him to visit Symons during a stopover in London on a journey between Dublin and Paris.4 Joyce was still preening himself as a poet of the Celtic ilk at this time, seeking help in publishing the verse that would eventually become his first book, Chamber Music. This was help that Symons would give. An account of the meeting has Symons playing a passage from Parsifal on the piano for the visitor and it concludes with Yeats remarking that “Symons has always longed to commit great sin, but he has never been able to get beyond ballet girls”.5 Joyce is said to have enjoyed this passage of mild badinage between literary pals, but whether it alone was responsible for curing him of a jejune aspiration to be a Symons-like, ’90s-ish decadent poète is doubtful. What is clear is that such a Wagnerian as he became in his mature oeuvre had less to do with the path blazed by Symons than with the one Moore was taking. The same may be said of another pre-eminent experimental novelist in English of the period, D.H. Lawrence. The connections between Moore’s Wagnerian interests and these figures were first described by the pioneering scholar, William Blissett of the University

3

I touch on this subject in my study Orthodox Heresy: The Rise of “Magic” as Religion and Its Relation to Literature, New York: Macmillan, St Martin’s P, 1989. See the chapter entitled “Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy”, especially section IV, “Schuré and Initiatory Theatre”. 4 Richard Ellmann describes the meeting in James Joyce, New York, London, Toronto: Oxford UP, 1977, 115-16. I discuss it in Martin, Wagner to the Waste Land, 136. 5 Stanislaus Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, ed. Richard Ellmann, New York: Viking P, 1958, 197.

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of Toronto.6 Concerning D.H. Lawrence, Professor Blissett advanced the idea that Moore was not only a stylistic precursor of early works such as The Trespasser, but was also a link for Lawrence to attitudes and approaches of two other Wagner-drenched predecessors, Nietzsche and Gabriele D’Annunzio. Moore’s most significant statement on the Wagnerian aesthetic as applied to the novel is in an “interview” he did for the Musician in 1897. Here he ascribes to D’Annunzio (who was also a favourite of Symons’) the most systematic use of leitmotif in verbal detail up to that date. Leitmotif may rank as the technique of Wagner’s that is most consistently adapted by writers but, arguably, it would be left to the mature Joyce to exploit it to the full. Moore argues in his interview, which appeared while he was writing Evelyn Innes, that he was not keen to go to the length of D’Annunzio in building up descriptive detail as if to form chromatic chords. His main concern was to pursue, in what he calls “a music novel”,7 what he sees as Wagner’s devotion to certain grand “motives”: for example, the Parsifal motif of redemption that was a recurring favourite; also the characters’ psychological “underlife”, a phenomenon not easy to dissociate from the music that broods beneath the words of Wagnerian avatars.

6 See William F. Blissett, “George Moore and Literary Wagnerism”, Comparative Literature, XIII/1 (Winter 1961), 53-73. I have always felt a little sorry that Professor Blissett did not precede me in publishing a book on the topic because, in many ways, he was not only a trailblazer but il miglior fabbro. Blissett’s surprise on reading the announcement of forthcoming publication of a book with my title stopped publication for a short while. Macmillan contacted me for response to his rather hopeful expression of fear that I had plagiarized him. When I described the extent and nature of my citations, all were satisfied. 7 The extent of the Wagnerian underpinnings of this transitional novel, as well as the success of Moore’s experiment in it, is discussed by Christine Huguet in “The Prima Donna and the Convent: Border Crossings in Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa” (see the present volume). In the discussion that followed the delivery of the paper on which Christine Huguet’s article is based (at the International Conference “George Moore: Across Borders” at the Université Charles de Gaulle-Lille 3, France [30-31 March 2007]), it was suggested that the bulk of the book, especially in contrast to Moore’s work before and after, may have constituted an attempt at a kind of novelistic Gesamtkunstwerk. This would place it in Moore’s opus in a position rather analogous to that of The Ring in Wagner’s. One might add that Sister Teresa represents a first in Moore’s many attempts to deal with the theme of Parsifal, the one work of Wagner’s with which he claimed never to have fully sympathized.

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One can discern in the phrase “motif of redemption” a certain matter of temperament, and perhaps also those of age and background. The phrase was not one that would be used by Joyce, nor was the concept one that Joyce would approach without dressing himself in a protective carapace of learned wit. At the same time, intricate use of leitmotif and thoroughgoing modulation of it constituted just the sort of verbal pyrotechnic on which his frankly, if often parodical, musical method would be built. Thus, when treating the relationship between Moore’s Wagnerism and that of Joyce, Blissett was probably right to point principally towards some relatively superficial borrowings from Hail and Farewell: whistling of the birdsong from Siegfried to summon a friend, identification of a walking-stick with Nothung, the idea of “forg[ing] in the smithy of [the] soul the uncreated consciousness of [the] race”.8 There was not much more, apart from one exception: the inspiration from Edouard Dujardin, Moore’s great ami and onetime editor of La Revue wagnérienne. Joyce famously produced Dujardin at the lunch Sylvia Beach had arranged to celebrate publication of Ulysses, claiming that the by-then aged author of Les Lauriers sont coupés was the progenitor of the monologue intérieur that he had both consciously and subliminally adapted from Wagner, and thereby was also the progenitor of the fundamental method – as well as part of the subject – of Joyce’s masterwork. It may be significant that, at this stage, Joyce did not cite Moore nor did he bother to seek him out until some years later when Joyce’s own fame had reached its zenith and when Moore, in the eyes of the literary world, had long since become yesterday’s man. As Eliot had been with Symons, so Joyce was with Moore: increasingly reluctant to draw attention to what had been a more important literary fatherhood (in the Harold Bloom sense) than many had noticed, a parentage that involved, at least, Wagnerian aspiration, inspiration and adaptations. So what was Moore’s Wagnerism? As indicated, it began in France with his friendship with Dujardin, among others; it was quickened by association with the Francophile Symons; it was solidified by trips to Bayreuth with Moore’s fellow Irish grandee, the Wagner-mad Edward Martyn, and with his great lady friend, Maud Bache Cunard. There 8

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976, 253.

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may have been others who further stimulated Moore’s Wagnerian interests: in his magisterial biography of Moore, Adrian Frazier refers to his “old friend” Lord Howard de Walden, who might also be described as potentially part protégé, part patron. He was twenty-eight years younger than Moore and, at the time of his accession to title and his marriage to an opera-singing heiress, he was one of the wealthiest men in Britain. Frazier further speculates that, for Moore, Howard de Walden may have represented a successor to another wealthy English friend, Sir William Eden, with whom the novelist travelled to Bayreuth. Frazier adds that Moore had befriended Eden’s wife much as he would Howard de Walden’s. Not only did Moore know how to conduct himself in grand circles, his interest in women was also “quite genuine, ... he liked and understood the somewhat cramped position of women at that period”.9 Howard de Walden wrote verse drama under the name of T.E. Ellis and backed theatres and theatre ventures. At Chirk Castle, he wished to do for theatre in Wales what he saw Lady Gregory, Moore and Yeats as having done for Ireland; later, he would become a patron of Dylan Thomas, whose forename was inspired by the title-character of one of Howard de Walden’s plays. Moore was a frequent guest both at Seaford House in London, where he would meet Lady Cunard, and at Chirk. He would have encouraged, and been encouraged by, his host’s interest in symbolism and Arthurian legend, by his backing of a Maeterlinck production at the Haymarket and by his collaboration on epics with Joseph Holbrooke, sometimes known as the “Cockney Wagner”. One of those epics was produced at Covent Garden under Beecham on the eve of World War I and was critically lambasted for its “German method”. Not enough has been written about Howard de Walden, and students of Moore might take note of this influential figure. It remains lore among grandchildren of Howard de Walden – some of whom are now figures in literary London10 – that Moore was among the few ageing lions of his day (and they numbered Bernard Shaw, for 9

Adrian Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2000, 389-90. 10 I am indebted for the facts contained in this paragraph to two of Howard de Walden’s grandchildren, in particular to Tatiana Orloff-Davidoff and Thomas Seymour. The latter is editor of a recently published edition of three of Howard de Walden’s classical plays and repository of the most extensive information on the man’s life and works.

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example) who was polite to Howard de Walden’s young wife. She might have seemed insignificant at the time but her memoir, Pages from My Life (1967), would give a Marie Larisch spin to the zeitgeist – one that would probably have fascinated a latter-day T.S. Eliot. Moore’s most thoroughgoing attempts to write musical or Wagnerian prose in an experimental and/or Symbolist mode – in The Lake11 and The Brook Kerith – come from this period. As had been the case with Symons earlier, aesthetic sympathy was concerned with a principle associated with Walter Pater but which had been enunciated in almost the same terms by Mallarmé: “all art aspires to the condition of music.” It is intriguing to speculate who might have influenced whom. In relation to Symons, Moore was at first not only older but more successful, moneyed and better connected to the right salons; in relation to Howard de Walden, only the first two states applied. But is it possible to determine who is more influential in such couplings as Rimbaud and Verlaine, Nechayev and Bakunin? Frazier states that Moore was always dependent on the companionship of a “beautiful”12 11

Fabienne Dabrigeon-Garcier’s “‘A letter came into his mind’: Fictional Correspondence in The Lake” recalls how that novel’s structure – letters between a man and a woman underwritten with a brooding, digesting narrative – constitutes a remarkable literary application of the Wagnerian mode of long meditative arias underscored by psychologically allusive and onward-propelling orchestral narration. In this sense, following on The Ring experiment of Evelyn Innes (see note 7 above), The Lake might be placed as the Tristan in Moore’s opus. It came at a similarly central point in its creator’s life: as Alain Labau’s “George Moore: A Man of Letters on the Margins of Reality” points out (see the present volume), Moore’s contemporary correspondence with Maud Cunard, to whom he had long played Tristan to King Mark’s wife, contains allusion to Wagner’s correspondence with Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of his patron Otto Wesendonck. That adulterous affair is credited as the biographical inspiration for Wagner’s most extreme Romantic work. One of the letters Labau cites – about the nature of the love of women – contains what appears to be a paraphrase of a famous line from Byron’s Don Juan, the probable origin of which was a letter from Teresa Guiccioli, the Ravenna countess with whom Byron had an adulterous liaison during his Italian years, an affair which on both sides was in self-conscious imitation of one between the Duchess of Albany and the playwright Alfieri decades earlier. With Modernists as with Romantics, one must always be alert to “intertextuality” in life as in art. Could not an experience of Tristan at Bayreuth have inspired love as well as much as it did literary experimentation by Moore? Could not Wagner’s affair with Mathilde have been coloured by what he knew of Byron – and so on? 12 See Frazier, George Moore, 123.

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and generally younger man; in the case of Symons, his attraction was doubled since, by the mid-Nineties, he brought in train the other dedicatee of Evelyn Innes and the model for Ulick Dean, one to whom Moore was attracted for Irish reasons as well. But Frazier’s intimations apart, Symons’ position in literary London was, within a few years of Moore’s meeting him, simply too pivotal for Moore not to have wished to shine in the younger man’s eyes by performing in ways which he would admire. In the following decade, much the same might be said, if on different grounds, of Howard de Walden. However, it was not Symons in the end but rather the other dedicatee of Moore’s music novel who would seem to offer the most, and would thus sustain Moore’s attention the longer; perhaps partly as a result, Symons was eclipsed in his esteem. This would be apparent when, a decade later, George Russell showed Moore some of Joyce’s poems – those which became Chamber Music – and Moore’s critical compass had shifted to the degree that he could dismiss them with the epithet “Symons!”. This seems not a little cruel, but typical of the barbed candour that lost Moore many a friend during his memoirist years. A decade and a half further on, when Symons was still trying to pull himself out of the aftermath of breakdown and what would be the inevitable decline of his career, Moore summoned him to suggest that he, Symons, might write his, Moore’s, biography and went on to prescribe what tone the work might take. Symons, affronted by the Wagner-like pomp of this offer, apparently withdrew in something like the dudgeon felt by the young Nietzsche after being patronized once too often by Der Meister. To adapt Nietzsche’s famous line on “stellar friendship”, from then on, the two would pass “like ships in the night”.13 13 Another letter to Lady Cunard which Labau cites paraphrases Nietzsche’s remark in The Case of Wagner about Wagner’s music being at its most impressive in phrases or details, even “a single bar” as Moore puts it. In his biography of Moore, Adrian Frazier wonders how much, and when, Moore actually read the German philosopher, given that his works were not widely available in English until late in the Edwardian decade. He speculates that Moore’s knowledge may have depended mainly on talking with Dujardin, Halévy and other French admirers of the philosopher, whose works were translated into French early on. See Frazier, George Moore, 64-65. In fact, The Case of Wagner and two other Nietzsche books were translated into English in the mid-1890s, providing occasion for three important articles by Havelock Ellis on him in the Savoy. Moore may well have read these translations at the time or in the decade after, or at least The Case of Wagner, which would have interested him on Wagnerian grounds anyway. His unacknowledged borrowing of Nietzsche’s famous aperçu in the

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What had come between them? Feelings of belittlement on Symons’ part, no doubt. But might there not also have been old, or buried, irritation at theft of enthusiasms and ideas? Or was the breach mostly related to the ghost of a third party in their friendship, one to whom Wagnerism in literature had meant the least but whose Wagnerism in accomplishment had, arguably, amounted to the most? This was a man whose friendship the blithe Moore had by then also long squandered, the recently Nobel prize honoured W.B. Yeats. Returning to the force of Wagner’s influence on writers in the following decades, it must be acknowledged that Richard Cave’s study of Moore’s novels offers, in one or two chapters, some of the subtlest observations available on the power of Wagner’s example.14 Cave seems spot on in his identification of how Moore, at his best, rendered a monologue intérieur in The Lake: it was one that was not merely sequential in revealing the workings of a mind, as Dujardin had done in Les Lauriers sont coupés or as Joyce would do with Leopold Bloom; it was a monologue intérieur that was cumulative in its power, just like monologues in Wagner, and thus for its character, it was potentially transformational. It is in this novel departure from normal operatic procedure that Wagner surely had his most profound and far-reaching effect, appealing to occultists, moralists and psychologists of a new generation as well as to mere Decadent dreamers. It is with a similar technique, Cave argues, that Moore’s work – especially his later great effort, The Brook Kerith – merits more permanent attention. This would also be true of another attribute that Moore shared with, and to some extent took from, Wagner: the all-absorptive, rhythmical narration. That was what Nietzsche would disparage, perhaps disingenuously, as “unending melody”; it was what Moore’s literary son, Joyce, would spend his last two decades attempting in Finnegans Wake, that experimental novel whose river runs back to “riverrun” and out into the vastest of all attempts by a mere writer to compose a modernist, post-Wagnerian work, using words as notes and building up waves of harmony and dissonance out of verbal leitmotifs. letter to Maud Cunard suggests this as a probability (see Labau, “George Moore: A Man of Letters on the Margins of Reality” in the present volume). 14 Richard A. Cave, A Study of the Novels of George Moore, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1978.

PAINTING AND WRITING IN MOORE’S CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN, LEWIS SEYMOUR AND SOME WOMEN, AND A DRAMA IN MUSLIN FABIENNE GASPARI

Artistic creation was for George Moore a major concern, an issue he obsessively addressed in his own writings, whether in essays, in autobiographies, or in novels. A Modern Lover was published in 1883, five years before Confessions of a Young Man, and then in 1917 it was revised and published with a new title, Lewis Seymour and Some Women. Both Lewis Seymour and Some Women and Confessions of a Young Man relate the origins of a young painter’s career but they differ in so far as Lewis Seymour, to a certain extent, fulfils his aspirations and even becomes a member of the Royal Academy, whereas the narrator of the autobiographical Confessions of a Young Man, despite desperate attempts to become a painter, fails and finally turns to writing. The two sister arts, painting and writing, were the two poles of Moore’s artistic career and it is their relationships which will be outlined here, through a study of Moore’s portrait of the artist as a young man, then through an analysis of the various ways that images surface in words in Lewis Seymour and Some Women and in A Drama in Muslin. A portrait of the artist as a young man Both Lewis Seymour and Some Women and Confessions of a Young Man return to origins. Paradoxically, both begin with death and then unfold a process of rebirth and recreation in a very Nietzschean way. It is the death of the father, narrated in the first pages, that marks the origins not only of the text but also of a new course in life. I sense here the hint of Oedipus revisited: Lewis Seymour’s father – a mad scientist spending his life shut in his laboratory in the basement of his house, carrying out mysterious and forbidden experiments – dies in an explosion. It is only in relation to the sense of freedom experienced by

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the narrator of Confessions of a Young Man that Moore’s father’s death is mentioned: My father’s death freed me, and I sprang like a loosened bough to the light. His death gave me power to create myself – that is to say, to create a complete and absolute self out of the partial self which was all that the restraint of home had permitted; this future self, this ideal George Moore, beckoned me, lured like a ghost; and, as I followed the funeral, the question, Would I sacrifice this ghostly self, if by doing so I should bring my father back? presented itself without intermission .…

Filiation being broken, the possibility of self-creation – to which the father-figure was an obstacle – arises and insistently presents itself to the mind of the would-be artist, so insistently that it becomes an imperative: “before me the crystal lake, the distant mountains, the swaying woods, said but one word, and that word was – self; not the self that was then mine, but the self on whose creation I was enthusiastically determined.”1 The Irish landscape, the place of origins itself, paradoxically lures the narrator away from his own roots: the prelude to his self-creation and rebirth is exile. A forerunner of Joyce, Moore presents exile as a prerequisite of the artistic enterprise but he introduces it at the outset of his autobiographical text, whereas it is only in the conclusion that Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man opens onto exile. For Moore, exile initiates an artistic quest that itself may be viewed as a process of self-creation. Going to Paris means becoming both a man and an artist; it means recreation and re-creation in the intertwining of art and love, both in the experiences of the narrator of Confessions of a Young Man and of Lewis Seymour. However, Confessions of a Young Man, in the words of Moore, is “more concerned with art than with the relaxations of the artist”2 and is hence a story of genesis, of symbolical death and rebirth as the young man is “striving heart and soul to identify himself with his environment, to shake himself free from race and language and to recreate himself as it were in the womb

1

George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man (1886), London: William Heinemann, 1928, 8. 2 George Moore, Preface, Confessions of a Young Man, xi.

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of a new nationality, assuming its ideals, its morals, and its modes of thought”.3 “I fain would show my soul in these pages, like a face in a pool of clear water”:4 Moore’s autobiography, a literary self-portrait, is presented as an act of self-contemplation, with the mirror – an object often represented in pictorial self-portraits – as the reflecting medium. Louis Marin’s analysis of the interplay between mirror and portrait in the very act of painting could be applied to Moore’s own enterprise: “The picture is then the mirror and the mirror is the picture: in the centre of this perfect reversibility, the activity of eyes and hand in a to-and-fro movement almost abolishing distance ...: the mirror, containing the image it reflects is already the picture itself, while the picture is still the mirror.”5 However briefly evoked through Moore’s reference to a pool of clear water, the myth of Narcissus reminds us of its link with painting as it has been interpreted as the first story of artistic creation. In one of the first treatises on painting, Alberti designated Narcissus as the founder of painting since representation itself is based on the desire to grasp and fix one’s image considered as an image of the Other.6 The dedication (written in French) that precedes the text of Confessions of a Young Man clearly introduces the art of painting: The soul of an ancient Egyptian was reborn in me when my youth died, and I developed the idea of conserving the spirit and form of my past in art. So, dipping my brush in my memory, I painted its cheeks so that they would capture the exact resemblance to life, and I enveloped my

3

Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, 123-24. Ibid., 9. 5 Louis Marin, Détruire la peinture, Paris: Flammarion, 1977, 167: “Dès lors le tableau est bien le miroir et le miroir le tableau: au centre de cette parfaite réversibilité, l’activité, le geste du regard et de la main dans un va-et-vient presque sans distance ...: le miroir, porteur de l’image qu’il reflète est déjà le tableau, et celuici, encore, le miroir.” 6 See Liliane Louvel, L’Œil du texte, Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1998, 52. Louvel quotes Damish and Marin who both associate the myth of Narcissus with the origin (and death) of representation. Hubert Damish even refers to formal narcissism as the very foundation of representation – “narcissisme formel sur lequel se fonde la représentation”. 4

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Fabienne Gaspari dead self in the finest shrouds. Rhamses II never had treatment so pious! Oh that my book would be as durable as his pyramid!7

Recording his past, Moore wants to embalm and preserve it in a text that becomes for him the equivalent of a mausoleum or a pyramid. For Elizabeth Grubgeld, Moore performs the tasks of an embalmer: “As the embalmer, the writer has made of his younger self a kind of literary mummy that resides in the textual pyramid excavated by the revising author.”8 Far from being new, the idea of writing to attain immortality is nevertheless given a new treatment, as Moore compares the handling of the pen with which to write his confessions, with that of the brush. Yet the question that arises then is whether writing is equated with painting or rather with making up the mummy’s face (or is it the mummer’s face?). That, in itself, is rather contradictory to the image of the mirror previously referred to. Though irreconcilable, transparency and opacity paradoxically coexist in Confessions of a Young Man, as it is through the poses he holds that Moore manages to invent and paint himself as a polymorphous artist. Offered to JacquesEmile Blanche but in fact also to Moore’s own self and to his own art, the dedication, with its pompous and artificial tone, is itself a pose that inaugurates a series of postures and – some would say or did say – impostures. Zarathustra’s command that pain and death should be preludes to rebirth could be the epigraph to Lewis Seymour and Some Women and Confessions of a Young Man: Creation – that is the great redemption from suffering, and life’s becoming being. But that the creator may be, much suffering itself is needed and much change. Yes, there must be bitter dying in your life, you creators! Thus you are advocates and justifiers of all impermanence. 7

Moore, Preface, Confessions of a Young Man, v: “L’âme de l’ancien Egyptien s’éveillait en moi quand mourut ma jeunesse, et j’ai eu l’idée de conserver mon passé, son esprit et sa forme, dans l’art. Alors trempant le pinceau dans ma mémoire, j’ai peint ses joues pour qu’elles prissent l’exacte ressemblance de la vie, et j’ai enveloppé le mort dans les plus fins linceuls. Rhamsès le second n’a pas reçu des soins plus pieux! Que ce livre soit aussi durable que sa pyramide!” (trans. Elizabeth Grubgeld, George Moore: The Autogenous Self, Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1994, 47). 8 Grubgeld, The Autogenous Self, 48. Grubgeld also defines Confessions of a Young Man as an “autobiographical pyramid” (ibid., 36).

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For the creator himself to be the newborn child, he must also be willing to bear the child and to endure the pains of childbirth.9

Both texts stage failures of the artist figure: there are many uninspiring models, many drawings angrily rubbed out, many pictures, either unfinished or, if finished, rejected. If Lewis is much more successful than the narrator of Confessions of a Young Man, both novel and autobiography eventually turn their backs on painting. Lewis, whose never-too-fertile imagination is drying up, seems to be expelled from the last pages, only to be replaced by Helen, his wife and model, herself engrossed in her own writing. At the end of his Confessions, after several “abortive”10 paintings (a word he uses to define his attempts), after dabbling in journalism and being dissatisfied with its fragmentary nature (“I could not learn to see life paragraphically”11), the narrator pictures himself struggling with a new art form and striving to complete his first novel, A Modern Lover: My novel seemed an impossible task – defeat glared at me from every side of the room. My English was so bad, so thin .... I was weighed down on every side, but I struggled to bring the book to a close.12

Moore, writing of himself as the failed painter becoming a novelist who is writing the story of another painter, who is not himself but nonetheless an avatar, introduces a somewhat vertiginous mise en abyme that prefigures the even more complex relationships between writing and painting in some of his works. In the last lines of Confessions of a Young Man, Moore seems to turn his back on his aborted attempts at painting and it becomes obvious that painting emerges as the subject of writing. Unfolding a painful and complex process of self-creation (a “myth of self-birth”,13 for Elizabeth Grubgeld), Moore’s Confessions is itself a matrix, as it contains all the intellectual nourishment (Manet, Degas, Balzac, Zola 9

Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None (1892), trans. Walter Kaufmann, New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005, 76. 10 “Will my novel prove as abortive as my paintings, my poetry, my journalism?” (Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, 216). 11 Ibid., 216. 12 Ibid., 222. 13 Grubgeld, The Autogenous Self, 37.

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being the greatest) ingested and digested by Moore’s artistic stomach: “The book is a sort of genesis: the seed of everything I have written since will be found herein”;14 “Nature provided me with as perfect a digestive apparatus, mental and physical, as she ever turned out of her workshop, absorbing and assimilating all that is poured into them without friction or stoppage.”15 Moore represents himself as a malleable substance, a man of wax, an artistic body marked and shaped by diverse influences: My soul, so far as I understand it, has very kindly taken colour and form from the many various modes of life that self-will and an impetuous temperament have forced me to indulge in. Therefore I may say that I am free from original qualities, defects, tastes, etc. What is mine, I have acquired, or to speak more exactly, chance bestowed, and still bestows upon me. I came into the world apparently with a nature like a smooth sheet of wax, bearing no impress, but capable of receiving any; of being moulded into all shapes.16

As a matrix, Confessions of a Young Man also contains the seeds of Moore’s literary undertaking, which would involve an indefatigable exploration of the links between text and image. This was a venture that would take on a new dimension at the turn of the century with the introduction of Wagner and the melodic line. That Moore never turned his back on painting is not only illustrated by his recurrent addressing of pictorial issues through the creation of characters who, as painters, discuss their art, but it is also doubly confirmed by the resurfacing of image in text. Tours and detours in Lewis Seymour and Some Women Lewis Seymour and Some Women recounts a double journey, geographic and artistic, from landscape painting in the manner of Constable (which Lewis learns in the English countryside) to portrait (learnt in Paris), through the Boucher-like representation of mythological subjects of Venuses and Cupids (which he paints on the walls of his wealthy patron and mistress’ house). A form of regression might even be pointed out as landscape painting supplanted genre painting in the second half of the nineteenth century and became a 14

Moore, Preface, Confessions of a Young Man, xi. Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, 210. 16 Ibid., 2. 15

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dominant genre made famous by Turner, Ruskin’s writings and the French Impressionists. Lewis’ journey enables Moore to launch forth into travel in the history of painting and to punctuate the narrative with the names of real and fictitious artists and works: Goya, Millet, Corot, Raphael, Rubens, appear on the first pages, followed by Boucher, Michaelangelo, Tintoretto, Bouguerau, Lefevre, Ducet, Rouneuf, Leonardo da Vinci, Ingres, Watteau, Lancret, Manet, Fragonard, Mantegna, Botticelli, Rembrandt, Gustave Doré, Rossetti, le Titien, Cabanel. To this list of painters should be added writers’ names: George Eliot, George Sand, Wordsworth, Shelley, Boccacio, Dante, Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Edith Wharton, Balzac, Sterne, Fielding, Smollett, Byron, Mallarmé, Villon, Gautier, Swinburne. These long lists conclude with a Greek sculptor, Lysippe, and a composer who inspired Moore’s “melodic line”, Wagner. Artists are mentioned not only because they are the subjects of hot debates between the characters but also because some of their works are to be found in the story itself, as a consequence blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction: a picture by Goya and another by Corot are on sale at an art dealer’s; Seymour admires the Tintoretto hung in the house of Carver, the art dealer, and walks up stairs supposedly designed by Leonardo in Blois Castle where he also sees Ingres’ picture of the Holy Family. A novel on art, Lewis Seymour and Some Women guides the reader through a legacy Seymour has to use as a basis and reference for his own creation but which he also has to transcend. Yet the past becomes a burden and the maze-like aspect of the references to art reflects their paralysing effect on the protagonist who does not really manage to digest diverse influences. If artistic debates appear as long pauses in the narrative flow and transform the novel into a kind of essay, they are not simply digressions or detours: they foreground essential issues of the novel itself. Thus, the conversation on Titian, revolving around the representation of the female body and the nude, throws a new light not only on Seymour’s ideals but also on those of Moore: Sexual reveries, Lewis averred these pictures to be; beautiful of course; yet he could not help feeling that the painter had pursued a fleeting phantom, till in a sudden detachment of the sense he saw two women seated, one on the ground clad in great robes, the other naked on the edge of the well, poised in a movement lyrical as a swallow’s flight. The picture had been named, he said, “Sacred and Profane

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Fabienne Gaspari Love,” which shows how little the art of painting may be understood, for it is certain that Titian’s mind while painting this picture was possessed only of a pure desire to represent life in all its fullness and beauty, the divine essence rather than the actual manifestation.17

Titian’s art rests on a delicate balance between seeing and dreaming, reality and illusion, immobility and movement, the sacred and the profane; Seymour’s definition of it shows how such art brings together opposites and sums up the essence of life, being visionary, going beyond the physical, the visible and the profane to reach the metaphysical, the invisible and the divine. If painting is the subject of debates and if pictures are analysed, image also surfaces in the narrative, when scenes, landscapes or characters are described. When Lewis comes across one of his friends, Frazer, a painter affiliated to the “Moderns”, both put a stop to their conversation to gaze at the urban landscape: And Lewis continued to relate his adventure till he noticed that Frazer was absorbed in contemplating the lights and shadows in the streets: then he stopped. The day was sloppy, but the sun shone between the showers, and the violet roofs of Waterloo Place glittered, scattering around the reflections of vivid colour. A strip of sky, of a lighter blue than the slates, passed behind the dome of the National Gallery, the top of which came out black against a black cloud that held the approaching downpour. “You say that my sunset effects are too violet in tone. Look yonder!” exclaimed the enthusiast; “isn’t everything violet – walls, pools, and carriages? I can see nothing that isn’t violet.”18

The emergence of image in text is indicated by the rupture of the linear narrative that itself is reproduced by a pause in the conversation. The description of the landscape – seen through the eyes of Frazer and Lewis, both dedicated painters – fills a whole paragraph: the typographical blanks that frame it echo the sudden silence between the two friends and introduce an effect of freeze-frame. Vision is followed by a debate on colour and truth, and the presence of the National 17 George Moore, Lewis Seymour and Some Women, Paris: Louis Conard, 1917, 23839. 18 Ibid., 33.

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Gallery in the background is emblematic of the ongoing dialogue between text and image in Moore. “Ut Pictura Poesis” in A Drama in Muslin In The World, the Text and the Critic, Edward Said reformulates Horatius’ famous “Ut Pictura Poesis”: “Writing cannot represent the visible, but it can desire and, in a manner of speaking, move towards the visible without actually achieving the unambiguous directness of an object seen before one’s eyes.”19 In A Drama in Muslin, Moore’s writing indeed moves towards the visible: the frequent use of “you see” to introduce descriptions may be analysed as a form of incantation that makes pictures emerge from words or even transforms words into images. Lively description or hypotyposis20 suspends narrative flow, substituting present tense or nominal sentences for past tense, and creating a pictorial effect. It opens up in the text what Liliane Louvel calls “an eye” (“l’œil du texte”).21 As it furnishes a denunciation of social comedy and of the marriage market, the text seems to linger on spectacle, on appearances and on the bodies and dresses of the young girls. At one stage in the novel, Moore depicts a ball held at Dublin Castle: “The first were a few stray black coats, then feminine voices were heard in the passages, and necks, arms, green toilettes and white satin shoes, were seen passing and taking seats.”22 A good example of impressionist writing, this sentence introduces colours and details that correspond to fragments of bodies and clothes and that form an incomplete and blurred picture. While here it is integrated into the narrative flow, 19

Edward W. Said, The World, the Text and the Critic, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983, 101 (quoted in Liliane Louvel, Texte/Image, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2002, 33-34). 20 Hypotyposis is a Greek term meaning “model, picture, drawing, painting”. In Les Figures du discours (Paris: Flammarion, 1977, 390), Pierre Fontanier gives the following definition of hypotyposis: “[Hypotyposis] paints things in such a lively and forcible way that it stages them under one’s eyes, so to speak, and turns narrative or description into image, picture or even a real scene taken from life” (“Elle peint les choses d’une manière si vive et si énergique, qu’elle les met en scène en quelque sorte sous les yeux, et fait d’un récit ou d’une description, une image, un tableau, ou même une scène vivante”). 21 See note 6 above. 22 George Moore, A Drama in Muslin (1886), Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1980, 87.

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some other passages actually put a stop to the action, freezing it in a way, so that time seems to be stopped. Such pauses in the narrative appear to favour the emergence of image in text and signal the opening of the “eye of the text” on the visible world: Shoulders were there, of all tints and shapes. Indeed, it was like a vast rosary, alive with white, pink, and cream-coloured flowers: of Maréchal Niels, Souvenir de Malmaisons, Mademoiselle Eugène Verdiers, Aimée Vibert Scandens. Sweetly turned, adolescent shoulders, blush white, smooth and even as the petals of a Marquise Mortemarle; the strong, commonly turned shoulders, abundant and free as the fresh rosy pink of the Anna Alinuff; the drooping white shoulders, full of falling contours as a pale Madame Lacharme; the chlorotic shoulders, deadly white, of the almost greenish shade that is found in a Princess Clementine; the pert, the dainty little shoulders, filled with warm pink shadows, pretty and compact as Countess Cecile de Chabrillant; the large heavy shoulders full of vulgar madder tints, coarse, strawberry colour, enormous as a Paul Neron; clustering white shoulders, grouped like the blossoms of an Aimée Vibert Scandens, and, just in front of me, under my eyes, the flowery, the voluptuous, the statuesque shoulders of a tall blonde woman of thirty, whose flesh is full of the exquisite peach-like tones of a Mademoiselle Eugène Verdier, blooming in all its pride of summer loveliness.23

Zooming in on shoulders, the description – a catalogue or inventory of colours and shapes – revolves around the simile that equates woman with a rose. The cliché traps not only women’s bodies – fragmented and scattered in the writing – but the description itself. What is also striking is that the simile works both ways as women are like roses, but roses are labelled with the names of women. Fragments of shoulders, juxtaposed elements separated by semicolons, an abundance of adjectives describing form and colour – all of these compose a picture that is both perceived and drawn by an observer at the same time: “just in front of me, under my eyes.” Surprisingly enough, the third-person narrative introduces an I/eye, an embodied observer who finds himself included in the scene and whose vantage point the reader cannot but espouse. What the text tries to imitate is not simply some visual reality but perception itself, however 23

Ibid., 172-73.

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fragmentary and impressionist it may remain, despite – or because of – multiplicity and abundance. In Imageries, littérature et image au XIXe siècle, Philippe Hamon opposes different modes of reading image and text in the nineteenth century: “The reading of an image is characterized by zigzags, as the eye rapidly moves from one element to another on a flat surface, and such reading challenges the slow and linear progression imposed by the literary text.”24 It is just such linear progression that Moore’s fragmentary syntax partly disrupts and challenges in the passages that have been quoted. To-and-fro movements between zooming in on details (with one’s nose on the scene/canvas) and overall perception also entail a process of fragmentation that is created by the multiplicity of details composing Moore’s textual pictures. Liliane Louvel underlines the function of detail as a miniature image that introduces the visual and the visible in text: “Detail opens ‘the eye of the text’ ... and facilitates a process of visualization.”25 Its frequent use in Moore’s textual pictures leads to hyper-realism and a myopic vision of reality, the counterpart of which is fetishism: what Moore is striving to depict is the female body, yet no global view is achieved. The “erotic arabesques”26 that Moore so appreciated in Zola’s writing become erotic fragments. The flow of adjectives describing form and colour also confers a sensual dimension on Moore’s writing. Some descriptions even achieve synaesthesia, involving as many as the five senses. In A Drama in Muslin, it becomes clear that the emphasis on body and perception – not simply visual perception – leads to sensual writing. Reflecting on his own style in the Preface to the revised edition Muslin, Moore sees himself as a writer “a little over anxious to possess himself of a vocabulary which would suffer him to tell all he saw, heard, smelt, and touched”, the consequence being “a headlong,

24 Philippe Hamon, Imageries, littérature et image au XIXe siècle, Paris: José Corti, 2001, 36: “Enfin, l’image avec son mode de lecture qui lui est propre, mode d’un parcours zigzaguant et rapide de l’œil sur une surface plane, lance un défi au texte littéraire voué au mode linéaire et lent de la lecture.” 25 Louvel, L’Œil du texte, 175: “Le détail ouvre l’œil du texte … et permet au lecteur de visualiser la chose.” 26 Moore quoted by Richard Allen Cave, A Study of the Novels of George Moore, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1978, 17.

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eager, uncertain style”.27 When Mrs Barton and her daughters pay a visit to the dressmakers, a long description of fabrics – a purple patch reminiscent of Zola’s Au Bonheur des dames – shows a style eager to account for physical experience but also to cross boundaries between art forms: Lengths of white silk clear as the notes of violins playing in a minor key; white poplin falling into folds statuesque as the bass of a fugue by Bach; yards of ruby velvet, rich as an air from Verdi played on the piano; tender green velvet, pastoral as hautboys heard beneath trees in a fair Arcadian vale; blue turquoise faille Française fanciful as the tinkling of a guitar twanged by a Watteau shepherd; gold brocade, sumptuous as organ tones swelling through the jewelled twilight of a nave; scarves and trains of mid-night-blue profound as the harmonic snoring of a bassoon; golden daffodils violent as the sound of a cornet; bouquets of pink roses and daisies, charmful and pure as the notes of a flute; white faille, soft draperies of tulle, garlands of white lilac, sprays of white heather, delicate and resonant as the treble voices of children singing carols in dewy English woods; berthas, flounces, plumes, stomachers, lappets, veils, frivolous as the strains of a German waltz played on Liddell’s band.28

Writing, music and painting are associated through the interpenetration of the lexical fields of music and painting and a systematic use of comparisons and references to painters and composers, to genres, and to instruments. No matter how unsuccessful he may be here, Moore seems to have adopted and adapted Pater’s formula, “All art should aspire to the condition of music and of painting”.29 The fabrics are seen, touched, and heard. This is patently a piece of sensual writing in which feelings, colours, forms, and sounds become blended. “Touch is art”, says a character in Lewis Seymour and Some Women, as he criticizes Lewis’ portrait of Lucy Bentham, and more precisely underlines its lack of depths: “If I understand your picture correctly, you wished to decorate a surface, and you have done it, and admirably.”30 Without turning writing into three-dimensional 27 George Moore, Preface, Muslin (1915). Quoted by Judith Mitchell, “Huysmans and George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin”, Dalhousie Review, LXV/1 (1985), 97. 28 Moore, A Drama in Muslin, 162. 29 Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1873), Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986, 37. 30 Moore, Lewis Seymour and Some Women, 200.

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reality, the perception of fabrics and of their sensual potential gives a sense of depths and mirrors the use to which language is put, not just in this excerpt but also more generally in Moore’s writing. For Jean Noël, “Moore is a sensual artist, still in love with the medium he uses, like a painter liking the material for its own sake”.31 Like a painter, or as a painter? It seems indeed that Moore, despite failure as a painter, never forgot the lessons he learnt in the Paris studios, nor his conversations with Manet and Degas. Whether recounting his own story as an apprentice painter in Confessions of a Young Man and prolonging it in Lewis Seymour and Some Women, or debating on art and introducing image in text, Moore returned to painting again and again. His literary venture also involved painting as he strove to cross artistic borders and bridge the gap between painting and writing, exploiting the fertile tensions and oppositions between them. Not only did he blur boundaries between art forms (writing, painting, and music) but he also explored their potential through language. He pushed his medium to its limits and, through trying to transcend it, eventually became the polymorphous artist of his own Confessions of a Young Man and, in addition, a representative of turnof-the-century aesthetics and its ideals of fusion between the arts.

31

Jean C. Noël, George Moore: l’homme et l’œuvre (1852-1933), Paris: Didier, 1966, 468: “Moore, artiste sensuel, est encore épris des qualités du matériau qu’il emploie à la manière d’un peintre qui aime la matière pour elle-même.”

MOORE AND WHISTLER: WRITER AND PAINTER AT LOGGERHEADS ISABELLE ENAUD-LECHIEN

There was almost a generation of difference in age between the American-born artist James McNeill Whistler (1833-1904) and the Irish writer George Moore (1852-1933), yet their names are nowadays intimately linked in art historians’ minds. After recalling the circumstances of their meeting, then Moore’s first references to Whistler, we shall assess the links between Whistler’s “Mr. Whistler’s Ten O’Clock” (1885-88) and The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890)1 and Moore’s Modern Painting (1893). The two men came from fairly wealthy families and both lost their fathers at an early age, Whistler at sixteen, Moore at eighteen. Faced with their relatives’ attempts to discourage them from pursuing artistic studies, their remarkable determination led them to undertake their artistic careers on the continent, away from their countries of origin. First in London, then in Paris, they engaged in a particularly active social life, which did not prevent them from investing considerable energy in their work. The two men met in England, at Victor Barthe’s studio in Chelsea. Opinions differ as to the date of their meeting: some place it during the autumn of 1871, two years after Moore moved to London with his family; others in 1874.2 Whatever the case may be, the young Irishman remembers that during those evening classes:

1

James McNeill Whistler, “Mr. Whistler’s Ten O’Clock”, in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, London: Heinemann, 1890, 131-59. 2 See Adrian Frazier, George Moore 1852-1933, New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2000, 24; Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore, London: Victor Gollancz, 1936, 48; Janet Egleson Dunleavy, George Moore: The Artist’s Vision, the Storyteller’s Art, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1973, 39; Tony Gray, A Peculiar Man: A Life of George Moore, London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996, 69.

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Isabelle Enaud-Lechien Whistler was the attraction .… I picked my way through the easels and stood at the edge of the crowd that collected around the famous artist. His drawings on brown-paper slips seemed to me to be very empty .... His jokes were very disagreeable to me; he did not seem to take art seriously, but I must have disguised my feelings very well, for he asked me to come to see him.

In spite of those rather negative first impressions, and probably flattered by the older man’s interest in him, Moore lost no time in paying him a visit. I was left to look upon the melancholy portrait of his mother which he had just completed, and gathering nothing from it I turned to another picture, a girl in a white dress dreaming by the chimney-piece, her almost Rossetti-like face reflected in the mirror …. I could discover no correct drawing in [the Japanese screen], … I think that I despised and hated him when he capped my somewhat foolish enthusiasm for the pre-Raphaelite painters with a comic anecdote.3

Yet, shortly afterwards Moore was to enthuse over the American artist’s work which, he declared, “subjugated” him.4 As we shall see, one of the striking traits in his character was his capacity for going back on previous spontaneous pronouncements. That being said, Whistler’s invitation clearly shows the artist’s interest in the young Irishman, whose personality was probably already quite charismatic. When Moore arrived at the Gare du Nord in Paris on 13 March 1873, he was twenty-one years old; Whistler was nearly forty and enjoyed a fairly considerable reputation in France as in England. Moore was soon moving in Parisian avant-garde circles, the bohemian world that Whistler had frequented for almost twenty years, and he would always remain attached to the people he met there – Manet in particular – and admit that during that time he lived “like a sponge,

3

George Moore, Vale, in Hail and Farewell (1914), Washington: Colin Smythe, 1985, III, 34. 4 John Lloyd Balderston, “The Dusk of the Gods: A Conversation on Art with George Moore”, Atlantic Monthly, CXVIII (August 1916), 172. I am grateful to Dr Nigel Thorp (Centre for Whistler Studies, University of Glasgow) for drawing my attention to this article, most of which is reprinted in George Moore, Avowals, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1919.

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letting [himself] be soaked, penetrated all over”.5 As we know, writing would gradually take precedence for him over painting. Even before he came to achieve his ambition to write Modern Painting, Moore evinced a strong interest in the work of the American painter, as evidenced by various allusions in his autobiographical texts, his conversations and even his novels. It was in his commentaries on art, nonetheless, that his thoughts on the American artist, whom he soon came to look upon as the herald of a new trend, were the most substantial. If one excepts scattered allusions to Whistler which Moore made while he was preparing himself for battle as an art critic, one of his first in-depth studies of the artist occurs in Chapter 8 of Confessions of a Young Man (1888): Whistler, of all artists, is the least impressionist …. Whistler’s art is classical …. Take his portrait of Duret. Did he ever see Duret in dress clothes? Probably not …. Whistler took Duret out of his environment, dressed him up, thought out a scheme – in a word, painted his idea without concerning himself in the least with the model.6

“Ten O’Clock” and The Gentle Art of Making Enemies versus Modern Painting Both Whistler and Moore wrote several works containing the fruits of their reflections on art. Comparison between them is all the more interesting as Whistler gave Moore a copy of The Gentle Art of Making Enemies with the dedication “To George Moore – for furtive readings”,7 as if ironically echoing the occasionally over-hasty criticisms of the memorialist. Moore considered that as “Ten O’Clock” shared certain views expressed in Modern Painting, it was easier for Whistler to make a witty remark about them than admit that he did not hold a monopoly in aesthetic reflections: “You see Whistler had read Modern Painting, and finding that there were some pages in the book which fell in with his own appreciation of the art of painting he could not do else than suggest to me that Modern Painting was derived from The Ten O’Clock.” Moore was reluctant to give the 5

George Moore quoted by Georges Jean-Aubry in L’Echo de Paris, 21 March 1928,

I. 6

George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man (1888), London: William Heinemann, 1952, 82. 7 Balderston, “The Dusk of the Gods”, 172; Moore, Avowals, 306.

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impression that the attack had scored a hit: “his manner led me to understand that he wished to put a joke upon me, so I begged him to have his joke …. furtive reading, which means that anything George Moore writes – anything good that he writes about painting – was plagiarised from me, James McNeill Whistler.”8 The best method of defence supposedly being attack, he moreover recalled that several of his close friends had already made fun of the American painter’s boastfulness. Whistler made his first public statements on his art on 20 February 1885 at 10 pm, hence the title of his lecture. While Mallarmé was working on its translation into French, Moore was given the opportunity to clarify for him certain idiomatic expressions in the original text. He was therefore familiar with the ideas expressed in the course of those lectures,9 which he had no hesitation in quoting at length several times. Considering that “Ten O’Clock” was “one of the dainty bits of prose in the English language”,10 he gave the impression that he particularly admired the literary qualities of the text, as if its substance – the painter’s theory – had only a limited import.11 “Ten O’Clock” is included in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, recommended by Whistler for a fuller understanding of his work. It comprizes a sequence of appeals, opuscules, letters, catalogues, newspaper articles annotated by the artist, all linked together like the different parts in the demonstration of an essential truth: no outside element should interfere in judgements concerning art. Moore’s previous reflections on art had been contained essentially in Confessions of a Young Man and Impressions and Opinions (1891). The very title of Moore’s later work displays his ambition to go beyond the writing of circumstantial texts mainly based on his personal experiences, and to approach the subject of art through indepth articles, compiled and commented upon – with the permission of the editor of the Speaker. In this respect, the critic’s claim to have written a theoretical work seems better founded than that of Whistler, whose “Ten O’Clock”, with its title referring to a particular set of circumstances, is by no means an indication of the speculative 8

Moore, Avowals, 306. Even if his name appears on the seating plan organized by Whistler (MS Whistler P. 625, Centre for Whistler Studies), Moore did not attend. 10 Balderston, “The Dusk of the Gods”, 172; Moore, Avowals, 306. 11 See Balderston, “The Dusk of the Gods”, 173. 9

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ambition of its author. In the very first chapter of Modern Painting, devoted to the American artist, Moore acknowledges: His character was for a long time incomprehensible to me …. All that seemed discordant and discrepant in his nature has now become harmonious and inevitable … looking at the man I see the pictures, and looking at the pictures I see the man.12

Stumbling blocks: towards a critical dialogue? It is interesting to compare the two artists’ points of view on three of the pronouncements made by Whistler in public. The first is the challenging of the existence of periods in art or of artistic peoples: The Master stands in no relation to the moment at which he occurs – a monument of isolation – hinting at sadness – having no part in the progress of his fellow men …. He is also no more the product of civilisation than is the scientific truth asserted dependent upon the wisdom of a period.13

Whereas, in the early Victorian context, most publications attempted to identify the specificities of national Schools through an iconography or a particular style, or by advancing political, even economic arguments,14 the convictions expressed by Whistler sounded very much like a challenge, even a veritable profession of faith. Indeed Moore reacted vigorously to the questioning of a sort of national determinism, which he attributed to the “cosmopolitanism” of the artist: “Art is nationhood … art reached its apogee two thousand five hundred years ago.”15 He maintained that Greek art and Oriental art were essential sources: We owe everything to the Greeks, even Jesus, and it behoves me to remark here ... that if a shipload of Elgin Marbles had been landed in

12

George Moore, Modern Painting, London: Walter Scott, 1893, 1. Whistler, “The Ten O’Clock”, 154-55. 14 See, for example, Ernest Chesneau, Les Nations rivales dans l’art, Paris: Librairie académique Didier, 1868; Léon Delbos, Les Deux rivales, l’Angleterre et la France, Paris: Savine, 1890. 15 George Moore, “Art and Science”, Speaker, 19 March 1892, 346; rpt in Moore, Modern Painting, 135-36. 13

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And he went on to distinguish various main phases of creation up to the 1880s, thereby marking the diffusion of the “Impressionist” vision only to be followed, he deplored, by the “death of art”. This inevitable decay, Moore asserted, was linked to the development of means of communication, since those very periods and geographical zones that were the richest in art had owed this richness to their comparative ignorance of each other. So the renaissance of art could only be envisaged “after an interval perhaps of many centuries”, an idea similarly expressed by Whistler at the end of “Ten O’Clock”: “We have then but to wait – until, with the mark of the Gods upon him – there come among us again the chosen – who shall continue what has gone before.”17 Moore spoke of this to Balderston: I had that question of an artistic period out with Whistler in Paris. He had discovered that his theory was more or less shaky .… After all, an artistic period only means a time in which there are more good artists than at another time, and you’ll surely not deny that there were more good artists in Florence in the sixteenth century than in the tenth …. We have agreed to call such a fortuitous concourse of atoms an artistic period.18

It is difficult to determine how much credit can be attached to Moore’s memory of a conversation held quite far back in the past and concerning a man whose opportunism and vanity he had so often deplored, notably in Avowals. For Moore, Whistler’s writings aimed not only to proclaim his aesthetic principles but also to justify his selfconfidence and readily boastful nature. The two men apparently agreed more on the relations between art and nature. In his “Ten O’Clock”, Whistler proclaimed:

16

Moore, Avowals, 294. However, even if he thanked Whistler at length for having introduced “the Oriental spirit ... into our Western art”, Moore considered that “though he made and pointed out the way, he has not walked in it” (George Moore, “Art for the Villa”, Magazine of Art, XII [July 1889], 298; rpt in George Moore, Impressions and Opinions, London: David Nutt, 1891, 291). 17 Whistler, “Ten O’Clock”, 159. 18 Balderston, “The Dusk of the Gods”, 172.

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Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful – as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious harmony.19

In a century deeply influenced by scientific discoveries, artistic creation, through a sort of osmosis, sought to base itself on rigorous, technical foundations. Whistler’s systematic choice of precise titles such as Arrangement n° 1/n° 2 … demonstrates his concern to make his pictorial intentions clear to the public, as does indeed his preference for musical terminology – Nocturne; Harmony; Symphony; etc – in a quarter of his titles. Rather than mere anecdote, the painter’s subject should be painting itself, its forms as well as its chromatic arrangements. Moore was aware of these assertions, which he evokes in Confessions of a Young Man and seems to paraphrase in Modern Painting: As the musician obtains richness and novelty of expression by means of a distribution of sound through the instruments of the orchestra, so does the painter obtain depth and richness through a judicious distribution of values …. The colour is the melody, the values are the orchestration of the melody; and as the orchestration serves to enrich the melody, so do the values enrich the colour.20

He takes up Whistler’s terms word for word, at the same time wondering over them: Can I say more? … James McNeill’s point is that Nature is rarely an artist. But may we not say the same of Man? … Indeed …. Are not then Man and Nature equal, both of them being seldom artists? James McNeill would have found no way out of the dilemma …. ”21

19

Whistler, “Ten O’Clock”, 143. George Moore, “Ingres and Corot”, in Modern Painting, 78. Moore makes no mention of the scientific aspect of artistic method, considering that Whistler’s process of selection above all expresses his attachment to Oriental art. 21 Moore, Vale, 34. 20

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If Whistler was concerned that art should be made subservient to education,22 Moore went much further, questioning the capacity of an institution to pass on artistic knowledge: “art is wholly untransmissible, … cannot be repressed, encouraged, or explained; it is something that transcends our knowledge, even as the principle of life.”23 This is one of the rare points on which his judgement apparently never changed throughout his life. And he saw it as strikingly illustrated by the excessively authoritarian treatment of Whistler by the Royal Academy, concluding: “Happily his genius was sufficient for the fight.”24 Moore did not imagine for a moment that the Academy could be reformed, and had no hesitation in demanding its abolition.25 From discord to break-up When the American scriptwriter Balderston saw in Moore’s house a copy of The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, he asked him: “Does not Whistler in his ‘Ten O’Clock’ lecture advance a theory of art which would make all you have said, to put it mildly, untenable?”26 Indeed, in spite of Moore’s declaring that he rejoiced in having understood the man and the artist, many commentaries clearly show their divergences as well as Moore’s misunderstandings of Whistler. In Modern Painting, for instance, he enthuses over Portrait of his Mother: Think of anything if you can, even in the best Japanese work …. When we study the faint, subtle outline of the mother’s face, we seem to feel that there the painter has told the story of his soul more fully than elsewhere.27 22 “So Art has become foolishly confounded with education – that all should be equally qualified …. Art happens – no hovel is safe from it, no Prince may depend on it, the vastest intelligence cannot bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce” (Whistler, “Ten O’Clock”, 150-51). 23 Moore, “Art and Science”, in Modern Painting, 137. 24 George Moore, “The Organisation of Art”, Speaker, 4 June 1892, 676; rpt in Moore, Modern Painting, 133. 25 See George Moore, “Free Trade in Art”, Speaker, 12 March 1892, 315; “The Royal Academy”, Fortnightly Review, LI (1 June 1892), 782; “The New Art Criticism”, Speaker, 25 March, 1 and 8 April 1893, 341, 368, 395; rpt in Moore, Modern Painting, 232-48. 26 Balderston, “The Dusk of the Gods”, 170. 27 Moore, Modern Painting, 10.

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Did he not know what Whistler himself had written of this portrait? Now that is what it is. To me it is interesting as a picture of my mother; but what can or ought the public to care about the identity of the portrait?28

A few lines later, often the case after extravagant praise, the hand of wrath strikes. Moore considers the portrait of Carlyle29 as a failure compared with the first Arrangement in Grey and Black, and declares: A portrait is an exact reflection of the painter’s state of soul …. Mr. Whistler’s portrait reveals certain general observations of life; but has he given one single touch intimately characteristic of his model?

The man who claims to have understood the artist here reproaches him with what he was actually seeking to achieve: an absence of sentimentality and a refusal of the anecdotal in order to highlight the formal qualities of the work. Such contradictions brought a mocking response from several critics, including the Pennells: “George Moore praised and then qualified the praise and never understood as Modern Painting amply proves.”30 Not until after 1890 did Moore and Whistler refer to each other in their correspondence. Their differences of opinion became more pronounced, particularly when three particular matters brought them into conflict. In early September 1890, Whistler quarrelled with Augustus Moore (George’s brother), who had written disparagingly of Mrs Whistler’s first husband, the architect Godwin, in the Hawk.31 A 28 “Art should be independent of all claptrap – should stand alone, and appeal to the artistic sense of eye and ear, without confounding this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love, patriotism, and the like ….. That is why I insist on calling my works ‘arrangements’ and ‘harmonies’” (James McNeill Whistler, “The Red Rag”, World [22 May 1878], 4-5; rpt in Whistler, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies 127-28). 29 James McNeill Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black, n° 2: Thomas Carlyle, 1872-73, Glasgow Art Gallery. 30 Elizabeth R. and Joseph Pennell, The Whistler Journal, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1921, 10. 31 See letters from Augustus Moore to Whistler, 16 October 1883, Centre for Whistler Studies 04175; from Whistler to Hogarth Club, 4 January 1889, Centre for Whistler Studies 02142; from Degas to Whistler, 9 March [1885/1890], Centre for Whistler Studies 00814; from Whistler to Mirbeau, [1/8 October 1890] Centre for Whistler Studies 09311.

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few weeks later George published “Degas, Painter of Modern Life”, an article in which – probably out of solidarity with his brother – he savagely attacked Whistler. When Whistler later called him “one of those despicable journalists always hanging around studios”, Degas unreservedly took the painter’s part, declaring that “Nothing can make me fall out with Whistler!”.32 In 1895, Sir William Eden, an old friend of Moore’s, commissioned Whistler to paint a portrait of his wife, hoping to obtain it at a reduced price. Once the portrait was finished, Whistler, feeling insulted by the sum of a hundred guineas that he received, decided to paint out the head of the model. He was furious at the part played by Moore in the affair and wrote him a scathing note. The public became aware through the press of their subsequent exchange of virulent letters and took it as a joke when Whistler challenged Moore to a duel. The American painter, however, was outraged that the Irish writer did not turn up.33 Finally, when in April 1897 Whistler supported Joseph Pennell in a lawsuit against Walter Sickert – concerning some works produced on lithographic paper – Moore was a witness for Sickert. For the American painter, this betrayal prevented any possibility of his ever envisaging forgiveness. Such disputes gave rise to extremely caustic exchanges between the two men. When, for instance, Whistler wrote to Moore, “I shall always see you with the greatest delight – looking upon you as the original means of bringing about one of my most completely joyful moments!”.34 Moore replied with a typically stinging remark that he 32 From Mallarmé to Whistler, 25 October 1890, Centre for Whistler Studies 13449: “Rien ne peut me brouiller avec Whistler!” See also letter from Whistler to Degas, [16 October 1890?], Centre for Whistler Studies 00818. Following Moore’s article in Magazine of Art, Degas reproached him with having revealed details of his private life and broke up with the writer. “Degas is not deficient in verbal wit”, Moore declared; “Mr. Whistler has in this line some reputation, but … when Degas is present, Mr. Whistler’s conversation is distinguished by brilliant flashes of silence” (Moore, Impressions and Opinions, 225). 33 Letters from Whistler to Moore, 12 March 1895, Centre for Whistler Studies 14182; from Moore to Whistler, 13 March 1895, Centre for Whistler Studies 04183. Whistler demanded that his friends should henceforth have no further contact with the novelist (see, for example, letters from Whistler to William Heinemann, [25/31 March 1895] Centre for Whistler Studies 11273; from Whistler to Sickert [20/24 November 1896] Centre for Whistler Studies 05445). 34 From Whistler to Moore, 7/21 March 1895, Centre for Whistler Studies 04178.

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had no time “to consider the senile little squalls which you address to the papers”.35 In 1902, when asked about Moore, Whistler declared: “George Moore does not exist. He died many years ago.”36 As for Moore, he continued to write regular commentaries on the painter’s work, and during Whistler’s posthumous exhibition in 1905, he confided to Elizabeth Pennell that “the old spell was over him once more, and things seemed more wonderful than ever”.37 Towards an assessment of Moore’s art criticism: an essentially subjective stance In Moore’s very first commentaries, one is struck by the subjectivity of his assertions, linked to his direct or indirect relations with those he studies, their works and what his experience as a painter “revealed to him”. He can thus write: “I understand criticism more as the story of the critic’s soul than as an exact science.”38 The works are studied in such a way as to bring out the pertinence of his assertions. When he identifies in Portrait of Miss Alexander two major sources (Velasquez and Oriental art), his analogies, neither new nor questionable, are there to support his own opinion on the respective values of these references and the feeling of wonder they arouse.39 Some of his judgements are flawed by approximations, in dates or in incomplete references for instance, seemingly destined above all to discredit the personality of the artist. At a time when exhibitions of caricatures were in vogue, Moore, among others, daringly ventured onto personal ground. Even if he attributed some of Whistler’s notable successes, such as the Nocturnes, to the painter’s traits of personality,40 he had no compunction in putting forward his supposed 35

From Moore to Whistler, 11 March 1895, Centre for Whistler Studies 04179. Pennell, The Whistler Journal, 241. According to Nancy Cunard, Whistler apparently said to his mother: “Moore … started long after the rest of us. It will take him a long time to grow up entirely in literature. If he ever writes a really great book, it will be after he is fifty” (Nancy Cunard, Memories of George Moore, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1956, 107). 37 Ibid., 285. 38 Moore, Impressions and Opinions, 43. 39 1872-73, Tate Gallery. “This picture seems to me the most beautiful in the world …. Exquisite and happy combination of the art of an entire nation and the genius of one man – the soul of Japan incarnate in the body of the immortal Spaniard [Velasquez]” (George Moore, “Whistler”, in Modern Painting, 11). 40 “He is even a strong man, but he is lacking in weight, … the Nocturnes, which are clearly the outcome of a highly-strung, bloodless nature whetted on the whetstone of 36

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physical weaknesses, his “lack of nerves”, his “tempérament de chatte”,41 etc, using these alleged characteristics to prove that Whistler is incapable of passing “from masterpiece to masterpiece” like Michaelangelo, Velasquez and Rubens. Beyond Moore’s desire to cut the artist to the quick, the most disconcerting aspect of his remarks is that they reveal a degree of innate naïvety, Moore basing his judgements on risky presuppositions. After all, did the Masters he quotes only paint masterpieces? Some have considered that the eclecticism of his readings partly explains the often radical development of Moore’s tastes in painting, sometimes leading him to contradict himself. In Modern Painting, he comes to consider that the effervescence of the artistic world – which had attracted him so much in Paris – bore within it the dispersion of talents into a multitude of aspirations (symbolists, divisionists, etc), too superficial to become the solid foundation of an art of quality.42 It is therefore unsurprising that he should be criticized for his nostalgic view of his years in Paris and for his incapacity to consider postImpressionist painting as other than a demonstration of fin-de-siècle degeneracy. As Moore himself well knew, some of his awkward turns of phrase were detrimental to the clarity of his expression.43 When he writes: “After praising, it is usual for a critic to execute a change of front as adroitly as he can”, the initial postulate is clear, but he then gets lost in sibylline explanations: “it presupposes that the writer … would have been a greater writer if his temperament and instincts were altered so as to conform more closely to the critic’s ideal.” Similarly, his alternate compliments and criticisms so as to prove the objectivity of his study often prevent a coherent expression of his own opinions, and one is sometimes at a loss to know what his personal viewpoint actually is, as he seems to content himself with passing on generally held views. Moreover, Moore himself admitted to being its own weakness to an exasperated sense of volatile colour and evanescent light” (Ibid., 6). 41 Ibid., 4. 42 See George Moore, “Decadence”, Speaker, 3 September 1892, 285-86; rpt as “Monet, Sisley, Pissarro and the Decadence”, in Moore, Modern Painting, 84-96. 43 He recalls, for instance, that having written in Modern Painting that “The tale is not a pleasant one, but it is a lesson”, he deplored that “negligent phrase” suggestive of a moral role: “The picture is only a work of art, and therefore void of all ethical signification” (Moore, “The New Art Criticism”, in Modern Painting, 234).

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impressionable, and it seems that some of his articles were inspired by thoughts expressed by his friends.44 When one is familiar with the vicissitudes of Moore’s own career, one wonders what motivated him so deeply to defend Whistler’s literary qualities. Can the lack of discernment with which he reproaches his contemporaries not be equally applied to the commentaries made on his own texts? Is his ingenuousness feigned when he declares: I cannot understand how reputations are made …. People used to tell me that my ideas and the construction of my novels were good, but that I could not write. Then somebody called me a great stylist, and now they tell me I can write very well but have no ideas?45

George Moore assessed by Whistler and other critics During his lawsuit against Ruskin Whistler denounced at length the importance attached to the opinions of critics.46 In “Ten O’Clock” he further reproached them with, among other things, observing a work of art not in its essential originality but as the anecdotic account of a bygone moment. Challenging Moore’s capacity to judge the technical characteristics of a work of art, Whistler probably considers him as one of those whom he designates as “appointed preachers”.47 Moore’s multiple paradoxes hindered the development of a mode of thinking that was globally pertinent, if lacking in coherence. His limits were obvious, as shown in his incomprehension of postImpressionist painting, partly due to his lack of detachment. Indeed, his personal impressions took precedence over any in-depth analysis based on soundly argued aesthetic principles. For all that, some appreciate Moore’s capacity to admit his weaknesses, making him instantly accessible, as if they were simply 44

George Moore, “Art Patrons”, in Modern Painting, 148. If Blanche is to be believed, Moore often came round to his opinions during the mid-1880s (see JacquesEmile Blanche, Portraits of a Lifetime, London: Dent, 1937, 142). As Blanche was also close to Whistler, their exchanges may well have led them to adopt positions in common. 45 Balderston, “The Dusk of the Gods”, 173. 46 “I should not disapprove in any way of technical criticism by a man whose life is passed in the practice of the science which he criticises …. I hold that none but an artist can be a competent critic” (Whistler, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, 5-6). 47 Whistler, “Ten O’Clock”, 149.

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youthful mistakes with which his friends should be associated.48 Moore was notoriously reluctant to define his past errors as superficial or approximative personal judgements, even though they were still present in his later works. However, when he deplores for instance the biased attitude of artists commenting on their own works with a reference to “Ten O’Clock”, one wonders whether he is not being selfcritical: “The criticism of a creative artist never amounts to more than an ingenious defence of his own work – an ingenious exaltation of a weakness (a weakness which none suspects but himself) into a conspicuous merit.”49 Even if he does not always draw the right conclusions from his observations, some of them are remarkably sound. Of a Nocturne, for instance, he writes: “There is another nocturne in which rockets are rising and falling, and the drawing of these two showers of fire is so perfect that when you turn quickly towards the picture, the sparks really do ascend and descend.”50 He seems therefore to understand that Whistler was proposing a new definition of space. His intuition regarding the decisive role of the viewer in the reception of a work appears to anticipate the ideas inspiring twentieth-century art and Marcel Duchamp’s famous statement, “It is the viewer who makes the painting”.51 In fact, Moore’s writings on the world of art contain accounts enlivened by his sense of the anecdotic and even, paradoxically, by the contradictions within them. Unconcerned with framing them in a chronology, he unravels the tangled web of his memories, capturing in incisive detail the salient points of the characters he remembers.

48 He confesses, for example, to his sarcastic reaction to the first exhibition of the Impressionists: “So we went to jeer a group of enthusiasts that willingly forfeit all delights of the world in the hope of realizing a new aestheticism …. We could only utter coarse jibes” (Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, 28). 49 Moore, “Whistler”, 3. In Confessions of a Young Man, Moore similarly ironizes: “And his work is in accord with his theory; he risks nothing, all is brought down, arranged, balanced, and made one; his pictures are thought out beforehand, they are mental conceptions” (Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, 82). 50 Moore, “Whistler”, 24. 51 “Ce sont les regardeurs qui font les tableaux” (Marcel Duchamp, Duchamp du signe, Paris: Flammarion, 1975, 187).

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In spite of his approximations, he is generally appreciated for his sense of observation and notably for the precision of his descriptions of works such as Whistler’s Sea and Rain:52 Some would call the Whistler ‘slight’ … I dissent altogether …. I should say that it was fundamental, profound. It was painted in a time when Mr. Whistler had not ceased to think and to feel deeply, and the expression he has given to that receding tide haunts me .…

Concerning the material characteristics of the work, he goes on: “A little blue figure stands between the sea, sand and the sea, a most doleful little figure, full of suggestion and of the most exquisite blue imaginable, lighting up the entire picture.”53 Moore’s remarks on the chromatic qualities of the picture are indeed especially interesting insofar as today the sky is pale blue and the sea greyish-brown. Beyond the praise, such acute perception in the description poses the question of potential colour changes in the work – and consequently the problem of its preservation.54 In this sense we can appreciate the importance of Moore’s accounts of paintings and artists, which have added considerably to our knowledge of them. Also to be emphasized is the active role he played in encouraging the National Gallery to acquire Whistler’s paintings, and his loud indignation when, in spite of his efforts, Whistler’s portrait of his mother was sold to the French government.55 However sarcastic the painter may have been towards him, Moore’s intellectual clear-sightedness remained intact. Blowing hot and cold – as if to assert his fearlessness to take stands exposing him to the condemnation of those concerned, Whistler in particular – and confident in the validity of his opinions and 52

James McNeill Whistler, Sea and Rain, 1865, University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor. 53 George Moore, “The End of the Season”, in Modern Painting, 97-98. 54 On the changes in works linked to chemical alteration, see Isabelle Enaud-Lechien, Whistler, le peintre, le polémiste, Courbevoie: Editions ACR, 1995 and Whistler et la France, Paris: Herscher, 1995. 55 George Moore, “The Society of Portrait Painters”, Speaker, 11 and 18 July 1891, 291, 324. Whistler, certainly aware of Moore’s manoeuvres, and probably bitter about the little support raised, asked Mallarmé to intervene for the French government to buy the painting (late September). Until the last moment Moore tried, in vain, to make him change his mind. See George Moore, “How England Lost her Picture”, Speaker, 19 December 1891, 338.

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impressions, Moore more than once seemed to lose sight of the status he aimed to achieve: that of an art critic with a capacity for analysis, not just description, visibly moving towards the status of a writer skilled in sketching his characters’ essential features.

MAX THE CARICATURIST AND MOORE: CROSSING THE BOUNDARIES OF FRIENDSHIP MARIE-CLAIRE HAMARD

George Moore was often accused of mischievously caricaturing his friends in his writings, but we know his line of defence, which was stated in a letter of 28 October 1912 quoted by Joseph Hone in his 1936 biography of Moore and rightly echoed by Adrian Frazier in his: “Your charge that I have made you [Colonel Moore] seem physically repulsive seems to me … unfounded – that I have caricatured, yes – but I did not think anybody minded that. Max and others have caricatured me out of all human resemblance but I never objected.”1 Max Beerbohm never tired of drawing Moore from the very first days of their acquaintance in 1896 to the very last days of his life in 1956. He proclaimed himself Moore’s friend, but he claimed the right of the artist to disregard his subjects’ feelings: So long as a man’s head interests me, I shall continue to draw it. He is simply an unpaid model of mine and as such should behave.2

Admittedly, the artistic formula for Moore was soon figured out. The author of Esther Waters finds his way into Max’s first collection of drawings, called Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen, published by Smithers in 1896.3 Moore is seen in profile; the head is too big for 1

Adrian Frazier echoes the quotation by Joseph Hone of a letter of 28 January 1912, where Moore expresses surprise at the reactions of his friends after the publication of Hail and Farewell (Adrian Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2000, 384; Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore, London: Victor Gollancz, 1936, 307). 2 Max Beerbohm, Letters to Reggie Turner, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1964, 73. 3 Max’s works are still under copyright and the reproduction of all of the caricatures studied here has proved too expensive. It is possible to find them reproduced in certain books easily available in university libraries. This particular drawing figures in

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a rather frail body that bends forward under its weight. This is a portrait-charge in the tradition of Daumier and Nadar at a time when the practice of Max’s contemporaries and rivals, Spy in Vanity Fair for instance, is closer to the humorous portrait. Although Max will slowly come to the new norm over the years his first representation of Moore still benefits from the full force of comic exaggeration. Three features cannot fail to be noticed: the wisp of hair accentuating the bend of the head; the movement of the hand reaching towards the mouth; the vacant face. A single line goes uninterrupted from the neck and chin along the cheek and curls down to draw an eye, or rather to suggest a look that needs interpretation. The clue is given by Beerbohm in a text of 1913 which he did not use until 1950 when he was asked by the BBC to give a talk on Moore. Published in his last collection of essays, Mainly on the Air, this talk has been abundantly used by Moore’s critics and biographers. Max could be describing this very drawing in the following passage: The finger-tips of his vague, small, inert, white hand continually approached his mouth and, rising thence, described an arc in the air – a sort of invisible suspension-bridge for the passage of his I-de-a to us. His face, too, while he talked, had but one expression – a faintly illumined blank.4

The second drawing is a pen-and-ink sketch, more spontaneous than the preceding, published by the Daily Chronicle in January 1899, which illustrates the feud between Moore and the dramatic critic William Archer.5 Moore is trailing his coat before Archer in order to bludgeon him properly. The dour Scot in full Highland dress is J.G. Riewald, Beerbohm’s Literary Caricatures from Homer to Huxley, London: Allen Lane, 1977, pl. 88, 247. See also David Cecil’s biography of Beerbohm, Max, London: Constable, 1964, 203. 4 Max Beerbohm, Mainly on the Air, 2nd edn (enlarged), London: William Heinemann, 1957, 89. Also quoted by N. John Hall in Max Beerbohm: Caricatures, New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 1997, 45. 5 Max Beerbohm was dramatic critic for the Saturday Review where he had succeeded G.B. Shaw in 1898. His article (“Pat and Sandy”) on the controversy between Moore and Archer concerning Edward Martyn’s play The Heather Field appeared on 28 January 1899 (rpt. in Max Beerbohm, More Theatres, 1898-1903, ed. Rupert HartDavis, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1969, 104-109). The drawing in pen and ink was probably executed at the same time, for it was published by the Daily Chronicle two days later. It is reproduced in Frazier, George Moore, 269.

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manoeuvred by an Irish peasant with his eyes almost closed but the expression of mischievous delight is suggested all the same and the gesture is unmistakable. In 1904 Max had an exhibition at the Carfax Gallery and he published a series of drawings in colour called The Poets’ Corner. Moore, who was then readily associated with W.B. Yeats in Beerbohm’s mind, is represented in similar terms, although his figure is perhaps a little more florid. He bends the other way. He is clearly mystified by his “introduction to the Queen of Fairies” and holds a cane to his mouth in silent wonder. The wisp of hair, the moustache hiding the mouth and the cheek hiding the eye are very close to the portrait-charge but there is something more in the situation: the queen of fairies is no bigger than Tinker Bell, Barrie’s fairy in Peter Pan, then hot off the press, and here is a lady that Moore can hardly hope to turn into a lover. Unsurprisingly, his boasting of aristocratic conquests was such a permanent feature of Moore’s conversation that Max was again to take up the subject explicitly in a drawing that he gave to Edmund Gosse in 1916 – Moore in great mourning is seen in the act of turning away from a tomb. To these visual tokens of grief Max has added an explanatory Elegy, supposedly spoken by his bereaved friend – a perfect epigram of which we may suppose that Moore was never told: Elegy on Any Lady by G. M. That she adored me as the most Adorable of males I think I may securely boast. Dead women tell no tales.6

However, Moore was certainly aware of Max’s portrait-charge of 1909 because it was exhibited at the Leicester Galleries.7 For once he 6

This drawing is reproduced in Rupert Hart-Davis, A Catalogue of the Caricatures of Max Beerbohm, London: Macmillan, 1972, pl. 39, 206. See also Hall, Max Beerbohm. Caricatures, pl. 32, 46. 7 The original of this caricature was the property of a great collector of Max’s drawings, Sir Philip Guedalla, and half his collection has been bequeathed to the Ashmoleum Museum, Oxford. A booklet of twenty-eight caricatures from the collection was issued by the Ashmolean in 1958, simply called Caricatures by Max.

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is facing us. He is obviously talking: the left hand is raised toward a picture; he has lines of concern on his brow and a small mouth can just be discovered in the middle of his moustache. All the expression is concentrated in his closed eyes, suggested by a single line thickening in the middle. This is the moment when William Orpen was painting Homage to Manet with Moore in action, sitting on the edge of his chair, thrusting himself forward the better to convince Hugh Lane, Philip Wilson Steer and Tonks.8 Moore the art critic seems younger on Orpen’s canvas. An earlier canvas by Orpen, a portrait of Moore in 1903, could usefully be compared to these Maxian pictures.9 There Moore sits disconsolately on a chair in a darkened room and his face, turned towards the audience, is illumined by his large eyes. Indeed, Moore has often been painted, by Manet first of all, and by the leaders of the New English Art Club, a movement launched in 1886 and influenced, by and large, by the French Impressionists. They may have been fascinated by the problems such a face as Moore’s could not fail to create for them. In his text of 1950, Max Beerbohm explains that “in Moore’s face, immutable though the expression was, by some physical miracle the features were perpetually remoulding themselves. It was not merely that the chin receded and progressed, nor merely that the oval cheeks went rippling in capricious hollows and knolls; the contours of the nose and brow, they too, had their vicissitudes.”10 Because Moore often sat for painters, Max imagined an encounter between the novelist and an artist’s model.11 On the drawing itself the caption reads: Reappearance of Mr George Moore in Chelsea. Artist’s model: “Ought to be ashamed o’ yourself – coming and taking the bread out o’ us poor girls’ mouth.” This is plate 21. It is also reproduced in Lord Cecil’s biography of Max Beerbohm, 203; Riewald, Beerbohm’s Literary Caricatures, pl. 89, 251, Hall, Max Beerbohm. Caricatures, pl. 33, 47. 8 The painters D.S. MacColl and Walter Sickert are standing and watching the critic. See Frazier, George Moore, pl. 19, 352. The painting belongs to the City Art Gallery of Manchester. 9 This picture, George Moore, at 4 Upper Ely Place, is reproduced in Frazier, George Moore, 330. 10 Beerbohm, Mainly on the Air, 77. 11 Max Beerbohm, Fifty Caricatures, London: William Heinemann, 1913, 45. See also Riewald, Beerbohm’s Literary Caricatures, pl. 90, 253.

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Reappearance of Mr George Moore in Chelsea, Sir Max Beerbohm, pencil study (c. 1912). The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, The Morris Library, University of Delaware Library.

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It is signed and dated “MAX, 1909”. When it was included in the volume Fifty Caricatures in 1913, the printed title had become “Rentrée of Mr George Moore into Chelsea”. Moore affected to talk French and believed that he had a Parisian accent, to Beerbohm’s intense delight.

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Gaffer George, Sir Max Beerbohm, ink and watercolour (c. 1909), with additional caption inscribed on separate leaf. The Mark Samuels Lasner Collection, The Morris Library, University of Delaware Library.

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After the Great War Max’s models no longer appear in evening dress and Moore’s figure becomes uncharacteristic. Only the face retains its personality and the fun now resides mostly in the situation. The best of these later drawings belongs to the series “The Old and the Young Self” of 1924, published in Observations, Max’s last volume, in 1925. There Edmund Gosse, Arnold Bennett, Augustus John the painter, and several others are confronted by their own pasts, their youthful ambitions. In Moore’s case, the dialogue is funny although the point is a little facile.12 On the contrary the contrasting figures are wonderful because Max has reconstructed the profile of the Young Moore out of his full face portrait by Manet. And this time, the Old Moore does not reach with his right hand for his mouth, but for his breast, showing “the only novelist since Balzac”. Max often introduced Moore’s characteristic profile in a group portrait too. In 1908 he imagines a deputation of his favourite victims “urging him, in the cause of our common humanity, and of good taste, to give over”. Moore bends his head between Pinero and Henry James.13 In 1925 he stands in the last row of “Some Persons in the Nineties”, next to Sickert and Le Gallienne.14 However, very soon Max was to stop publishing his drawings: it was a young man’s game, he told Behrman.15 And indeed, he no longer caught the characteristics of the younger generation of writers and artists, for he was better inspired by those of his youth: one thinks of the fine figure of Aubrey Beardsley on the right of “Some Persons of the Nineties”, as well as 12

The caption reads: Young Self: “And have there been any painters since Manet?” Old Self: “None.” Young Self: “Have there been any composers since Wagner?” Old Self: “None.” Young Self: “Any novelists since Balzac?” Old Self: “One.”

It is reproduced in Riewald, Beerbohm’s Literary Caricatures, pl. 91, 255; Hall, Max Beerbohm. Caricatures, pl. 31, 45; Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, pl. 25, 439. 13 Hart-Davis, Catalogue of the Caricatures of Max Beerbohm, pl. 6, 183. 14 The original drawing is in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. It is also reproduced in Caricatures by Max, pl. 1; Riewald, Beerbohm’s Literary Caricatures, pl. 51, 153; Hall, Max Beerbohm. Caricatures, pl. 62, 77. 15 “I seemed to have mislaid my gift for dispraise. Pity crept in” (S.N. Behrman, Conversation with Max, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1960, 116).

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Max’s own silhouette, more boyish than ever. He went on caricaturing the authors of the books in his library, on the flyleaf or on the title page, for the pleasure of his friends or sketching a portrait or two for a special occasion. Yet his Old Self remained within the bounds of friendship.

Some Persons of “the Nineties” Little Imagining despite their Proper Pride and Ornamental Aspect, how much they will interest Mr Holbrook Jackson and Mr Osbert Burdett, Sir Max Beerbohm, 1925. Ashmoleum Museum, University of Oxford.

II. AUTHORSHIP AND AUTHORITY

GEORGE MOORE AND COLLABORATIVE AUTHORSHIP ADRIAN FRAZIER

Moore was so single-mindedly a literary person that life itself was for him essentially authorship, and he turned all relationships into literary collaborations. In George Moore on Parnassus, one of Helmut Gerber’s editions of Moore’s letters, the correspondents may be Secretaries, Publishers, Printers, Agents, Literati, Friends, and Acquaintances, but Moore uses them all as collaborators in his literary enterprizes.1 Secretaries such as Mona Kingdon he keeps busy taking down his dictation and typing up drafts of works-in-progress. He employs research assistants like Margaret Gough to go to the British Library and read up on subjects for him. He wheedles his old friends in the National Library of Ireland, W.K. Magee and Richard Best, to do research for his novels before they are written and to edit them after they are drafted. He pays Virginia Crawford to write letters in the person of the female teacher in The Lake (1906), letters he then incorporates verbatim into that novel. He supervises Lennox Robinson in a dramatization of Esther Waters, and suppresses Robinson’s contribution; then passes the same novel on to Barrett Clark for a further attempt at making the novel stageworthy. He encourages the young American James Whitall to write a book modelled on Confessions of a Young Man and construed so as to lend credence to the fictional element of “Euphorion in Texas”.2 In a weird literalization of the metaphor of literary offspring, Whitall was to pretend to be born in Texas, as Moore’s child by Honor Woulfe. In that particular arrangement, Moore insisted his own contribution be suppressed. He pays Irish writer James Stephens to put folk idioms 1

George Moore on Parnassus: Letters (1900-1933) to Secretaries, Publishers, Printers, Agents, Literati, Friends, and Acquaintances, ed. Helmut E. Gerber, Newark: U of Delaware P, 1988. 2 A story originally published in The English Review of July 1914, and later reprinted in the 1915 Heinemann edition of Memoirs of My Dead Life.

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into Moore’s drafts of the stories by Alec Trusselby in A StoryTeller’s Holiday. In fact, from the late 1870s and the first play he wrote with Bernard Lopez, Martin Luther, Moore was at all times involved in at least one literary collaboration, sometimes on works that resulted from combined efforts but that he, and he alone, signed, sometimes on works of publicly acknowledged co-authorship, and sometimes on works in which by agreement Moore’s own name does not appear. Since the publication of Michel Foucault’s essay, “What Is an Author?”, there has been widespread interest in the exploration of how notions of authorship changed through history.3 At all times, the practice of authorship has been more complex than a relationship between a single person as cause and one text as effect. Shakespeare, for instance, was not the only author involved in writing Shakespeare’s plays: contemporary London playwrights worked on parts of some of them, and the scripts for others were altered by actors and managers in production. But the actual varieties of collaborative activity in Moore’s work match in number and complexity anything that has been proposed in literary theory or commonly found in the history of literature. He was a feverishly conspiratorial writer. Just to take the case of drama, Moore divided the labour of composition between himself and others in many ingenious ways. With A Fashionable Beauty (1887), Moore teamed up with his brother Augustus to write the lyrics for the musical, but they stole the plot from a French play (a piece of involuntary collaboration by the French author), and assigned the musical element to Jimmy Glover. For The Strike at Arlingford (1893), Moore sketched out the story for a play about a strike, in which the labour leader is seduced by an aristocratic lady, and presented this to an actor-manager, but for progress beyond that point, he turned to professional dramatist Arthur Kennedy, who was evidently paid both for his labours and his silence.4 Moore had come to realize that while he could describe a scene in a novel, he 3

Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?”, in Michel Foucault: Language, CounterMemory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard, trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977, 113-38. Originally a lecture before the Society at the Collège de France, 22 February 1969, it was first published in the Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie, LXIII/3 (1969), 73104. 4 George Moore, “To Clara Lanza”, 26 October 1889, in The Letters of George Moore, 1863-1901, ed. Robert Becker, diss., U of Reading, 1980, 623-24.

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could not write a scene in dialogue, and plays are, after all, on the face of it, dialogue.5 In these collaborations, the parts of the composition were shared out among specialists. Behind the composition of The Bending of the Bough (1900) lies a novelistic degree of social complexity, in which composition rolls on in waves of rewriting. Edward Martyn, as a result of conversations with Yeats and especially George Moore, wrote a play called The Tale of a Town, which Moore and Yeats believed stood in need of serious editing. At some point, the editing went so far that Martyn decided it was no longer his play at all. In exasperation and confusion, Martyn left his friends free to continue their revisions. Moore chopped and changed characters and reconstructed the Acts, and then turned the manuscript over to Yeats, Douglas Hyde and AE, who each added political epigrams and allusions to Irish political figures and events. Moore alone signed the play, as no one else wished to do so. Martyn wound up renouncing the whole effort, though the play was a stage success and Martyn had as much claim as anyone to sole authorship. For Diarmuid and Grania in 1901, a new division of labour was attempted: Yeats wrote Diarmuid and Moore wrote Grania. As neither was able to write dialogue that works on stage, the result was imperfect. Just as some authors publish “found poems”, Moore constructed a play around a “found character” – The Coming of Gabrielle (1920). A countess who admired his novels had been writing Moore brilliantly funny letters,6 and he felt he just could not keep such treasures to himself, so he wrote a play about himself receiving those very same letters, and reading them out to dinner guests. None of these plays is a great play, but together they illustrate the manner in which the composition of a literary work is a complicated enterprise, divisible into many parts, and those parts may be undertaken by different people, according to their own specialized talents. Writing is far more like movie making than is often allowed. When a movie concludes, the credits roll on minute after minute: there is usually more than one credit for writing, story by one author, and 5

Clara Lanza, “My Friendship with George Moore”, The Bookman (New York), 47 (July 1918), 483. 6 George Moore’s Correspondence with the Mysterious Countess, eds David B. Eakin and Robert Langenfeld, ELS Monograph Ser. 33, U of Victoria Dept of English: U of Victoria P, 1984.

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screenplay by another. There is a director, who has an assistant, who has assistants, and they make changes to the screenplay. The actors frequently have been called upon to ad lib. A whole firm of editors then takes over and leaves out half of what was filmed, and may dub in new lines. In sum, scores of talented people are involved in the authorship of a single film. With a play or poem or novel, the number of those involved in composition may be fewer than in a film, but that number is still more than one. That the writing not just of dramas but also of novels was for Moore a team activity is made clear by the case of Evelyn Innes, Moore’s novel about a Wagnerian opera singer. In writing the book, Moore came up against his own limited understanding of music. He picked up a lot from reading Edouard Dujardin’s La Revue Wagnérienne, but he also turned for help to his friend Edward Martyn. The passage from the manuscript he gave Martyn had blanks in it, blanks Moore wished Martyn to fill in with appropriate technical terms. When Martyn failed to supply the necessary, Moore turned to the lute-maker Arnold Dolmetsch, who gave the author a paragraph in which there is much talk of altos, trebles, basses, and the pure third, and this paragraph was put straight into the novel.7 In that same novel, a lead character named Ulick Dean is a portrait of W.B. Yeats. The plot required that character to write a love-letter to the opera-singer. So Moore asked Yeats to write the letter on behalf of Ulick Dean, and he did so (it appears in the Oxford University Press edition of Yeats’ letters). Yeats also edited the manuscript of Evelyn Innes with particular attention to bringing the figure of Ulick Dean into focus, the better to mirror the original. About these contributions to his work, Moore suggested that it would be best if Yeats kept quiet, as reports of the collaboration would only “give occasion for some vain merriment”. “I am willing”, Moore concluded, “to take credit for work which I have not done without assistance so that the few who are capable of seeing may see its beauty”.8 That justification may sound self-satisfied and aesthetically pretentious, but it was indeed true that Moore’s sole aim was to write the best book possible, and to do that

7

George Moore, “To Arnold Dolmetsch” (late August 1895?), in Becker, Letters of George Moore, 1001. 8 Letters to W. B Yeats, eds Richard J. Finneran, George Mills Harper, and William M. Murphy, London: Macmillan, 1977, I, 45.

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meant that he had to accept humbly that he could not be the book’s sole author. Even this formulation – for the sake of the work, taking credit for work Moore was unable to do so well himself – does not quite capture the multiple constituents of author and text. Not only might a text have multiple authors, but the primary author might actually be made up out of many people’s work. This point is strangely yet clearly made by Moore in a 1911 letter to his old friend Edouard Dujardin. Moore enclosed with this letter a draft of his response, in French, to his niece, a Carmelite nun who had requested that Moore burn all his books and rejoin the Catholic Church. Would Dujardin kindly revise Moore’s reply to his niece? Whether Moore was asking for Dujardin’s editorial assistance because Moore’s French was imperfect or because Dujardin’s theological expertise was considerable, it seems strange to send a draft overseas of a personal letter to a family member for expert revision, before putting the polished article into the post. Moore gives the following reason for doing so: “The correspondence of a man of letters is never wholly private.”9 Apparently, a distinction is implied between “George Moore, the man of letters” and “George Moore, the uncle”. The man of letters, like his books, is a work product in the construction of which many hands have labored, and for public benefit, rather than private glory. If Moore frequently appropriated (sometimes with pay) the labour of other writers – on occasion to the extent that he laid himself open to charges of plagiarism – then he often freely gave constructive assistance to other writers without seeking recognition. Probably the most successful case of such ghost authorship is Father and Son (1907), Edmund Gosse’s classic late Victorian autobiography. In 1896, Moore read his friend’s biography of his father Philip Gosse, and an idea suddenly filled him with terrific literary excitement. Moore grabbed his hat, hailed a cab, and hastened to Gosse’s club. After warming Gosse up with praise for the biography, Moore explained that the biography had revealed to him a much better book that could be written, the story of the religious father and the literary but irreligious son, from the child’s point of view. “His influence on you, and yours on him”, Moore explained, and a “record that will be full of sympathy, no reproach”, with a background of Plymouth 9

Letters from George Moore to Ed. Dujardin, ed. John Eglinton, New York: Crosby Gaige, 1929, 88.

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Brethren.10 Later, when Gosse hit a snag in the composition of the book, Moore told him the snag would disappear if the book were written in the first person, advice Gosse was happy to accept. Thereafter, Moore, who was a regular Sunday luncheon guest at the Gosses’, never missed an opportunity of asking how the great psychological novel was going. That Father and Son was ever written, and that it was written as it was, are both owing to Moore, and he never went out of his way to claim credit for it, though Father and Son is more famous and better-selling to this day than any book Moore ever wrote. He was not always so modest. In 1887, he encouraged Julia Davis Frankau to write her first novel, and apparently laid down the lines of that novel for her as decisively as he did for Gosse with Father and Son. Dr. Philips is a serious, searing, naturalist novel of a type different from and vastly superior to anything Julia Davis Frankau wrote afterwards, and she had written nothing before. After the book was published (by Vizetelly, Moore’s publisher), it made something of a sensation, partly because of its Jewish anti-Semitism and partly because it treats adultery so straightforwardly. Moore could not bring himself, after such success, to allow his part in its authorship to go unnoticed. Writing to the reviewer William Archer, Moore divulged his role: “By the way, you read Dr. Philips; I suppose you recognized my hand in it?”11 Archer had not, but he could be relied upon not to keep the news to himself. Julia Davis Frankau, who wrote under the name “Frank Danby”, got her own back with her next novel, A Babe in Bohemia (1889). Moore contributed to this novel not by supervising its composition but by becoming a character in it. “Sinclair Furley” is at once both recognizable as Moore and contemptible as a man. He has just one approach to attractive women: to propose collaboration. First, he stares at the woman; second, he demands she talk to him, and tell him her secrets; third, he declares he has discovered genius in her. “I am sure you are clever”, he tells Lucilla:

10

Evan Charteris, The Life and Letters of Edmund Gosse, London: Heinemann, 1931, 308-309. 11 George Moore, “To William Archer”, 14 September [1887], in Becker, Letters of George Moore, 444-45.

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“I am sure you could dance. I am a good judge, and I see it in your walk. Did you ever hear of Margaret Taylor? I invented her. I told her she could sing, and she sang, and had an enormous success. You are cleverer than she is. I can see it. You must let me give you lessons. We will get up an entertainment together.”12

Later in the narrative, Sinclair Furley keeps himself so busy reading Lucilla his stories that he forgets to make love to her. All he really wants from a woman, it is said, is a friendship that “necessitated talent on both sides – a supplementing and completing talent”.13 He is not really interested in sex, just in art. Lucilla herself is looking for love, not fame or notoriety, for which another will claim the credit. Amidst these examples of collaboration, one can make out all the various types of employees in a publishing or film-making company and credit-lines in their products: Agent Commissioning editor Contributing Editor Copy Editor Researcher Writing Partner “Story by …” “Dialogue by …” “Location work by …” “Based on the life of …” “Sequel to …” “With thanks to … for lyrics from ….” Script Doctor Reader Censor Critic Publicist

The paradox is that while writing is in all cases, and especially in the case of George Moore, a social and collective enterprise, its products are chiefly valued for the degree to which they at once impart lifelikeness to many characters and secrete a single personality. The Tragedy of King Lear is one of the greatest plays ever written because 12 13

Frank Danby, A Babe in Bohemia, London: Spencer Blackett, 1889, 110. Ibid., 114.

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it has in it the unforgettable characters of Cordelia and her nasty sisters Goneril and Regan, the good and bad brothers Edmund and Edgar, the decent and noble servant Kent, and, naturally, Lear himself, but also because all of these characters are Shakespearean, in their powers of expression and capacity to plumb the limits of human experience. Something comparable can be said of War and Peace: it contains the whole world, and yet it is all Tolstoi. Moore treasured that same quality of personality decanted into words, and paradoxically he sought the help of others in order to achieve it. Moore’s own particular path to the achievement of personality in prose was through a confessional reverie, not a confession of sins in order to overcome guilt, but a stream-of-consciousness release from all shame, in which he lets down all guard. By an intimate sharing of personal secrets, Moore aimed to bring himself before the reader and draw the reader close to himself. He comes to understand this about himself in the course of writing an 1890 letter to Clara Lanza, the American novelist Moore never met but to whom he made love in letters. After writing to Lanza of the final break-up of his ten-year affair with a mistress in Paris, Moore continues, Dear me, what am I not writing – [a delightful way of saying he holds nothing back] But why not? I want my letters to interest you, and I can only do this by making them personal. And the sentences I have just written are strangely and intensely personal, so much so that they have brought you quite close to me, on the edge of this table of red cloth. I can see the face so perfectly white more clearly than I have ever seen it before and all the thick flaxen curls throwing the faintest shadow on the neck. I hope you do not mind my writing to you exactly as I felt at the moment. Why should you? A match is all that is required and all my rambling musing is at an end as if I had not mused at all.14

And while there is no reason to believe that this passage was ever revised (apart from my silent correction of spelling and punctuation), had Moore meant to publish it, nothing would have prevented him

14

George Moore, “To Clara Lanza”, 4 July [1890], in Becker, Letters of George Moore, 666.

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from asking the assistance of friends in perfecting its impression of spontaneity.15 For the final part of this essay, I would like to focus on what I believe is a remarkable case of personal confession by Moore, but in a novel of which he did not write a word. At some time in 1920 when Moore was working on Heloise and Abelard, he went to a party at which people were telling stories around the fire, true stories. One of the guests, the widow Mrs Arthur Harter, whose maiden name was Ethel Maud de Fonblanque, told a story about Juliet, a friend of hers who had married an Italian and lived in Florence.16 Juliet was slightly jealous because in her whole life she had had but one lover in addition to her husband. Still, this lover had meant everything to her. In fact, he was, unbeknown to her husband, most likely the father of the second of her two sons, though Juliet could not be absolutely sure. Out of devotion to the boy as much as to Juliet, the lover remained single and a friend of the family through many years, until, when the boy was twenty, Juliet’s husband died. The way was open then for the lovers to marry, after a decent Italian interval of two years, but during this interval, the boy who may have been their son became engaged to

15

Part of the letter – or its subject – was soon thereafter developed by Moore into an article, published as “Notes and Sensations”, in The Hawk, 4 September 1890, 134. 16 Mrs Arthur Harter was, before her marriage to Arthur Harter, Ethel Maud de Grenier de Fonblanque, younger daughter of Albany de Grenier de Fonblanque. She had married Arthur Cornwell on 17 February 1881; he was then a master in a firm of East India merchants in the City of London. They had one child, but in December 1883 obtained a legal separation. In January 1886, Mr Cornwell emigrated to the United States, but meanwhile he had hired detectives to watch his wife. After his departure to America, the detectives observed Ethel Maud leaving the house of Mr Arthur Harter at one in the morning. He sued for divorce, and in the trial a valet formerly in the service of Mr Harter and a parlour maid formerly in the service of Mrs Cornwell testified that they had observed the pair engage in familiarities. A divorce was granted, and subsequently Ethel Maud married Mr Harter. In March 1894, she published a volume of poems with Leonard Smithers, entitled A Chaplet of Love Poems. A number of the love poems were from a mother to her children. Thereafter, Mrs Harter often appears in The Times in lists of those present at the weddings and funerals of notable people, many of them titled. She was also noticed as an executive in the Anglo-Italian Literature and Dante Society. Evidently, she was a member of the social set of the Sitwells. On 18 July 1939, an auction was held at Sotheby’s of her things, including paintings by Fragonard and Sir Theodore Lawrence. She died on 4 October 1942; the service was held at the Catholic Church in South Ascot.

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an American divorcee who, as the result of an accident, had become infertile. Juliet’s lover was the last of the line in an Italian family of minor nobility, and he was horrified that he might be deprived of an heir one generation on if he married Juliet. From his point of view as an Italian Catholic aristocrat, the boy’s choice of a bride was entirely wrong – an American, a divorcee, and incapable of providing an heir. In a burst of desperation, he explained to the boy that he intended to make him his heir, and that he was, truth be told, the boy’s natural father. This shocking information had the horrible consequence of making the boy resent his mother, veer in loyalty to the deceased husband, hate the lover, and commit himself utterly to his fiancée. So the Italian count did his duty and married an eligible and wealthy younger Italian woman. Juliet was distraught. On hearing this story, Moore cried out, “You must write that”. Mrs Harter had published a book of poems in 1895, but she had never written a novel, or even a story. But Moore’s interest in her turning this tale into a novel was emphatic and unflagging. He promised to leave his Saturday afternoons free to listen to each chapter as it was written and to give her advice on how to manage the narrative; she could not fail to write a good novel. On 2 September 1920, Moore walked from his Ebury Street house to Mrs Harter’s residence, 33 Montpellier Square, but was disappointed to find her not home.17 By 18 October, however, they had begun the collaboration during a luncheon at Mrs Harter’s. Moore suggested that the narrative unfold in a conversation between Juliet and her English friend Laura, who is happily married but entertains light affairs with a succession of men:18 the women should discuss the art and science of adultery, how the longest affairs are the ones that begin most quickly, and was it possible to have more than one affair going at a time. On 19 January 1921, Moore invited Mrs Harter to Ebury Street to read him what she had written thus far. In their next session on 3 February 1921, he was irritably dissatisfied with her work.19 She was forgetting to carry out the design the novel. The point, he explained, was to weave two narratives, past and present, closely, undetectably, 17

George Moore, “To Mrs Harter”, 2 September [1920], Berg Collection, 63B1382, New York Public Library. 18 George Moore, “To Mrs Harter”, 18 October 1920, Berg Collection. 19 George Moore, “To Mrs Harter”, 3 February 1921, Berg Collection.

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together, with the story of Juliet’s tragic love affair emerging gradually in conversation, as she tells more than she means to do, moving toward a point of absolute candour. Two weeks later, he was able to congratulate Mrs Harter on her progress. The final chapter was in sight, and Moore promised to give her “a little arrangement that will bring the book to a harmonious end”. It is impossible to be certain of what this “little arrangement” was, but it may have been the development in which one of Laura’s wealthy male friends comes to take a romantic interest in Juliet, and this in turn causes Juliet to renew her own interest in life. When May 1921 arrived, Mrs Harter was still at work on what Moore called her “very pretty novel”. By then the two had become friends who greeted one another with warm embraces. She wrote that she missed him when he was away. On 16 June 1921, Moore admitted that he missed her too. Would she like to accompany him on his August visit to Dieppe, where he would be visiting Nancy Cunard? They could stay at a hotel. It would, he promised, be delightful.20 Evidently, Mrs Harter did not accompany Moore on this interesting expedition, but she did arrive at Ebury Street one Saturday in October to read him the last chapter of her book. On this occasion, Moore insisted on one title for the novel rather than another. Her idea of calling it The End of It All was impossible, and would cause the book to be read, Moore declared, only by servant girls. A Love Conference was much better; it would assure potential buyers that the book was not a rehash of other novels.21 Having got his way, Moore recommended the book to his publisher, T. Werner Laurie, assuring him A Love Conference would be likely to sell fifteen- or twenty- thousand copies.22 Laurie sent it to the publisher’s reader, who rejected the book. Moore was furious. Laurie was like a sick man who goes to a great specialist (that is George Moore) for a diagnosis, and, having received his opinion, then prefers the advice and treatment of a local practitioner (that is the publisher’s reader).23 Moore then passed the book to W.H.

20

George Moore, “To Mrs Harter”, 16 June 1921, Berg Collection. George Moore, “To Mrs Harter”, Thursday; undated, Berg Collection. 22 George Moore, “To T. Werner Laurie”, 14 October 1921, in Gerber, George Moore on Parnassus, 547. 23 George Moore, “To T. Werner Laurie”, 14 November 1921, ibid., 555. 21

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Heinemann, who accepted it promptly and published the book in May 1922.24 At this point, one may ask why did Moore take such trouble seeing to it that Mrs Harter turned her fireside tale into a novel? During this period he was hard at work, often for seven or eight hours a day, finishing Heloise and Abelard and then writing the stories for In Single Strictness. It was not characteristic of Moore to take so much time out from his own work to indulge a friend, and Mrs Harter had not, originally, even been a friend. Arguably, Moore’s motivation can be found in a dispute in which he had recently been involved with Lady Cunard. He had often wished to dedicate a novel to her, and she had always declined the honour. Finally, he was determined that she should permit him write a public dedication to her of Heloise and Abelard. She remained very cautious. He wanted the world to know that they had for decades been lovers and that Nancy Cunard was their child, but she did not want the world to know anything of the sort. In December 1920, she demanded that he provide her with a copy of his dedication before sending it to the printer. The dedication is a flowery paragraph in deliberately stilted French.25 Still, she consulted with the chief justice of the high court, Lord Buckmaster. She then proposed to Moore that he could print this paragraph on one condition: that he leave her name out of it. So Heloise and Abelard is dedicated to “Madame X”. It was certainly painful to Moore that Lady Cunard did not wish to be publicly associated with him or his writings. The beauty of the story told by the fireside by Mrs Arthur Harter was that it bore such a similarity to the story of Moore’s relationship with Lady Cunard. She too had married young, and he had become her lover not long after her marriage. She too was not absolutely certain who the father of her child was, Sir Bache Cunard or George Moore. Moore also maintained a long-term relationship with the Cunard family, so that he might continue his affair with Maud and oversee the growth of Nancy. However, the analogy breaks down at various points. Maud had only one girl; in the novel, Juliet has two boys. Maud had many lovers; Juliet had only one. Nonetheless, in soliciting from a woman’s 24

George Moore, “To Mrs Harter”, 12 February [1922], Berg Collection. George Moore, “To Maud, Lady Cunard”, 26 December [1920], in Letters to Lady Cunard 1895-1933, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis, London: Hart-Davis, 1957, 108-109. 25

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point of view an uninhibited account of a long-term affair that led to the birth of a child, Moore could enjoy at several removes the pleasure of confessing a secret he was forbidden by Lady Cunard to reveal. For someone who enjoyed awkward ironies in life as much as Moore did, it must have given him great pleasure to invite Mrs Harter to join him in paying a visit to Nancy Cunard in Dieppe. It appears that Moore let Lady Cunard in on his elaborate game. Once The Love Conference was completed, Moore wrote to Mrs Harter that he had “met the other day the lady that was kind enough to come to Orelay with me” – a reference to “Doris” in “The Lovers of Orelay” from Memoirs of My Dead Life (1906), and Doris is modelled on Maud Cunard. “She was delighted to see me again”, Moore continues, “and was without a word of reproof for the chronicle of our loves. She is now the mother to two healthy children and a husband who does not come into the drawing room.” The last sentence is false and a bit of a joke. Lady Cunard was no longer living with her husband, and Nancy – now grown-up, and none too healthy – was her only child. But it may be true that Moore teased Lady Cunard that The Love Conference was a chronicle of their loves, and that she did not reprove him for it. For who would be likely to guess at the implication? Even if someone did guess, how absolutely deniable it was. George Moore had not made up the original story on which the novel is based, and he had not written a single sentence of it. Indeed, he evidently never held a page of the manuscript in his hand, only listened to it being read. Yet The Love Conference is George Moore’s own confession of the great secret of his life.

CROSSING BORDERS: MOORE AND YEATS IN THE THEATRE EAMONN R. CANTWELL

George Moore’s literary work crossed many borders, as described in the essays in this collection, but it was the breaching of a very particular type of border – an intellectual and moral one, which caused the sundering of his relationship with his great contemporary and onetime friend, the poet and playwright W.B. Yeats. In this essay I will look at how, following one reasonably successful collaboration, the trust which is necessary between collaborating writers and the recognition that borders must be agreed and sustained, as they had been, although with considerable difficulty and much argument, in their first collaboration, broke down in their ill-fated effort to work together to produce the play which was eventually published in 1902 under Yeats’ name as Where There Is Nothing. Moore and Yeats first met in the Cheshire Cheese pub in London in May 1894. Yeats was twenty-nine years old with books such as The Wanderings of Oisin, The Countess Cathleen and various legends and lyrics, The Celtic Twilight, and the recently published play The Land of Heart’s Desire to his name, while Moore, thirteen years older, had already published eight novels, including A Modern Lover, A Drama in Muslin and Esther Waters, as well as books of poetry, plays and essays. At this meeting, the conversation, as described by Moore in Ave, turned after some initial fencing, to talk of the theatre and of Moore’s experience in writing and producing his play The Strike at Arlingford in London in February the previous year. However, notwithstanding a common interest in the theatre, the relationship between the two writers did not immediately prosper and it was more than a year before they met again when both were living in the Temple area in London. During the next few years their acquaintance developed with some support from Lady Gregory, and while Moore was not in the

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west of Ireland in the summer of 1897 when the idea for an Irish Literary Theatre was first advanced, as Adrian Frazier tells us, “From the very start, however, he was part of the plans for that theatre”.1 Frazier describes how Moore came to Dublin during the controversial run of Yeats’ The Countess Cathleen in May 1899 and involved himself, with great delight, in the ongoing arguments about the morality of Yeats’ play. In the autumn of that year, much to Lady Gregory’s dismay, a proposal to collaborate on a play for the Irish Literary Theatre on the theme of Diarmuid and Grania was agreed between Moore and Yeats. Writing to his sister Lily on 1 November 1899, Yeats described the progress to date and detailed how the work was to be divided: We made the first draft while I was in Tillyra – the “scenario” that is a very full & rather lengthy account of all the scenes written like a story – & Moore is now writing the play out fully. He will then give it to me & I will go over it all putting it into my own language so as to keep the same key through out & making any other changes I see fit & sent [for send] it back to Moore.2

The collaboration over Diarmuid and Grania became increasingly fractious and generated considerable correspondence extending over a period of more than a year, much of which has been published in Volumes II and III of Yeats’ Collected Letters3 and in Volume I of Letters to W.B. Yeats.4 A few quotations from the letters of Moore to Yeats give a flavour of his thinking and show how the supposedly agreed borders in the division of labour were under threat: “My dear Yeats …. If it was your intention all along to be supreme in command I wish you had taken the scenario and written the play”, and “For me to hand over a play the greater part of which is written by me, for final

1

Adrian Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, New Haven, CT and New York: Yale UP, 2000, 264. 2 W.B. Yeats, “To Lily”, 1 November 1899, in The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats 1896-1900, eds Warwick Gould, John Kelly, and Deirdre Toomey, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997, II, 461. 3 Ibid., and The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats 1901-1904, eds John Kelly and Ronald Schuchard, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994, III. 4 Letters to W.B. Yeats, eds Richard Finneran, George Mills Harper, and William Martin Murphy, London: Macmillan, 1977, I.

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correction is an impossible proposal.”5 Yeats was prepared to concede that Moore had a greater knowledge of the stage but was not prepared to go further: On the question of style however I [will] make no concession. Here in your turn you must give way to me .... Remember that our original compact was that the final words were to be mine.6

Moore, however, has amusingly described, in Ave, Yeats’ preposterous notion of having the play written in French, translated into English, then into Irish and finally back to English. The writing of Diarmuid and Grania went through many revisions and generated much argument before it was eventually completed. The revisions, which show in detail how the work developed, were published in 2005 in the extensive Cornell Edition, edited by J.C.C. Mays of University College Dublin,7 so I am not going to dwell on them here. The play, which featured incidental music composed by Edward Elgar, was performed in the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin in October 1901 with some, if limited, success. The Irish Times remarked: “To Mr. Yeats’s poetic inspiration was added Mr. Moore’s gift of construction, of welding varied elements into a dramatic whole, so that the play was an admirable example of fine workmanship.”8 The Irish Independent judged the play “a piece of considerable power to charm which would read better than it lends to staging”,9 while The Freeman’s Journal thought that the characters were “a little too modern”.10 Other commentators were more critical. The Evening Mail considered it a “mixture of oil and water, or Mr. Yeats contaminated by Mr. George Moore”.11 D.P. Moran’s The Leader, in its usual trenchant language, called the play “a heartless piece of vandalism practised on a great Irish story”,12 and the reviewer for The Evening 5

George Moore, “To W.B. Yeats” [early 1901?], in ibid., I, 78. W.B. Yeats, “To George Moore” [15 November 1900?], in Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, II, 585. 7 Diarmuid and Grania, Manuscript Materials by W.B. Yeats and George Moore, ed. J.C.C. Mays, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell UP, 2005. 8 The Irish Times, 22 October 1901, 4. 9 Irish Independent, 22 October 1901, 5. 10 Freeman’s Journal, 22 October 1901, 4. 11 Evening Mail, 22 October 1901, 4. 12 D.P. Moran, “Diarmuid and Grania”, Leader, 2 November 1901, 158. 6

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Herald was very disappointed due to “a wearisome repetition of sentiment in long dialogues and irritating speeches, and a startling absence of any Celtic atmosphere”.13 Notwithstanding their limited success with Diarmuid and Grania and the arguments that had ensued during its composition, Yeats and Moore did not give up the idea of further collaboration. On 12 July 1901 Yeats wrote to his father: “I have also plans for a new play with Moore, a religious Don Quixote, which may or may not be carried out.”14 It seems very likely that these plans had been progressed by a letter which Yeats had just received from George Moore consisting of what Moore called “a little scenario which you may be able to develop”.15 The existence of this scenario, which has not been published to date, along with other published and unpublished comments in letters by Lady Gregory, John Quinn and George Russell (AE), raise questions regarding how accurate were Yeats’ many descriptions of how his relationship with George Moore foundered in the writing of this new play Where There Is Nothing. Moore, as we shall see below, said very little. Although Moore’s scenario has received little attention, the play, which Yeats excluded from his collected works, has engendered quite an amount of critical comment. Katherine Worth’s 1987 edition of Where There Is Nothing and the totally rewritten version, The Unicorn from the Stars, includes considerable detail about the composition and sources of both plays. Worth, however, makes just a brief mention of the scenario, which, she wrote, Moore had “helped to develop from Yeats’s idea”.16 In identifying Nietzsche as an influence on the play, she did allow “the possibility that Moore and Yeats had thought along Nietzschean lines in their brief collaboration”.17 Other more recent critics such as Barbara Suess who saw the play as “an important moment in Yeats’ career as a dramatist” and as “an example of Yeats’ early logical arguments against progressivism, … in a form chosen specifically by Yeats because he thought it would appeal to audiences 13

Evening Herald, 22 October 1901, 2. Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, III, 87. 15 In the notes to Collected Letters, III, 86, the year is given as 1901. Roy Foster and Adrian Frazier, in their biographies of Yeats and Moore, give the year as 1902. I suspect the former is correct. 16 Katherine Worth, Introduction, Where There Is Nothing and The Unicorn from the Stars, by W.B. Yeats, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1987, 5. 17 Ibid., 21. 14

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accustomed to realist plays”,18 makes no mention at all of Moore’s scenario. Yeats’ and Moore’s most recent biographers, Roy Foster and Adrian Frazier, have both adverted to Moore’s “little scenario” without describing it in much detail. Foster does give a brief summary and also in a note quotes a version of the collaboration as told by John Quinn which I believe, on the basis of evidence discussed below, to be untrustworthy. Before addressing the issues raised I reproduce in full the scenario as it appears, written in Moore’s hand, in the National Library in Dublin.19 No year is given for Moore’s letter – it could be either 1901 or 1902 – but, as mentioned previously, I believe it is the former. I also reproduce a fragment of a typewritten letter from Moore, located in the same file in the National Library, which seems to indicate that there was some further correspondence regarding the play that has never come to light. 4 Upper Ely Place Dublin

July 3rd [1901/2]

My Dear Yeats Here is a little scenario which you may be able to develop I The university. The tinker has come to steal some thing but to the young man the tinker is a revelation. – He goes out with the tinker – Enter students and professors. He re-enters dressed as a tinker. Instead of his expected discourse he delivers a discourse against civilization. He proves that civilization is scientific barbarism. He gives up his professorship and goes out in search of the tinker. II Years have passed. His relations assemble in the courtyard of the inn and they tell of his doings – all love him notwithstanding his eccentricities – he is the author of verses and the founder of religions and has been brought back from Paris. He enters rolling a barrel of

18

Barbara Suess, Progress and Identity in the Plays of W.B. Yeats, New York and London: Routledge 2003, 152. 19 Courtesy of the National Library of Ireland: George Moore, National Library of Ireland, MS 8777.

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Eamonn R. Cantwell porter before him and his followers carouse – policemen arrive to expostulate and they beg of him to limit his hospitality. Suddenly he calms down and consents to live with his relations. III scene out of doors His conduct is exemplary. He plays draughts every night and never tells improper stories. His aunts are surprised that his parisian [sic] adventures are not more racy and they are in a way disappointed. He enters with peasantry and announces his intention of giving up his property to them – he will do this when the property becomes his and he introduces the dirtiest girl in the village as his bride. He is asked why he married her and his answers are nebulous. But when she shows a disposition to settle down to live with him he is alarmed. The parents take them both in. IV He has escaped from home and has become a clown in a circus. The tinker has come to mend the pots and pans and is surprised to find him leading a regular life – “unless you are born in the irregular you never get free from the regular.” He is by this time tired of the circus and the only advantage it has is that his relations cannot find him – the disguise is complete. He dreads his wife. But the tinker offers to marry her and he accepts joyfully. V a ruined monastery But he has not been able to consent to marriage and so he has become a hermit and lives in a great odour of sanctity amid the ruins of the monastery. But thereby there is a modern monastery and the monks are jealous of him. They excite the rabble against him – they accuse him of reviving the ancient religions and in his cell are found – the book of Lir, the book of Aunghus [sic], the book of Mananaan, and the book of Dana also the acts of the Druids. This is sufficient to exasperate the populace and he is overwhelmed. Enter the wife and the tinker. The tinker asks the wife why her husband could not live with her and she tells the tinker that her husband only married her out of charity, that he never regarded her as a wife. Otherwise he was a very nice man and she had no fault to find. The tinker praises him as a friend – he was a good pal. One of the villagers enter(s) and tells what has happened. They look for the victim. They find him. They take him away in a wheelbarrow and now that her husband is dead the wife can marry the tinker. Always Yours George Moore

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The fragment which I mentioned seems to be the final page of another letter from Moore regarding the scenario, typed on light blue notepaper and signed by Moore. It reads as follows: Act will be the Monastery. The monks turn him out and he would start a hermitage outside the Monastery as in the sketch which I sent to you. Always Yours George Moore

How does Yeats’ play compare with this scenario? The hero of Yeats’ play is Paul Ruttledge, a seemingly provocative choice as Ruttledge, not a very common Irish name, was the name of Moore’s land agent in Mayo. The name was later used as a pen name by Moore for an article on “Stage Management in the Irish National Theatre” in the magazine Dana.20 Ruttledge, like Moore’s hero, the young professor, is disillusioned with the world he is living in and leaves the University in Moore’s case, and the Big House in Yeats’, to join a group of tinkers having put on tinker’s clothes. Both marry a tinker girl, provide barrels of porter for their followers, give up their property, and in a key episode in both play and scenario speak out against the conventions of society. As we saw in Moore’s scenario this occurs in his first Act when the young professor “delivers a discourse against civilisation” proving that it is “scientific barbarism”. In Act IV of Yeats’ play, Paul has become a monk, as Moore’s hero will in his final act, but is rebelling against the conventions of the order. He preaches that the world must be destroyed, that everything that “has law and number” must be destroyed for “where there is nothing there is God”. For this he is expelled, with some followers, from the monastery. Both Moore’s young professor and Yeats’ Paul Ruttledge have offended against common conventions and both pay a price. In Moore the monks “excite the rabble against him” accusing him of heresy. In Yeats, Paul and the monks who followed him are set upon by a crowd of peasants who accuse them of witchcraft. In both cases the hero is finally overcome by the mob and killed, leaving his tinker wife, with his original tinker friend, to mourn him. Both play and scenario extend the action over a considerable period of time, in 20

George Moore, “Stage Management in the Irish National Theatre”, Dana, 5 September 1904, 150-52.

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Moore’s second Act “years have passed”, while in Act IV of Yeats’ play five years have passed. There are undoubtedly elements of Yeats’ ideas in the Moore scenario. The concept of “scientific barbarism” smacks more of Yeats than of Moore. Also in Yeats’ essay “Magic”, first published in September 1901, we read an invocation of the Scholar Gypsy who left university “to join himself to a company of vagabond gypsies”.21 However, the general thrust of the scenario is much more like Moore: the flight to Paris, the writing of poetry there, the alarm at the reality of marriage, the break-up of the family property etc, and there is no indication in Moore’s letter of any input by Yeats. The name of the play is taken from a Yeats story, “Where There Is Nothing, There is God”, first published in October 1896 and included in his book The Secret Rose in April 1897. The story tells of the arrival at a community of monks of a poor beggar, who is eventually recognized as a saintly figure who, years previously, had fled from a monastery, become a hermit, dressed in rags, and had found the nothing beyond which there is God.22 It seems clear that the Moore scenario did indeed form the basis of the Yeats play and, with this in mind, it is interesting to examine the public and private comments made by Yeats and Moore about their collaboration. As mentioned previously, Moore said, or was reported to have said, very little, while Yeats and some of his friends had much to say. Yeats’ first public comment was with the original publication of the play which remarkably was as a supplement to The United Irishman, then edited by Arthur Griffith, on 1 November 1902. This speedy and previously unannounced publication was planned to surprise Moore and forestall any action he might take before the play was published. In a postscript to an article in the same issue of The United Irishman, entitled “The Freedom of the Theatre”, Yeats wrote that the play … is founded upon a subject which I suggested to George Moore when there seemed to be a sudden need of a play for the Irish Literary 21

W.B. Yeats, “Magic”, in Essays and Introductions, London: Macmillan, 1961, 39. “‘What is beyond that?’ said the child. ‘There is nothing beyond that; there is God.’” (W.B. Yeats, “Where There is Nothing, There is God”, in The Secret Rose [1897], London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1978, 185). 22

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Theatre; we talked of collaboration, but this did not go beyond some rambling talks. Then the need went past, and I gradually put so much of myself into the fable that I felt I must write on it alone, and took it back into my own hands with his consent …. I have used nothing of his ….23

A different story was given some years later in a letter to his publisher A.H. Bullen when, instructing him not to include the play in his 1908 Collected Works, Yeats wrote that Lady Gregory, he and Douglas Hyde wrote the play “in a fortnight to keep George Moore from stealing the plot”.24 When his eight-volume Collected Works was published between September and December 1908, Yeats made a further comment: “I wrote [the play] at such speed that I might save from a plagiarist a subject that seemed worth the keeping till greater knowledge of the stage made an adequate treatment possible.”25 This 1908 note was changed in Yeats’ Plays in Prose and Verse published in 1922 to: “I wrote in 1902, with the help of Lady Gregory and another friend, a play called Where There Is Nothing, but had to write at great speed to meet a sudden emergency.”26 In his Autobiographies, published in 1936, Yeats made yet a further public comment on the writing of the play: “I had told Moore a fantastic plot for a play, suggesting collaboration, and for twenty minutes or half an hour walked up and down a path in his garden discussing it.”27 Yeats then described how he had written to Moore regretting that he “must write that play without his help”, as Moore had withdrawn from “the movement” but had received no response.28 Then, following their meeting at a Feis in Galway in August 1902, (described in some detail by Moore in Salve), Moore, according to Yeats, telegraphed that he had written a novel on “that scenario we 23

W.B. Yeats, “The Freedom of the Theatre”, The United Irishman, 1 November 1902, 5 (my italics). 24 W.B. Yeats, “Letter to A. H. Bullen”, 12 February 1908, in The Letters of W.B Yeats, ed. Allan Wade, London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954, 503. 25 The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W.B. Yeats, ed. Russell K. Alsbach, London: Macmillan, 1966, 713. 26 Ibid., 712. 27 W.B. Yeats, Autobiographies: Reveries Over Childhood and Youth and the Trembling of the Veil, eds William H. O’Donnell and Douglas N. Archibald, London: Macmillan, 1955, 452. 28 There is no copy of such a letter in Yeats’ Collected Letters. The movement was the “Irish Literary Theatre”.

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composed together. Will get an injunction if you use it.” According to Yeats, “I wrote or telegraphed that I would use nothing of his but would certainly use my own plot”.29 None of this correspondence has been located. Moore’s response to the publication of the play was reported by Lady Gregory to John Quinn, Yeats’ legal patron in America, in a letter on 8 November 1902. She wrote that Moore, not having read the play, asked George Russell: “‘Does the hero change clothes?’ ‘Yes’ ‘Has he a brother?’ ‘Yes’ ‘O then it’s exactly the same thing, absolutely mine!’” (In fact, Moore’s scenario does refer to relations although it includes no specific mention of the hero’s brother; however, the inclusion of a brother may well have been suggested later by Moore in the letter of which only a fragment survives). Lady Gregory described Moore as feeling “towards Yeats as towards a man who dined with him and stole his spoons”. But she concluded that “this does not matter now the play is out, Yeats ideas and the absence of Moore’s ideas are too clearly manifest. Needless to say there is no talk of an injunction.”30 As Lady Gregory had written, Moore did not proceed with his threat to take legal proceedings, and efforts were made by George Russell and others to mollify both antagonists. John Quinn seemed to take the matter seriously, writing to Yeats on 27 September 1902: As I understand his claim, it is that you and he were collaborating on the play and that at a certain time you decided “to throw him over and go on without him.” He would never be able to make out this contention, unless you have committed yourself by admissions in writing to him …. If it comes to the worst you may have to fight him …. It would be an ugly fight and while your publisher for business reasons might not fear but might welcome it, you would not want to be dragged into an open rupture with Moore on a charge of appropriating his ideas.31

Roy Foster gives John Quinn’s version of the collaboration, in a note to his W.B. Yeats: A Life, quoting from an unpublished letter by 29

Yeats, Autobiographies, 453 (my italics). Lady Gregory, “To John Quinn”, 8 November 1902, in Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, III, 244. 31 Lady Gregory, “To W.B. Yeats”, 27 September 1902, in Letters to W.B. Yeats, I, 107. 30

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Quinn to the publisher John Lane dated 24 October 1902, now in the Berg collection in the New York Public Library. Quinn described George Russell telling Yeats and Moore about a “member of a wellconnected family who had joined the tinkers in Ireland” and Yeats remarking that the story “would make a good play”. According to Quinn, Yeats and Moore “began to sketch up the scenario” and talked “about how the acts should run but no actual writing was ever done” and later Moore “got tired of the matter … and told Yeats that he might write the play if he cared to”.32 The well-connected person was in fact Philip Francis Little, an eccentric acquaintance of George Russell and described by him as exhibiting “much freakish conduct … as when he entered an assembly of the very godly and denounced them for the immorality of their costumes”.33 Russell, in fact, wrote to Lady Gregory in March 1902: “tell Willie … I have also begun a kind of spiritual comedy to rescue my friend Little from Moore’s vulgarising touch.” This, however, had changed by August when Russell again wrote: I am not going to touch Little I leave him with a protest to WBY and Moore. I am sure when they have both written no one will recognise any similarity between their work or will trace the fantastic original.34

Russell did seem to have some doubts as to whether Yeats was wholly innocent as he wrote to Lady Gregory of Moore: I cannot believe he is serious in threatening an injunction, and if I were WBY I would write my play and never bother my head about Moore. Of course, if what Moore asserts is true – that the main idea of the plot and scenario is his – then I think Willie ought to invent something else.35

There is, however, an unpublished letter in the Berg collection in New York that gives a new twist to the story and also tells us 32

R.F. Foster, W.B. Yeats: A Life, Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 1997, I, 583. George Russell, The Living Torch, ed. Monk Gibbon, London: Macmillan, 1937, 155. 34 George Russell, “To Lady Gregory”, March 1902 and August 1902: The Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, The New York Public Library. 35 Quoted in Frazier, George Moore, 321, with suggested date of September 1902. 33

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something more about the relationship between Moore and Irish nationalists such as Arthur Griffith and Frank Fay. This is a letter from Lady Gregory to John Quinn dated 9 October [1902]. While the letter is mainly concerned with the effort to acquire an American copyright for the play it gives a new version of how the play became to be published in The United Irishman, which was a unique event in the publishing history of Yeats’ drama. The letter reads in part: The exact truth is this. He sent his M.S. to Bullen who after some delay refused to take the risk of publishing, being afraid of Moore. (Yeats had sent him the correspondence and told him exactly what had occurred, which of course he was right in doing, though he knew Bullen to be weak before a possible enemy). Then Yeats went to Dublin for a few days, and the matter was arranged thus. The United Irishman agreed to publish the play as a supplement the week after next. If Moore takes an injunction against them, they will issue an appeal asking for money to fight him. But it is very unlikely he will take any steps against a popular paper. Indeed I don’t believe in his ever venturing into Court at all. There are too many witnesses to his plagiarisms, or victims of them, thirsting for his blood.

Lady Gregory then quoted from letters she had received from Yeats describing a meeting between Moore and Frank Fay. Moore had threatened an injunction if Fay produced the play; George Russell had told Moore what he thought of his conduct. He further said that he would not see him any more and that Yeats’ friends would provide the money if the issue went to court: I don’t believe he will fight in the end for all that. By Mr. Russell’s account he is inventing new falsehoods as they are wanted, but he knows they would not bear the test of cross examination. It is a profound secret that the play is to appear in The United Irishman. Even Russell does not know it.36

One comment in a letter from Yeats dated 4 October 1902 that Lady Gregory does not quote is an interesting one on how the agreed borders between the collaborators could have a mercenary aspect:

36

Lady Gregory, “To John Quinn”, 9 October 1902, Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

Crossing Borders: Moore and Yeats in the Theatre

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Moore has several quite new & circumstantial lies. He says for instance that when he consented to my writing the play he had an understanding that his name was to be to it also. “Second, only second – second on the title page.” This was half way to half profits.37

That Yeats had sent the play and correspondence to his publisher A.H. Bullen has not been noted by any commentators and certainly was never referred to by Yeats himself. There is, however, no reason to doubt that Lady Gregory was telling the correct story in her letter to John Quinn. This letter further complicates an already complicated story, but it does seem, in reading Yeats’ published comments on the genesis of the play, that he was somewhat economical with the truth when he wrote that his collaboration with Moore “did not go beyond rambling talks”. Many years later, in his Dramatis Personae first published in 1935, Yeats looked back at his arguments with George Moore with regret and described how some time after the publication of the play John Quinn “brought us together, but we were never cordial again; on my side distrust remained, on his disgust. I look back with some remorse.”38 Moore, presumably, had an element of revenge in his sometime satirical portrait of Yeats in his Hail and Farewell trilogy. As Adrian Frazier has written: “The cruel farce over the scenario simply liberated Moore to write whatever he liked about Yeats and Gregory in his autobiographical tour de force.”39 But interestingly Moore never went so far as to release the “little scenario”, the existence of which would, in my view, have cast Yeats’ many published comments on their failed collaboration in a different, and from Yeats’ point of view, a much less favourable light. After all the work to outmanoeuvre Moore, Yeats was never satisfied with the play. Apart from the initial publication in The United Irishman, and two limited editions which John Quinn had published in America in November 1902, one of fifteen copies and one of thirty, there was just one further publication, with many revisions, in 1903, by A.H. Bullen in London and by Macmillan in New York as Volume I of Plays for an Irish Theatre. Yeats also excluded the play from any 37

W.B. Yeats, “To Lady Gregory”, 4 October 1902, in Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats, III, 232. 38 Yeats, Autobiographies, 454. 39 Frazier, George Moore, 323.

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future editions of his Collected Works. It is currently available in the Variorum Edition of the Plays of W.B. Yeats as well as in Katherine Worth’s edition. The play was subsequently replaced by a version totally rewritten with considerable acknowledged help from Lady Gregory, with a similar theme but substantially different plot, and now called The Unicorn from the Stars. By contrast with the writing of Diarmuid and Grania, which seems to have been a genuine collaboration with much interchange of ideas and much argument, but where boundaries were recognized and maintained and a final agreed version produced, the play Where There Is Nothing can be seen as a case where an intellectual and moral boundary was breached. By suggesting that Yeats might develop his “little scenario” Moore was, in my view, not totally handing over his intellectual property rights to the ideas in the scenario that deserved recognition. Yeats, on the other hand, never publicly acknowledged that Moore had sent him the scenario and, as described, went to very considerable lengths over an extended period of time to disavow any serious input to the play by Moore. By excluding the play from the canon of his work, it seems likely that, while recognizing the play’s limitations, he also continued to feel uneasy about the lack of recognition he had given to Moore’s scenario and he had in fact crossed a border and “stolen the spoons”.

GEORGE MOORE: A MAN OF LETTERS ON THE MARGINS OF REALITY ALAIN LABAU Nous sommes nés en marge et sommes restés et nous resterons en marge. C’est bien cela, en marge. Et d’ailleurs, quel meilleur poste pour observer, sentir et juger!1

If, along with Julia Kristeva, we adopt the view that “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the transformation or absorption of another text”,2 one of the critic’s tasks may be to try and identify citations, references, echoes and influences of every kind with which a work of art is inevitably saturated and, in so doing, facilitate its understanding. In this respect Moore’s writings not only draw upon former writing techniques, as is generally the case of all authors, they are also shot through with references to previous writings. They extensively feed upon former writings in the same hand, his own compositions serving as intertextual referent: newspaper articles turned into more serious fiction, short stories reworked into novels, novels transformed into drama are just a few examples. Similarly, these accretions or “suites on ancient motifs” may be taken from an alien hand, in the form of stylistic imitations, materials borrowed from ancestral heritage, Celtic traditions or the Holy Scriptures, re-readings or re-writings of canonical classics but also translation – which may be viewed as the appropriation of another text. Once translated into another language, from which they would be translated back into 1

Paul Léautaud, 27 October 1906, in Journal littéraire, I (November 1893-June 1928), Paris: Mercure de France, 1086: “We were born on the margins, we have kept to and shall remain on the margins. Mark my words, on the margins. Besides, can one think of a better vantage point from which to observe, feel and judge?” 2 Julia Kristeva, Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, New York: Columbia UP, 1980, 37.

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English, some of his books seemed to Moore much improved after “a bath in Irish” or, to pursue his own metaphor, after a French immersion: “The comedy [The Coming of Gabrielle] has come back from France and my friend’s ribbons and paint have improved it immensely … he has rewoven my dialogue into a very pretty pattern.”3 In such a context, the fact that he plagiarized two and a half lines from Balzac appears as a mere trifle: “They seemed to come into the dialogue. Do you think that matters?” he wrote to Emily Lorenz Meyer in April 1909: “I don’t.”4 If one considers that his whole production is also laden with musical citations or pictorial echoes, it then becomes obvious that Moore’s works very distinctly bear innumerable traces of other texts or even languages, whether they be those of others or his own, the constant revising of his own works being in itself a brilliant exercise in intertextuality. Because Moore’s works and characters have not only been modelled but constantly remoulded, one cannot dismiss the dialogical feature which is latent in his approach to literature; previous texts are adopted, adapted, distanced, distorted, cited, ignored or simply rejected, existing characters revived, reshaped, renewed, renamed, or merely repudiated. It seems that, while exerting full authority over the destiny of his production and consequently the longevity of his characters, Moore strives to defy any attempt to identify a single viewpoint from which his texts and characters may be apprehended to the likely exception of his own. Paradoxically, the myth of filiation is debunked by the author himself, as the disorientated reader, thus incapacitated from tracing the origins of a text, is caught in a web of self-quotations. Such echoes that contribute to the sense of both familiarity and bewilderment experienced by the reader may be reverberated by other tongues. Writing in 1918 to T. Werner Laurie about “Liadin and Curithir” in which Moore’s language is deliberately permeated by Irish turns of phrase, he declared: “the use of the two idioms gives the

3

George Moore, “To Emily Lorenz Meyer”, 13 May 1909, in George Moore on Parnassus: Letters (1900-1933) to Secretaries, Publishers, Printers, Agents, Literati, Friends, and Acquaintances, ed. Helmut E. Gerber, Newark: U of Delaware P, 1988, 160. 4 Moore, “To Emily Lorenz Meyer”, 10 May [1909], in ibid., 159.

George Moore: A Man of Letters on the Margins of Reality 115 book a very special character – a sort of exhibition in ventriloquism.”5 Moore’s output as a whole may then be qualified as stereophonic (to use Roland Barthes’ terminology) – if not polyphonic (in Bakhtinian terms) – or as hypertext. The borders or margins of Moore’s books never being clear-cut, meaning becomes evanescent and what may be baffling for the reader or the critic is the absence of a reliable source or centre from which it may be disentangled. Writing to Hildegarde Hawthorne about one of her novels, Moore praises her “clear sighted mind which weaves and unweaves the web …. Your book is not a novel – it is a piece of tapestry.”6 This constant process of weaving and unweaving, which counter-effects pure linearity and results in the absence of a single traceable thread, undoubtedly characterizes his own works just as if, oddly enough, Moore shunned the fixity of print. The choice of a seamstress deliquescing in alcohol as the central figure of A Mummer’s Wife is fraught with meaning. To achieve the narrative fluidity Moore was after, the traditional boundaries of genres had to be subverted and the common ingredients of the novel needed to be woven into a seamless pattern. But while Moore busied himself turning fiction into new fiction, the line between reality and fiction became smudged far beyond what such a daring literary enterprise as Hail and Farewell, his fictional autobiography, may suggest. The initial sense of fragmentation that might be prompted by Moore’s literary undertakings and the multiplication of intertexts enmeshed in the texture of his writings, as masterly illustrated by Hail and Farewell, is undoubtedly exacerbated when one peruses his correspondence. It could at first sight be viewed as a succession of marginal and self-contained fragments. And yet, as in Moore’s case, writing is more than ever an intertextual process, a text may become, be it only fleetingly, the signifier of other texts.7 As any kind of 5

Gerber, in ibid., 369. Moore, “To Hildegarde Hawthorne”, 15 October [1907?], in ibid., 141. 7 Let it be made clear, however, that we are not seeking any historical truth. According to Moore himself, the margin between fact and fiction in his professed autobiographies is so thin that any attempt to distinguish between art and reality would be bound to failure. Moore was all too keen on sacrificing truth to aesthetic satisfaction: “Facts must be vivified by an idea”, he wrote to his brother Maurice in June 1912 (in ibid., 228). In Confessions of a Young Man, he very clearly stated that “art was not for us then as it is now – a mere emotion, right or wrong only in proportion to its intensity” (George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, in The 6

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production may be seen as tending towards repetition, it seems possible to identify recurring motifs intertwined in his correspondence which, through their very repetition, result in a given pattern that may create a new point of focus and cast a light on Moore’s creative process at large. As he himself noted in a letter to Lady Cunard dating from October 1897: In little bits, often no more than a bar, Wagner tells the deepest secrets. This is one of the secrets of life, her most hidden secret; it is in our hearts, but beyond words.8

Thus exploring the peripheries of Moore’s works – namely a collection of several thousand letters – is a way of legitimizing what may be too hastily looked down upon as pure marginalia. Observing Moore from the margins of his main opuses is a means of revealing his stance as a writer. His letters testify to his unfailing urge to write, they bear evidence of his art as much as his artistry, they serve as an outlet for his literary moods but also as a catalyst for his deepest feelings and emotions. Neither should they be viewed as simple notes and notations written more or less offhandedly. In more letters than one, Moore’s style matches that of his choicest pieces and his correspondence should be seen less as a spin-off of Moore-the-man than extensions of Moore-the-writer. Letter writing always had special importance for Moore. Not only did he accept that part of his correspondence with Edouard Dujardin should be published, but in a letter to Lady Cunard of 31 August 1907, the possibility of an epistolary novel is clearly alluded to: “suppose we begin a correspondence with a view to some publication, a correspondence that would be affectionate, amorous and literary”, which would require “courage and application”.9 We know that he first intended to publish the letters he received from an Austrian countess called Gabrielle.10 Instead, he wove some excerpts of their Collected Works of George Moore, New York: Boni and Liveright, Carra Edition, 1924, IX, 332). 8 George Moore, October 1897, in George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard 1895-1933, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis, London: Hart-Davis, 1957, 25. 9 Moore, 31 August 1907, in ibid., 54. 10 George Moore’s Correspondence with the Mysterious Countess, eds David B. Eakin and Robert Langenfeld, ELS Monograph Ser. 33, U of Victoria Dept of English: U of Victoria P, 1984.

George Moore: A Man of Letters on the Margins of Reality 117 correspondence into the dialogue of The Coming of Gabrielle. Similarly, he used letter writing in his fiction as a literary technique which added to the blending of genres he was after, as in Confessions of a Young Man, in which Chapter 8 stands as an extract of a letter, or as a means of allowing the underlife of his characters to surface: among other examples, one could mention the exchange of letters between Father Oliver and Father O’Grady, and Father Oliver and Rose Leicester in the early version of The Lake (Nora Glynn in the 1921 publication). The virtues he ascribed to letter writing are those that he expected to find in any literary work. Indeed, letters constitute records of an unmediated expression of the self: “I am too full of my work for letter writing and it seems egotistic to write about oneself and yet self is the essence of letter writing”;11 “The most interesting letter is the most egotistical”; “I want your letters to be all about yourself”; “Literature is not a question of information but of personal expression.”12 The content of all these letters is in keeping with his central idea that “art is personality” or that “the work of the great artist is himself”. In brief, as he points out in Confessions of a Young Man, art does not derive from the scientific observation of life: “Art is not mathematics, it is individuality.”13 By registering various forms of emotion, letters contribute to lifting the veil on the inner life of the letter-writer. In his correspondence Moore sometimes authorizes himself to drop the masks that shield his public self and to speak with sincerity about his feelings, desires and frustrations. Sincerity may then rhyme with simplicity of expression, as illustrated by a letter sent to Lady Cunard on 19 July 1929: “This letter is commonplace in substance and intention, it is no more than one of a thousand letters written to tell you that I look forward to seeing you.”14 The theme of the letter is reminiscent of another dating from the summer of 1893 in which he tells Lena Milman about the impression made upon him by the love letters of a Portuguese nun: “I

11

Moore, “To Lena Milman”, end of 1892, in George Moore in Transition: Letters to T. Fisher Unwin and Lena Milman 1894-1910, ed. Helmut E. Gerber, Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1968, 59. 12 Moore, “To Hildergarde Hawthorne”, 14 August 1907 and 7 September 1913; “To Ernest Boyd”, 17 August 1914, in George Moore on Parnassus, 138, 280, 291. 13 Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, 382. 14 Moore, 19 July 1929, in George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard, 176.

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love you, come to me, I suffer, that is the simple substance of her letters.”15 The tone of confidence, which is one of the main features of letter writing, triggers off the emotional empathy of the reader, who becomes more permeable to alien forms of experience that may ultimately serve as a mirror. In this case, empathy induces a process of narcissistic identification. To Lady Cunard on 13 July 1905 he wrote: I have just put aside Wagner’s letters to Mathilde. Was there ever a man so interested in himself? Well, he had the right to be, for he was the most interesting thing alive and he clearly knew it, and egotism is the god that inspires the letter-writer and good letters are all about the letter-writer.

In his postscript he added: “I have just read Mathilde’s letters. I have read them with tears in my eyes … these letters tell us again that love of man for a woman (better still the love of woman for man) is the most beautiful thing in the world.”16 But most important of all, in a letter, the flux and reflux of sentiments is allowed to be captured. To Lady Cunard, he writes that a letter is not a course on literature (“une lettre n’est pas un cours de littérature”),17 while he explains to Lena Milman what his intention was when writing Confessions of a Young Man: I send you Confessions of a Young Man …. I only hope you will not misunderstand the book, that is to say I hope you will not think it is a statement of my opinions concerning life and things; the book is merely emotional and personal. I take it that a human soul is daily deluged in emotions quite irrespective of its opinions; I have tried to fix the ephemeral and sometimes almost involuntary passing of emotions.18

And yet can the tentative and the ephemeral be fixed in print and retain their transient nature? While the past is necessarily re-collected, the present of the letter that is put to paper is simply collected and unaffected by the workings or trappings of memory: 15

Moore, “To Lena Milman”, July-August 1893, in George Moore in Transition, 72. Moore, 13 July 1905, in George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard, 40-41. 17 Ibid., 27. 18 Moore, “To Lena Milman”, 1888-1889, in George Moore on Parnassus, 55-56. 16

George Moore: A Man of Letters on the Margins of Reality 119 The present and the past are in the letters what they were in reality – this sentence is not quite English. The present is – I cannot see the present in the past tense.19

What Moore certainly means is that the past is what it was because the present, if adequately recorded, does not need to be revised. His obsession with revision and his innumerable attempts at re-visiting the past might partly stem from the difficulty in fixing the essence of the present. If memory can confer materiality upon the present, a recollection will inevitably lose in intensity. This concern for time and the necessity of suspending its course is omnipresent in his fiction where the overlapping of several temporal planes is used to warp the linearity of realistic narration. Therefore it is no surprise that it should have become more acute in the last period of his life. Time, not unlike the writer, stakes out the ultimate margins. What emerges from the reading of Moore’s last letters has been summarized by Helmut Gerber as follows: From the clues that survive to GM’s intention in Madeleine de Lisle and from the tone of the letters in which he discusses the novel, one detects mainly that a failing memory, failing energy, and the fear of waning creative talent compelled him to make a last frantic effort to prove himself. Madeleine de Lisle, however, could only have proved that, with the publication of Aphrodite in Aulis, he had written enough. The unfinished novel, as best as we can judge, was becoming a patchwork made up of several stories he had not finished, bits and pieces recalled from Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa and perhaps The Lake, a little something borrowed from Ulick and Soracha, very likely echoes from Heloïse and Abélard, and perhaps a vague memory of the love letters of Marianna Alcoforado, the Portuguese nun, which had deeply moved him in 1893.20

We would tend to disagree here with Gerber, who prophesies in Madeleine de Lisle a loss of talent. Moore’s final literary adventure could have been the sum, if not the summit or apex, of his art. Moore, through relentless hammering at his novels or plays, employed his life constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing meaning, as if 19 20

Moore, August 1907, in George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard, 54. Gerber, in George Moore on Parnassus, 742.

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meaning (or the self) was as malleable as wax and capable of endless refashioning or reconfiguration. Ironically, he expected his biographers to find “the thread on which all my books may be hung” rather than “regard … each book as an isolated fact”.21 But this thread does not hang on chronology because Moore’s undertaking will not follow any linear pattern. It spirals, gathering in all kinds of materials in its orbit that recombine as if in an open system. Moore repeatedly sneered at Lady Morgan who “seems to produce books as easily as a mouse produces mice”,22 a judgement in which Moore’s profound detestation of procreation is equalled only by his aversion to mass assembly-line production: “Millions of cheap books … have been published in the last ten years; short and thick bulky volumes, like dictionaries the sight of which makes a room look vulgar.”23 He did not want his books “to look like a row of bricks” or “like a line of machine-made bricks”.24 As noted by Janet Eagleson Dunleavy, Moore profoundly disliked the straight line. Describing Hanley in A Mummer’s Wife, he wrote of “the eye … wounded by naked red angles, by the raw green of the blinds and the similarity of each proportion” or “the brutal abruptness of the brickwork of the … factories”.25 Commenting upon the style of his last novels, Dunleavy emphasizes the way “the narrative is composed of sensuous lines that wind in and out and around characters and events in a rhythmic pattern that stops but does not end”. She adds: “As Moore repeats sounds and words in a passage, so does he create events that recur and people that reappear, in the larger narrative, to establish pattern.”26 This winding, repeating and neverending movement is at work in his production as a whole and gives it its definite pattern. By feeding upon itself, Moore’s work is in constant expansion. This spiralling is the quality that makes it so unique and at the same time ensures that it will be perpetuated through unending recombinations. Indeed, one of his main concerns in his letters is that 21

Moore, “To Ernest A. Boyd”, Summer 1916, in ibid., 328. Moore, “To Hildegarde Hawthorne”, December 1913, in ibid., 282. 23 Moore, “To T. Werner Laurie”, early autumn [1918?], in ibid., 398. 24 Moore, “To T. Werner Laurie”, early autumn [1918?] and “To Horace Liveright”, 7 July 1922, in ibid., 398, 600. 25 Janet Egleson Dunleavy, George Moore: The Artist’s Vision, The Storyteller’s Art, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1973, 70-71. 26 Ibid., 138. 22

George Moore: A Man of Letters on the Margins of Reality 121 his prose should survive all literary trends: “Evelyn Innes is not a good book as it stands and it will not stand the test of time but it can be made to stand the test of time I think, and am prepared … to devote six months to the rewriting of the book.” Celibates I do not propose to alter much. I only propose to rewrite the second story, but that I intend to rewrite completely with a new plot. My new plot is quite extraordinary and I think it will give a permanent interest to the book.27

About Hail and Farewell, he writes: “On re-reading, it struck me as being more likely than any other books to survive during the next thirty or forty years; and nobody, I suppose, in his senses looks forward to a longer immortality.”28 This spiralling movement is induced by Moore’s creative process, making revising unavoidable, if not vital, which is mainly due to the fact that his works and characters fail to attain inner focus until they have been objectified once and for all by the author himself: “I seem to have lost all individuality in my efforts to give individuality to different peasants and priests. I feel like an abstraction”; “The play will go much better now that he [the main character] has become objectified – before he was entirely subjective.”29 The blurring of the lines between observer and observed will inevitably lead Moore to a certain form of critical detachment from his characters, a severing of all ties if, to echo the words of Léautaud, the writer is to be free to pass judgement whilst at once empathizing with those under scrutiny. Indeed, although creation is derived from observation, it cannot be a mere transcription: “Transcription is not art.” Life must be recreated and recreating life “is like to recreate ourselves”.30 In many of his letters, Moore describes how he lived with some of his characters for several years on end before the final severance. But is severance possible if a work of art is informed by the personality of the artist and the artist constantly interferes with it? For Moore is not only a reader 27

Moore, “To T. Fisher Unwin”, 27 June 1900 and 14 January 1902, in George Moore in Transition, 199, 244. 28 Moore, “To Messrs Appleton [?]”, November 1924, in George Moore on Parnassus, 686. 29 Moore, “To Virginia Crawford”, 12 January 1902 and “To Margaret Gough” [November 1911?], in ibid., 102, 212. 30 Moore, “To Lena Milman”, 20 May 1893, in George Moore in Transition, 68.

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of his own books but also an active re-reader. As a result, his books and characters are endlessly re-assessed in the light of new impressions and opinions or “sous le coup de l’émotion”,31 the emotion(s) a human soul is daily deluged in. Moore is endowed with a real capacity for observing and absorbing his environment in order to satisfy his artistic impulse.32 His conception of art has a lot in common with that of Vladimir Nabokov as outlined in Lectures on Literature. Both writers see reality as a potentiality for fiction: The art of writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction. The material of this world may be real enough (as far as reality goes) but does not exist at all as an accepted entirety: it is chaos, and to this chaos the author says “go!” allowing the world to flicker and to fuse. It is now recombined in its very atoms, not merely in its visible and superficial parts. The writer is the first man to map it and to name the natural objects it contains.33

Thus, objectification inevitably turns out to be a difficult process since life itself is in danger of becoming an abstraction. By observing the world and its margins, Moore places himself on the margin of his own life and is condemned to become an abstraction: I did not remain till the end of the concert because I wished to fly from your world, which is not my world. You continue to imagine that these people interest me, but you are the only one in society that interests me. I revolve still but my orbit is a larger one than heretofore. I am now far away, almost invisible. I am Neptune, the oldest of the planets and am visible through a strong telescope.34

Neptune is the outermost planet of the gas giants. Moore pictures himself on the outskirts of our solar system, probably enjoying the music of the spheres. But the simile here is not so much the mark of an inflated ego as the expression of a deterritorialized self: “Life is 31

Moore, 31 August 1907, in George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard, 54. Metaphors of absorption are recurrent throughout Moore’s letters and writings. In January 1906, he very explicitly wrote to Lady Cunard: “No man has absorbed you as you have absorbed me” (Moore, January 1906, in ibid., 47). 33 Vladimir Nabokov, “Good Readers and Good Writers”, in Lectures on Literature, London: Picador, 1983, 6. 34 Moore, 21 January 1913, in George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard, 83-84. 32

George Moore: A Man of Letters on the Margins of Reality 123 made up of things which when we are close to them seem very small but which grow larger as the distance widens between us.”35 In his relentless search for his own identity, Moore employed his vital energy shaping the life and underlife of his characters but failed to shape his own to the exception of his public self. While observing society to give life to his characters, he diluted his own identity and fictionalized his own self. Ultimately, then, if reality lies in the eye of the beholder and if the world is but an endless reservoir for fiction, its edges become blurred and peripheries begin to bear a different relationship to the centre. Among Moore’s many epistolary exchanges, there was one that survived the test of time and the trials of his changing moods or successive infatuations. The relationship with Maud Cunard and later Nancy Cunard unmistakably provided him with a point of focus: “Dearest Maud, I have been expecting you for the last three days. Others have come, shadows, dreams, but you are my reality”; “You make me feel that I am alive”; “I shall die thinking of you”; “You and Nancy are my realities – all the others are shadows”; “When I think of you, words will not obey me, and after a little while, I begin to catch a tinge of the essential instinct in me – you.”36 It is exactly the same instinct as that which urges him to write. For in the letters that precede, the words “life” and “reality” should be taken with the utmost precaution. What is reality to Moore? Because the boundaries between life and literature are made permeable through constant toing and froing the centre may be in turn idealized. The image of Romeo and Juliet, the “star-crossed lovers”, surreptitiously creeps in in a letter to Maud Cunard dated 26 January 1905: “Your mother never tried to come between you and me … she knew that such predestined friendships must follow their own courses.”37 Lady Cunard will always remain his “star”, his “divine light”, his ideal, his ideal of light,38 while all other “passades” served as Rosalines who “prepared the way for the greater love”. While writing Heloise and Abélard, he wrote to Lady Cunard: 35

Moore, 30 March 1908, in ibid., 56. Moore, 22 May 1928, 27 October 1905, 6 April 1907, Summer 1911 and 5 January 1921, in George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard, 166, 47, 52, 80, 110. 37 Moore, 26 January 1905, in ibid., 37. 38 Moore, 9 January 1906, in ibid., 47. 36

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Alain Labau There are two women in my life Heloïse and Maud. Heloise is with me by night and day; but Maud has passed into a fiercer light than any that beats upon a throne and my life floats on ‘twixt meditations on Heloïse and memories of Maud.

Unsurprisingly this letter was signed “the discoverer of Maud and Manet”.39

39

Moore [probably February 1924], in ibid., 127.

“MAIS QUI VOUDRAIT ME LIRE EN FRANÇAIS?”: READING GEORGE MOORE’S LETTERS TO EDOUARD DUJARDIN MICHEL BRUNET

George Moore and Edouard Dujardin formed a deep and enduring friendship, as is borne out by the numerous letters they exchanged over their lifetime. Their correspondence covers the long stretch of years from 1886 up to, or nearly to, George Moore’s death in 1933. Moore’s first letter discloses the contextual beginning of their friendship. He was asked to subscribe to the third series of the monthly Revue Indépendante,1 whose young editor was Edouard Dujardin. They apparently first met in the offices of the periodical at n° 79 in the Rue Blanche in Paris. Within a few months, Edouard Dujardin was no longer a mere professional acquaintance but had become a close friend. Indeed, Moore’s form of epistolary address rapidly shifted from a duly formal “Monsieur”, in the first letter dated November 1886, to a warmer “Mon Cher ami” in the subsequent ones. The relationship actually developed into one of the longest personal and mutual bonds Moore ever had in his life. As Dujardin put it in one of his last letters to Moore, they had become “compagnons de vie”.2 Moore’s letters to Dujardin are of interest on several counts. In the first place, they afford autobiographical glimpses of the man and the writer; they testify to what extent such a close literary association came to bear upon the Irish novelist’s artistic development and literary production. They also throw interesting light on the border-crossing literary scene, in Paris, London and Dublin in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. And they finally constitute one of the 1

See his November 1886 letter to Dujardin, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin (henceforth HRHRC). 2 See Edouard Dujardin, letter to George Moore, 22 September 1930, Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet (henceforth BLJD). In this same letter their first meeting is also referred to.

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largest corpuses in French Moore ever produced. Admittedly, Moore wrote some articles – “occasional chroniques”3 or lectures4 – directly in French but in small numbers and the drafts were duly corrected and revised, by Dujardin incidentally, before being published or delivered. Unlike these writings, the letters he wrote in French were left in their original form. They were not submitted to the usual process of constant revision. This was a matter of considerable concern for Moore when he learnt in 1922 that Dujardin had kept all his letters from the beginning of their relationship and intended to sell them, and when a publication by the American publisher J.R. Wells was being considered in 1927.5 Moore apparently worried as much about the quality of the contents, “his remarks on life and letters”, as about his command of the French language. He was also very concerned with his self-image, as projected in his correspondence. Hence his anguished question: “Mais qui voudrait me lire en français?”6 The corpus Of all the letters, probably more than 250, that Moore sent to Dujardin, most of them seem to be extant, for the good reason that Dujardin kept them all carefully. He also dated those without a date by their postmark or delivery date, making up for Moore’s carelessness in that respect. More often than not, his letters were imprecisely dated or not dated at all. It so happened that Dujardin was regularly beset with financial difficulties and had to sell many of the letters from his most famous correspondents including Moore. Before he relinquished the letters however, he had them transcribed by a secretary.7 Moore had doubts about the intrinsic value and literary merits of his letters to Dujardin insofar as they were private letters, composed 3

George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, London: T. Werner Laurie, 1904, 166. See for example “Shakespeare et Balzac”, a lecture Moore delivered in Paris on 18 February 1910. It was published in Revue bleue, 26 February and 5 March 1910, 13. An English translation, “Shakespeare and Balzac”, was published in The Century Magazine, LXXXIX/1 (May 1914), 47. 5 See his 26 August 1927 letter, in Letters of George Moore, ed. John Eglinton, Bournemouth: Sydeham, 1942, 73-74. 6 Moore, letter to Dujardin, 21 November 1922, HRHRC: “But who would wish to read me in French?” 7 Transcriptions are available at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center and the Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet. Both libraries also hold some original manuscripts. Originals from 1886 to 1922 are currently held in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Yale, Connecticut. 4

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without primary thought of publication: “Good letters are letters written to be published, not letters written to a private individual.”8 He nevertheless gave permission to publish the letters in America on condition that his old friend W.K. Magee, better known under his pen name of John Eglinton, did the translation of a selection of the letters and wrote an introduction. It is noteworthy that at no point of the editing work in progress did Moore try to interfere with Eglinton’s selection and translation of the letters: “I know nothing about the contents of the book as I refused to receive the proofs, knowing that I would want to rewrite the letters completely.”9 Desirous to further his old friend’s literary career, he merely made general recommendations beforehand and confidently entrusted him with the task. He counted on Eglinton “eliminating that was too trivial for publication”10 and “making no experimental attempts in translating”.11 In other words, Moore somehow hoped that Eglinton would tamper with the text, probably as little as possible, but nevertheless with a view to correcting his errors in compliance with his wishes. Moore also thought of a follow-up publication of the letters in correct French. Presenting Dujardin with a copy of the English translation, he wrote in a letter dated 28 May 1929: I am sending you a corrected copy for I wonder if you might publish the French text. It delights my heart but it would have delighted my heart even more had you corrected the mistakes for which you alone are now responsible.12

8

Moore, 17 January 1928, in Letters of George Moore, 78. Moore, letter to Dujardin, 27 September 1928, BLJD: “Je suis ignorant du contenu du volume, ayant refusé de recevoir les épreuves sachant bien que les épreuves m’inspireraient une rédaction à fond des lettres.” 10 Moore, “To Barrett H. Clark”, 19 September 1928, in George Moore on Parnassus. Letters (1900-1933) to Secretaries, Publishers, Printers, Agents, Literati, Friends, and Acquaintances, ed. Helmut E. Gerber, Newark: U. of Delaware P, 1988, 764-65. 11 Moore, 26 August 1927, in Letters of George Moore, 74. 12 Moore, letter to Dujardin, 28 May 1929, BLJD: “Je vous envoie l’exemplaire corrigé, car j’envisage la possibilité que vous publiassiez le texte français. Cela me réjoui [sic] le coeur et cela m’aurait rejoui le coeur davantage si vous aviez corrigé les fautes dont vous seul êtes responsable.” Moore was very fond of past subjunctive forms in French. In fact, a present subjunctive “publiiez” is required here by the sequence of tenses. 9

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Letter to Edouard Dujardin, George Moore, 28 May 1929. Bibliothèque Littéraire Jacques Doucet, Paris.

Such a project must have caused Dujardin some concern as to the nature of the text of the prospective publication. Did it mean that he was to give a French translation of the English translation? Moore

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made things clear in a subsequent letter: “I have never expected you to undertake the translation of my humble letters. I just wanted them to be correct.”13 While the Eglinton edition14 represents a valuable attempt to gather Moore’s letters to Dujardin, the collection is not thoroughly reliable. First, it remains a subjective selection of the correspondence. Eglinton obviously rejected letters of apparently lesser substantive importance in order to choose those that contained aspects most likely to enhance Moore’s literary persona. Likewise, Dujardin had apparently made his own selection of the letters before selling them, much as Moore suspected: “None of us knows whether Dujardin has included all the letters.”15 Some letters are not printed in full; others omit dates and places. There are some misplaced letters in the chronological order and, last of all, they unfortunately only cover the years 1886-1922. The remainder of the letters, that is, those which were not included in the Eglinton edition along with those written after 1922 are part and parcel of one and the same discursive process. The whole set of letters might be viewed in terms of rhythm, rather than regarded as a discontinued flow. There are prolific ebullient periods when letters or “turns-at-writing”16 succeed each other in a sustained rhythm and there are more or less enduring lapses rather than sheer interruptions. Moments of silence in Moore’s correspondence make sense. Those breaks can be ascribed to various reasons. They can be put down to periods of intensive work. He sometimes apologized for neglecting his friend: “Forgive my silence, for I am working like Balzac or very nearly.”17 This was particularly true when his powers started to decline and he was toiling away over his work, aware of the fact that he did not have much time left to complete his oeuvre. There were also occasional flare-ups, endless squabbles and constant haggling over 13

Moore, 12 June 1929, BLJD: “Je n’ai jamais desire que vous entrepreniez une traduction de mes pauvres lettres. J’ai seulement voulu un texte correcte [sic].” 14 Letters from George Moore to Ed. Dujardin, 1886-1922, ed. John Eglinton, New York: Crosby Gaige, 1929. 15 Moore, 17 January 1928, in ibid., 78. 16 Teun De Rycker, “Turns at writing: The Organization of Correspondence”, in The Pragmatic Perspective, eds Jef Verschueren and Marcella Bertuccelli-Papi, Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1987, 613-47. 17 Moore, letter to Dujardin, trans. John Eglinton, 9 February 1904, HRHRC: “Pardonnez-moi, je travaille comme Balzac, presque.”

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such legal and money matters as copyrights and delayed or nonexistent payments. Few of the letters broaching the latter subject appear in the Eglinton edition. And at the end of the day, the two friends regularly made up their differences: “Have I vexed you? No, friends who have known each other for forty years do not squabble any longer.”18 More often than not, the frequency of the letters depended on the particular type of relationship Moore and Dujardin developed over forty-five years. A master / disciple relationship If we were to draw up a chart representing the epistolary output year after year, the graph would show an immediate dramatic rise in the late 1880s. There was a peak in 1888 at the time when Moore was occupied with the revision and the publication in French of Confessions of a Young Man in Dujardin’s review. The correspondence levelled off afterwards with an average of eight letters a year, to dwindle over the last years. The fact that Moore used his correspondents to serve his literary purposes has received ample notice and critical treatment. Moore’s interest certainly came to bear on the rhythm of the correspondence. In his Introduction to the translation of the letters, Eglinton wrote: “It is to be inferred that the long breaks in the correspondence coincide with periods in which Dujardin could be of no use to him.”19 Enlisting his correspondents’ help was part of Moore’s writing strategies. Moore was to acknowledge his indebtedness to his resourceful friend explicitly in Conversations in Ebury Street in the following words: To none have I given so ardent an ear as I have to Edouard Dujardin. Manet, Degas, and Monet were casual contributors, but were I asked to tell in whose field I have harvested most profitably, I would answer: in Dujardin’s.20

But while Moore extensively relied on Dujardin as an informant on the music of Wagner and on biblical topics, he also asked him to correct his errors in French. Dujardin was not only the knowledgeable 18

Moore, letter to Dujardin, 28 May 1929, BLJD: “Vous ai-je fâché? Non des amis de 40 ans ne [sic] chamaillent plus.” 19 Eglinton, Introduction, in Letters from George Moore to Ed. Dujardin, 9. 20 George Moore, Conversations in Ebury Street, London: William Heinemann, 1924, 184.

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person to turn to for information, whom he incidentally called “mon maître”,21 he was also the French tutor or instructor; or, at least, Moore would have liked Dujardin to play this role, much in the same way as his father had done when ordering young George to write a three-page letter home every day. It is tempting to draw a parallel here. The young boy wrote to his father: “if you will only correct the mistakes I make and send them to me I am sure that we by acting in concert will do a good deal more good than by scolding me ….”22 The older George wrote to Dujardin: “So as to take advantage of your corrections, you must reply by return of post.”23 In both cases, we find, on Moore’s part, the same intention to control things. Dujardin, however, would not readily and systematically correct Moore’s French except when proof-reading his texts for publication. He claimed that: It would be a shame for me to correct your mistakes. Your mistakes are little wild flowers that are scattered on your text and I swear that they are far from being ugly.24

While, on the whole, Moore had a decent command of the French language, notwithstanding some unfortunate turns of phrase, his letters in French are studded with spelling errors, as are some of his letters in English. It appears that a lot of his mistakes are to be ascribed to his impetuous temperament. A survey of the letters leave the impression that they were written in a rush. He left words unfinished, mixed up letters such as “e” and “i”, split words that did not deserve such a treatment, for example, “en semble,” “en verrai” or, conversely, grouped them together: “un peu decourage.” His carelessness may also be responsible for paranomasia, substituting one word for another, for example “complements” for “compliments”, “consuls” for “conseils”. Moore once recognized that he was poor at spelling, in a very shrewd way: “Once again autograph (orthography) is failing 21

Moore, letter to Dujardin, 26 December 1921, HRHRC. Moore, letter to his father, 28 January 1866, in Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore, London: Victor Gollancz, 1936, 27. 23 Moore, letter to Dujardin, 13 February 1896, HRHRC: “Pour que je puisse profiter de vos corrections, il faut me répondre par retour du courrier.” 24 Letter from Dujardin to George Moore, 1 June 1929, BLJD: “Corriger vos fautes, ce serait me déshonnorer [sic]. Vos fautes, ce sont les petites fleurs sauvages qui se sont posées sur votre texte et je jure qu’elles sont loin de faire mal.” 22

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me.”25 Given the mistakes he often made showed that he had a better command of spoken than of written French. Indeed, his spelling lapsed, more often than not, into phonetic transcription. As mentioned earlier, he was very keen on past subjunctive forms, not always correctly but most probably used for the sake of their sounds: “publiassiez” and “écrivissiez”, to quote but a few. Most interesting is his own commentary on the subject: I detest mistakes in syntax and beg of you to correct mine, though in writing these old letters I held to no thought of being read by anyone but you. There – I said ‘tinsse’; what a magnificent subjunctive! Does it exist in your grammar, or is it an invention of your friend?26

The conversational and heuristic dimensions Apart from the typical, phonetically inspired misspelling of words, Moore’s letters to Dujardin bear other marks of a pervasive oral quality. The letters are usually short and brisk in manner. Some of them resemble telegrams,27 the content is functional, the wording is compressed, elliptical, not to say paratactic at times. Questions and the French question-tag, “n’est-ce pas?” crop up in the text in guise of conclusions. Contact with the correspondent is revived through such phatic signs as “Dites”, as if the letters were live conversations. Actually, they often seem to re-enact a viva voce exchange between the two friends. There is even some kind of physicality in the final handshake: “Je vous serre la main” or “poignées de mains”.28 But, in spite of the immediacy and great sense of urgency they convey, the letters are no substitute for real dialogues. A lot of them are used to make arrangements for meetings and longed-for literary conversations 25 Moore, letter to Dujardin, 2 July 1897, HRHRC: “en core une fois l’autographe me fait défaut.” 26 Moore, letter to Dujardin, trans. John Eglinton, 21 November 1922, BLJD: “Je hais les fautes de verbes et je vous prie de les arranger, quoique en écrivant mes anciennes lettres je ne tinsse aucunement à être lu que par vous. Tinsse, voilà un magnifique subjonctif. Existe-t-il dans votre grammaire, ou bien est-il l’invention de votre ami?” 27 Moore would actually send Dujardin telegrams as well. 28 Moore, letters to Dujardin, 13 August 1897, 8 October 1906, 21 November 1922, HRHRC. Incidentally, Moore made the interesting remark in a letter dated 22 May 1909: “A hearty shake-hands! It seems to me that I am more addicted to hand-shaking in my correspondence than in actual life”, trans. John Eglinton (“Il me semble que je donne beaucoup plus de poignées de mains dans mes lettres que dans la vie privée”). Eglinton added this passage to a letter dated 12 May 1909.

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in Paris, London or Bayreuth. Letters often recall past dialogues and look forward to some prospective discussions: “I am thirsting to see you and to resume our talks.”29 The sense of distance that the letters strive to subdue is sometimes rendered more acute by their very raison d’être. Unlike some other epistolary relationships Moore had in his life, his association with Dujardin was based on renewed contacts – and heated debates – with his correspondent. Accordingly, his letters emerge as the tip of the iceberg – the written remains of endless talks on literary, musical, and religious subjects. Moore made regular pilgrimages to France and was a frequent visitor at Dujardin’s place of residence at Le Val Changis, near Fontainebleau, south-east of Paris. In his old age, he was to reminisce about the place as a sanctuary where he conceived some of his works and had the opportunity to practise his French. Le Val Changis also provided him with the sylvan locale apt to bring forth a moment of self-revelation as to his command of the French language. In a crowning letter that was to close the collection edited by Eglinton, Moore recalled a conversation he had had with Dujardin about his errors in French: “You must correct the mistakes in French, at all events the mistakes in spelling.” And you answered – I remember again your exact words: “What on earth can it matter to you?” “What indeed can it matter?” I muttered; and as we walked side by side amid your green vanillas I began to attend to the songs of the birds. The chaffinch has an eager song, I said; the song of the wren is cheerful; the lark, darting out over the cornfield, is an enrapt creature. Each bird has its own little jargon, and how stupid it would be to wish them all to sing what we call music! I also, have my own little jargon, and it would be stupid to try to make it different. Correct French in a foreigner is detestable … and after all I prefer my own jargon to grammar – and you do also, I think? …30 29

Moore, letter to Dujardin, 20 June 1898, trans. John Eglinton, HRHRC: “J’ai soif de vous voir et de reprendre toutes nos causeries.” Moore seems to underline the physicality of the intellectual exchange by using the traditional metaphor of thirst. 30 Moore, letter to Dujardin, trans. John Eglinton, 21 November 1922, BLJD: “‘Il faut corriger les fautes de français au moins les fautes d’orthographes.’ Vous m’avez répondu. Je vous cite textuellement: ‘Qu’est-ce que cela peut vous foutre ….’ En effet qu’est-ce que cela peut me foutre, fut ma réponse et vous suivant sous vos arbres, et en marchant côte à côte par les vertes venelles, j’écoutais les chants des oiseaux. ‘Le pinson chante avec entrain’, je me suis dit, le roitelet gaiement, l’alouette qui s’élance

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While Moore certainly improved his command of French with the help of Dujardin, he probably took pride in ignoring grammatical rules, proper spelling and punctuation. There is something rebellious about his not abiding by language standards, possibly redolent of his schooldays at Oscott. From Le Val Changis, he wrote to his publisher T. Werner Laurie: I am convinced that French is my natural language – one that I never learnt sufficiently. My French never went to school but it’s strangely natural to me.31

Writing to Dujardin, though, enabled Moore to try his French out on him in the most practical way. With no thought of publication, the letters also served as a testing ground. Some letters include poems he submitted to his friend so as to have his shrewd opinion and judicious corrections.32 Some poems were to be integrated, at a later stage, into published works, such as the poem celebrating a painting by Lord Leighton.33 Others were written as mere occasional verse such as the scatological “vers burliogues”34 meant to ridicule Paul Bourget on his visit to London or “La chair est bonne de l’alose” intended to apologize for his inability to visit Dujardin in Fontainebleau.35 “Ecrire en français”: the performative dimension It seems that writing in French was not so much a matter of linguistic or literary training as of transgressing boundaries – getting across au-dessus le champs de l’avoine est une exaltée. Chaque oiseau a son petit jargon et de les faire chanter sur les notes de notre gamme, si on le pouvait, serait bête. Moi aussi, j’ai mon petit jargon: il serait bête de le changer. Le français correct d’un étranger est odieux … après tout j’aime mon jargon mieux que la grammaire, et vous aussi n’est-ce pas?” Moore’s dubious analogy between his French and the song of a lark affords a favourable image of the Irish writer. It might also be seen as a distant tribute to his favourite English poet Shelley and a reminder of the poem “To a Skylark” (See Hone, The Life of George Moore, 64). Eglinton decidedly doctored – or betrayed – Moore’s prose in this passage. 31 Moore, “To T. Werner Laurie”, 25 April 1921, in George Moore on Parnassus, 521. 32 As a matter of fact, Moore would send the same poems to some other French friends such as Aristide Marie. See his book of recollections: Aristide Marie, La Forêt Symboliste, Esprits et Visages, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1936, 133. 33 Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, 170. 34 Moore, letter to Dujardin, 15 July 1897, HRHRC. 35 Moore, letters to Dujardin, 9, 14, 18, 20 May 1920, HRHRC.

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borders – and escaping his original social and cultural Irish milieu and the prevalent ideologies. In some respects, his correspondence with Dujardin provided him with the discursive means of furthering this project. Having taken up residence in Dublin, he wrote to his French friend on 24 September 1902 that he would like to do something different: “I should like to do something different – paint, model, write in French. Anything to escape”,36 in order to break free from the Gaelic League and from Ireland. This claim is strongly reminiscent, by the way, of Father Oliver Gogarty’s train of thought at the beginning of The Lake: “He wished himself away in a foreign country, distracted every moment by new things, learning the language out of a volume of songs, and hearing music, any music, French or German – any music but Irish music.”37 In this particular instance, as is often the case with Moore, the letter will appear to disclose the telltale signs of the hidden symbolic strategies brought into play in the literary works. Indeed, letters are to be construed as the laboratory in which literary works are conceived. Building on personal experience, letters develop an imaginary of language and communication, connoting the use of French for him. But what seems to be more interesting in our view is that appropriating and using the French language turns out to be an implicit performative act, in an almost linguistic sense of the word. His wish to write in French cannot be reduced to a mere incidental statement; by wording it effectively in French, he seems to fulfil his project or his dream of slipping past national boundaries and rejecting bigoted views. It is actually accomplished in the very act of writing in French. The “saying” is certainly as important as the “said”. Admittedly, Moore’s letters do not come up to the standards of literary works or some famous literary correspondences but they do partake of a similar symbolic discursive gesture. To some extent, the letters he wrote to Dujardin, possibly along with the creatively revised French translations of his works, substitute for the body of literary works he never wrote directly in French. Moore was probably conscious of his limitations in French. Interestingly enough, in Conversations in Ebury Street, he recalls what he confided to Georges Jean-Aubry: “It is 36

Moore, letter to Dujardin, trans. John Eglinton, 24 September 1902, HRHRC: “Je voudrais faire la peinture, la sculpture, je voudrais écrire en français. La fuite … la fuite.” 37 George Moore, The Lake, London: William Heinemann, 1905, 6.

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possible to write a page, two pages, or a few verses, in a foreign language, but a book in a foreign language is apt to end in lead.”38 No doubt, Moore was at a disadvantage, linguistically speaking, in his epistolary interaction with Dujardin. Yet, paradoxically, his failing to master the language properly, that is to say, by received academic standards, allowed him to build a positive image or “face” of himself to take up the terminology of the sociologist Erving Goffman.39 In his provocative statement, “I like my jargon better than grammar; so do you, don’t you?”, Moore is not fishing for undeserved praise, but trying to earn his correspondent’s approval in anticipation and thereby the control of the exchange.40 By asserting the specificity of his French jargon and having it recognized as such, he somehow asserts his identity. By so doing, he reveals himself both as an actor and a stage director in the interaction. In the final analysis, French is to be seen as instrumental in establishing his position in the epistolary relationship. The use of the French language in Moore’s letters to Edouard Dujardin seems to serve the purpose of fulfilling Moore’s “facewant”.41 It works on a cultural and ideological plane as well as on the more personal plane of his close relationship with Dujardin. In that light, Moore’s doubt-ridden question, “Mais qui voudrait me lire en Français?”, sounds more like an invitation to read his letters in the text and possibly a disguised plea for recognition.

38

Moore, Conversations in Ebury Street, 264. Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual, New York: Pantheon Books, 1967, 5. 40 “J’aime mieux mon jargon que la grammaire et vous aussi n’est-ce pas?” Professor Elizabeth Grubgeld gives an enlightening analysis of Moore’s strategies to dominate the epistolary dialogue with his relatives and his friends in George Moore and the Autogenous Self: Self: The Autobiography and Fiction, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1994. See the chapter entitled “Writing the Life in Dialogue”. 41 Penelope Brown and Stephen S. Levinson, Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987, 62. 39

III. GRAFTS AND TRANSPLANTS

THE QUEST FOR FEMALE SELFHOOD IN EVELYN INNES AND SISTER TERESA: FROM WAGNERIAN KÜNSTLERROMAN TO FREUDIAN FAMILY ROMANCE ANN HEILMANN AND MARK LLEWELLYN

“Words cannot tell my delirium, my madness” – thus George Moore exclaimed on first hearing Tristan and Isolde in 1892, a few days after attending a Drury Lane production of Wagner’s Rhinegold at the instigation of his friend and collaborator in the Irish Literary Renaissance, Edward Martyn.1 As he later recalled in Hail and Farewell, he had initially been reluctant to accompany Martyn: “For Wagner was reputed unmelodious and difficult to all except the most erudite, and fearing that I should be bored for several hours by sounds which would mean nothing to me, I began to seek excuses … but the moment the horns gave out the theme on the Rhine my attention was arrested, and a few minutes after it was clear that new birth awaited me.”2 This “new birth”, stimulated further by repeated visits to Bayreuth during the mid- to late 1890s, spawned new ideas in Moore. Wagner and Bayreuth had already featured in his works prior to his initiation in 1892, but had then, in quasi-anticipation of Max Nordau’s Degeneration (original German edition, 1892; English translation, 1895), served to signal dysfunctional psychologies. Thus the Martyninspired protagonist of A Mere Accident (1887) and “John Norton” (Celibates, 1895) embraces a Wagnerian aesthetic in order to sublimate passionate impulses in his life, thereby fortifying his

1

George Moore, “Tannhäuser”, Speaker, 20 July 1895, 74; see also Adrian Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2000, 244, and George Moore, Ave, in Hail and Farewell (1911), London: William Heinemann, 1947, I, 152. 2 Moore, Hail and Farewell, 152.

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Catholic asceticism; his preference for art rather than people points to his “profound process of alienation”.3 Once Moore himself had become susceptible to Wagner, the emphasis shifted from the exploration of states of alienation and repression to its opposite, the expression of sensual affinities, of sensual impulses as they shape both individual characters and authorial style. Therefore, Moore’s championship of the “melodious line” is directly attributable to the impact of Wagner on his writing.4 Like the use of leitmotifs in Evelyn Innes,5 the stylistic device of repetition in Diarmuid and Grania (1901),6 jointly authored with Yeats, emulates Wagner’s use of musical motifs. As William Blissett noted, the play is “full of Wagnerian motifs accommodated to Irish legend”.7 Wagner’s success in establishing a German national opera must have held singular appeal to Irish Literary Revivalists like Yeats, Martyn and Moore, all engaged on setting up an Irish Literary Theatre. To Moore, Wagner also came to represent the principle of life that Catholic doctrine set out to deny. In The Lake (1905) the sensuality and passion expressed in Wagner is placed in direct opposition to the dogma of the Catholic Church.8 Ever the selfparodist, Moore ironized Wagner’s influence on himself by adopting a quasi-operatic structure for his trilogy Hail and Farewell (1911-14) headed by an “Overture”,9 invoked Wagner’s “unending melody” in The Brook Kerith,10 and concluded his Wagnerian theme by

3

George Moore, “John Norton”, in Celibates, ed. Ann Heilmann, in The Collected Short Stories of George Moore: Gender and Genre, eds Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007, I, 125. 4 For Moore’s discussion of the “melodic line”, see his “Advertisement” to Celibate Lives in In Single Strictness, ed. Mark Llewellyn, in The Collected Short Stories of George Moore, V, 260. 5 See Paul Devine, “Leitmotif and Epiphany: George Moore’s Evelyn Innes and The Lake”, in Moments of Moment: Aspects of Literary Epiphany, ed. Wim Tigges, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999, 155-75. 6 George Moore and William Butler Yeats, Diarmuid and Grania: A Three Act Tragedy, intr. Anthony Farrow, Chicago: De Paul U, 1974. 7 William F. Blissett, “George Moore and Literary Wagnerism”, in Comparative Literature, XIII/1 (Winter 1961), 65. See also Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore, London: Victor Gollancz, 1936, 238. 8 Blissett, “George Moore and Literary Wagnerism”, 66. 9 Ibid., 66-67. 10 Stoddard Martin, Wagner to the Waste Land: A Study of the Relationship of Wagner to English Literature, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982, 115.

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borrowing the title of Wagner’s 1851 Communication to My Friends for his last work (published posthumously in 1933). As Baudelaire wrote in his 1861 essay on “Richard Wagner and Tannhäuser”, Wagner’s operas dramatize “the struggle of the two principles which have selected the human heart as their chief arena, namely the struggle of the flesh with the spirit, of hell with heaven and of Satan with God”.11 Wagnerian opera and the monumental clash of sensual desires and spiritual imperatives, of life and death drives, are central to Moore’s novel sequence, Evelyn Innes (1898) and Sister Teresa (1901). Originally conceived as a single text,12 the two novels explore the artistic, sensual and spiritual trajectory of the impoverished daughter of a Catholic musician specializing in the medieval and Renaissance periods and a female opera singer and music teacher (now deceased). Seduced by the aristocratic art lover and materialist-atheist aesthete Owen Asher, a figure who encapsulated some aspects of Moore himself,13 Evelyn leaves her father’s home in Dulwich to become an internationally celebrated Wagnerian soprano, only to withdraw to convent life and a new identity as “Sister Teresa” at the culminating point of her public career, after embarking on an affair with Ulick Dean, a Celtic nationalist composer, occultist and pantheist based on Yeats (and in Moore’s later revision remodelled to resemble AE or George William Russell). According to Adrian Frazier, Yeats was somewhat startled14 by this portrait of a self-absorbed, “sombre ecstatic”15 alter ego so focused on his dream world that he is oblivious not only to his external appearance but also, more woefully, to the heroine’s ever more desperate love-making: “Love as a theme did not seem to suit him; he seemed to fade from her; he was only real when he spoke of

11

Cited in Peter Wapnewski, “The Operas as Literary Works”, in Wagner Handbook, eds Ulrich Müller and Peter Wapnewski, trans. John Deathridge, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1992, 27. 12 George Moore, Preface, Sister Teresa, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901, vii. See also his Preface to the second English edition of Sister Teresa, London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1909. However, in A Communication to My Friends ([London]: Nonesuch Press, 1933) Moore gave a different version of events by suggesting that it was only after the publication of Evelyn Innes that he conceived of writing a sequel. 13 See Susan L. Mitchell, George Moore, Dublin: Talbot P, 1930, 54. 14 Frazier, George Moore, 266. 15 George Moore, Evelyn Innes (1898), London: Ernest, 1929, 142.

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his ideas [whereas she] … was no longer truly herself except when speaking of sexual emotion.”16 In these pointedly fin-de-siècle texts Moore dramatized the Victorian conflict between materialism and idealism, depicting the escalating mental crisis that results from the clash between Evelyn’s pursuit of a sensual life sublimated into art and her flight into religious ecstasy and quest for metaphysical relief. In mapping, in his heroine, the “intense but involuntary life of the soul”17 and with it the spiritual malaise of post-Darwinian Victorianism, Moore also engaged with contemporary art movements – above all the Wagner cult and the Celtic Renaissance, both expressions of Victorian neo-Romanticism – in a poignant effort to create a female-centred version of Huysman’s fin-de-siècle explorations of artistic, sensual and spiritual epiphany. As Phyllis Weliver has illustrated in her study of Victorian representations of women and music, by the close of the century the female musician had become a literary trope signifying the dichotomies of femininity (the seductive demon, the redeeming angel) as well as cultural and scientific investigations of the mind/body split.18 These binaries are central to the psychological plight of Moore’s heroine, who is alternately enraptured and tortured by her internalization of and identification with these cultural symbols. Moore extends the interrogation of musical performance as a marker of dysfunctional family relations found in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876) by adding a turn-of-the-century psychoanalytic edge to Evelyn’s predicament. Eliot’s Alcharisi embraces her operatic career by rejecting her identity as a mother: a rejection later reinforced, albeit unwittingly, by the young Deronda’s profound discomfiture with the idea of his own musical recitals, an unease which is intensified and validated by Mirah’s experience of commodification at the hands of her father. Evelyn, by contrast, seeks to recreate and reconnect with her parents in and through opera. Our essay therefore examines Moore’s novel sequence in its dual function as a Wagnerian female artist novel and a proto-Freudian psychological study. Moore’s portrait of the artist as a tormented 16

Ibid., 187. Moore, Sister Teresa, 207. 18 Phyllis Weliver, Women Musicians in Victorian Fiction, 1860-1900: Representations of Music, Science and Gender in the Leisured Home, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000, 6-7. 17

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young woman in quest of spiritual versus sensual happiness is also an exploration of the psychological repercussions of disrupted and inadequate parenting. Thus Evelyn’s ecstatic self-surrender to opera and a ritualized, female-directed form of religion represent a displaced quest for her mother, who died in her girlhood and whose stern personality shapes her life, just as in her love affairs and her subjection to her Catholic priest she retraces her relationship with her father, whose absorption in his musical work acts as an inspiration to her own development while foreclosing the possibility of fuller emotional interchange. In his examination of the psychological causes of Evelyn’s lack of emotional and spiritual stability Moore explored ideas shortly to be articulated by Sigmund Freud. Moore’s novel sequence, we argue, reflects a moment of transition between late Victorian and early twentieth-century aesthetic and critical paradigms. “All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music”:19 a Wagnerian Künstlerroman If, as Stoddard Martin and Paul Devine have illustrated, Wagnerian opera is the central artistic leitmotif of Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa20 and the yardstick by which the heroine’s spiritual and sensual progression can be measured, the novel cycle also acts in a more general sense as roman à clef in that it draws on real-life artists of the time. Most prominently, the figure of Ulick Dean (Yeats) serves to provide an Irish nationalist perspective on Wagner where Evelyn’s response is entirely instinctual, emotional, and articulated in and through the body. Other figures represent aspects of contemporary artistic and aesthetic circles: Evelyn’s first lover, Sir Owen Asher, is modelled on the art lover and patron Sir William Eden;21 in having bought the Wagnerian Review he also shares some aspects with Moore’s friend Edouard Dujardin, the editor of La Revue wagnérienne who, according to Richard Allen Cave, exerted the greatest Wagnerian

19 Walter Pater, “The School of Giorgione”, in The Renaissance (1873), London: Fontana, 1964, 129 (emphasis in original). 20 For analogies between Evelyn Innes and Wagner’s operas see Martin, Wagner to the Waste Land, 105. Devine draws attention to the fact that “The Wagnerian allusions are themselves employed as leitmotifs which delineate the changing state of Evelyn’s spiritual crisis” (Devine, “Leitmotif and Epiphany”, 162). 21 Frazier, George Moore, 259. In a December 1903 letter to Cecile Gabrielle von Hoenstadt Moore referred to Eden as Owen Asher (in ibid., 234).

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influence on Moore.22 The portraits of Evelyn and her father were inspired by the Dulwich musician Arnold Dolmetsch and his daughter Helene, who recreated English music of the seventeenth century on original instruments restored by Dolmetsch.23 Evelyn and Mr Innes also share certain features with Edward Martyn: his purist passion for early modern music (Vittoria and Palestrina)24 is mirrored in Mr Innes’ work, while his Catholic soul-searching, so cruelly satirized in Moore’s memoirs, finds tragic expression in Evelyn’s spiritual anguish. A woman of constantly shifting moods, whose religious fervour always threatens to give way to overpowering erotic impulses and whose forceful sensuality disintegrates into an obsession with chastity, Evelyn also carries traits of the writer Pearl Craigie (“John Oliver Hobbes”), with whom Moore was conducting a stormy halfaffair at the time; Evelyn’s religious advisor, Monsignor Mostyn, is modelled on Monsignor Browne, Craigie’s confessor.25 Evelyn further draws on Lady Cunard, the woman who permitted Moore to make love to her over the space of a lifetime while always eluding him; and on Virginia Crawford, who in 1886 had gained notoriety through her part in Sir Charles Dilke’s divorce case, and who subsequently converted to Catholicism and spent some time living as a nun.26 An amalgamation of different real-life women, Evelyn Innes functions as an idea as much as a flesh-and-blood character – an idea Moore first articulated in “Sex in Art”, an article originally published in the Speaker in 1893 and later included in his Modern Painting (1897). “Sex is as important an element in a work of art as it is in life”, he emphasized: “all art that lives is full of sex.”27 In Moore’s opinion this was the reason for the failure as artists of all but the most exceptional women. A woman as a rule failed as an artist because “She will make no sacrifice for her art; she will not tell the truth about herself as frankly as Jean-Jacques [Rousseau], nor will she observe

22

Richard Allen Cave, A Study of the Novels of George Moore, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1978, 137-38. 23 Frazier, George Moore, 248. 24 Moore, Ave, 171. 25 Hone, The Life of George Moore, 203. 26 Frazier, George Moore, 411. Crawford collaborated with Moore on the convent scenes and later on The Lake. 27 George Moore, “Sex in Art”, in Modern Painting, London: Walter Scott, 1897, 227. For the original article, see Frazier, George Moore, 522, n.138.

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life from the outside with the grave impersonal vision of Flaubert”.28 At first glance this appears to apply to Evelyn. Apart from her initial break with conventional morality when she leaves the parental home to embark on an uncertain career, Evelyn, once she has gained public recognition as an opera singer, makes no sacrifices for her art (thus she turns down important engagements for the whim of accompanying Owen on pleasure trips). She certainly does not observe life with an impersonal vision; rather, the key to her operatic success is the uninhibited mise en scène of intense moments of personal experience transposed into art. In this she resembles Daniel Deronda’s operatic mother, whose acting is “not good except when it was not really acting, but the part was one that I could be myself in”.29 In performing her inner crises, however, Evelyn fulfils Moore’s second criterion: by yielding the private to spectacular public display, she not only tells the truth about herself and her body (something Virginia Woolf was soon to enjoin women artists to do);30 by projecting herself and her sexuality into her art, she also creates an authentically feminine style of acting, an “acting the body”, which establishes a new, quasi-Ibsenite outlook on the Wagnerian heroine and Wagnerian stage performance. Consequently, the erstwhile statuesque and pathetic is replaced with the dramatic performance of authentic emotion and the intensity of lived experience: … she thought she could create an Isolde more intense than the Isolde of the fat women whom she had seen walking about the stage, lifting their arms and trying to look like sculpture … her Isolde would have an intense and a personal life that no Isolde had had before. And in holding up her own soul to view, she would hold up the universal soul ….31

Evelyn’s acting is a reflection of herself and her experience and also an intensification of this experience: “[it] was a medium through which she was able to re-live particular phases of her life, or to exhibit her present life in a more intense and concentrated form.”32 Her 28

Moore, “Sex in Art”, 229. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda (1876), London: Penguin, 2002, 217. 30 Virginia Woolf, “Professions for Women”, (1931), in Virginia Woolf: On Women and Writing, ed. Michèle Barrett, London: Women’s P, 1992, 57-63. 31 Moore, Evelyn Innes, 116-17. 32 Ibid., 124. 29

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operatic performances assume meaning beyond the artistic, taking on profound psychological significance, since every new role represents a past or future life or situation, the enactment or re-enactment of which might bring relief to her troubled sense of self and her conflicting identities of daughter, lover, sinner seeking redemption, and artist. Life and art, memory and performance blend together into one whole, with the effect that Evelyn starts to project her public performance into her private life, acting out scenes there too. Every time she performs in The Valkyrie she rehearses the dreaded re-encounter with her father as Brünnhilde contending with Wotan’s rage. When she finally finds the courage to visit Mr Innes, she is conscious of acting a part: The wonder of the scene she was acting – she never admitted she acted; she lived through scenes, whether fictitious or real – quickened in her …. She had acted all that she now believed to be reality on the stage many times. It seemed as true then as it did now – more true …. She knelt at her father’s or at Wotan’s feet – she could not distinguish; all limitations had been razed. She was the daughter at the father’s feet. She knelt like Magdalen …. It was not until he asked her why she was singing Wagner that she raised her face. That he should not know, jarred and spoilt the harmony of the scene as she had conceived it, and it was not till he repeated his question that she told him.33

Her disappointment at her father’s interjection indicates the degree to which Wagner and his larger-than-life roles have entered the fabric of her private life, signalling also her lack of a separate identity beyond her operatic personae. This lack of a stable identity is a contributing factor in precipitating her religious crisis once the multiplicity of operatic roles have been internalized and through performance externalized and transcended: With Margaret [Faust] she was back in the schoolroom …. Her Margaret was unpublished, but her Elizabeth [Tannhäuser] was three times as real. There was no comparison, not even in Isolde could she be more true to herself. Her Elizabeth was a side of her life that now only existed on the stage. Brunnhilde [Ring cycle] was her best part, for into it she poured all her joy of life … all her enthusiasm for life and for the hero who came to awaken her to life and to love. In 33

Ibid., 162-63.

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Brunnhilde and Elizabeth all the humanity she represented … was on the stage.34

Margaret, the fallen woman in Charles Gounod’s Faust (1859), is the first role she performs, to great acclaim, on her return to London, six years after leaving her father’s home for a career abroad. In enacting Margaret she relives the momentous sensual awakening she experienced at first sight of Asher, and also the threat of disgrace and shipwreck that accompanied her move beyond the boundaries of middle-class respectability. However, Tannhäuser’s Elizabeth represents the young woman in her unfallen state, a figure of purity and redemption who embraces self-sacrifice (in Wagner’s opera Elizabeth gives her life to save Tannhäuser’s soul). While initially rejecting conventional self-sacrifice (looking after her father), Evelyn later espouses a position of self-abnegation when she becomes a nun. To enter the convent and purge herself of the life of the flesh means to redeem Tannhäuser within herself (like Tannhäuser, the unreconstituted Evelyn always sees the higher life but is unable to break free from the spell of Venus). Isolde is the role that triggers the crisis and prompts the sacrifice of Elizabeth, setting off a process of transformation and rebirth which turns Evelyn into Sister Teresa. It is as a result of rehearsing Isolde with Ulick Dean that the two become lovers (thereby placing Asher in the position of King Mark). Isolde’s “Liebestod” is recreated in a different form in Evelyn’s break with her lovers and her withdrawal to the order of the Passionate Sisters. Like Isolde she embraces “death” in the conviction of the immortality of her desire. As Evelyn seeks release from her devastating sense of sin by embracing the doctrines of the Church, Isolde becomes Kundry, the role Evelyn would have been engaged to play next if she had remained on the stage. Evelyn’s ecstatic self-surrender to the authority of her stern confessor, Monsignor Mostyn, recreates Kundry’s redemption-throughsubjection in the concluding act of Parsifal: It was the beauty of unity, here was a man whose ideas are so deeply rooted that they express themselves in his flesh. In him there was nothing floating or undecided; and in the line of the thin, small mouth and the square nostrils, Evelyn divined a perfect certainty on all 34

Ibid., 125-26.

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points. In this way she was attracted to his spiritual guidance, and desired the support of his knowledge, as she had desired Ulick’s knowledge when she was studying Isolde. Her clear, nervous vision met the dry, narrow vision that was the priest … he felt that she must be forced into submission – she must accept the entire doctrine of the Church …. He was determined to reduce her to his mind … his voice was so kind, so irresistibly kind, that she heard nothing but it … she could not withstand the kindness of that voice: it seemed to enter into her life like some extraordinary music or perfume …. An extraordinary sweetness came over her, she seemed borne away upon a delicious sweetness; she was conscious of an extraordinary inward presence. She … buried herself in prayer, experiencing all the while the most wonderful and continuous sensation of delight …. He had healed her, and she felt hope and life returning to her again.35

That this highly sensual self-subjugation to rigid dogma embodied in a chilly and relentless would-be redeemer cannot augur well for Evelyn’s future well-being is anticipated in Ulick’s categorical dismissal of Parsifal as a pretentious and hypocritical morality play with a deeply reprehensible message: “the abjection of Kundry before this stuffed Christ revolted him. But the obtusely religious could not fail to be moved.”36 Therefore, it may not be surprising if Evelyn, once she has entered the convent, finds herself again and again drawn to thinking about Brünnhilde, the lover and warrior goddess from the Ring cycle who successively saves, is awakened by, and destroys Siegfried. The images and music of Brünnhilde and Isolde haunt Evelyn in her retreat as a nun, threatening her devotion and her Kundry-like conversion. Evelyn’s change of name to Teresa when she takes the veil may indicate as much, with its direct connotation of the uncontrollable, and physical as well as spiritual, passion of St Teresa. When Evelyn becomes Teresa, Wagner and the life of the flesh are at best subdued, never dead in her. Indeed, as Moore wrote in an article on Wagner in the Speaker in 1895, “the sensualist can never become religious; he may cease to sin, and love God, but he is as much a sensualist after as

35 36

Ibid., 308, 312-13. Ibid., 149.

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before. St. Theresa, for instance.”37 Like Saint Theresa, Moore’s Teresa at best fools herself about her inner transformation. In this state of repression, Wagnerian references take on ominous meaning: Evelyn’s friend and fellow-singer, Louise Helbrun, who happens to visit on the very day of Evelyn’s election to the sisterhood, implores her to “throw away the ring”. The ring that represents her betrothal to Christ here also emblemizes the ring of the Nibelungs with its attendant curse of corruption and destruction. Just as in The Rhinegold the evil-minded Alberich sets off the curse with his craving for power, so here the nuns, whose survival depends on the monetary benefits of Evelyn’s singing, are ultimately to blame for her demise: “the nuns only want your money”, warns Mademoiselle Helbrun.38 Later, when Evelyn struggles to come to terms with the loss of her faith and her sense of entrapment within the convent, involuntary dreams of Brünnhilde’s Siegfried-induced awakening to the beauty of the world39 signal her desire to leave while also prompting the recognition of her defeat: Her whole life seemed to be read out to her, and at the end of the long reading she answered, “No Siegfried will come to release me from this prison of invisible bars. And if Siegfried came to release me from these flames … of what use should I be to him … or to anyone?”40

A Brünnhilde roused to the magnificence of nature and now at last converted to Ulick Dean’s pantheistic vision, while entertaining no hope of recapturing the life of the flesh embodied by the figure of Siegfried, Evelyn ends her Wagnerian journey by again experiencing Kundry’s sense of redemption, but this time redemption in and through nature: She saw the beautiful earth quiescent like a nun watching the sacrament. The plants lifted their leaves to the light.

37

George Moore, “A Reaction”, Speaker, 13 July 1895, 42. The fact that Moore’s heroine’s convent name is taken from St Teresa might also be considered an ironic reference to Dorothea Brooke as a modern Saint Theresa in Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872). 38 Moore, Sister Teresa, 142. 39 Ibid., 199. 40 Ibid., 200.

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It remains questionable whether Evelyn might be able to resolve the dilemma of her life in an overwhelming sensual-qua-spiritual epiphany. As Cave has noted, “her decision to remain in the convent is nothing less than a rejection of her new-found purpose and identity”.42 The loss of her voice in the aftermath of a bad cold constitutes the physical manifestation of her loss of the will to live, reflected in her inability to leave the convent: when after months of delay she has the opportunity she is frightened by the prospect and closes the door back on herself. The novel concludes with another visit from Mademoiselle Helbrun, and a glimpse of a cheerfully resigned Sister Teresa with not a shred of passion left in her, who indifferently refers to herself as a “broken spirit”43 and whose outlook on life is now entirely focused on the more gifted of the pupils who attend her music lessons in the convent. William Blissett rightly compared Moore’s use of “Wagnerian parallels” in Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa to Joyce’s use of Homeric myth in Ulysses, arguing that “the opposition of Wagner and Catholicism [serve] as correlatives of Evelyn’s state of sin and state of 41

Ibid., 233. Cave, A Study of the Novels of George Moore, 160. 43 Moore, Sister Teresa, 235. 42

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grace”.44 There is, however, a third concept at work in Moore’s two novels, and that is the psychological impact of family relations. As Stoddard Martin has argued, Moore’s interest in psychology was at least partly indebted to Wagner and his conceptualization of Wagner as a great literary dramatist and analyst of Shakespearean dimensions: Moore sought “to create the perfect modern prose: a synthesis of psychology, symbolism, and naturalism – in short, the very elements Wagner had so successfully brought together”.45 Wagner, Moore stated in 1895, was “a naturalist writer in his music …. He seemed to unite Balzac and Flaubert in one.”46 The Wagnerian parameters of Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa can therefore also be read in the context of psychological naturalism: a quest for the lost parents. “Some day she thought someone would write [their] history. It would be a very interesting history – her father, her mother and herself”:47 a Freudian family romance Sister Teresa ends where Evelyn Innes begins: with a celebrated opera singer’s loss of voice and her displacement of her art into music lessons. Evelyn inherited her gift from her mother, who had a prominent career before her marriage. The future Mr and Mrs Innes met in Italy, where she was performing in Mozart’s Don Giovanni; after their marriage they moved on to further engagements in Paris and Brussels, until in Brussels she lost her voice. After spending all their money on medical treatment, the Inneses moved to London with their baby-daughter and settled down to a prosaic life: he took the post of organist at a parish church and she started giving singing lessons. The circular structure of the plot emphasizes the mirror dynamics between Evelyn and her mother’s careers and lives. Evelyn’s operatic career starts where Mrs Innes’ terminates, in Paris and Brussels: in Paris Evelyn is coached by the formidable Madame Savelli, who offers to train her until she has “twice the voice her mother had”.48 Her first triumphant success with Margaret, her mother’s role, takes place in Brussels, the site of Mrs Innes’ collapse. If Margaret, the innocent girl, is their joint point of departure, Evelyn with her 44

Blissett, “George Moore and Literary Wagnerism”, 55-56. Martin, Wagner to the Waste Land, 114, 102. 46 Moore, “A Reaction”, 42. 47 Moore, Sister Teresa, 70. 48 Moore, Evelyn Innes, 107. 45

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irregular private life plays Isolde to Mrs Innes’ Elizabeth. At the beginning of her crisis of conscience Evelyn wonders whether she should marry Asher and if she is ready to leave the stage. As in Daniel Deronda, a female opera singer cannot be a wife, much less a mother – Evelyn declares to Asher early on in the novel that “I don’t want children. I want to sing”,49 a possible comment on her own mother’s inability to hold both positions. How much then might Mrs Innes’ loss of voice, in the very spectacle of breaking down in the middle of an opera, have been a capitulation to, perhaps also be a protest against, the imposition of silence on the professional woman with domestic responsibilities? Evelyn, too, capitulates, though in different circumstances. In her painful conviction of her essential inferiority vis-à-vis her mother, the correspondences in their fates provide her with a sense of relief that borders on elation. At every stage in her life she compares herself to her mother, who is the yardstick for her own moral and professional achievements and failures. The only surviving memento of the mother, the portrait which dominates the parental home at Dulwich, is consulted again and again as the “mirror on the wall” (or, in Freudian terms, super-ego) which measures Evelyn’s state of sin and fall from her mother’s grace: At that moment she caught sight of her mother’s eyes. They seemed to watch her; she seemed to know all about Owen, and afraid of the haunting, reproving look, Evelyn studied the long oval face and the small brown eyes so unlike hers. One thing only she had inherited from her mother – her voice. She had certainly not inherited her conduct from her mother; her mother was one of the few great artistes against whom nothing could be said. Her mother was a good woman …. What did she think of her daughter? And seeing her cold, narrow face, she feared her mother would regard her conduct even more severely than her father.50

When after her performance in Faust she asks a former admirer of her mother’s, the Marquis d’Albazzi, “if she sang as well as her mother”, his response is a masterpiece in diplomacy: “Mademoiselle, the singers of my day were as exquisite flutes, and the singers of your

49 50

Ibid., 67. Ibid., 157.

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day give emotions that no flute could give.”51 Her father is more candid in his appraisal: “Your Margaret is very good; better than I expected – I am speaking of the singing, of course, as acting it was superb.”52 Evelyn reflects that: To convince him that she sang as well as mother was out of the question, but she might be able to convince him that she could do something that mother could not have done. It was strange that she always thought of mother in connection with her voice; the other singers did not seem to matter; they might sing better or worse, but the sense of rivalry was not so intimate.53

Evelyn’s mother fixation and her overwhelming sense of sin and desire for purification are intricately connected, and it is here that the Wagnerian Künstlerroman is complemented by the psychological novel and its attention to what Freud was shortly to define as the “family romance” and the impact of mourning on individual subject constitution and development. In his paper “Family Romances”, written in 1908 and published untitled in Otto Rank’s The Myth of the Birth of the Hero (1909),54 Freud articulated ideas that would become central to his later theory of the Oedipus complex, such as the hypothesis that children experienced an intense sense of rivalry towards their same-sex parent.55 This sense of rivalry, so acute in Evelyn’s case, is intensified by the mother’s death: the idealized love object becomes the source of pain and anguish, powerfully negative feelings which, in order to protect the love object, are subsequently projected back onto the self and expressed through self-depreciation.56 In “Mourning and Melancholia” (written in 1915 and published in 1917), Freud argued that selfreproaches and strong feelings of guilt can be read as symptoms of mourning, and that “dissatisfaction with the ego on moral grounds” was the most typical feature: “The patient represents his ego to us as worthless, incapable of any achievement and morally despicable; he

51

Ibid., 125. Ibid., 167. 53 Ibid., 195. 54 The Freud Reader, ed. Peter Gay, London: Vintage, 1995, 297. 55 Sigmund Freud, “Family Romances”, in ibid., 298. 56 Sigmund Freud, “Mourning and Melancholia”, in ibid., 586. 52

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reproaches himself, vilifies himself and expects to be cast out and punished.”57 In Evelyn Innes, while the self becomes the target for recrimination, the object of love and mourning (the mother) is transformed into an abstract principle, or a set of principles, as in Evelyn’s mind Mrs Innes assumes the metaphorical significance of “morality” and “the soul”: … her mother’s face looked out of her reverie, grey and grave and watchful, only half seen in the shadows. She seemed aware of her mother as she might be of some idea, strangely personal to herself, something near and remote, beyond this span of life, stretching into infinity … this grey shadow was more real to her than the rest of the world. The face did not stir, it always wore the same expression. Evelyn could not even tell if the expression of the dim eyes was one of disapproval. But it needs must be – she could have no doubt on that point. What was certain and sure was that she seemed in a nearer and more intimate, in a more essential communication with her mother, than with her father who was alive. Nothing seemed to divide her from her mother. She had only to let her soul go, and it could mingle with her mother’s spirit, and then all misunderstanding would be at an end.58

Evelyn’s overpowering need for spiritual communion with a mother who is no longer available in the flesh may furnish the psychological explanation for her flight from the world and wish to immerse herself in the life of the spirit. In an earlier short story, “Agnes Lahens” (Celibates, 1895), Moore explored the wish to retreat behind convent walls as an infantile desire to return to the womb of the good mother in a situation in which neither parent offered any emotional stability. In Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa he created a psychologically more complex picture of a parental constellation that suspends the protagonist between life and death drives. Evelyn’s confessor Monsignor Mostyn, an emissary from Rome with personal contact to the Pope, becomes the medium between the world (her father, the surviving parent) and the spirit (the mother). The psychological urgency of Evelyn’s desire to please, and fulfil the expectations of, both parents lies at the heart of the duality 57 58

Ibid., 584-85. Moore, Evelyn Innes, 206-207.

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that rules, and destroys, her life: “She was neither one thing nor the other. She desired two lives diametrically opposed to each other, consequently she would never be happy.”59 Had her mother lived, she would have taught her to sing high opera; and then, Evelyn reflects, “I should have had no occasion to go away with Owen”.60 In this rather naïve scenario, she would have followed in her mother’s footsteps without the sin of irregular sexual relations; with no lovers and with the continued support of and close bond with the mother, there would have been no need to seek for spiritual guidance and protection in convent life. Likewise, had her father shown greater affection for her and taken a more pro-active interest in developing her voice, Asher might not have been able to seduce her so instantly with the three-fold temptation of erotic adventure, foreign travel, and the prospect of fame. Importantly, Asher is of a “higher social standing”61 than Evelyn’s father, a factor Freud mentions in relation to the need to escape “from the parents of whom [one] now has a low opinion”. Closer in age to Mr Innes than to Evelyn, Asher acts as a father substitute, as does Monsignor Mostyn; diametrically opposed in outlook, the atheist aesthete and the ascetic priest are responsive to Evelyn’s needs, where her father, engrossed as he is in his work, fails. As Freud argues in “Family Romances”, “the whole effort of replacing the real father by a superior one is only an expression of the child’s longing for the happy, vanished days when his father seemed to him the noblest and strongest of men and his mother the dearest and loveliest of women”.62 While striving to live up to the exacting standards of her mother, Evelyn is also desperate for acknowledgement from a father too absorbed in his work and too much caught up in his own mourning to pay much attention to her. His affection when he does express it is a symptom of his love for his wife: “He saw her beauty and sex idealised and in the vision were the eyes and pallor of the dead wife, and all the yearning and aspiration of his own life seemed reflected back in this fair, oval face.”63 After her elopement with Asher, Evelyn is disappointed to discover how quickly

59

Ibid., 135. Ibid., 157. 61 Freud, “Family Romances”, in The Freud Reader, 299. 62 Ibid., 300. 63 Moore, Evelyn Innes, 164. 60

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her father consoles himself with Ulick Dean, who works with him on his early music and acts as his amanuensis much as Evelyn used to: … he did not seem to care whether she came or stayed away. His ideas seemed to fill his life completely and there seemed no place for her in it. When she went to see him, he was glad to see her, but he never seemed to want her.64

After her break-up with her lovers, in an attempt to return to her girlhood she moves back to their Dulwich home, and now at last feels unreservedly happy: … she felt that he loved her better than any lover …. Never had she been so happy …. Her father was the real love of her life; the rest was mere excitement.65

The idyll, however, does not last. Mr Innes is called to Rome to act as an adviser on papal music, and firmly discourages Evelyn from accompanying him. Faced with the loss of her family home and having already spent regular weekends at the convent, she has no alternative but to move there altogether. Her plans to join her father in Rome once he is settled are invalidated by his death, and the breakdown she suffers as a result has the effect of hastening her confirmation as a nun, binding her more tightly to a community and vocation in which she has ceased to believe. Nor does the convent provide the parental guidance and love she so desperately craves. The childishness of the other nuns, giggling over priests’ vestments and jealously guarding their personal relationship with particular saints through the numbers of candles they are permitted to light, jar with Evelyn, who feels alienated by their lack of intellectual and especially musical interest. The only nun with a wider outlook on life, who shares her passion for music, Sister Mary John, is so frightened by the ardency of the feelings she develops for Evelyn that she asks for a transfer to the mother convent; and the prioress, a final parent substitute, while showering her with affection, wholly fails to understand her dual nature, and like Asher and Monsignor Mostyn, addresses only one side of her. The prioress’ death repeats the cycle of 64 65

Moore, Sister Teresa, 61. Moore, Evelyn Innes, 194.

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loss and mourning in Evelyn’s life, but this time there is nobody else who might serve as a substitute parent. In the revised 1909 edition of Sister Teresa Moore explored a significantly different conclusion: here Evelyn leaves the convent to found a home for disabled children, thus transforming her quest for the lost parents into a project of autonomous parenting. In the original conception of the book, however, the intensity of Evelyn’s emotional needs prohibits such a resolution, and her mournful glance onto the outside world from behind the open convent door is much more in keeping with the psychological constitution of her character. Indeed, Moore seems to have felt this too at the time, having written to Virginia Crawford in 1900 that “she remains in the convent …. A nun who had known the world might give up the convent for the world but one who gives up the world for the convent because the gifts of the world are not enough does not go back to the world.”66 For Evelyn, though, neither the world nor the convent is a place where her quest for family relationships can be satisfied. Throughout both novels, in an interchangeable variety of relationships with her biological father, Owen Asher or Monsignor Mostyn, Evelyn’s desire for stability has been denied: after taking her from her father it is Asher who, six years later, seeks to prompt a reunion between the two, and later it is her religious father, Mostyn, who insists that she cannot enter the convent and take full vows because her duty lies with her now elderly father. Mr Innes, in turn, rejects his daughter for a higher father: Rome and the Pope. In subsequently taking full vows Evelyn seeks to return to a maternal bond through her relationship with the prioress, but this leads to tensions between herself, the new mother figure and the other nuns in a kind of religious sibling rivalry. Following Evelyn’s swift elevation through the ranks of postulant and novice to full sisterhood as a result of her successful efforts to clear the convent of its debts incurred by the mismanagement of the previous prioress, the other members of the community display their jealousy of her special place in the prioress’ attentions and respond by 66 George Moore on Parnassus: Letters (1900-1933) to Secretaries, Publishers, Printers, Agents, Literati, Friends, and Acquaintances, ed. Helmut E. Gerber, Newark: U of Delaware P, 1988, 86-87. For critical responses to Moore’s altered ending, see Cave, A Study of the Novels of George Moore, 145; Elizabeth Grubgeld, George Moore and the Autogenous Self: The Autobiography and Fiction, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1994, 205-206.

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instigating their own money-making schemes. There is even a suggestion that some of the nuns wish to raise funds equal to the £8,000 Evelyn’s singing secured, in order to buy her out of the convent. Having sought an alternative family, Evelyn once again finds herself excluded from full participation in its emotional life. Ending as a “broken spirit”, teaching singing to the girls who come to the convent’s school rather than being a singer, Sister Teresa is portrayed as more aware of the nature of the divide between herself and her mother than at any previous moment in the novel. In accepting her parentless position, however, she in some senses reaches a partial resolution of the problem of the mother’s absence by projecting this absence into her own flight from the world: if, as she says, “The important thing to do is live, and we do not begin to know life, taste life, until we put it aside”,67 then the absent mother becomes more palpable as a missing presence. Alive and yet having pushed life aside, Evelyn has moved as close to the dead mother as she can while still living. Earlier in the novel, Moore describes a scene in which she looks at the portrait of her dead mother, acknowledging that “The portrait of our father or our mother is a sort of crystal ball into which we look in the hope of discovering our destiny”.68 As Freud put it, the “child’s most intense and most momentous wish ... is to be like ... the parent of his own sex”,69 a wish that Evelyn goes some way towards satisfying at the end of Sister Teresa. Ultimately, punctuated by a multiplicity of paternal and maternal bereavements and shaped by conflicting parental representations of a life of sensuality or spirituality, Evelyn’s duality is complemented by the interpenetration of the two themes that orchestrate her story to its tragic dénouement, where the Wagnerian Künstlerroman meets the Freudian family romance. Evelyn is driven to prosaic doom, a Trilby held in thrall by Moore’s own fascination with the grand narratives of Freud and Wagner: … as I listen to the Bohemian’s formless rhapsody, I become a strange being that I myself do not know; a strange germination is in process within me; thoughts and desires that I dread, whose existence in myself I was not aware of, whose existence in myself I would fain 67

Moore, Sister Teresa, 235. Ibid., 70-71. 69 Freud, “Family Romances”, in The Freud Reader, 298. 68

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deny, come swiftly and come slowly, and settle and absorb and become part of me .... I pause, horrified; but I may not pause, I am hurried on; repudiation is impossible, supplication and the wringing of hands are vain ... my worst nature is uppermost .... I am the prey of that dark, sensual Bohemian and his abominate fiddle ....70

70

Moore, “A Reaction”, 43; rpt in Moore’s “After Parsifal”, Speaker, 30 November 1895, 588-89.

“NO MORE THAN A SKETCH” MARY PIERSE

George Moore’s comments on the nature of art appear, at times, to provide tempting keys to his literary philosophy and clues to his novelistic practice. Some of those opinions seem to be particularly relevant to specific periods and volumes. However, from amongst his many assertions at various junctures, one might choose three that could be identified as being part of a core recipe, and those are: “no more than a sketch”; “an instinctive desire to imitate nature”; and “I probed my fancy, I dabbled in psychology.”1 Since all of those quotations come from Avowals, their pronouncement at a relatively late date (1919) in Moore’s writings, combined with evidence of the author’s earlier fidelity to such methodology, is indicative of their relative importance. This essay will argue for the centrality of those beliefs, in whatever degree of blending, in some of Moore’s striking and memorable fictional constructs, both before and after their specific articulation in Avowals. It will be noted that Moore accords primacy to the sketch, and that his imitation of nature and “dabbling” in psychology are delivered within that literary framework and with the rapid pen strokes that correspond to the visual artist’s esquisse or ébauche, or to impressionist technique.2

1

George Moore, Avowals, London: Cumann Sean-Eolais na hEireann, 1919, 97, 289, 212. 2 In the nineteenth century when the Académie (and Royal Academy) presided over artistic training, the esquisse and ébauche were preliminary outlines or quick rough drafts that fell far short of the detail and polish demanded for a finished picture. From the time of the Impressionists, the sketch assumed an importance in its own right as a valid and rich perceptual rendition that disputed the earlier conceptual notions and traditions of academic art. Moore’s training as a painter has undoubtedly facilitated his translation of impressionist technique from brush to pen.

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Diagnoses by Dr Moore Proof of the literary complexity and artistry of George Moore can be located in many places, and it can certainly be found in A Flood,3 a short tale of under four thousand words. While the origins of this story go back to 1892, and it subsequently emerged in slightly different forms in 1901, and from 1911 to 1913, attention here will focus on the book version published in a limited edition in 1930. One might judge from the repeated appearances of this story that it is one with which Moore was particularly happy. Undoubtedly, his portraiture of Daddy Lupton furnishes an example of a character who exhibits obvious signs of the author’s careful construction, and yet of whom it still can be said that he is “no more than a sketch”. Daddy Lupton is the grandfather in this story and, at the conclusion of the book, the sole survivor of a flood. His first appearance is described thus: “old Daddy Lupton, awful in his nightshirt, like Death himself coming to bid him good-morning.” As flood waters rise, Daddy Lupton expresses the extraordinary sentiment that the situation “makes one feel young again”. The apparent explanation for this opinion is that he views this flood as the biggest “we’ve had these sixty years”. A line later he is “babbling his recollections of a great flood of eighty years ago, in which he had nearly lost his life”. There is no discernible emotion in his short account of that inundation: “All my brothers and sisters were drowned, father and mother too, but my cradle floated right away as far as Harebridge, where it was picked up by a party in a boat.”4 The spotlight then switches to other members of the family but, when his son says that he “never seed the river rise so quickly afore”, Daddy is heard again, with all the urgency of the pupil with the right answer, “I did. I did”. The response of his son to that 3

George Moore, A Flood, New York: Groff Cronklin at the Harbor P, 1930. This particular edition was limited to 185 copies. The first version of this story was “In Sight of Death”, published in the Illustrated London News on 13 August 1892. See Ann Heilmann, Introduction, in The Collected Short Stories of George Moore: Gender and Genre, eds Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007, II, xxiv, n.54. Brendan Fleming has recently discovered an Irishlanguage version of the story (“An Díle”) which was serialized in Ireland in late autumn of 1901. The next appearance of the story was as “A Flood”, published in the Irish Review in March 1911, and subsequently in Living Age (1911) and Smart Set (1913). See Edwin Gilcher, A Bibliography of George Moore, DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1970. 4 Moore, A Flood, 3-4.

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excessively eager intervention is to say “Go and dress ’eeself, father” since Daddy is “still in his nightshirt, and his last tooth shook in his white beard”.5 While he is off stage, the reader gleans a little more, gathering that Daddy’s flood stories are often repeated: his son says “Grandfather will tell ’ee that this be nothing to the floods he knew when he was a little boy”.6 In Daddy Lupton’s next appearance, a cameo-type one, he is juxtaposed with a glimpse of the youngest person in the house: “The baby had been laid asleep on the bed, and Daddy sat by the baby softening his bread in his mug of tea, mumbling to himself, his fading brain full of incoherent recollections.”7 At this point, the story is one third of the way through and the quotations provided here make up the sum total of what is seen and heard of Daddy Lupton up to that juncture. Yet, even from those minimal flashes of sound and vision, it can be justifiably claimed that in his rapid sketching, George Moore has imitated nature, and with consummate skill, probed his fancy and dabbled in psychology – and even psychiatry. If geriatric psychologists or psychiatrists were assessing Daddy Lupton, they would already have noted classic signs: limitation of thinking with the patient falling back on old memories, reiterating stereotyped thoughts, getting “stuck” whether in attention or in speech, just like the gramophone needle in a groove. The technical term is “perseveration” and it involves a pathological repetition, and/or extreme difficulty or inability to move to another subject. It is often accompanied by uninhibited content, the voicing of something that is inappropriate for the situation. The latter phenomenon is also evident in Daddy Lupton’s unfortunate stories that, instead of passing the time or distracting the family from their predicament, merely return to tales of babies, children and lovers drowning whether sixty, seventy or eighty years previously. The clinicians say that the patients’ worlds contract, that they cannot perceive the effect of their behaviour on family, that they become more egocentric. Wandering and denial are frequently part of the presenting symptoms. What is the import or the significance of those signs? They are the most common indicators of senile dementia 5

Ibid., 6. Ibid., 8. 7 Ibid., 9. 6

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and of Alzheimer’s disease8 – all of which George Moore has comprehensively painted into this story with a few strokes of the pen and with far fewer words than are found in even the shortest of the clinical definitions. The preliminary diagnosis of senile dementia or Alzheimer’s would tend to be confirmed by Daddy Lupton’s reactions later in the story. When his son says that he is afraid that, following the drowning of her fiancé, his sister has also perished, Daddy’s reply is “Very likely”. He goes on, “The jade always gets them in the end. Where be the cards?”.9 The inadequate response to the death of his own daughter, and the lack of sympathy with his son, reflect the neurological deterioration that prevents Daddy from thinking and imagining and thus limits him to remnants of old thoughts, to repetition of hackneyed or stereotypical phrases, none of which he can develop or elaborate upon. The subsequent game of cards sees Daddy counting and recounting the coppers that he wins, and he hardly notices the later drowning of family members as the focus of his tunnel-vision is on the double allowance of tobacco and the second glass of ale that his winnings would permit. While the house further disintegrates in the flood, he “played with his winnings”.10 After his son and grandson drown, Daddy merely registers that “Everything is gone – table, cards and a shilling in coppers”.11 It is only on the penultimate page that “the wild grief of the woman seemed to wake reason in Daddy’s failing brain”. However, the capabilities of that brain only run to the statement that “all excepting me baccy and the rheumatics are the same to me now”.12 The forces of nature are inexorable, the house crumbles, six members of the family are wiped out and when Daddy is at last rescued, his fixated preoccupation is with those rheumatics, the topic of the moment: “They be very bad at time, and I must be careful of myself this 8

Of all the medical texts on the subject, the following are particularly useful: Richard Cheston and Michael Bender, Understanding Dementia: The Man with the Worried Eyes, London; New York: Jessica Kingsley, 2003; Alan Jacques and Graham A. Jackson, Understanding Dementia (1988), 3rd edn, London: Churchill Livingstone, 2000; Dementia, eds Mario Maj and Norman Sartorius (2000), 2nd edn, Chichester: John Wiley, 2002. 9 Moore, A Flood, 23. 10 Ibid., 27. 11 Ibid., 31. 12 Ibid., 32.

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winter.”13 The diagnosis of Dr Moore is spot on: the bleakness of the dementia sufferer’s shrunken world, and the resultant distressing effects on the family, are unremarked but palpable. Just as the portrayal of Daddy Lupton is “no more than a sketch”, so too is the sketch technique employed to depict other family members. There is the brief but automatic recognition by them of aspects of Daddy’s condition, of his propensity to dwell on earlier disastrous floods: “Grandfather will tell ’ee that this be nothing to the floods he knew when he was a little boy.”14 There is the understanding that Daddy lacks judgment: “Tom, ’as ’ee a bit of baccy to give to Daddy to stop his jaw with?”15 Daddy’s return to infantile comprehension is marked: “’E and the baby are the only two that can smile this morning.”16 The reaction of his daughter-in-law to the arrival of the rescuers is to drown herself, crying “Saved, and the others be gone” as she “flung herself into the flood”17 – thus indicating the horror of her experience, and also the perception of Daddy Lupton either as nobody because of his cognitive impairment, or as an intolerable burden because of those limitations. The impact of this story is totally disproportionate to its small scale and to the brevity of bare outline drawings of scene and character. The narrative of A Flood is presented in the fragmented and minimalist style appropriate to an outline sketch but its extremely powerful and memorable effect has not been limited by that mode of delivery, rather it has been deliberately enhanced by judicious reduction. It should be noted that the 1930 version of the story provides, in a few places, a slightly pared-down delineation of the character of Daddy in comparison with that in the earliest version of the tale, “In Sight of Death” (1892).18 Sentences such as “‘Do ’ee think so?’ said the old man, grinning vacuously’, ‘Well, the jade do seem like waking up’” and the phrase “the childlike old man” are omitted from A Flood, as is a reference to “The old man’s levity” that

13

Ibid., 33. Ibid., 8. 15 Ibid., 13. This sentence is not in “In Sight of Death” (the 1892 story). 16 Ibid., 20. 17 Ibid., 32-33. 18 This story is reproduced in The Collected Short Stories of George Moore: Gender and Genre, eds Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007, II, 95-102. 14

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appears in “A Flood”.19 Their absence results in even fewer lines in the sketch but the cut back in detail achieves an even more accurate portrayal of Daddy Lupton’s condition and a more chilling atmosphere in this horror tale. Imitating nature There are rather different portraits to be found in the world of Ulick Burke. In the story “So on he fares” in The Untilled Field, Ulick Burke is introduced as “a pretty child with bright blue eyes, soft curls, and a shy winning manner”.20 Those credentials constitute an authorial seal of approval for the child; they provide a degree of validation for the opinions that are filtered through his consciousness at the beginning of the story, even though his attitudes and actions are still clearly those of a child. Thus for the reader, some credibility attaches to intimations of the restrictive lifestyle that the child experiences, and also to the cruelty of the punishments he suffers, culminating in the incident when his mother puts a bee down his back to sting him because he consorted with village children. Small as he is, just ten years of age, Ulick runs away and is taken in by “a lone widow”. The short and succinct textual comment is: “in a very short time Ulick was as much loved by his chance mother as he had been hated by his real mother.”21 Three years later, his surrogate mother dies and Ulick goes to sea. However, at the age of twenty, “a desire to see what they were doing at home came over him”.22 When he arrives near the house, there is an almost surreal and dreamlike air to his encounter with a little boy, also named Ulick Burke, and it rapidly emerges that they share a mother and father but that the second Ulick is well treated by his mother. His mother’s reaction to the return of her missing older son is “Oh, it’s you! Why we thought you were drowned!”.23 Not surprisingly, that welcome elicits the response “Mother” [said Ulick] “you don’t seem very glad to see me”. The returned sailor “began to feel that if he had

19

Ibid., 103-11. George Moore, “So on he fares”, in The Untilled Field, Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1990, 137. This edition reproduces the 1931 versions of the stories. 21 Ibid., 143. 22 Ibid., 144. 23 Ibid., 146. 20

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known how his mother would receive him he would not have come home”.24 He leaves shortly afterwards. As can be seen, this story is not one of the loving mother – and yet it is, because their mother loves and cares for the second Ulick. It is not a story of an unlikeable elder son since none of his actions undermine the initial picture of him as having a shy, winning manner, and he is subsequently taken in and loved by a mother substitute. It is apparent that, in these fine pencil lines, and without ruminating on the psychological aspects, Moore conveys several things: firstly, that a loving maternal instinct does not automatically arise in a biological mother; secondly, that the urge to give that same loving care can exist without the biological link. If both of those observations now appear so obvious as not to require statement, it was certainly not the case in 1903. Neither had it been so during the preceding decades when the separate spheres doctrine of the Victorian years was promulgated, when official idealization was of the contented mother in the home surrounded by little children whom she nurtured and guided, and when those dicta involved the imprisonment of women in such roles, regardless of their wishes or suitability. It is not surprising that George Moore, so often recognized as a feminist, should choose simply to paint a broader picture – no more than a sketch, and definitely a reproduction of nature as it is, rather than as what might have been claimed to be the truth at the time. As Ulick found, “he could see that his mother wished to welcome him, but her heart was set against him now as it had always been”.25 The complexity of the human condition is registered and accepted, if not fully understood by mother or son, and certainly not explained by the author. In this same story, there is one more psychological insight that merits mention: when Ulick leaves again, he thinks about how easy it would be to throw himself in the canal but the text goes on to say “but only children drown themselves because their mothers do not love them; life had taken a hold upon him” (my emphasis). This realistic portrayal of a character who suffers but survives is yet another delicate and brief touch in the sketching of a broken family. His capacity to recover and cope may well be rooted in the love received from his substitute mother. Unquestionably, the indication of Ulick’s 24 25

Ibid., 146-47. Ibid., 147.

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onward route is an eschewal of the melodramatic and the romantic, and the manner of its depiction is in contradistinction to the overloaded stories and pictures of Victorian days. As Jean C. Noël has acknowledged, there is “remarkable neatness” about this story.26 Much additional evidence can be adduced to support the assertion that, far from limiting the imagination or restricting the view, “no more than a sketch” frequently supplies the key to a wealth of further information. Moore’s treatment of Harold Lawson is a case in point. Harold is another faintly-sketched character, the brother of Mildred Lawson in the story of the same name in Celibates (1895). With short pen strokes, Harold is made to appear convincing as the authoritative, patriarchal, unimaginative, conservative and prosperous businessman, conscientious in his daily office-going, concerned in the way he looks after the interests of a difficult sister. This is conveyed briefly: through the mention of his fuss and rush for the morning train to the City; through his inability to envisage a “better purpose” for a woman than marriage;27 through his admission that he knows little about “art and literature and all that kind of thing”;28 through his narrow Anglicanism with his “hesitations and scruples” about the new vicar preaching in a surplice;29 through his suspicions that Roman Catholics or Socialists siphoned off Mildred’s money. In all instances, the information is imparted in a line or two, with none of these views ever being expanded upon. Harold plays a supporting role in the story, and the lines devoted to him are infinitesimal in a tale that runs to a few hundred pages.30 However, the paucity of words in the line drawing stands in sharp contrast to the full and fleshed-out image of Harold that the readers can perceive. In what is no more than a sketch, the multi-dimensional aspects of a contemporary type are presented and pictured with total plausibility. This is Moore’s imitation of nature in the sense that he reflects salient and telling facets of a character, and does so in a 26

Jean C. Noël, George Moore: L’homme et l’œuvre (1852-1933), Paris: Didier, 1966, 319: “une netteté remarquable.” While agreeing with part of Noël’s judgments (“Les incidents, les actes, les paroles crient de vérité”), I find his putative symbolistic interpretation to be less persuasive. 27 George Moore, Celibates, London: Walter Scott, 1895, 276. 28 Ibid., 252. 29 Ibid., 246. 30 312 pages in the original Walter Scott edition of 1895; 254 pages in the Brentano (New York) edition in 1915.

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particular creative fashion that, quite deliberately, rejects any expected orthodoxy or current propaganda. The method accords with Moore’s assertion that such imitation is an artistic comment upon the mysteries of nature. While his mimetic approach here is obviously far removed from the detail and mode of naturalism, it is in harmony with his own aesthetic theory on imitation of nature. Riches of the brief reference Interesting examples of the power of the brief reference are to be found both in “An Deoraidhe” (a story in An t-Úr Ghort)31 and in “The Exile”, its supposed translation from Irish into English. It is worthy of note that the implications concerning choice of chocolate drink differ slightly in the two language versions. In “An Deoraidhe”, the character of Peadar (Peter in “The Exile”) asks for Cadbury’s cocoa in preference to spirits. Cadbury’s cocoa is not forthcoming however, the household only has Epps’s cocoa.32 Pádraigín Riggs has noted the relevance for Irish nationalism of the Epps’s brand in that its advertising featured John Bull sitting astride the globe, and thus its consumption is indicative of a creeping acquiescence in imperial rule, an hypothesis that is supported by a passing reference to the diminution in Irish language ability of Peadar and his brother.33 Peadar’s first choice of Cadbury’s represents the preference for the Quaker philanthropists over the Jewish businessmen. Moreover, the Epps name had additional connections to Moore’s world since his friend Edmund Gosse was married to Ellen Epps whose sister Laura was the wife of the artist Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and the model for several of his classical and historical pictures. Those were canvases that were viewed with extreme disfavour by Moore in his art criticism. Thus, in this Irish-language version of the story, the chosen tipple of Peadar, the returned clerical student who evinces a certain preciousness and effete impractical aesthetic qualities, conveys 31 Seorsa O Mordha, An t-Úr-Ghort, Dublin: Sealy, Bryers and Walker, 1902. “An Deoraidhe” is the Irish-language version of the story that was subsequently published as “The Exile” in The Untilled Field. 32 I am indebted to Pádraigín Riggs for drawing attention to the cocoa brands in “An Deoraidhe”. See Pádraigín Riggs, “An t-Úr-Ghort and The Untilled Field”, in George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds, ed. Mary Pierse, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars P, 2006, 130-41. 33 Ibid., 134-35.

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particular messages concerning Ireland’s colonial status and the decline in old Irish ways. Moore’s snapshots include the reported inability of Peadar even to harness a horse. That latter ineptitude, together with the tangential cocoa/Alma-Tadema link, suggests elements of the nature and psyche of Peadar and would intimate Moore’s dismissive evaluation of him. In “The Exile”, the brand names are absent but cocoa is still on the menu for Peter (Peadar) and there is no overt comment upon, nor attention drawn to, linguistic difference between the generations. Riggs has noted that standard English is employed in the narrative but that Irish word order occurs in the dialogue.34 However, there is further differentiation between the speech of different characters, with Pat (the father) using Irish word order and Peter voicing a very precise and educated standard English: where Pat asks, in direct translation from the Irish, “Now James, what do you be thinking?”, Peter can be heard to say “My stomach wouldn’t retain it. I require very little, but that little must be the best”.35 From the faint nuances in that linguistic picture, a language difference is very subtly conveyed, and Peter’s impracticality and incompetence are firmly tied to his choice of the language of the imperial master. Both in “An Deoraidhe” and in “The Exile”, the land is to be retained, and the situation of the small farmer saved, by the advent of Catherine, the competent woman whose roots are in farming in the locality and whose abilities are multiple. She successfully ran the dairy for the nuns and, on her departure from the convent, the Reverend Mother laments that “we have got no one to take your place”.36 Catherine knows, as do Pat and James, that she will be able to “make something out of Pether”,37 run the farm, and care for the older generation. In just those few words, enormous importance is attached by Moore to the position and contribution of a woman. In addition, the woman is unmistakeably Irish, local and skilled. It is she who is the modern manifestation of Éire, Banba or Fodhla and her involvement offers hope to a nationalist cause that has not even been mentioned. Her turn to marriage and return to farming signal a reverse of flight from the land and a stemming of the flood of emigration, and 34

Riggs, “An t-Úr-Ghort and The Untilled Field”, 134. George Moore, “The Exile”, in The Untilled Field, 1, 10. 36 Ibid., 18. 37 Ibid., 21. 35

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thus offer the prospect of a new generation. With fine appreciation of his potential audience and the psychology of his readership, Moore subtly presents Catherine’s position as a matter-of-fact situation, the optimal choice and an inevitable success. In that way, he deftly skirts any debate on gender roles while clearly installing the best person for the job and insinuating the normality and acceptability of the development. In these two short stories, Moore has dabbled in psychology both in intimations of the complex motivations and reactions of Peter and James, and in his estimation of the readers and how they might be manipulated. His imitation of nature is authentic—and yet it is all accomplished in “no more than a sketch”. When the outline sketch is used for the physical features of characters, the portraiture can transmit messages that are instantly decodeable, whether reflecting authorial approval or more neutral evaluation. To describe Esther in Esther Waters as having a “sturdily built figure, graceful in its sturdiness”, marks her out and removes her from run-ofthe-mill characters; to further mention her “white and rose complexion”38 ensures that she is recognized as prima inter pares. In that same novel, the gap between Mr and Mrs Barfield is exemplified in their physical appearances: Mr Barfield’s “legs seemed grotesquely thick” and he rode “a stout grey cob”; “Although nearly fifty, her figure was slight as a young girl’s”.39 However, this reading of character through physiognomy is one that Moore can also question: Mrs Fargus in “Mildred Lawson” has the much mocked stereotypical exterior of the New Woman but her way of life reflects the solid virtues so lauded by the Victorian age. The picture of Mrs Norton in “John Norton” mentions her “quiet, decisive step” and that “her fashionably-cut silk fitted perfectly”; but, “her cold grey eyes were close together above a long thin nose”.40 The earlier elements of that description suggest competence; in an era that linked physiognomy with disposition, the latter part openly hints at a tendency to interfere. All are brief delineations, mere sketches that carry a potentially heavy weight of latent meaning.

38

George Moore, Esther Waters, London: Walter Scott, 1894, 4, 7. Ibid., 10, 28. 40 George Moore, “John Norton”, in Celibates, 315. 39

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Literature and the art world Examples from A Drama in Muslin (1886) and from “Mildred Lawson” illustrate how George Moore, one-time art student and later art critic of the Speaker, employs his knowledge of the art world to literary effect. Incorporating faint literary drawings whose implications are so much wider than the minimal word content would suggest, Moore employs the visual image to enrich the literary sketch. In the final pages of A Drama in Muslin, the prospect of a bright creative future for Alice is intimated merely by the presence of a yellow William Morris pot and yellow-covered French novels on the piano nobile, in contrast to the “rigid and bare” dining room on the floor below where hangs a Frith engraving.41 For Moore, the despised Frith print would have even less artistic value than three ducks on a wall, and while the Morris porcelain of the Arts & Crafts Movement might fall short of impressionist sophistication, its purchase indicates continuing education and progress. The banned yellow-covered French novels signify breadth and dynamism in Alice’s literary interests and involvements, ones presumably shared by the ladies who gather in her house every Thursday. The “numbers of ladies, all of whom write novels” signal that renaissance is possible. In “Mildred Lawson”, two short sentences could serve as the ébauche, or even the programme notes, for Théodore Rousseau’s “Oak Tree and Rocks”, a painting exhibited at the 1861 Salon. In the sentences “out of the charred spectre of a great oak crows flew and settled among the rocks, in the fissures” and “isn’t that desolate region of blasted oaks and sundered rocks wonderful”,42 Moore’s words connect to Rousseau’s art, as well as to the paintings and artists of the area (Barbizon and the forest of Fontainebleau). Prompts to the Rousseau paintings reinforce the bareness of the landscape he describes verbally, furnish visual enhancement for the general reader, and particular enrichment for the many who were familiar with Rousseau’s typical scenery. In so doing, Moore foregrounds the

41 George Moore, A Drama in Muslin (1886), Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993, 326. 42 George Moore, “Mildred Lawson”, in Celibates, 146.

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possibilities for translation of verbal to visual art, and vice versa, and underlines the expansive potential of the sketch in both media.43 Sketching gender The quick Moore sketches must also be read in terms of a wider literary significance. In a period when Stevenson’s Treasure Island was a woman-free zone and Rider Haggard’s imperial quest romances (such as She and King Solomon’s Mines) feature men travelling to adventures and to worlds where men rule, and where women – if they appear at all – are dominated, Moore’s easy recognition of gender equality is quite exceptional. As detective stories of the time firmly excluded women from knowledge and power, Moore furnishes feminist texts and does so without didacticism. In fact, it could be claimed that gender generalizations are challenged by Moore at every turn as he chisels away the grounds for alleged superiority and subordinacy. In books as diverse as A Drama in Muslin (1886), Esther Waters (1894) and Celibates (1895), one has to be struck by the positive light that Moore shines on women who get up and do, and by the less than happy outcome for those who do not or cannot, whether because they are confined by others, or imprisoned by their own outdated ideas or by notions absorbed from romantic fiction. Numbered amongst his competent, caring and surviving women are Esther, Mrs Barfield, Mrs Lewis and Miss Rice in Esther Waters, and Mrs Norton and Mrs Fargus in Celibates. In each instance, the depictions are pictures that are made rich only by their power of suggestion and definitely not by any accumulation of detail. One of Moore’s key portraits of males is that of Major Lahens in “Agnes Lahens”, the final story in Celibates. The Major is a man who is caring and protective of his daughter; he is without status in the house or in a wider fashionable society because he has lost his money. Moreover, he is associated with the typewriter, the tool of the single or “odd” woman. Lack of money has disempowered him, just as its possession endows his wife, Olive Lahens, with a supremacy that has nothing to do with the biological difference that was supposed to determine roles within the household. Moore presents reversal of the usual power structure in this home – the Major is the caring parent, 43 See also Mary Pierse, “European Influences and the Novels of George Moore: Reciprocal Artistic Impressions”, in Ireland and Europe in the Nineteenth Century, eds Leon Litvack and Colin Graham, Dublin: Four Courts P, 2006, 171-85.

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diligent, honest, and hard-working – all qualities that were allegedly esteemed by the Victorians, and found natural when combined with a lack of economic power and status, if the possessor of the qualities was a woman. The characterization of the Major is simultaneously a typical challenge by Moore to automatic or illogical, stereotypical gender assumptions, and a clear demand for value to be granted to socalled feminine qualities in a man. A core methodology? It requires considerable literary skill to confront and undermine the certainties of Establishment beliefs concerning power or gender without appearing to do so, as it does to insinuate new ideas into the minds of readers without frightening them. The outline sketch, through the provision of brief impressions or minimal line drawings, has been Moore’s chosen methodology in the examples given above. In each case, it can be asserted that he has, in a perceptual sense rather than in a conceptual one, successfully rendered nature as it is, and that to achieve these believable portraits, he has relied on a solid grasp of human psychology and societal realities. However, it could be argued that all the given examples belong under the rubric of fiction; the logical consequential question is whether the same ingredients or framework could be seen to be central and vital in such works as The Brook Kerith, The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe, Hail and Farewell, Conversations in Ebury Street, Memoirs of my Dead Life, or indeed in any book by Moore where autobiography and fiction mingle. The answer must surely be that while elements of sketch, nature and psychology are involved in such works, they constitute only part of a more complex structure. The acute psychological reading of Yeats in Hail and Farewell is but one component in a large picture gallery that features alleged autobiography and satire, with – as Elizabeth Grubgeld has pointed out – comic exaggeration and excessive repetition.44 Moore’s presentations of the stories of Daphnis and Chloe,45 and of Héloïse 44

See, for example, Elizabeth Grubgeld, Anglo-Irish Autobiography: Class, Gender and the Forms of Narrative, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 2004, 133-34. 45 For an expert evaluation of Moore’s engagement with classical Greek, see Konstantin Doulamis, “Lost in Translation? George Moore’s The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe and rewriting Longus”, in Pierse, George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds, 86-101.

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and Abélard, employ skills and techniques other than that of the outline sketch, while the detail, melodic line, biblical exegesis and inventions of The Brook Kerith go far beyond a mere sketch and include psychological interpretations (such as those attributed to the characters Joseph, Dan and Rachel) that form part of the lengthy considerations foregrounded therein. George Moore’s numerous prescriptions for literature and verdicts on texts make up a lengthy body of advice and opinions and so, conscious of the hazards involved in searching for a core recipe, one is necessarily cautious. Prudence is justified in the light of just one such comment by Moore: … whether one picture is cognate in political feeling with the one that preceded I care not a jot; indeed I would wish each to be evocative of dissimilar impressions, and the whole to produce the blurred and uncertain effect of nature herself. Where the facts seemed to contradict, I let them contradict.46

Add to that his aesthetic crusade to “expose the stiff paralysed narrative, the short sentence trussed like a fowl, with the inevitable adjective in the middle”,47 and the range of potential formulae expands widely. Nonetheless, the ability of Moore to use bare outline drawing to generate aura and atmosphere, to mirror the natural and to reflect deep psychological insight, can be seen as a key component in several of his significant compositions, as well as being important to other expansions and expressions of his literary philosophy and practice. Although seen to great effect in short stories, the faint sketch is not confined to this genre; neither is it a feature of just one period in his writing career – the 1930 edition of A Flood indicates that, in his late seventies, he returned to the practice with close attention and undiminished expertise. While not constituting the totality of the Moore philosophy or practice, the outline sketch, imitation of nature and psychological “dabbling” must surely be recognized and accepted

46 George Moore, Parnell and His Island, ed. Carla King, Dublin: U College Dublin P, 2004, 89. 47 Moore, Avowals, 261.

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as essential and fundamental parts of a rich and creative literary legacy.

ANCIENT GREECE AND THE ART OF STORYTELLING IN GEORGE MOORE’S APHRODITE IN AULIS KONSTANTIN DOULAMIS

Aphrodite in Aulis, George Moore’s last complete novel, is a fine example of the strong current of Hellenism found in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Western culture. The strong Hellenic presence in this work, ubiquitously in evidence in the use of names, themes and images deeply rooted in the Greek past, is combined with modern fiction to create an interesting story with a historical colour. Even though this has been recognized by critics,1 and the usefulness of contextualizing Aphrodite in Aulis with respect to its sources has been well demonstrated,2 the ancient Greek historical and literary texture of this work has thus far received very little scholarly attention. Yet, a closer examination of the Greek images can furnish an insight not only into this novel but also into Moore’s literary sophistication. How accurate are references to historical events and characters in this novel? What purpose do allusions to the ancient Greek world serve? Does the prominent Hellenic element affect a reading of this novel, and, if so, in what way and to what extent? To attempt a largescale examination of the above questions would be a task extending far beyond the limits of this essay. However, it is both useful and important to bring out the connotative and cultural significance of This article is based on a talk that was first delivered at the International Conference “George Moore: Across Borders”, at the Université Charles de Gaulle-Lille 3, France (30-31 March 2007); a longer version of it was later presented at the Bristol AngloHellenic Society meeting, University of Bristol (25 April 2007). I am grateful to the audience on both occasions for their useful comments. I am also most grateful to Mary Pierse for reading and commenting on this essay. 1 See Anthony Farrow, George Moore, Boston: Twayne, 1978, 151; Richard A. Cave, A Study of the Novels of George Moore, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1978, 230-31. 2 See Peter G. Christensen, “The Aestheticized Image of Aphrodite in George Moore’s Aphrodite in Aulis”, Classical and Modern Literature, XIV/2 (Winter 1994), 127-40.

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some of the ancient Greek symbols and images employed by Moore, while looking more closely within the novel at statements about storytelling which, I will suggest, can be read as Moore’s selfconscious allusions to his own art of writing. Anachronisms and inconsistencies How historically accurate is this “historical” novel? In George Moore: l’homme et l’oeuvre, Jean Noël praises Moore’s thorough research into Classical antiquity, including various aspects of Greek life and topography, and states that “one could hardly reproach him for so painstakingly seeking to avoid anachronisms and topographical impossibilities”.3 Noël’s claim notwithstanding, Moore’s novel is not without anachronisms and historical inconsistencies,4 as will be demonstrated below. It is known that Phidias’ famous gold and ivory statue of Athena was completed and dedicated in 438 BC and that Aristophanes’ Banqueters was produced by Callistratus in 427 BC. The two events, however, are presented as simultaneous in Moore’s novel, where Phidias says that his statue of Athena has just been completed, and, later on, a very young Aristophanes (mistaken for a teenaged boy by Rhesos) announces that he is preparing to stage his Banqueters.5 Moreover, Kebren’s speech at Otanes’ funeral is likened to Pericles’ funeral oration, which is cited by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War.6 Pericles’ speech was delivered at the burial of the first Athenian war dead a year after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC. This means that the opening of Aphrodite’s temple in Moore’s novel, on which occasion Pericles’ funeral oration is recalled, must be at least one year later than 430 BC. The statement that “Aulis would soon rival Corinth”,7 on the other hand, which is one of Thyonicus’ arguments in support of the view that the temple in Aulis should be dedicated to Aphrodite, is more 3

“On ne saurait lui reprocher d’avoir aussi patiemment cherché à éviter anachronismes et impossibilités topographiques” (Jean C. Noël, George Moore: L’homme et l’oeuvre [1852-1933], Paris: Didier, 1966, 455). 4 Already noted briefly by Christensen, “The Aestheticized Image of Aphrodite in George Moore’s Aphrodite in Aulis”, 129. 5 George Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, London: William Heinemann, 1931, 244, 248. 6 Ibid., 259. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, trans. R. Warner, London: Penguin Classics, 1962, 2.35 ff. 7 Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, 135.

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likely to be a reference to Corinth at the time when the city was still powerful and prosperous, and certainly before the late 430s BC, when Corinthian economy started to decline dramatically due to its active involvement in the Peloponnesian War. However, if the early 420s BC are accepted as chronological backdrop to the second half of Moore’s novel, the picture of the Greek world that the novelist draws is different from the historical events of that period: relations between Greek city-states had been particularly tense in the years leading up to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.8 Boeotia, with the sole exception of Plataea, had sided with the Peloponnesians against the neighbouring city-state of Athens, and had been engaging in hostile action for several decades before the war started. Moore’s picture of Boeotia, however, is much different: the only thing threatening the peace and prosperity of Aulis is natural disaster and the anger of Poseidon, while there appears to be free movement between Boeotia and Attica. Moore’s portrayal of some of the “historical” characters may also be seen as diverging from historical record: it is possible that the historical Sophocles and Euripides shared a friendship. But Euripides and Aristophanes were not the best of friends: Aristophanes pokes fun at Euripides in several of his comedies, most notably in The Frogs. Yet the three of them hang out together as friends in Moore’s novel. Very little is known about the historical Phidias after his work on the Acropolis was completed. It is recorded that he, like other members of Pericles’ close circle, had suffered a personal attack by the Athenian statesman’s political opponents. Accused at first of stealing gold from the statue of Athena Parthenos in 432 BC, Phidias was able to disprove that charge. A few years later, however, he was accused of impiety, for depicting himself and Pericles on the shield of the same statue of Athena, and was thrown into prison. In Moore’s novel, there is no mention of any of those incidents and the focus is, rather, on two elements: Phidias’ artistic authority, and his illness (of which there is no concrete historical evidence). The most widely accepted view is that the historical Phidias died either in prison, shortly after he was sentenced, or in exile. In any case, it is very doubtful that in the 420s BC the historical Phidias would have been able to travel leisurely to Aulis to inspect the work of a former 8

Also mentioned by Christensen, “The Aestheticized Image of Aphrodite in George Moore’s Aphrodite in Aulis”, 129.

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apprentice, as Moore’s Phidias does. Nevertheless, the choice of this specific character in this particular novel is not without special significance – a point to which I will return. What at first glance may be perceived as inaccuracies in Moore’s depiction of Classical Greece, is highly unlikely to be the result of incomplete knowledge or of lack of thorough research on his part. Conversely, there is evidence to suggest that Moore had put considerable effort into researching all aspects of the ancient Greek world down to the slightest detail. As Hone points out: In a series of letters S.C. Atchley supplied voluminous and useful details concerning the width and current of the Euripos and, later, still fuller descriptions of the scenery along the road between Athens and Aulis. After assimilating the information, Moore sent a draft of the opening chapter to Atchley, who commented upon it minutely. That he should have occupied so much of his time and the time of his correspondent with the business is an instance of his thoroughness, for the whole episode of the journey is told in six and a half pages of the book.9

Further evidence of Moore’s profound knowledge of ancient Greece may be found in the novel itself, and in the way in which the novelist exploits the rich ancient Greek culture. To illustrate this, I will focus upon two major aspects of the text: the symbolism behind Aulis, and Homeric and Herodotean allusions in connection with storytelling. Why Aulis? One of the first questions that a preliminary reading of this novel raises must be: “why did Moore choose Aulis as backdrop to this story?” If his aim was simply to add a touch of Greek colour by creating a historical setting, why not choose the city-state of Athens, which, in the fifth century BC, was at the height of its power and glory and the centre of cultural, political and intellectual life in the Greek world? After all, the novel’s protagonist, Kebren, is an Athenian; his sons, Rhesos and Thrasillos spend their adolescence dreaming of moving to Athens; and some of the prominent historical figures featuring in this work, such as the playwrights Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, the sculptor Phidias, the architects Iktinos and 9

Joseph Hone, The Life of George Moore, London: Victor Gollancz, 1936, 413.

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Kallikrates and the statesman Pericles, were all based in Athens. Joseph Hone remarks that “prudence or modesty prevented Moore from setting the scene in Athens itself”10 but I would suggest that there is more to it. Aulis, a small town on the Boeotian coast across the sea from the island of Euboea, is not mentioned much in the ancient sources. Hesiod, the eighth-century BC poet, says in his Works and Days that he sailed once from Aulis to Euboea.11 Several centuries later, the first-century AD geographer Strabo records that an Aeolian fleet had sailed from Aulis to Asia.12 What this town is most famous for, however, is its connection with the Trojan War. Aulis was the point of assembly for the Achaean expedition against Troy. It is in Aulis where, according to Greek legend, Iphigeneia, daughter of the commander-in-chief of the Greek army, Agamemnon, was sent to be sacrificed for a safe voyage of the fleet, a theme developed in Euripides’ well known tragedy Iphigeneia at Aulis. Choosing Aulis as the main setting for this story while, at the same time, keeping Athens in the background, allows Moore to construct the glorious world of Athens as a far-away, dream world that Rhesos and Thrasillos (and, through their eyes, Moore’s reader too) yearn to experience. Clearly, this would not have been possible, had Kebren’s sons been born and raised in Athens. Thus the dream status of Classical Athens is maintained throughout the novel and at no point is the story entirely immersed in fifth-century BC Athenian history, except possibly for the few pages that see Kebren and his sons visit Athens. Nevertheless, the city lends its glory to the novel and feeds the plot with people and events that contribute a great deal to the work’s historical character. Joseph Hone rightly observes that “the intellectual stir of Athenian life is always felt at the periphery of Moore’s Boeotian tale”.13 In addition, the Trojan War connection provides an even more important reason for the choice of Aulis. While Christensen is right in pointing out that, despite the obvious similarity of Moore’s title to 10 11

Ibid., 485. Hesiod, Theogony, trans. M.L. West, Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1999, 651

ff. 12 Strabo, Geography, trans. H.L. Jones, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1988-97, 9.2.3. 13 Hone, The Life of George Moore, 485.

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Euripides’ Iphigeneia at Aulis, neither Iphigeneia nor her sacrifice are mentioned in this novel,14 the significance of the inevitable allusion to the Euripidean tragedy, through the myth upon which Euripides’ play was based, should not go unnoticed. Moore knowingly evokes the familiar myth of Agamemnon and Iphigeneia and tacitly justifies his choice of Aulis by establishing a clear link between Aulis and the launch of Agamemnon’s expedition to Troy. The latter event is explicitly mentioned both at the start and at end of the novel, in two important statements that frame the narrative. “The Greek fleet sailed from the bay of Aulis for Troy”, says Kebren in Chapter 1, “foreseeing the journey that lay before him”. In Chapter 22, the town’s biggest historical claim to fame is compared with Rhesos’ completion of the statue of Aphrodite: “But the whole town, dear son, is coming to hear thee speak of sculpture. I foresee this day as the greatest day that Aulis hath ever known” – “Greater”, Rhesos interjected, “than the day the Greek fleet sailed for Troy?” “Yes, my son.” “For that we live in it?” Rhesos asked. “No”, replied Kebren ….15

There is further evocation of the Euripidean play when Moore’s central character, Kebren, incited by a god, arrives in Aulis and dreams of “playing the part of Agamemnon” in a tragedy.16 From these examples, I would argue that the Euripidean model is an important resonance in the text, and the allusion to it in the title of the novel is so strong that there is hardly any need for Moore to spell out the links. With the Euripidean connection firmly established already in the title and the first few lines of the novel, the symbolism in Moore’s Aphrodite begins to become clearer. Iphigeneia at Aulis is a tragedy about choices: central to this play is the struggle that Agamemnon goes through, hesitating between the call of love and policy. Moore’s Kebren faces a similar dilemma: he is required to choose between his love for Biote and his desire (which has become somewhat of a personal responsibility) to travel to Troy to expound on the true 14

Christensen, “The Aestheticized Image of Aphrodite in George Moore’s Aphrodite in Aulis”, 130. 15 Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, 1, 258. 16 Ibid., 14.

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identity of Helen. Agamemnon chooses duty, while Kebren opts for love and convenience, but they both sacrifice something that is extremely important to them: Kebren sacrifices the search for Helen’s divinity; Agamemnon sacrifices his daughter. Despite Agamemnon’s and Kebren’s initial hesitations and doubts as to whether they have made the right decisions – and both are tormented by that uncertainty – the ultimate success of the larger, long-term plan in each case gradually eliminates every trace of doubt. Moore’s novel ends with the achievements of Kebren’s and Biote’s sons, and the saga of the Trojan War concludes with the sack of Troy. This is precisely why the choice of Aulis as the setting for Moore’s novel is important: it signifies the tension between family and duty, the clash between personal happiness and the individual’s sense of responsibility, and the personal dilemmas that arise from these. Aulis, the starting point of Agamemnon’s physical journey to Troy, marks, in a sense, the beginning of Kebren’s personal journey in life. Homer, Herodotus and the art of storytelling Naturally, the implicit reference to Agamemnon and the Trojan War points not only to Euripides but also to Homer. The Homeric theme is particularly important in this novel,17 since not only is Kebren’s search for the true identity of Helen of Troy central to its plot, but also readings and recitations of the Homeric epics occur frequently in the course of the narrative. Reading the Homeric epics is presented as part of Kebren’s life from the outset, and, consequently, his confession later on that as a young man he used to read the Iliad to his father’s customers comes as no surprise.18 Following Kebren’s arrival in Aulis, reading or reciting Homer becomes a popular pastime in Otanes’ home.19 It is also presented as an effective way of distracting one’s thoughts; as a welcome diversion for Biote during her pregnancy; as part of the children’s education; and as a tool used for teaching Greek 17

Moore’s preoccupation with the Homeric epics and their importance for Aphrodite in Aulis is revealed in one of his letters to John Eglinton dated 25 June 1927, in which the novelist wrote: “I think that in the revision I shall limit the lecture to two things: first, how the Iliad came to be written. From that there seems no escape, any more than there is an escape in an introduction to a book from stating when the writer flourished. In painting a full face the artist must put two eyes; from the two eyes there is no escape” (Hone, The Life of George Moore, 411). 18 Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, 195. 19 Ibid., 7, 22, 54, 57, 60-61, 143, 223.

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to Rhesos and Thrasillos.20 Thus, Biote’s unwillingness to hear Kebren read Homer becomes a manifestation of their dysfunctional relationship after several years of marriage.21 Homer also serves as a point of chronological reference for important historical events, and is seen as an important part of ancient Greek heritage deserving of universal reverence, as is revealed by the aspiring young comedian’s summary of his new play, in which those accused of disrespecting Homer are sentenced to death.22 Moreover, there are numerous allusions to the Homeric epics in the course of Moore’s narrative: there is frequent mention of the gods and mount Olympus, elements which feature heavily in Homer; the reference to Otanes’ dead wife and her passion for weaving in the first chapter strongly echoes Odysseus’ wife Penelope; Kebren’s imaginary meeting with Otanes in the Underworld in Chapter 11 evokes Odysseus’ descent to the Underworld and his meetings with his mother, Agamemnon and Achilles; the story of Odysseus and Calypso, occupying an important part of Book 5 of the Odyssey, is recalled in Moore’s Chapters 4 and 9; and the entire scene of Rhesos’ meeting with Melissa and Earine, who swam from Euboea to Aulis in search of a judge who would decide which of the two had the most beautiful bottom in Chapter 15, is strongly reminiscent of the famous judgment of Paris which set in motion the events that led to the Trojan War. Not only is the judgment of Paris strongly echoed in the episode of Melissa and Earine, in which it is also explicitly mentioned, but the actual story of how Paris chose Aphrodite is told by Kebren early on in the novel.23 In Moore’s novel, there are also echoes of entire stories that are embedded in the Iliad and the Odyssey: the story of the love triangle between Hephaestus, Ares and Aphrodite, echoing Odyssey 8.215-94, is mentioned in Chapter 12; the clash between Zeus and Poseidon, reminiscent of Iliad 13.345, is mentioned in Chapter 16; and the myth of Poseidon’s flirtation with Aphrodite, based upon and continuing the story of Hephaestus, Ares and Aphrodite in Odyssey 8, is narrated by Otanes in Chapter 16. It becomes apparent that the Homeric epics are seen by Moore as long stories containing many embedded narratives: .

20

Ibid., 64, 70, 72, 76. Ibid., 226. 22 Ibid., 103, 251-54. 23 Ibid., 156, 12-13. 21

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“There are many stories in the Odyssey; the Odyssey itself is a story”, explains Biote to Thrasillos.24 Moore’s novel, then, which mirrors the Odyssey in being a narrative of embedded narratives, provides ample opportunity for characters such as Otanes and Kebren to assume the role of storyteller. Kebren’s inclination to engage in storytelling, in particular, is facilitated by the introduction of his character as “an actor of old time and a rhapsodist”,25 and this presentation receives further reinforcement by the parallelism between Kebren and Odysseus, Homer’s expert inventor of stories. This is implicit in various locations in Aphrodite in Aulis. First, at the start of the novel, Kebren, a newcomer in Aulis, receives the hospitality of Otanes, the wealthy merchant who would soon become his father-in-law, and is asked to tell his story, much like Odysseus receives the hospitality of the Phaeacians in the Odyssey and is invited by King Alcinous, who nearly became Odysseus’ father-in-law, to relate the story of his travels.26 But instead of this leading to a long secondary narration as it does in the Odyssey, Moore’s Kebren offers to tell another story instead: “the greatest of all stories”, as he calls it, “the Iliad” – it is not until later that he will narrate his own life story. And, not unlike Odysseus, Kebren receives a promise from his host that one of his ships will take him wherever he wants.27 This is not the only instance where Kebren is cast as Odysseus. “Remain with us for a year, Kebren, and if a year in Aulis should prove thee another Odysseus thou wilt re-engage in thy long pursuit of Helen”,28 says Otanes to Kebren in an attempt to persuade him to marry his daughter. When Kebren leaves on a business trip to the Black Sea, his wife Biote, who is angry with him for going away, says to her father: “A pretty story thou hast invented, father, to reconcile me to my husband, who may, like Ulysses, have fortuned on an enchanted island, where months go by cooing for the unloosing of a girdle.”29 And in Chapter 19, as mentioned earlier, Kebren, like 24

Ibid., 72. Ibid., 137. 26 Ibid., 9 ff; Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Walter Shewring, Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 1998, 7. 27 Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, 7, 18 ff, 23. 28 Ibid., 58. 29 Ibid., 125. 25

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another Odysseus, contemplates an imaginary trip to the Underworld and wonders whether he will meet his late father-in-law there.30 The stories with a Homeric colour here identified are not the only embedded narratives in Moore’s novel. There are several other digressive narratives, of which two are of particular interest: the comparison of Greek with Egyptian death rituals in Chapter 6 and the story of Cheop’s pyramid in Egypt in Chapter 10, both of which echo strongly another famous Greek storyteller, Herodotus, who is known for his long digressions in his history of the Persian Wars. The influence of the Ionian historiographer, who is named by Kebren as “one of the greatest of our writers”, is evident in many locations in Moore’s novel,31 but passages in which cultural matters come to the fore appear to be particularly privileged in that respect. The cultural divide between Greeks and oriental non-Greeks (labelled “barbarians” in Classical Greek culture), which pervades Herodotus’ writings, is a recurring theme in Moore’s Aphrodite in Aulis: “Barbarians have art, but they have not unity”, exclaims Otanes in a conversation about Greek and oriental cultures.32 Further discussion turns to the “advantage slavery is to barbarians”, and later on the “changes that trading with oriental peoples had produced in Greece” are considered and the discussion centres upon eunuchs and “the Eastern world”.33 It is certainly not inappropriate for Moore’s characters to articulate a Herodotean xenophobic attitude towards orientals in a story set only a few decades after the end of the Persian wars, with the Persian invasions still bitterly remembered by the Greeks: “We were austere and pure till the Persians came, and having chased the Persians out of our country would it not be shameful to

30 Odysseus’ trip to Hades leads to a reunion with his mother, Agamemnon and Achilles (Homer, Odyssey, 11). 31 Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, 135. As Christensen remarks, Kebren’s suspicion that the temple of Aphrodite might become a house of prostitution in Aulis strongly echoes Herodotus’ statement at 1.199, where he describes the Babylonian custom of having women engage in sexual intercourse with strangers in the temple of Aphrodite (Christensen, “The Aestheticized Image of Aphrodite in George Moore’s Aphrodite in Aulis”, 133). See Herodotus, The Histories, trans. A. de Sélincourt, rev. J. Marincola, London, New York: Penguin, 1996. 32 Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, 18. 33 Ibid., 64, 118, 119.

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bring over their Gods for worship?”,34 is a view offered during the debate about which god Aulis should dedicate its temple to. There is, however, a non-Greek nation that is mentioned frequently and which receives a more favourable treatment than the rest of the barbarians in Moore’s novel: the Egyptians. It is here that we may see the extent of Herodotus’ influence, who dedicated Book 2 of his Histories to Egypt. In Moore’s work, a conversation about death turns into a digression on the way in which Egyptians and Greeks strive to achieve immortality: the former through the unique practice of embalment; the latter through the construction of temples filled with marble representations of the Gods in Chapter 6. This comparison of religious practices for the dead recalls Herodotus’ fascinating discussion of Egyptian mummification, where he too offers a comparison of Egyptian with Greek customs.35 In Moore’s novel, shortly before Kebren leaves for the Black Sea, discussion reverts to Egyptian culture, and the focus this time is on Cheops’ pyramid. The general description of this imposing Egyptian monument echoes the detailed account provided by Herodotus, from the number of slaves that worked to construct it, to the time it took to complete. Asked by his sons to explain how he had gathered all that information, Kebren responds with what may be read as an allusion to Herodotus’ first-hand observation of Cheops’ pyramid while travelling in Egypt: “[the story of the pyramid is] a story well enough for those who have seen the pyramid, but words have little power to help you to see in your thoughts that mountain of stone pointing upwards, black amid the stars.”36 Kebren’s story of the pyramid, based upon an eye-witness experience such as that described by Herodotus, develops into an exciting tale about a lost manuscript containing the clues to Cheops’ wealth, just like a reference to the Homeric tale of Hephaestus and Aphrodite develops into a new story about Poseidon’s pursuit of Aphrodite, as was discussed above. Some of the frequent digressions in Aphrodite in Aulis, then, which have even been suspected of being structural flaws,37 may very well 34

Ibid., 135. Herodotus, Histories, 2.86-90. 36 Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, 102; Herodotus, Histories, 2.124-25. 37 See Janet E. Dunleavy, George Moore: The Artist’s Vision, the Storyteller’s Art, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1973, 137-38 on the issue of structural unity in Aphrodite in Aulis. 35

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be interpreted as subscribing to the long tradition of digressive narratives in ancient Greek literature, a tradition to which Moore appears to adhere and to allude through associating some of his own embedded stories with two of ancient Greece’s most celebrated storytellers, Homer and Herodotus. But Moore’s preoccupation with storytelling goes beyond evoking the Homeric and Herodotean paradigms. It is also reflected in a series of statements made by various characters throughout this novel: “A good story loses none of its goodness in repetition”, remarks Biote, when she asks Kebren to tell Rhesos how Aphrodite was chosen over Poseidon for the statue that their son was going to carve.38 “A perfect story hath always a perfect end”, states Rhesos, referring to his unexpected meeting with Earine and Melissa – with George Moore pre-empting here, perhaps, the ending of the novel itself. “A great story needs a great teller”, declares Kebren, when invited to deliver a speech at Otanes’ funeral. Even animals are potential storytellers in Moore’s novel: “My travels would make a poor narrative compared with the story he [Ajax the wolf] could tell, if he had words”, explains Rhesos to his mother.39 Telling a story involves an audience as well, and hearing a good story is described as a thirst greater than that for alcohol: “Wine is always welcome but thou quickenest my thirst for the story”, says Mnasalcas to Kebren,40 anxious to hear about his daughters who had eloped with Kebren’s sons. And when Thyonicus, in the scene of the rhetorical battle over the god to whom the temple in Aulis would be dedicated in Chapter 13, refers pejoratively to Herodotus’ storytelling and dismisses one of his opponent’s arguments as mere “tales from Herodotus”, Kebren intervenes to defend the art of storytelling by pointing out that Herodotus is “one of the greatest of our writers”.41 Perhaps the most striking of these statements, nonetheless, is Rhesos’ remark on stories about art: “For art is for the artist, and stories about art and artists are for the populace”, announces Rhesos in his speech to the people of Aulis.42

38

Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, 137. Ibid., 162, 193, 239. 40 Ibid., 206. 41 Ibid., 135. 42 Ibid., 234. 39

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Bearing in mind that Aphrodite in Aulis was composed by Moore towards the end of his career and, indeed, of his life,43 we may read in those statements on storytelling and storytellers Moore’s selfreferential reflections on his own artistic views and preoccupations. This would also account for the emphasis placed by Moore upon Phidias and his illness, who movingly confesses to Rhesos: “I was afraid I might not live to see it [his statue of Athena] finished, but the gods willed otherwise, and now that it is finished it matters little whether I live six months longer or die today.”44 The reference to Phidias’ fragile health and the vulnerable tone of his frank confession, which, as already mentioned, has no foundation in any available evidence on the historical figure of Phidias, must reflect Moore’s preoccupation with his own health while he was working on Aphrodite in Aulis, and certainly echoes Moore’s Preface in which he dedicates the novel to his surgeon.45 Moore’s self-referential reflections are complemented by the single most important development that seals Aphrodite in Aulis: Rhesos’ decision (in the revised version of the novel) to ignore Phidias’ criticism and to leave his work of art unchanged. The character Phidias, an artist whose name remained synonymous with artistic perfection throughout the ancient world and whose artistic authority is carefully established in this work, is particularly important here. By making Rhesos reject the criticism offered by someone of Phidias’ status, Moore attaches special significance to Rhesos’ declaration that he is perfectly satisfied with his work: “I see nothing to alter, nor anything to reproach me”, he tells his father, and he continues: “My art is my own, and today I am free to follow the current of my soul.” When asked by Kebren whether he is pleased with his work, he affirms: “Well pleased indeed …. Finding nothing to change is a happy moment in a sculptor’s life.”46 This strong statement put into the mouth of an artist-character by a novelist who is reaching the end of his career, must also serve to defend not only the revised ending of this novel but also its numerous digressions that are here a hallmark of 43

Moore wrote Aphrodite in Aulis “all through the brainfog of a long illness”, his recent biographer notes (see Adrian Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, London and New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2000, 457). 44 Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, 244. 45 Moore had undergone surgery in 1928, two years before Aphrodite in Aulis was published (see Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, 444 and 454). 46 Moore, Aphrodite in Aulis, 257-58.

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Moore’s own “art of storytelling”, an art which is frequently alluded to in Aphrodite in Aulis.47 It is often said that Moore’s work, especially his early writings, are characterized by a continual debate about success and failure, with the egocentric and sometimes overly self-critical Moore seeing his work as imperfect and in need of revision and enrichment. In his last complete novel, however, Moore at last appears to view his work as a success, as witness the self-referential reading of Rhesos’ statement. Thus, Cave is right to observe that Aphrodite in Aulis may be read as “a fitting apology for Moore’s arts and achievement”.48 In order to convey this apology, Moore has artfully employed ancient Greek symbols and themes, where he has carefully woven into a narrative in which historical accuracy and attention to detail coexist with deliberative, creative deviations from historical record, and in which popular images from Greek mythology and from various periods of Greek history and literary production have been combined to create a work of art and about art. This is a novel whose author self-reflexively remarks that he is as proud of it as his character Rhesos is of his statue of Aphrodite.

47

Cave maintains that “these later sections of the novel concerning Rhesos are almost an allegorical statement of Moore’s own concept of realism in art …” (Cave, A Study of the Novels of George Moore, 232). 48 Ibid., 232.

IV. SPACES AND THE SUBJECT

FRAMING THE BODY: GEORGE MOORE’S “ALBERT NOBBS” AND THE DISAPPEARING REALIST SUBJECT ELIZABETH GRUBGELD

As the autobiographical narrator of his 1918 A Story-Teller’s Holiday, George Moore responds to the request of his fictional interlocutor for a specifically Irish story: “the story I’d be telling you”, the narrator says, “is Irish only because it all happened in Morrison’s hotel”.1 Although the Dublin setting is inconsequential to the events of his tale, it nevertheless introduces the person of Albert Nobbs as a memory from the narrator’s visits to the hotel and consequently initiates one of the many masculine narrative frames in which Moore encloses Albert’s story. As Albert, a woman who lives as a male hotel waiter in mid-nineteenth century Dublin, finds herself sequestered by geographical and architectural enclosures, so Moore’s narrative framing encloses her within ever-expanding concentric circles of discourse that lead from the inner world of the story’s setting to the outermost circle of Moore’s intended (as distinct from implied) readership. The elaborate meta-narrative Moore designs causes the primary subject of realist fiction, the body, to disappear except as a creation of discourse. However, the outer reaches of Moore’s screen 1

George Moore, A Story-Teller’s Holiday, London: Cumann Sean-eolais na hEireann, 1918, 266. This line derives from Chapter 44 of the first version of A Story-Teller’s Holiday, privately issued under the imprint of Cumann Sean-eolais na hEireann, an imaginary organization set up for the sole purpose of shielding Moore from prosecution for obscenity. The chapter does not appear in the version used by Ann Heilmann and Mark Llwellyn for their scholarly edition of A Story-Teller’s Holiday (The Collected Short Stories of George Moore: Gender and Genre, eds Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007, IV) nor does the story of Albert Nobbs. However, “Albert Nobbs” is included in The Collected Short Stories of George Moore, V, 189-220 with other fiction concerning alternative sexualities and will be cited in the text as “Albert Nobbs”. Other quotations from Heilmann and Llwellyn’s edition of A Story-Teller’s Holiday shall be cited as Story-Teller’s Holiday.

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nevertheless locate his ambiguously gendered subject within a lived world that demands an ethical response from author and reader. “Albert Nobbs”, A Story-Teller’s Holiday, and the rejection of Realism The story first appeared as one of many tales incorporated into A Story-Teller’s Holiday. In this unusual mixture of memoir, fiction, folk legend, and fantasy, Moore employs his autobiographical persona, George Moore, whose origins at Moore Hall, County Mayo, early life among the painters and poets of Montmartre, and long – and controversial – literary career is presumed to be familiar to his readers. Having finally settled in London in 1911, he returns to Ireland for a visit soon after the Easter Rising and, having explored the ruins of the insurrection and considered writing his impressions of the scene, leaves for the west of Ireland. There he encounters the local traditional storyteller, Alec Trussleby. The two men begin to exchange tales. Most concern the bawdy adventures of clerics and nuns in early Christian Ireland, but “Albert Nobbs” presents a nineteenth-century urban setting and an approach to narrative more akin to the Modernist experiments of Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford than to Alec’s folktales.2 Although its language and setting greatly differ from that of the other stories, this final addition to the collection reinforces Moore’s overall concern with the devastating effects of sexual repression and the difficulties of telling and hearing stories that fall outside the domain of regulated behaviour. George Moore had long been fascinated by the varieties of gender identity and sexual behaviour. His own sexuality was itself highly complicated, and while he viewed the sexual lives of others with curiosity, and at times amusement, he was most often empathetic, while lamenting what he believed to be the unnecessary and destructive suppression of the sexual impulse and the equally

2

Despite the affinity of his narrative technique with that of Conrad and Ford, Moore was blind to Conrad’s attributes and made a habit of publicly insulting Conrad’s style and subject matter. Although as editor of The English Review, Ford had met with Moore and believed him to be “infinitely the most skilled man of letters of his day – the most skilled in the whole world” (Ford Madox Ford, “Contrasts: Memories of John Galsworthy and George Moore”, The Atlantic Monthly, CLI/5 [May 1933], 562), to my knowledge Moore never indicated any awareness of Ford as a writer of fiction.

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disturbing exploitation of women.3 By 1918, he had been writing about variant sexual behaviour, both autobiographical and fictional, for nearly forty years. His 1895 Celibates offered a series of short stories about individuals who, for different social and psychological reasons, reject sexual interactions with others. In 1922, he published another collection on the subject, In Single Strictness, and five years later excerpted “Albert Nobbs” from its original context to include it in his final collection of stories, Celibate Lives. Since then, the story has been reprinted in several anthologies of British and Irish short fiction, translated into at least two languages, and in 1972, adapted for the stage by the French feminist playwright Simone Benmussa. Her stage play also forms the basis of Rodrigo Garcia’s 2011 film adaptation. Benmussa’s play has been frequently produced and much praised for its ability to transpose into theatrical terms the process by which an individual of indeterminate gender and sexual identity becomes an unknowable subject created by the patriarchal discourse in which she is described and discussed.4 Yet it is Moore’s own story that exposes, as does Benmussa’s adaptation, the rhetorical 3

Moore never married, although he had numerous serious and more fleeting relationships with a variety of women; he also enjoyed erotic conversations and epistolary exchanges with female admirers. In the 1889 French edition of his autobiographical Confessions of a Young Man, Moore suggests that his “soul hovered” for a moment before his conception in indecision as to gender, and he counted as one of his favourite novels Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin, which concerns a man’s attraction to a woman disguised as a man and later, to a man disguised as a woman. Although Moore clearly had bisexual inclinations, the degree of his physical involvement with men is unknown; however, as Eve Sedgwick has argued, homosocial relationships are not dependent on specific sexual practices or restrictive identities (Eve Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosexual Desire, New York: Columbia UP, 1985). See also Adrian Frazier’s article concerning homosocial interactions among Moore, Martyn and Yeats: Adrian Frazier, “Queering the Irish Renaissance: The Masculinities of Moore, Martyn, and Yeats”, in Gender and Sexuality in Modern Ireland, eds Anthony Bradley and Maryann Gialanella Valiulis, Amherst: U of Massachussets P, 1997, 32-33. 4 Moore’s story also anticipates contemporary understandings of gender and sexual identities as socially constructed, indissociable from the forms of power that govern them, and ruled by what Judith Butler calls a “heterosexual imperative” that opens up certain sex identifications and forecloses others: Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, London: Routledge, 1992. For a discussion of the story within the context of Moore’s other writing about sexuality and celibacy, see “Moore’s Everlasting Yea: Sexuality and Production in the Fiction of the Middle Period” (in my George Moore and the Autogenous Self: The Autobiography and Fiction, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1994, 64-102).

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relationships of speaker and listener (or writer and reader) that contribute to the social formation of its subject matter. Instead of presenting to the reader an infallible source of empirical witness – the traditional role of “the voice of the author” in the English novel – both the fictionalized figure of Moore on holiday and the less fictionalized figure of Moore as author speak as but two of many voices, none of whom is a fully adequate speaker or listener. Albert’s body remains a site of speculation, inference, and unknowability. As much as the human body in all its impulses, instincts, frailties and pleasures had always captured Moore’s literary attention, after the turn of the century it became increasingly a body that is selfconsciously remembered, narrated, and framed. In retrospect, it is surprising that a man so conscious of the rhetorical dynamics of storytelling and so interested in representing the storyteller’s subjectivity might have once imagined himself a Realist. Although he was drawn to the frankness and lack of sentimentality within the Realist novel, if we consider Zola’s definition of the Realist method as the writer’s having performed “on two living bodies the analytic work that surgeons do on corpses”5 or George Eliot’s wish to give “a faithful account of men and things as they have mirrored themselves in [my] own mind”,6 then after the mid-1890s, Moore had ceased to be a Realist, if indeed he ever were. Instead, it is much less the “men and things” mirrored in the writer’s mind that forms the real interest of his work than the narrative act of forming into prose what the mind refracts.7 Gender, storytelling and material space Storytelling forms the subject matter of “Albert Nobbs” as much as do the details of Albert’s life as a cross-dressing woman in mid nineteenth-century Dublin. Tzvetan Todorov has asserted that “a text

5

Emile Zola, Thérèse Raquin, Preface to the 2nd edn (1867), Paris: Gallimard, 2010, x: “sur deux corps vivants le travail analytique que les chirurgiens font sur les cadavres.” 6 George Eliot, Adam Bede (1859), New York: Penguin Books, 1998, 174. 7 In her comparative study of Moore and the Brothers Goncourt in this volume, Nathalie Saudo-Welby traces through the revisions of Esther Waters during this period a decisive trend away from a Realist objectification of Esther’s body towards the expression of her powers of memory and speech.

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always contains within itself directions for its own consumption”,8 and when at the start of his story Moore’s autobiographical narrator recalls his childhood visits to the Dublin hotel where Albert worked, he provides just such cues to the ways we must read the frames of discourse whose interrelations make up the wider plot in which Albert’s story is enclosed: I remember long passages on the second landing, and half-way down these passages was the well. I don’t know if it’s right to speak of the well of a staircase, but I used to think of it as a well. It was always being drummed into me that I mustn’t climb on to the banisters, a thing I wished to do, but was afraid to get astride of them, lest I should lose my head and fall all the way down to the ground floor. There was nothing to stop me from reaching it, if I lost my balance, except a few gas lamps .... the long passages led to a minor stairs, but I never followed either lest I should miss my way. A very big building was Morrison’s Hotel, with passages running hither and thither, and little flights of stairs in all kinds of odd corners by which the visitors climbed to their apartments, and it needed all my attention to remember the way to our rooms on the second floor.9

By inviting his listener (and by extension, his readers) into the architectural labyrinth that threatens the male child with vertigo and disorientation, Moore initiates a story that will challenge masculine control over knowledge. The narrator here anticipates the labyrinth of material space and discourse conventions that entrap Albert’s efforts to realize a domestic life. Albert, whose given female name is never divulged, was born the illegitimate offspring of “grand folk” whom she has never known. Her education and keep are paid out by an allowance, and she grows up in what she recalls as the benign female space of a convent school until the death of her parents ends the payments. She and her old nurse move into the decidedly dangerous masculine space of Temple Bar, where they clean the apartments of the barristers. Heterosexuality there presents only threat: there are rough men in Temple Lane whom she fears might “pull her about” and make her pregnant, and her 8

Tzvetan Todorov, “Reading as Construction”, in The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, eds Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1980, 77. 9 Moore, “Albert Nobbs”, 189.

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unrequited love for a gentle if effeminate barrister is crushed by the arrival of his hyperfeminine French mistress. In despair, she considers throwing herself in the river until a kindly servant suggests that with her slight figure, she might obtain lucrative employment were she to impersonate a male waiter. Albert successfully does so and lives out her days in masculine disguise within the maze of stairs and inner rooms at the Morrison Hotel. After her effort to court and marry Helen, one of the kitchen maids, meets with humiliating rejection, Albert must abandon her plans for a seaside vacation in the west of Ireland with Helen, and even more significantly, her dream of establishing a business and home away from the hotel: a shop with two counters, one for tobacco and one for sweets, and a cozy household where she would live with her wife. Occupying the role of provider and husband, she would nevertheless “be a woman to the dear one at home”10 and of the little daughter who might be born to the woman she marries, she thinks, “What matter whether she calls me father or mother? They are but mere words that the lips speak, but love is in the heart and only love matters.”11 Unable to fit into any clear identity – masculine, feminine, heterosexual, or lesbian – and denied the multiply gendered spaces of which she dreams, Albert remains within the interior of the hotel until she dies. Her space within the hotel is shared only once, but it is a lifechanging instance. The hotel manager insists that Albert share her bed with Hubert Page, a house painter who comes to Dublin on a very busy evening when no other rooms are available; Page is known and liked by the staff because he does not drink, bully, or flirt with the housemaids. A series of accidents results in the revelation of Albert’s sex, followed by the revelation of Hubert’s: within that room, both men are, in fact, women.12 But while Hubert tells of her happy 10

Ibid., 202. Ibid., 203. 12 In this scene, Hubert reveals her sex by assuring Albert that “there’s nothing there”. I would offer three possible explanations for the phrase. In the first, Moore would perceive the penis as presence and the vagina as absence. However, given his frequent expressions of appreciation of female genitalia, it is unlikely that he believes “there’s nothing there”, and more likely that it is Hubert, not his author, who is trapped within masculinist discourse. Mary Pierse suggested at the 2007 conference of the International George Moore Society that in light of both women’s painful experience with masculine sexuality and gendered behaviours, Hubert may be declaring that Albert has “nothing” to fear because Hubert has “nothing” with which to hurt her. 11

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marriage to another woman elsewhere, Albert can tell her own story only within this room, hidden inside the labyrinth of stairs. And even there, in that room, words fail. Shaking her head over the seven long years of loneliness Albert has endured, Hubert repeats, “seven years ... neither man nor woman, just a perhapser”.13 Textualizing the body The geographical and architectural enclosure that keeps Albert from escaping the hotel parallels the framing of her story as it is told and heard by its characters. These characters have such trouble telling their stories and hearing those of others. Just as Hubert has no words to describe Albert except through a vocabulary of lack, so the other characters in the story, as well as the narrator and his listener, Alec, fall over their tongues in the effort to describe her. Moore plays fast and loose with pronouns, shifting mid sentence from masculine to feminine and back again as the narrative consciousness moves among those characters aware of her sex or those not. After her death, the hotel staff stumbles through their sentences, similarly grasping for the correctly gendered pronouns. Even were we to disregard the autobiographical narrator and his listener – as well as the outer discourse frames Moore constructs around his book – we would still have a story that foregrounds its characters’ efforts to tell it. Not only do the characters speak of Albert with difficulty but they also listen inadequately. Albert herself falls asleep before she hears any advice Hubert might give her about how to court and marry a woman. A young prostitute listens sympathetically to Albert’s expression of loneliness, but the girl’s attention wanders when a customer saunters by. Helen’s paramour, Joe, proves incapable of hearing her shallow misgivings about exploiting Albert’s generosity for the presents she will receive – and pass on to him – and he cruelly repeats what she has told him of Albert’s wooing so as to make Albert the laughing-stock of the kitchen. And even Hubert returns to the hotel too late to give Albert the advice she needs. Her own wife having died, Hubert fears to replicate Albert’s lonely end and decides to return to her daughters and husband, telling no one of the life she has lived for so many years. Throughout A Story-Teller’s Holiday, characters find themselves unable to speak or listen well: the narrator avoids contact with a nun 13

Moore, “Albert Nobbs”, 198.

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in the rail station whose eyes, he thinks, are imploring him to hear her story and assist her in an escape; while a man on the train to Westport relates the history of the jockey, Joseph Appleby, Moore’s attention wavers and he misses the first half the story; his neighbour Cunningham is said to be a fine teller of tales but will not speak to Moore; and in the folk story of the poets Liadin and Curithir, Curithir forgets his verses when consumed by love, and Liadin loses both voice and her audience when the clergy suppresses her newly passionate expression. The inadequate narrators and bad listeners of the framed tale of “Albert Nobbs” thus encapsulate a pattern seen within the book as a whole, and they also echo the failings of the two storytellers, Moore and Alec. Moore has offered Albert’s history as his contribution to a contest that Alec has suggested between himself, “the Westport Rooster”, and Moore, “the Ballinrobe Cock”. Although Alec declares Moore the superior male bird, announcing, “I’m bet, fairly bet, crowed down by the Ballinrobe Cock”, once the story concludes he counters with a series of objections. Immediately, he complains that Moore has omitted the best parts, and his criticisms destabilize the narrator’s authoritative position while reminding the reader that Albert’s life is but a story subject to the design or skill of the teller. In Alec’s explanation of those “best parts”, he betrays much about the male listener as configured in Moore’s tale. Alec would like to know how Hubert’s husband (who never appears in the story) would respond to her return: if he would like her “better than he did before, or less”. He also wants to see Hubert “vexed by the two daughters and the husband, and they at her all the times with questions and she hard set to find answers for them”. Finally, Alec wonders how Albert and Helen might have lived with Joe about the place, “eating and drinking of the best, and when there was a quarrel he’d have a fine threat over them”.14 Like Joe, Alec uses what he hears to reaffirm his superior position. He invents three further humiliations in which the heterosexual male figures – Joe and Hubert’s husband – exercise authority over the transgressors. He fails to grasp the reasons that Albert and Hubert chose to live as men: the violence and the sexual aggression of the real men around them and the economic inequalities that insure few recourses for working class women beyond factory 14

Moore, Story-Teller’s Holiday, 220.

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labour, domestic service and prostitution: conditions that Moore accentuates in telling the tale.15 Instead, Alec insists that most people “in these parts” would readily believe Hubert’s fifteen-year absence from heterosexual life was the result of having been kidnapped by fairies, for, he adds, a “woman that marries another woman, and lives happily with her, isn’t a natural woman; there must be something of the fairy in her”.16 Beyond narrative framing Surrounding the inner narrative full of tellers and listeners, the conversation of the cock and rooster is itself framed by three further sets of writers and readers: George Moore as an autobiographical persona and the readers whom he directly addresses, George Moore as an historical person and the friends to whom he sends portions of A Story-Teller’s Holiday and who will subscribe to its private publication, and finally, George Moore as both persona and author and the future audiences whose existence he anticipates in his publication plans. For these outer reaches of the labyrinth, we must go beyond the story as it appears in Celibate Lives or in anthologies of fiction to examine the surrounding text of A Story-Teller’s Holiday and its intended readership, as alluded to in the Preface, as well as the history of its circulation and publication. As if foreshadowing his contest with Alec, in the initial chapters the autobiographical narrator suggests that stories – particularly the odd and variegated in nature – appear as gifts for the benefit of their tellers for whom they establish prestige within a pantheon of male artists. Wandering through some shelled buildings near the scene of the Easter insurrection, he wonders how he might cast the scene in some novel way, until the discovery of a displaced 15

Although Moore acknowledges sexual pleasure as motivation for cross-dressing in his portrait of Hugh Lane in Hail and Farewell and in the suppressed self-portrait of the 1889 French edition of Confessions, in “Albert Nobbs” he engages in what Marjorie Garber in Vested Interests: Cross Dressing and Cultural Anxiety calls “an explanatory discourse that privileges socio-economic or psychological motivations over the sexual pleasuring potential of masquerade” (cited in Ann Heilmann, “‘Neither man nor woman’? Female Transvestism, Object Relations and Mourning in George Moore’s ‘Albert Nobbs’”, Women: A Cultural Review, XIV/3 [2003], 249). Transvestism in Moore’s story figures as an ineffectual response to poverty and male violence rather than a form of sexual expression or a means to parody and defuse gender categories. 16 Moore, Story-Teller’s Holiday, 220.

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cat gives him an angle on his material, and he rejoices in what he calls “Nature’s unexpectedness and fecundity”. “She is never commonplace in her stories”, he observes, “we have only to go to her to be original ... I could have imagined everything else ... but not the cats seeking for their lost hearth, nor is it likely that Tourgeneff could, Balzac still less”.17 Later in the book, Moore objects to one of Alec’s stories in which a young medieval cleric and the nun he loves are devoured by wolves as they attempt their escape to the continent. “I suspect”, he remarks, “that an ecclesiastic unleashed the wolves. It would never do to allow a pair of lovers to go away to the Pyrenees to live happily in broken vows.” Alec, puzzled, asks, “So you think, your honour, that the story did not come down unchanged from father to son?”.18 This conversation, like the narrator’s exultation at the discovery of the lost cat in the Dublin ruins, breaks the illusion of realism to call attention to the framing. In the first case, he alludes to an ethical quandary that had preoccupied him since his first novel published thirty-five years before: the compulsion of the artist to exploit the living world for aesthetic purposes. In the second case, his conversation with Alec underscores how narratives are shaped by those who control the means of transmission, whether the story is passed “from father to son” or altered by the interventions of a male clergy. The issues raised within the framed tale, the conversation of Alec and Moore, and the wider context of A Story-Teller’s Holiday are further complicated by Moore’s notation of “Albert Nobbs” as topic of exchange between a specific type of reader and the authorial persona of the Preface, a figure one step closer to a lived world than the autobiographical persona of the narrative per se. As Moore uses the Preface to A Story-Teller’s Holiday to explain his decision to publish privately, he initiates yet another frame around Albert’s story. Because of the anti-clerical and sexually explicit nature of his material, Moore chose to publish in an expensive limited edition and by subscription only. As Adrian Frazier has related in his biography19 and Ann Heilmann has detailed in her Introduction to A Story-Teller’s Holiday in Volume IV of The Collected Short Stories of George Moore, Moore – a veteran of many battles with censorship – several years before had faced a particularly noxious lawsuit brought by Lord 17

Ibid., 12. Ibid., 86. 19 Adrian Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 2000, 402. 18

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Alfred Douglas, charging him with blasphemy in The Brook Kerith. Additionally, the 1918 publication of Lewis Seymour and Some Women prompted a libel suit from a man of the same name who had been an infant at the time of the novel’s first publication as A Modern Lover. As Moore sought publication for this new work, even more dismal threats emerged. Arthur Brentano had determined in early 1918 that publication of A Story-Teller’s Holiday was simply too dangerous, while T. Werner Laurie felt compelled to consult their lawyers about the possible consequences of publishing the work. “Even a year after the publication of A Story-Teller’s Holiday”, Heilmann remarks, “court action was still a serious hazard; on 8 September 1919 Moore recorded that Boni & Liveright had ‘received warning from the authorities that if they sold A Story Teller’s Holiday publicly they would be prosecuted’”.20 Determined to avoid legal actions, Moore put the best face on the matter, explaining to a friend: The book will be published to subscribers only, and this is a step which I ought to have taken long ago. I abhor the modern idea that literature is written for everybody and sent round with the morning loaf and the milk .... My idea of literature is quite different; I ought to have separated myself from modern literature long ago.21

Accordingly, Moore establishes in both the pages and the publication circumstances of A Story-Teller’s Holiday a cozy collaboration with an elite audience. The autobiographical persona identifies himself to his readers at the start of A Story-Teller’s Holiday as “none other, O reader, than thy friend George Moore”,22 and in the Preface his authorial voice identifies his readers as people of sophistication and taste. These private subscribers and we, the twenty-first century readers of “Albert Nobbs” constitute the final frame around her story. Moore has already named his readers, but as he does so, he anticipates the future readers he knew would come: he had already planned to

20

Ann Heilmann, Introduction, in The Collected Short Stories of George Moore, IV, xv. 21 George Moore, The Letters of George Moore, 1863-1901, ed. Robert Becker, diss., U of Reading, 1980, 285. 22 Moore, Story-Teller’s Holiday, 7.

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republish for a mass market once the danger of prosecution was past.23 In these textual intimations of audience present and future, Moore imagines not only a hypothetical reader but one situated in history. His construction is perhaps illuminated by Ford Madox Ford’s explanation of his own fictional method, as given in his 1913 essay, “On Impressionism”: “I suppose that Impressionism exists to render those queer effects of real life that are like so many views seen through bright glass – through glass so bright that whilst you perceive through it a landscape or a backyard, you are aware that, on its surface, it reflects a face of a person behind you.”24 A very odd and unexpected turn occurs at the end of Ford’s last sentence. The glass allows us to perceive the subject matter – in this case, the blurred image of Albert Nobbs – but it also reveals not what we might anticipate, a reflection of the viewer-reader, but “the face of a person behind you”. The frame functions less like a picture frame, or even a mirror of the implied reader, than a frame of film, which theorists of cinema frequently describe as implying a world beyond its edges. In the late 1950s, André Bazin laid the foundation for contemporary thinking about borders of the “screen”, which, he argues, is fundamentally different from a picture frame. “The essential role of the [picture] frame”, Bazin argues, is “if not to create at least to emphasize the difference between the microcosm of the picture and the macrocosm of the natural world in which the painting has come to takes its place”.25 A screen, he explains, operates much differently: The outer edges of the screen are not, as the technical jargon would seem to imply, the frame of the film image. They are the edges of a piece of masking that shows only a portion of reality. The picture frame polarizes space inwards. On the contrary, what the screen shows us seems to be part of something prolonged indefinitely into the universe. A frame is centripetal, the screen centrifugal.26

23

George Moore, “To W.K. Magee”, 14 August 1917, Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. 24 Ford Madox Ford, “On Impressionism”, in Critical Writings of Ford Madox Ford, ed. Frank McShane, Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1964, 41. 25 André Bazin, “Painting and Cinema”, in What Is Cinema?, ed. Hugh Gray, Berkeley and Los Angeles: U of California P, 1967, 165. 26 Ibid., 166.

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According to Bazin, because the frame provides a contextual “end” of a painting, as a structure the frame pushes focus inward, back towards the painting. A frame of film provides one segment of a larger image, one that does not end at the screen’s perimeters despite the fact that it falls out of our range of vision. Building from this concept, contemporary theorists of the screen have argued that the video monitor’s capacity to capture live action that can be directed and viewed simultaneously by the subject of the video, as well as a digital projection’s ability to respond to the bodily position and direction gaze of its spectator, can further destabilize the distinction between what is inside the screen and the lived reality of the viewer. An even more apt metaphor for Moore’s technique might be a screen edged by a large and multi-faceted mirror that surrounds the represented subject with a reflection of both the viewer and what lies behind the viewer, while drawing attention to its own conspicuous presence and function.27 In his 1919 Preface, Moore defines the “lived reality” of his implied contemporary audience and his projected future readership by again suggesting an intimate relation with them, but he does so with a peculiarly gendered twist. Of his readers, he says, “they are not a heterogeneous crowd, but a family”. Whereas some books, he asserts, are written for “astronomers, for scientists, for doctors, for lawyers, for golfers, for cricketers, for chess players, for yachtsmen, and ... for young girls in their teens”, his has been prepared for a special readership, those whom he calls “men and women of letters”.28 His language offers an unusual broadening of the common phrase “men of letters” and this odd usage requires some attention. It could mean very little, as both the implied and the intended readers of Moore’s text seem to have been so overwhelmingly male. Moore’s circle of readers consisted of literary patriarchs like Edmund Gosse, W.H. Heinemann and Arnold Bennett, and he read portions of the Irish tales aloud to the coterie of old men with whom he had enjoyed many evenings since his return to London, as well as sending copies to other friends. Despite the concern expressed in a letter to Arthur Brentano that his book not be misunderstood as “commercial pornography”, he did in 27

See, for example, Margaret Morse’s exploration of the relationship between screen and spectator in digital video installations: Margaret Morse, “Body and Screen”, Wide Angle, XXI/1 (January 1999), 63-75. 28 Moore, Story-Teller’s Holiday, 3.

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fact see it as a genteel sort of elderly man’s literary pornography,29 and in a letter to W.K. Magee, he deemed A Story-Teller’s Holiday “an esoteric work” and himself a modern Rabelais.30 Moore perceived “Albert Nobbs” as a scandalous work, but also writes to Magee that his tale “is neither comic nor indecent but merely pathetic”.31 Given his adamant defence of the significance of Albert’s suffering in response to what must have been criticisms by Magee, it is clear that he uses a qualifying term like “merely” to contrast pathos with comedy and indecency rather than to rank it below other kinds of sorrow.32 Yet despite the distinction Moore makes between “Albert Nobbs” and the rest of his tales, within the context of A Story-Teller’s Holiday Albert still appears as a subject of masculine exchange: a tale told by a cock and critiqued by a rooster in a book by a man intended for men, a tale that like the story of the homeless cat amid the ruins of the Easter Rising, will rank its author, he hopes, above Tourgéneff and Balzac – or perhaps in this case, Rabelais. However, the question remains as to how to explain his designation of his audience as inclusive of “women of letters”. Given Moore’s extraordinary emphasis on the discourse communities in which Albert’s story takes its various shapes, his remark acts as a reminder that as a subject, Albert is not so much the product of male discourse but of a more general patriarchal discourse in which Moore and his readers are caught regardless of their sex. Moore intimates that even the sympathetic listeners – the urbane painters and writers to whom he read and sent his text, and we, their twenty-first century replicants – are but more educated versions of the kitchen maids and scullions who gather around the table after Albert’s death, making her the subject of 29

Moore, “To Arthur Brentano”, 8 November 1917, in The Collected Short Stories of George Moore, IV, 350. 30 George Moore, Letters of George Moore, ed. John Eglinton [W.K. Magee], Bournemouth: Sydenham, 1942, 44. 31 Ibid., 40. 32 In a letter to W.K. Magee and reproduced in the collection edited by him, Moore calls Albert “a poor distracted creature who had lost all she had in the world – her hope of a home. I cannot conceive of a more pathetic creature than Albert Nobbs” (ibid., 37). The date given (9 January 1917) must be inaccurate, as Moore did not begin to write “Albert Nobbs” until the following autumn. Additionally, a letter dated 22 December, 1917 in which he distinguishes “Albert Nobbs” from the comic and “indecent” stories implies that Magee had not yet read the story (ibid., 40). The January letter was probably written in 1918 rather than 1917.

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gossip, passing the tale from mouth to mouth, and unable to apprehend the subject except through the lens of confusion, cruelty, pity, curiosity, and even boredom. Although as men and women of a different century we are perhaps less bound by binary categories of sexuality, we, too, struggle to interpret her body, gathering evidence from the text to determine her motives, her inner life, and her sexual orientation: a matter Moore has left tantalizingly ambiguous, with trails of evidence leading in contradictory directions. In the second volume of their history of modernist women’s writing, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar claimed that the story effectively silenced the disruptive voices of Albert and Hubert,33 and in a more detailed and theoretically sophisticated reading, Ann Heilmann also concludes that, “in subjecting the female cross-dresser to the voyeuristic desire of the reader and the dissecting gaze and narrative manipulations of the master puppeteer, Moore’s text reinstates patriarchal hegemonies even as it explores the instability of sexual and gendered identities”.34 But Moore’s voyeuristic textual practices always include at least one more step: he not only examines the body of his characters with the penetrating gaze of Zola’s surgeon, he examines his own act of watching, and through implication or direct address, acknowledges that his readers are enjoying the privilege of observing the whole process. In this way, he openly displays the activities of both the puppeteer and the reader, exposing the means by which what Heilmann calls “patrotextuality” comes about. Albert and Hubert finally lose their utopian dream of a domesticity without the limitations of gender and sex boundaries, but by foregrounding the social discourses that drive them into silence, Moore renders his conclusion far from inevitable. Perhaps had the inveterate reviser lived just a while longer, he may well have given Albert and Hubert what he finally allowed in the last of his many fictionalized portraits of his devoutly Catholic and ineluctably homosexual cousin Edward Martyn: the possibility of a happy ending.35 33

Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, Sexchanges, in No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century, New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1989, II, 336-37. 34 Heilmann, “‘Neither man nor woman’?”, 258. 35 Edward Martyn appears first as a homosexual doomed to self-hatred and celibacy in A Mere Accident (1887); again as the protagonist of A Mere Accident in a condensed

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and revised version published as “John Norton” in Celibates (1895); the comically eccentric, devout, and self-denying “dear Edward” of Moore’s three-volume autobiography, Hail and Farewell (1911-1914); the frustrated Hugh Momfret of In Single Strictness (1922); and finally, the man who accepts his own nature in the revised ending of “Hugh Momfret” circulated by Moore only weeks after the publication of In Single Strictness and used in the Second American (Carra) edition in the following year. Moore’s desire to write a story in which a Martyn-like character finds happiness in a homosexual union is cited in Edwin Gilcher, A Bibliography of George Moore, DeKalb: Northern Illinois UP, 1970, 115, and discussed in Grubgeld (George Moore and the Autogenous Self, 88-89) and Frazier (George Moore, 422-23).

“THE SOUL WITH A FALSE BOTTOM” AND “THE DECEITFUL CHARACTER”: ANALYSING THE SERVANT IN THE GONCOURTS’ GERMINIE LACERTEUX AND GEORGE MOORE’S ESTHER WATERS NATHALIE SAUDO-WELBY

The French naturalists and the representation of the servant Zola’s naturalist method of fiction was famously inspired by Claude Bernard’s Médecine expérimentale (1865). Zola repeatedly made use of the metaphor of dissection to describe the task of writing fiction, with the unfortunate consequence of comparing the object of inquiry to a corpse.1 This gave prominence to the body: not only that of the characters, but also that of the observing subject or experimenter. As most readers reacted and objected to naturalist fiction in terms of their own sensitivity and repulsion, their bodies also became involved in the story. Besides, the very fabric of the text, which was generally deemed coarse and crude, played a great part in the physicality of naturalist novels.2 In Germinie Lacerteux (1864), the Goncourts tried to penetrate Germinie’s character by a real physiological dissection. In so doing, 1

Émile Zola, “Deux définitions du roman”, in Œuvres complètes, Paris: Nouveau Monde, 2002, II, 510: “Le [romancier analyste] est, avant tout, un savant, un savant de l’ordre moral. J’aime à me le représenter comme l’anatomiste de l’âme et de la chair. Il dissèque l’homme, étudie le jeu des passions, interroge chaque fibre, fait l’analyse de l’organisme entier. Comme le chirurgien, il n’a ni honte, ni répugnance, lorsqu’il fouille les plaies humaines.” [“The analytical novelist is, above all, a scientist, a student of morals. I like to think of him as the anatomist of the soul and the flesh. He dissects man, studies the interplay of the passions, examines each fibre, analyses the whole body. Like the surgeon, he feels neither shame nor repulsion when he investigates human wounds.”] There are innumerable variations along these lines in Zola’s critical works. See for example Zola’s 1868 Preface to the second edition of Thérèse Raquin, in Œuvres complètes, 2003, III, 28; “Gustave Flaubert”, in Les romanciers naturalistes, in Œuvres complètes, 2004, X, 504. 2 See Léon Bloy, Les Funérailles du naturalisme, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2001.

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they provoked great repulsion in their readers: Princess Mathilde Bonaparte reproached them with making her sick, so intense was her physical involvement in the novel.3 Zola compared the effect the novel produced on him to that of wine going to his head.4 The Goncourts themselves were so emotionally involved in the writing of their servant’s life that they said that they had written it “with their guts”.5 Reading the novel today, since it is written in sequential form and every possible explanation for Germinie’s behaviour is explored, the reader is not so struck by Germinie herself – rather, one feels gripped by the style of the Goncourts and the manner in which Germinie’s emotions and thoughts are rendered throughout in terms of the corporal and the physical. Indeed, the experiences, sensations and reactions of many different bodies are intricately woven into Germinie Lacerteux. The analysis of character is equally complex in the naturalist texts: when one reads Zola’s appreciative critical essay on Germinie Lacerteux, which was one of his earliest expositions of the naturalist method, it appears that “personality”, “temperament” and “character”, words that were dear to the naturalists from Hyppolite Taine onwards, are used in a flexible sense, and so could refer either to the heroine of the novel, to the novel itself, or to its authors:

3

See Zola’s Introduction to his article about Germinie Lacerteux in Le Salut Public, 23 January 1865; rpt. in Émile Zola, Mes Haines, in Œuvres complètes, Paris: Nouveau Monde, 2002, I, 755: “Mon goût, si l’on veut, est dépravé; j’aime les ragoûts littéraires fortement épicés, les œuvres de décadence où une sorte de sensibilité maladive remplace la santé plantureuse des époques classiques.” [“My taste is, shall we say, depraved; I like spicy literary dishes, decadent works of art where morbid sensitivity has replaced the healthy and wholesome character of the classical periods.”] 4 Ibid., 763: “Cette œuvre fiévreuse et maladive a un charme provocant; elle monte à la tête comme un vin puissant; on s’oublie à la lire, mal à l’aise et goûtant des délices étranges.” [“This feverish, morbid work is provocatively seductive; it goes to your head like strong wine; as you read it you will forget yourself, feel ill-at-ease and experience strange delights.”] 5 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, “To Émile Zola”, 27 February 1865, in Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Germinie Lacerteux, Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1990, 289: “Hélas, oui, nos œuvres sont maladives, et vous l’avez dit délicieusement, elles ont de la passion et de la grâce de malade: notre faute, que voulez-vous, est d’écrire avec nos entrailles et d’être de notre temps.” [“Alas, yes, our works are indeed morbid, and, as you put it in such an exquisite way, they are pervaded with the passions and diseases of the sick: our flaw, you see, is to write with our guts and to belong to our own time.”]

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One more child has been born into the family of human creations; for me that child has its own physiognomy, and its very own likenesses and features. A scalpel in my hand, I carry out the autopsy of the newborn baby and I am in the grip of an immense joy when I find in him an unknown creature, an individual kind of organism. The life of that body is unlike any other; from that moment on I experience the curiosity of a doctor faced with a new disease. I do not shrink back in disgust; I enthusiastically bend over the work, whether it be wholesome or unwholesome, without any regard for propriety or purity, and deep down I make out a great light which illuminates the whole book: the light of human genius coming into being.6

One cannot help wondering what Zola had in mind when he wrote of dissecting a newborn baby, although this metaphor is perfectly in keeping with the novel’s theme (it includes such scenes as the death of a child under the wet nurse’s charge and a miscarriage). After Zola has dissected the baby, he realizes that there is a creature within the baby,7 and when he looks even deeper he finds a great light, and finally human genius being born. Zola is delighted to deal with something that is alive and organic. But what exactly is he talking about? Germinie, the novel, its two authors, or even their genius? In the next ten lines, the words “temperament” and “personality” can be construed as referring to the physical, material presence of nature in the text (the body of the character), to the novel itself, which is then

6

“Un enfant de plus est né à la famille des créations humaines; cet enfant a pour moi une physionomie propre, des ressemblances et des traits originaux. Le scalpel à la main, je fais l’autopsie du nouveau-né, et je me sens pris d’une grande joie, lorsque je découvre en lui une créature inconnue, un organisme particulier. Celui-là ne vit pas de la vie de tous; dès ce moment, j’ai pour lui la curiosité du médecin qui est mis en face d’une maladie nouvelle. Alors je ne recule devant aucun dégoût; enthousiasmé, je me penche sur l’œuvre, saine ou malsaine, et, au-delà des pudeurs et des puretés, j’aperçois tout au fond une grande lueur qui sert à éclairer l’ouvrage entier, la lueur du génie humain en enfantement” (Émile Zola, “Germinie Lacerteux par MM. Edmond et Jules De Goncourt”, in Œuvres complètes, I, 755). 7 On the next page, the word “creature” is used to talk about Germinie (ibid., 756): “Imaginez une créature faite de passion et de tendresse, une femme toute chair et toute affection, capable des dernières hontes et des derniers dévouements …. Cette femme, cette créature maudite sera Germinie Lacerteux.” [“Imagine a creature made of passion and tenderness, a woman entirely composed of flesh and affections, capable of the most shameful acts and of the blindest devotions …. Such a woman, such a cursed creature is Germinie Lacerteux.”]

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treated as an individual, or to the character and temperament of the writers themselves (an artist’s temperament): To me it is the height of childishness to try and compare every artistic work to a model, to wonder whether books fulfil such and such conditions. I cannot understand that eagerness to rule over temperaments, to give lessons to the creative mind. A work of art is simply the manifestation of a personality in its highest and freest form, and as a consequence my only duty is to account for that personality. What do I care about the crowd? What I have between my hands is an individual; I can study it for itself, out of scientific curiosity. The perfection I aim at is to give my readers the rigorous anatomical description of the subject that was entrusted to me. My task is to penetrate into an organism, to recreate an artist’s temperament, to analyse a heart and an intellect, according to my own nature; the readers are free to admire or blame, according to theirs.8

As Zola reads through different layers of meaning, his critical essay takes the form of dissection. The literary creature becomes, in his hands, a complex and multidimensional blend of different personalities, bodies and influences. The reading of Germinie Lacerteux was a revelation for Zola, and the servant went on to be a choice fictional subject, with, notably, the publication of Gustave Flaubert’s Un Cœur Simple in 1877. Arguably, the female servant was an ideal subject for the naturalists because she was in their view not fully herself and was composed of many parts. Indeed, servants had to adjust to and adopt their masters’ timetables and habits, to fit into their masters’ clothes. 8

“Vouloir rapporter toutes les œuvres à une œuvre modèle, se demander si tel livre remplit telles et telles conditions, est le comble de la puérilité à mes yeux. Je ne puis comprendre cette rage de régenter les tempéraments, de faire la leçon à l’esprit créateur. Une œuvre est simplement une libre et haute manifestation d’une personnalité, et dès lors je n’ai plus pour devoir que de constater quelle est cette personnalité. Qu’importe la foule? J’ai là, entre les mains, un individu; je l’étudie pour lui-même, par curiosité scientifique. La perfection à laquelle je tends est de donner à mes lecteurs l’anatomie rigoureusement exacte du sujet qui m’a été soumis. Moi, j’aurai eu la charge de pénétrer un organisme, de reconstruire un tempérament d’artiste, d’analyser un cœur et une intelligence, selon ma nature; les lecteurs auront le droit d’admirer ou de blâmer, selon la leur” (ibid., 755; emphases added). In other passages, when Zola uses the vocabulary of physiology, he speaks about the anatomy of the characters themselves, as in the famous passage about the “analytical novelist” (see n.1).

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They might be asked to surrender their first names and to wear uniforms, thus simultaneously concealing their bodies, which could be perceived as a source of disorder, and erasing their personal identities. They had to deny their own desires and relinquish any privacy, with the result that they became estranged from their own bodies.9 Such physical alienation is linked to, and matched by, a corresponding mental dissembling. While it was considered normal that servants should tell lies for their masters’ sakes,10 they were not supposed to lie to protect their own private lives. Their reputed untruthful nature was at the core of the great nineteenth-century “servant problem”. With her alienated soul, her heart split in two and her apparently duplicitous nature, the female servant was a great source of mystery for the middle class, and a traditional source of fascination for the young master. To the naturalist writer, the imputed multifaceted nature of the female servant was an invitation to look beyond appearances and to experiment with literary dissection. In a late critical work, Les Romanciers naturalistes (1881), Zola described the Goncourts’ work as a process of dissection: [Germinie Lacerteux] is not a more or less interesting story, but a real lesson in moral and physical anatomy. The novelist throws this woman onto the dissecting table of the amphitheatre, the first woman who comes along, the servant-girl crossing the road wearing her 9

In Marguerite Baulu’s Modeste Automne (1911), a female servant writes: “Manger contre sa guise, s’habiller au goût des maîtres, dormir dans la case de temps infligée, sortir à l’heure ordonnée, travailler suivant leur méthode, accorder son humeur à la leur, en un mot devoir, pour vivre, s’introduire difficilement dans les modalités d’autrui, je ne connais pas une seconde destinée où l’on doive aussi continuellement contrarier ses organes, sa pensée, son caractère et ses désirs.” [“Eating against one’s own tastes, dressing according to one’s master’s tastes, sleeping within an allotted slot of time, working according to their methods, fitting one’s mood to theirs, in other words, being reduced to model one’s existence on that of others, I know of no other fate where one must so constantly frustrate one’s organs, thoughts, inclinations and desires.”] Cited by Anne Martin-Fugier in La Place des bonnes: La Domesticité féminine à Paris en 1900, Paris: Grasset/Perrin, 2004, 28. 10 Mrs Latch, speaking of Mr Leopold’s lies about race-horses, tells Esther: “What is servants for but to lie when it is in their master’s interests, and to be a confidential servant is to be the Prince of liars!” (George Moore, Esther Waters, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999, 41). This edition is based upon the 1931 text, which presents the novel as Moore left it: subsequent references to this edition appear in the notes as Esther Waters (1931).

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Although the anatomical metaphor is not literally present in the novel, Germinie is indeed described as a container to be explored, emptied and filled up, like an anatomical dummy. In contrast to that approach, when writing Esther Waters (1894), George Moore did not treat the servant’s body as an object of investigation in the traditional naturalist sense: there are very few physical descriptions of Esther, who is mainly made to exist through dialogue and free indirect speech. Moore is aware of the way the servant’s body and character undergo constant constructions and interpretations and one can read Esther Waters as a form of reflection or elaboration on the traditional formulae of naturalist novels dealing with servants. Moore’s Esther and the Goncourts’ Germinie: personal stakes Parallels between Germinie and Esther are numerous: they have similar fates in that they become pregnant by men who abuse them; their fates become entangled with those of their mistresses (Mlle de Varandeuil, Mrs Barfield); they are devoted to worthless men who cheat them but whom they love nonetheless. In both cases, their devotion to their masters is replicated in their submission to their lovers. Germinie Lacerteux was inspired by the Goncourts’ housekeeper, Rose Malingre, who served them for twentyfive years with such perfect and quiet devotion that she became a kind of mother figure to them. At her death, she was discovered to have been a particularly extreme specimen of the lost woman: she had run into debt for the sake of her lovers, had given birth to two children and was an alcoholic. The Goncourts were horrified: “It is awful to see 11 “Il ne s’agit pas d’une histoire plus ou moins intéressante, mais d’une véritable leçon d’anatomie morale et physique. Le romancier jette une femme sur la pierre de l’amphithéâtre, la première femme venue, la bonne qui traverse la rue en tablier; il la dissèque patiemment, montre chaque muscle, fait jouer les nerfs, cherche les causes et raconte les effets; et cela suffit pour étaler tout un coin saignant de l’humanité. Le lecteur sent les sanglots lui monter à la gorge. Il arrive que cette dissection soit un spectacle poignant, plein d’une haute moralité” (Émile Zola, “Edmond et Jules de Goncourt”, in Œuvres complètes, 2004, X, 557).

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this veil being torn apart: it is like the autopsy of something horrible within a corpse that has suddenly been opened.”12 After years of secrecy, Rose, now a dead body, could suddenly be opened and dissected, and the methodology of their dissection was distastefully like the autopsy which naturalist theory was going to present as a revolutionary artistic method. But the Goncourts were not so much fascinated by what they found inside as by their housekeeper’s capacity for deceit and by their own failure to discern its existence. This power of hers had defeated their much-vaunted powers of observation and had exceeded their own inventions and fictions: And along with that, she had such a powerful will, such a strong character, and a power for mystery to which nothing can be compared. Such secrecy – so many secrets, that were buried, hidden, without letting out any sign for our eyes and our ears or our well-trained senses, even in the hysterical fits which I saw her have when returning from the milkwoman; a mystery that she kept until her death and which she must have thought would be buried with her, so deeply had she entombed it within herself!13

The Goncourts’ commitment to writing Germinie’s life was thus stimulated by what they saw as hateful dissembling and a great mystery. In Confessions of a Young Man (1886), George Moore similarly recounts how he once experienced the young man’s mixed feelings of attraction and repulsion towards a female servant. Emma, the servant in question, is described as a crossbreed of the dog and the mule, with hands that cannot be called hands and legs “that do not look like legs”, yet “beautifully good”, rose-like and sublimely stupid.14 In his conversations with her, Moore tries to explore the nature of her attachment to her young man and to probe the depths of 12 “C’est affreux, ce déchirement de voile; c’est comme l’autopsie de quelque chose d’horrible dans une morte tout à coup ouverte” (Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal, Thursday 21 August 201, rpt. in Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Germinie Lacerteux, 273). 13 “Avec cela, une force de volonté, de caractère, une puissance de mystère, à laquelle rien ne peut être comparé; un secret, tous ses secrets renfoncés, cachés, sans une échappade à nos yeux, à nos oreilles, à nos sens d’observateurs, même dans les attaques de nerfs, que je lui ai vues au retour de chez la crémière; un mystère continué jusqu’à la mort et qu’elle devait croire enterré avec elle, tant elle l’avait bien enfoui en elle!” (ibid., 273). 14 George Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, London: Heinemann, 1929, 133, 135.

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her ignorance because “It is a strange thing to know nothing”.15 His account of Emma ends in an attempt to turn her into a fictional character.16 In Moore’s conversation with his own conscience he asks: “Would you seduce the wretched servant girl if by doing so you could pluck out the mystery of her being and set it down on paper!”17 This unanswered question proves that Moore once thought of acting the part of the rake who would damage a girl’s character for his own selfish ends; moreover, it reveals that the temptation to solve the mystery of her being by bodily means was real. The Goncourts’ and Moore’s responses to the servant’s mysterious power were very different. In their attempt to fill up the gaps in their vision of Germinie’s life, the Goncourts seem to have tried to fill Germinie up. She is described as a container which can be filled to the brink, with the constant risk of overflowing or exploding;18 she is either empty or full, either intensely virginal or an almost unnaturally maternal and fertile motherly creature.19 She is like a house that is alternatively abandoned or crowded.20 Thus, while Germinie gradually learns to hold her tongue, answer with monosyllables and keep to 15

Ibid., 134. “They would bring the idle loafer … his whispering would drive you mad” (ibid., 136). 17 Ibid., 207. 18 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Germinie Lacerteux, 176: “Le miracle de cette vie de désordre et de déchirement, de cette vie honteuse et brisée, fut qu’elle n’éclatât pas. Germinie n’en laissa rien monter à ses lèvres, elle n’en laissa rien voir dans sa physionomie, rien paraître dans son air, et le fond maudit de son existence resta toujours caché à sa maîtresse.” [“It was a miracle that this disorderly, fragmentary life, this shameful, shattered existence, never burst into pieces. Germinie never let anything pass her lips, she never betrayed any sign of it in her countenance, or in her air, and the cursed foundations of her existence always remained a secret to her mistress.”] 19 Ibid., 168: “c’est amusant les femmes comme toi ! toujours pleine ou fraîche vide alors!” [“how funny women like you are! They are either full or clean empty!” ] 20 Ibid., 190: “Mademoiselle était penchée avec une sorte d’épouvante sur ce corps abandonné et ne s’appartenant plus, dans lequel le passé revenait comme un revenant dans une maison abandonnée. Elle écoutait ces aveux prêts à jaillir et machinalement arrêtés, cette pensée sans connaissance qui parlait toute seule, cette voix qui ne s’entendait pas elle-même.” [“As it were, terror-stricken, Mademoiselle had bent over the forlorn body, which did not possess itself any more, and in which the past was returning like a ghost in a deserted house. She was listening to the confessions that were about to gush forth and were mechanically interrupted, these unconscious thoughts which were speaking by themselves, this voice which could not hear itself.”] 16

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herself, she seems to be incapable of holding on to any money, and everything she earns seems to flow out again and into the hands of her lover Jupillon; she would have pawned her body if she could.21 The topography of Germinie’s soul is similar to that of her body. In their correspondence, the Goncourts used the image of the container to talk about her soul: this woman whom they could never “fill up” had a “soul with a false bottom”.22 Their failure to penetrate Germinie’s secrets comes from the fact that Germinie is made up of hidden parts, the existence of which they do not suspect: she is split in two, divided between mind and body, between her goodness and her passions, between her rightful devotion to Mlle de Varandeuil and her selfconsuming submission to Jupillon. Interestingly, Germinie’s lies are hardly ever ascribed by the Goncourts to her alienated position as a servant, except when it is suggested that she might have been desperate to keep Mlle de Varandeuil’s affection. She is said to be good, but nonetheless adjudged to be naturally duplicitous and deceitful. In Mlle de Varandeuil’s words, “as for looks, she looks everything ….”23 Duplicity, duality and secrecy are portrayed as being at the core of her character. The Goncourts wrote that on some days, she did not even know herself and could only find herself again in pleasure and leisure, and that she “made her body lie heroically”.24 Their verdict is that she constantly shifts between the opposite sides of her character, which is “mobile, extreme, with no middle ground”.25

21

Ibid., 188: “On ne peut pas mettre sa peau au Mont-de-Piété.” [“You cannot pawn your body.” 22 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal, Thursday 21 August 1862, rpt. in ibid. 274 (emphases mine): “redescendant à ce cœur de Rose, que nous croyions tout à nous, nous avons eu comme une grande déception à voir qu’il y avait tout un grand côté que nous n’emplissions pas. La défiance nous est entrée dans l’esprit, pour toute la vie, du sexe entier de la femme. Une épouvante nous a pris de ce double fond de son âme, de ces ressources prodigieuses, de ce génie consommé du mensonge.” [“as we returned to Rose’s heart, a heart that we believed to be all ours, we felt immense disappointment on realizing that there was a whole part of it we had not filled up. A form of defiance got into our minds against life in general and against the whole female sex. We were struck with terror by this soul with a false bottom, by its amazing resources and its consummate genius for dissemblance.”] 23 “Ah! pour paraître, elle paraît tout ….” (ibid., 233). 24 “Elle fut héroïque à faire mentir tout son corps” (ibid., 235). 25 Ibid., 150.

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Moore, on the other hand, far from trying to fill up Esther’s life or to flesh her out, remains at a respectful distance from her. Duplicity in Esther Waters is an issue which is duly reflected upon, although this does not exclude a number of clichés: Esther is a thoroughly good character, whose devotion to God is the prime model of her relation to her employers – ideally, the good servant is religious. Esther’s existence, however, is split between the life of the senses, the lifeinstinct, which, in true Darwinian fashion, draws her towards William and his splendid shoulders, and the life of the spirit, which draws her to her kin, to her mother, Mrs Barfield, and Fred. Her love for William and the birth of her child constitute the great burden which she carries all her life and which makes her live a double life. She simultaneously lives out her fate and hides her circumstances from her employers so as to protect her privacy. While Germinie’s alienation results in hysteria, debt and selfforgetfulness,26 being two takes on a more positive form for Esther. The birth of her baby is no waste of the self, the child becomes her great purpose in life and rules her conduct: “There is another to think for now.”27 Esther’s apprenticeship in the art of lying and her capacity to dissemble are driven and impelled by an allegedly sound development of the life-instinct and maternal instinct. While the Goncourts and Mlle de Varandeuil failed to perceive the passionate side of Rose’s and Germinie’s lives, the protagonists in Esther Waters fail to perceive her intrinsic nobility. While the Goncourts attribute Germinie’s duplicity to her inner nature, Esther’s lying is presented as the result of circumstances, and its consequence is Esther’s self-fulfilment. As will now become apparent, what makes Esther’s duality problematic within the novel is that her character is not defined as a one-piece entity that could be set against circumstances. Moore’s artistic rejection of determinism Moore’s treatment of “circumstances” is striking: in the 1899 edition of the novel, the narrative voice analyses the moment when Esther, 26

Zola commented in his article (“Germinie Lacerteux”, 760): “Elle quitte Gautruche, qui lui dit de choisir entre lui et sa vieille maîtresse, et dès lors elle appartient à tous.” [“She leaves Gautruche, who tells her to choose between himself and her old mistress, and from then on she belongs to everybody.”] 27 Moore, Esther Waters (1931), 88.

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then in Mrs Bingley’s service, is in such low spirits that even her baby is becoming “indifferent to her”, in the following terms: She buried her face in her pillow [, seeking to escape from the passion of her despair. She was an unfortunate girl, and had missed all her chances. In the six months she had spent in the house in Chelsea her nature had been strained to the uttermost, and what we call chance now came to decide the course of her destiny. The fight between circumstances and character had gone till now in favour of character, but circumstances must call up no further forces against character. A hair would turn the scale either way.]28

Moore first uses free indirect style to express Esther’s own perception of her misfortune. By bringing in the first-person plural, the narrator then takes the judgment out of Esther’s mind and transfers it to external opinion. The expression “The fight between circumstances and character” sounds like the naturalist’s perspective on Esther’s case. In the 1926 version of the story, the whole passage between brackets is removed – arguably, a positive move: firstly, it makes the novel less didactic by taking away the theoretical and judgemental scaffolding. In the amended version, there is nobody to judge Esther’s situation; we see her burying her face in the pillow, a pose which is conventional without being explicit. Secondly, the emended passage presents character as given and unalterable, although character has systematically been presented elsewhere in the novel as a construction, as something standing outside the self, in the form of reputation or a written testimonial. It is thus a changeable verbal creation, which depends on the views of others. The word “character” appears four times within two pages very early in the novel.29 On two occasions, it is used neutrally to describe somebody’s nature or temperament. It is then used by Esther’s stepfather, who reproaches her with calling Mrs Dunbar a bad woman, and thereby taking away this woman’s character. Although Esther’s stepfather is presented as an irredeemably wicked man, by standing up for Mrs Dunbar, he is actually and unknowingly mounting a defence 28 29

George Moore, Esther Waters, London: Walter Scott, 1894, 157. Moore, Esther Waters (1931), 24-25.

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of Esther, since she will later find herself in a situation where she too might have her character taken away from her and might herself be referred to as a “bad” woman. Esther soon “learn[s] to like” this woman and changes her mind about her. The word “character” occurs again when Lady Elwin offers to take Esther as a servant in her house “for time enough to justify a recommendation”.30 In both of these cases, character shifts from being an essence to being a written construction, “Character” having become the term for a letter of recommendation written for a servant by a former employer and meant to be passed on to the next. At later points in the story, the word is almost always used in the sense of a written or oral testimonial which constitutes a threat, either because it is potentially deceitful or because it is a misleading representation of somebody’s credentials. Esther’s fight to survive with her baby requires defending her character – in other words, her reputation – alternatively by telling her true story or by lying. Her apprenticeship in the art of lying is imposed upon her by the joint necessity of protecting her baby and preserving the public image of her character. In the episode when Esther finds out that she is pregnant, Moore multiplies the number of images representing division: her mind is lost in a vague sensation of William; she loses consciousness; “her flesh [comes] to the relief of the spirit”; and lastly she fears she will be sent away without a character.31 Being two implies losing one’s character. The crisis is solved because Mrs Barfield is capable of reconciling the two characters: “she had not been wholly wrong in the girl’s character.”32 She then writes a slightly deceptive letter wherein the expression “at heart” – in “I believe her to be at heart a thoroughly religious girl” – suggests that there are different levels in Esther’s nature.33 Mrs Barfield’s text needs not only to be read but interpreted: her use of the intensive expression “at heart” paradoxically introduces some ambiguity by suggesting unknown depths to Esther’s character. We have to read between Mrs Barfield’s lines, just as Esther’s character can be interpreted in different ways, because there are

30

Ibid., 26. Ibid., 85-86. 32 Ibid., 88. 33 Ibid., 92. 31

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several dimensions to her behaviour. Esther’s conduct is both objectionable, according to one set of standards, and honourable. Mrs Trubner, another of Esther’s employers, is divided between her acknowledgment that “everyone has a right to protect themselves” and her wish that she had been given the conventional view of Esther. Her son considers that his mother should have “looked into [Esther’s] character more closely before she hired her” and that Mrs Barfield is a deceitful woman who “ought to be written to very sharply”.34 Esther is again dismissed. In her next position, she arouses the love and attention of the son of the house and has to face loss of character once more. When Esther, who is now working for Miss Rice, meets William and starts consorting with him, she fears she will once again lose her character because of him.35 At this point, guided by “some other woman whom she hardly knew [who] was thinking for her”,36 Esther decides to marry her son’s father, thus ultimately making her past character consistent and honourable and disproving all her critics. Esther’s life can thus be read as an attempt to keep up her written character or to reconcile her real life and her written character in the eyes of those who regard her as a fallen woman. Whenever the theme of character appears, it is always slightly subverted. A further example is raised in the person of Sarah, the servant who is a foil for Esther in the novel. Sarah does what many a girl of her condition does in nineteenth-century novels: she steals from her masters for her lover’s sake (as Germinie had done) and she is found out, tried, judged and convicted. In Chapter 39, which relates the trial, Moore adopts a legal style, making repeated use of the word “character” to refer indifferently to the evil-doers’ natures and to the credentials Sarah presented. William and Esther indirectly stand accused of providing a false character for Sarah: “Here lordship indulged in severe remarks against those who enabled not wholly irreproachable characters to obtain situations by false pretences, a very common habit, and one attended with great danger to society – one which society would do well to take precautions to defend itself against.”37

34

Ibid., 171. Ibid., 224. 36 Ibid., 228. 37 Ibid., 328. 35

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Esther thus successively acts the part of the one who misjudges somebody’s character, who suffers from the misconstructions caused by the reading of her character, and then who tries to mislead others by a false representation of character. The presentation of character as construct, as an account which stands apart from the servant’s life, reflects upon Moore’s own task of analysing Esther. Given the nature of the servant’s existence, the development of her character is under many constraints; it is constantly being constructed or misconstrued by others. George Moore’s task of describing Esther is clearly distinguished from that of her employers. Indeed, both the author and the employer are figures of authority and observers who play a decisive role in the creation of character. In the case of the Goncourts, the position of the master and of the author overlap. The Goncourts describe the physical links which tied them to Rose in their Journals, and write about Germinie in a novel. As employers and as writers, they have a role to play in the fashioning of a servant’s character and body. When reading Esther Waters, we become aware that Moore also attempts to explore and express Esther’s self-making and that characterization is no other than a form of representation. Esther’s body and mind are under as much pressure as her character. Except in the very first pages of the novel, Esther’s body is rarely described, and yet we get a sense of the pressures that it labours under. By refusing to wear her one and only dress to do kitchen work on first arriving at Woodview, Waters, as Esther is then called, refuses to allow her appearance, identity and property to be entirely surrendered to her employers. It is subsequently shown how Esther becomes dependent upon her body, which is said to change under the load of work and which is expected to, or made to, adjust to its functions: one employer wishes she were a fashionable “inch or two taller”, another one grumbles about “the danger of good-looking servants”, an old servant points out the necessity of keeping one’s teeth. A wet nurse ought to look healthy, to have a “beautiful” baby and “a good supply of milk”.38 What do readers have at their disposal to flesh out Esther’s character? When reading Esther Waters with Germinie Lacerteux in mind, one is struck by the comparatively small part assigned to 38

Ibid., 176, 175, 182, 140.

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Esther’s body as a site for knowledge. This is all the more surprising as any reader will agree that Esther has physical presence and that she is not as abstract as the comparison of her to “a prayer-meeting” might suggest.39 Although the reader gets the feeling of her physical presence and the power of her incarnation, this is achieved with what sometimes appears like a deliberate avoidance of physical detail and description, in contrast to the traditional naturalist method. The references to instincts, which form the most coherent interpretative network, were reduced with successive editions, as was the narrator’s commentary in the style of the naturalists; there is no rewriting of the only portrait of Emma in the first page, and none of the naturalists’ purple passages of descriptions of active bodies. The early physical descriptions of Esther become few and far between as the story progresses. However, what is striking is the repeated use of words referring to her breathing. In the first and last chapters, she heaves sighs, suffocates, chokes and stifles.40 There seems to be something the matter with her throat. The significance of this gradually becomes apparent: it occurs when Esther speaks. As Moore makes ample use of the free indirect representation of thoughts or speech to characterize Esther, his technique is closer to Flaubert’s than to that of the Goncourts. It differs from Flaubert’s, however, in so far as the narrator remains neutral and does not appeal to the reader’s judgement through irony. Moore has refused to impose himself upon Esther by any sly characterizing narrative intervention; he lets her speak in direct and free indirect speech, thus allowing Esther to create herself. This is reminiscent of the passage in Confessions of a Young Man where Moore describes his encounter with Emma. As the book provides an account of Moore’s public education, it is fascinating that the second longest dialogue in the book should be the one with Emma. This dialogue, which sounds authentic and contains very few elements of the picturesque, seems to confirm that, as he told her, he liked talking to her.41 Conclusion 39

Ibid., 74. “she sighed”, “the lungs of the jaded town girl drew in a deep breath of health” (ibid., 3), “choking with indignation” (ibid., 19), “suffocated with shame” (ibid., 22, 31), “her heart heaved a sigh of weariness” (ibid., 42), “a mouthful of fresh air” (ibid., 42), “Esther breathed a prayer” (ibid., 182), “She drew an easier breath” (ibid., 232), “She sighed” (ibid., 237), “That was what stuck in her throat” (ibid., 344). 41 “I like talking to you” (Moore, Confessions of a Young Man, 137). 40

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By refusing to impose himself upon Esther as a figure of authority through didactic commentary or in ironic summaries of her thoughts, Moore proves respectful of the servant’s sphere and of the mystery and silence that supposedly surround her life and body. Esther’s body is left unexplored by the scalpel: Moore has chosen conversation rather than dissection. This choice is given an iconic form in the motif of the parrot which Esther Waters sees in the Barfields’ quarters and whose empty cage she finds when she returns. The mute bird must be a tribute to Flaubert’s tale Un Cœur simple. What use could there be for a mute parrot and an empty cage? The reference brings out the difference between Félicité and Esther: while the former was finally locked in a conversation with her parrot, the latter only vaguely sees the bird,42 busy as she is engaging in innumerable verbal encounters with her employers, her fellow servants, with William and Fred. Esther’s character comes into existence from within, through free indirect thought and speech, or direct speech. Towards the end of the book, the presence of her body becomes more discreet, and is reduced to metonymies,43 while the references to her feelings and expressions increase. One might argue that it is the dramatizing of Esther’s life in dialogues that succeeds in substituting sympathy and compassion for the distant amusement engendered in his readers by Flaubert; it also results in giving some substance to Esther’s character, independently of any observer’s comments. In their Preface to Germinie Lacerteux, the Goncourts had written that they had wanted their readers to “touch human suffering with their eyes”,44 a metaphor suggestive of the subservience of Germinie’s body to that of the viewers. No such subservience exists in the case of Esther who sometimes seems so much in control of her own life that she is her own creator, as when Moore has her say “It’s the story of my life and I have not come to the end of it yet”, or “I shouldn’t mind if it wasn’t going to end by going back where it started”,45 which sounds like an appeal to the author-figure himself.

42

Moore, Esther Waters (1931), 87, 383. Hands; knees; arms (ibid., 315, 319, 323). 44 Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Germinie Lacerteux, 56: “ce que les reines d’autrefois faisaient toucher de l’œil à leurs enfants dans les hospices: la souffrance humaine.” [“what yesterday’s queens made their children touch with their eyes in the hospitals: human suffering.”] 45 Moore, Esther Waters (1931), 235, 185. 43

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George Moore has indeed freed Esther from the strict laws of heredity and circumstances that ruled over naturalist novels: like the horse races of the novel, her life is governed by her free will and by chance. A great lover and critic of the naturalist movement, George Moore has addressed the themes of naturalist novels, and partly subverted them. While giving us to understand and feel the various social and physical constraints that weighed upon servants with almost documentary precision, Moore also creates for Esther a mental sphere of her own, quite independently of the others’ representations. Esther’s struggle to remain in control of her own story tells a lot about Moore’s own attempt to reconsider the traditional theme of the servant in naturalist novels. The originality and importance of Esther Waters can thus best be felt in relation to that genre.

SPATIAL METAPHORS AND LIMINAL ELEMENTS IN ESTHER WATERS MICHELE RUSSO

This essay examines Moore’s use of liminal elements that make Esther Waters a narrative concerned with frontiers, in order to underscore their significance at both a social and diegetic level. Indeed, the novel may be seen as re-drawing the cultural and ideological coordinates of the last decades of the nineteenth century. Moore’s evocation of Esther’s movements through space and the vicissitudes of life turns the story into a textual map of spaces and borders, whose crossing entails the protagonist’s social change. Through the symbolic use of borders and frontiers that delimit the space of the narrative, the writer subtly questions rigid Victorian rules and paves the way for an upheaval of human conscience. Border-crossings in Esther Waters From the very first paragraphs, the narrative highlights Esther’s steady process of crossing real and metaphoric boundaries that leads her through an endless journey, until she settles into a more normal, serene life: “She stood on the platform watching the receding train .... A moment more and the last carriage would pass out of sight ....”1 When the protagonist arrives in Woodland to work as a kitchenmaid, the narrative voice clearly emphasizes the symbolic meaning of the railway: At the end of the platform the station-master took her ticket and she passed over the level crossing, trying to gather her wits but unable to do so till she caught sight of some “villas” .... She had been in service in such houses and knew that a general servant was kept in each. But the life in Woodview was a great dream, and she could not imagine herself accomplishing all that would be required of her .... But she 1

George Moore, Esther Waters, ed. David Skilton, Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999, 1.

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Michele Russo hadn’t sufficient money to pay for a ticket to London .... No, she couldn’t go back .... Of course she mustn’t go back. How silly of her to think of such a thing!2

The level crossing Esther has just passed over stands for a threshold that marks the boundaries between her girlhood and adulthood, between virginity and sin, thus representing the heroine’s first step into social life. The railway, therefore, is an enclosing fence within which Esther is located as one of the maids of the estate of Woodview. Woodview is the first place belonging to “fine folk”,3 away from London, where Esther is being sent to work. At the beginning of the novel, Moore’s description of the great estate foregrounds a marked separation between two inter-spaces, upstairs and downstairs, the former representing the protagonist’s personal world, the latter standing for the unfamiliar social world in which people bet and talk about racehorses, and Miss Mary entertains her visitors, “in the drawing-room or on the tennis-lawn”.4 These clearly demarcated spaces reflect the heroine’s split attitude to the world, since, as Sporn observes, Esther has two contradictory moral attitudes, a workingclass one for the world in which she struggles for existence and a puritan one for the world in which she is a petty bourgeoise.5 The narrative underlines Esther’s religious education: her room is the personal place in which she keeps her prayer books, as opposed to the kitchen, a working-class inter-space. After being seduced and abandoned by the footman William Latch, Esther returns home with the responsibility of raising her illegitimate child, and seeks a new job. The liminal element that divides Woodview and London is represented once again by the railway. On leaving, the heroine regrets having been unable to remain at the estate: “she looked out of the railway-carriage window and saw for the last time the stiff plantations on the downs and the angles of the Italian house between the trees.”6 The railway, therefore, draws and re-draws her movements within the borders of a space, whose crossing and re2

Ibid., 2-3. Ibid., 3. 4 Ibid., 35. 5 Paul Sporn, “Marriage and Class Conflict: the Subversive Link in George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin”, Clio: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History, III (1973), 15. 6 Moore, Esther Waters, 93. 3

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crossing marks her passage into a new phase of life. Interestingly, Esther’s return from Woodview allows the spatial symbolism of the fine country estate and the little brick street in London where her relatives live, to be reversed, the former turning out to be a protective place and a shelter, for the protagonist, whereas the latter henceforth exposes her to the harsh laws of rampant capitalism: “She had come to Woodview to escape from a home become unbearable, and was going back to it in circumstances a hundred times worse than those in which she had left it.”7 It seems that, in telling Esther’s story in London after she has been deserted by William Latch, Moore means to represent the case of a woman who “never need go wrong; [because] if she does it is always ’er own fault”.8 This is, ironically enough, the heroine’s mechanical word of advice to her younger sister – she has forgotten for an instant how her own sorrowful experience is compelling her to “rove” in order to find a job. Indeed, from the day when Esther climbed into the tramcar that was to take her from Victoria station back to her mother’s drab kitchen, London has embodied the capitalistic values of business and marketing. As a result, the narrative repeatedly places the heroine in situations where she is forced to conform to the cash nexus. Her life becomes a journey that takes her to different places to work as a wetnurse, compelled to leave her child in strangers’ hands.9 In the course of her never-ending wanderings, which provide a cartographic representation of her progress, Esther moves within the boundaries of London and seems to get caught in the net of her social position, without a chance of changing her situation and, therefore, of attaining society’s forgiveness. The heroine’s entrapment seems to obey social determinism, although wet-nursing stands for a liminal activity that places her on the threshold between two different social classes. Indeed, wet-nursing literally trespasses on the heroine’s body, entailing as it does “a colonization of the working-class woman’s body”.10 Esther’s body represents what Sandra L. Bartky identifies as

7

Ibid., 93. Ibid., 131. 9 See Nancy R. Cirillo, “A Girl Need Never Go Wrong: Or, the Female Servant as Ideological Image in Germinie Lacerteux and Esther Waters”, Comparative Literary Studies, XXVIII/1 (1991), 69. 10 Tess O’Toole, “The Victorian Wet-Nurse and George Moore’s Esther Waters”, Women’s Studies: an Interdisciplinary Journal, XXV/4 (1996), 332. 8

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“the ideal body of femininity; ... a ‘practised and subjected’ body, that is, a body on which an inferior status has been inscribed”.11 The emigration of Esther’s sister, Jenny, to Australia further illustrates the exploitation of the working class which the narrative makes a point of representing uncompromisingly. Hence, it appears that the author suggests a metaphorical link between wet-nursing and populating the colonies – the two legitimate activities reserved for working-class bodies. However, by suckling different babies with her vital lymph, Esther somehow epitomizes regeneration too. As her name aptly suggests, she stands for the river of life, symbolizing the frontier that divides the inner space of Woodview from the outer world of London. According to Lotman’s theory about space representation, Woodview stands for the inner circle, whereas London stands for the outer concentric circle.12 Unlike the upstairs/downstairs world of Woodview, where the baize curtain used to cut Esther off neatly from the “grand folk” living in idleness,13 London represents a chaotic space where the eponymous heroine learns to cope with the strict rules of Victorian society. London becomes a larger representation of life at Woodview. The geographical space of the City may be interpreted as an ideological region that assigns a strict role to people according to their class and gender. The closing lines of Chapter 19, in which Esther first discovers the prison-like world of the workhouse, convey in lyrical terms her awareness of London’s oppressive boundaries: A full moon floated high up in the sky, and the city was no more than a faint shadow on the glassy stillness of the night; and she longed to float away with the moon out of sight of this world .... But she could not sleep, and the moon whirled on her miserable way.14

Esther’s wish to overcome the limits of the City (and, more generally, of the ideological regionalism that is restricting her life) materializes

11

Sandra Lee Bartky, “Foucault, Femininity and Patriarchal Power”, in Feminism and Foucault. Reflections on Resistance, eds Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby, Boston: Northeastern UP, 1988, 71. 12 Jurij M. Lotman and Boris A. Uspenskij, Tipologia della cultura, eds R. Faccani and M. Marzaduri, Milan: Bompiani, 1975, 155-65. 13 Moore, Esther Waters, 80. 14 Ibid., 160-61.

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through her subversive strength, in a seemingly endless struggle for survival.15 The unmarried protagonist giving birth to a baby and then becoming a wet-nurse whose body is colonized both by the medical students at the charity hospital and by her subsequent employers, offers an effective threat to Victorian social barriers. By feeding infants from different households, Esther sets up a link with members of other families that blurs class distinctions.16 The transgressive potential of wet-nursing is emphasized by the heroine’s bounteous body. As Esther conjectures when she is hired by Mrs. Rivers to nurse her “poor little thing”: It is a wee thing, not half the size of my boy .... I daresay she will come round, ma’am. I suppose you weren’t strong to suckle her yourself, and yet you looks ’ealthy.17

The emphasis placed on the description of the characters’ bodies highlights the semantic import of the word “flesh”.18 From the first, Esther is presented as “firmly built with short, strong arms and a plump neck that carried a well-turned head with dignity. Her wellformed nostrils redeemed her somewhat thick, fleshy nose.”19 The 15

See Janet Egleson Dunleavy, George Moore: The Artist’s Vision, the Storyteller’s Art, Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1973, 99. 16 See O’Toole, “The Victorian Wet-Nurse and George Moore’s Esther Waters”, 329. 17 Moore, Esther Waters, 144. 18 To an Italian ear, Esther’s dramatic life and the paradigm of suckling recall the even more inhuman state of feminine characters in Giovanni Verga’s veristic novellas, notably “Nedda”. In this novella, the protagonist, Nedda, undergoes a similar ordeal. She falls in love with Janu, a poor boy who is ill with malaria. Poverty prevents them from getting married. Nedda becomes pregnant and, after her lover’s death, she is marginalized by society and considered a “sinner”. She finds herself completely alone with a child to look after. Unlike the homonymous protagonist of “Nedda”, however, who cannot nurse her baby because her “withered” breasts contain blood (both mother and baby eventually die of starvation), Esther represents a “pulp” of flesh, from which babies “suck” the juice of life. 19 Moore, Esther Waters, 1. Many passages in the novel similarly focus on the characters’ physicality. William Latch is described as follows: “Notwithstanding the swallow chest, he was powerfully built, the long arms could deal a swinging blow. The low forehead and the lusterless eyes told of a slight, unimaginative brain, but regular features and a look of natural honesty made William Latch a man that ten men and eighteen women out of twenty would like” (ibid., 5). Sarah Tucker, a maid who works with Esther at Woodview, is a “tall girl with a thin, freckled face and dark red hair” (ibid., 14) and Fred Parsons, Esther’s second lover, is “a meagre little man about

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stress laid on the body accounts for the repetition of the word “flesh”, notably in “the sinfulness of the world and the flesh”; “A pulp of red flesh”; “her flesh filled with a sense of happiness”; “her flesh was soft and flabby.”20 It amplifies the cannibalistic relationship between Esther and the babies she looks after. By nursing her employers’ babies, the heroine indeed converts her body and, more specifically, her flesh, into money. As Gilbert explains, flesh is the basic condition of her life and she is expected to use it the way she reckons most profitable.21 By suckling and feeding infants, Esther transfers her flesh into them, thus overcoming the ideological boundaries that separate her from upper-class women. Moore’s representation of the New Woman Esther Waters also looks at the protagonist’s religious education in a groundbreaking way. Despite the seemingly insurmountable hardships the storyline relentlessly engineers for the eponymous heroine, the novelist seems anxious to portray her, eventually, as a type of the New Woman. Indeed, in the wake of other Moore heroines such as Alice Barton in A Drama in Muslin (1886), Esther is characterized by a distinct streak of hopefulness. However, unlike Alice, she needs to redeem herself after having committed the unforgivable sin of having an illegitimate child: she must prove her innate “goodness”, as the novel’s provocative subtitle (“A good woman”) clearly indicates.22 Unsurprisingly, her devoutness often clashes with the life she is doomed to lead. At the same time, she crosses the boundaries between the strict rules prescribed by the Plymouth Brethren and the sins she has to commit to confront the difficulties of her working-class life. thirty-five, whose high prominent forehead rose above a small pointed face, a scanty growth of blond beard and moustache failing to hide the receding chin and the redsealing-wax lips”, whose “faded yellow hair was beginning to grow thin on the crown” (ibid., 186). Other relevant portraits would be those of Jim Saunders, Esther’s step-father (ibid., 102); of Miss Rice, Esther’s employer (ibid., 183) and of Jack, her son (ibid., 359). 20 Ibid., 80, 125; 125-26; 138. 21 See Elliot L. Gilbert, “In the Flesh: Esther Waters and the Passion for Yes”, in Novel: A Forum on Fiction, XII/1 (1978), 58. 22 Youngkin explains how Moore’s novel has attracted the attention of such feminist scholars as Gail Cunningham, Penny Boumelha and Rita Kranidis, who all underline the strong impact that the New Woman Type had on male novelists: Molly Youngkin, “George Moore’s Quest for Canonization and Esther Waters as Female Helpmate”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XLVI/2 (2003), 124.

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Religion thus becomes a leveller of social distinctions as much as wetnursing, in that the act of praying gathers believers by virtue of a unique spiritual faith, and allows the heroine and her “brethren” to deconstruct social hierarchies.23 Although she is living in the fin-de-siècle solipsistic world in which homo homini lupus constitutes the motto that guides human society, the protagonist ultimately outgrows her condition as a “fallen woman”. In contrast to Thomas Hardy’s Tess, a “pure woman” who is not given an active role to play, Esther steers away from the deterministic lot that awaits every sinner, by telling the truth and giving voice to her experience. After getting a chance of marrying Fred Parsons, a stationer’s foreman who, in his profound devoutness, has accepted her past, the heroine meets again her former lover: she soon forgives and forgets. In so doing, Esther, an outsider within an alien society, chooses to transgress her religious precepts for her son’s sake, without ever losing her faith and hope. She helps William to run a public house and finds herself among racetrack gamblers. In response to Fred’s complaints about her moral “perdition”, she quietly declares, “No, I’ve not changed”, explaining resignedly that “things has turned out different”: A woman can’t do the good that she would like to in the world; she has to do the good that comes to her to do. I’ve my husband and my boy to look to. Them’s my good. At least, that’s how I see things.24

Esther never feels alienated from her credo. Moore’s subversive portrait of a heroine even authorizes some kind of happy ending – Esther’s illegitimate child survives and becomes a loving son. Esther has not cherished in vain the hope to master fate by opposing its implacable rules, a narrative option making the story blatantly iconoclastic.25 23

See Agnes Shields, “Religion as Trope in the Naturalistic Novels of George Moore: A Mummer’s Wife, A Drama in Muslin, and Esther Waters”, Excavatio: nouvelle revue Emile Zola et le naturalisme international, XVIII/1-2 (2003), 369. 24 Moore, Esther Waters, 302. 25 The novel’s desecralizing of values had practical consequences which Moore thus sums up in one of his letters to T. Fisher Unwin, his publisher: “Esther Waters was refused by Appleton, Harper and Scribner. After the book was published here all three houses asked to be allowed to publish the book special editions authorized editions [sic]. I could name other rejections” (George Moore, “To T. Fisher Unwin”, 23

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Although Moore was still under the influence of the French naturalists in the 1890s, in Esther Waters he is obviously dismissing one of their pet theories, since Esther does not succumb to her destiny: confronted to the difficulties of a working-class woman, she makes groundbreaking choices.26 Living in a fragile ontological state, she nonetheless embodies the fin-de-siecle woman’s capability to turn her back on the doomed heroes of naturalist fiction as well as transcend the Hardyesque enigmatic force of Fate.27 As Dunleavy states: The years of her life flow into the future as the waters of the river flow into the sea. Thus the future becomes the past, yet the river remains, perhaps reflecting a star (Esther) in its surface, symbol of steadfastness and eternity.28

Through Esther’s vicissitudes, Moore makes life prevail in a naturalist novel in which the idea of a hero, and even more of a heroine, as someone free to change the course of events, clashes with a conventionally coercive determinism. Esther refuses the temptations and the troubles that the members of the Barfield family have brought into the lives of other people, thus managing to free herself from dependence on outer supports and overcoming the naturalist boundaries that limit her life. Moore’s complex handling of perspectives The numerous imaginary boundaries that characterize the text are a point of contact between the spatial metaphors represented by the narrator’s and Esther’s perspectives. At different points of the novel, their views seemingly overlap, the narrator’s words clearly echoing November [1901], in George Moore in Transition. Letters to T. Fisher Unwin and Lena Milman, 1894-1910, ed. Helmut E. Gerber, Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1968, 23738). 26 See Shields, “Religion as Trope in the Naturalistic Novels of George Moore”, 371. Regarding Moore’s naturalist influences, Adrian Frazier comments: “Moore was not a member of the party of French naturalists in the late 1870s, but he became their recognised English affiliate during his April 1884 return to Paris” (Adrian Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2000, 105). 27 See David Alvarez, “The Case of the Split Self: George Moore’s Debt to Schopenhauer in Esther Waters”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XXXVIII/2 (1995), 175. See also Francesco Marroni, Miti e mondi vittoriani: La cultura dell’Ottocento, Rome: Carocci, 2004, 232-35. 28 Dunleavy, George Moore: The Artist’s Vision, the Storyteller’s Art, 97.

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the character’s voice. Elsewhere, the heroine’s struggle against conventions is highlighted by the opposition between the narrator’s objective voice and the heroine’s anxiousness to see her subjective reading of life accepted. The boundary between objectivity and subjectivity is crossed by means of the frequent shifts from one perspective to another, which turn into a symmetrical mechanism of alternating voices. The overcoming of such borderlines recalls Bakhtin’s theory, according to which characters’ voices can be revealed primarily by introducing the reader into their inner world.29 Instead of being expressed from the narrator’s point of view, many descriptions and thoughts indeed reflect Esther’s internal world, and create a womancentred story, as is already to be observed in some of Moore’s previous novels.30 When the text reads, for example, “Would she be able to go three whole months without anyone seeing how big she was getting, till her next wages came due? She must risk it”,31 the reader is given privileged access to the heroine’s most intimate emotions and shares all the better her concern about a probable dismissal at Woodview. The working-class woman seems to come to a compromise with the omniscient point of view: she is the protagonist of a constraining narrative space who eventually succeeds in playing an active role in her own life. In contrast, other nineteenth-century heroines such as Tess are not allowed to express their worldview so consistently and to act as protagonists of the events that have been programmed for them, thus living within the boundaries that encircle their lives.32 The concluding events in Esther Waters again take place in Woodview, Esther returning to the Barfield estate after eighteen years. Although the circular structure of the story suggests the end of every regenerating process, the protagonist’s return to some kind of haven signals a further progress in her journey through life. As Esther again passes over the level crossing, an irreversible process is started which 29 Mikhail Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist, Austin: U of Texas P, 1981, 347-50. 30 See Youngkin, “George Moore’s Quest for Canonization and Esther Waters as Female Helpmate”, 124. 31 Moore, Esther Waters, 86. 32 See Siobhan Chapman, “From their Point of View: Voice and Speech in George Moore’s Esther Waters”, Language and Literature; Journal of the Poetics and Linguistic Association, XI/4 (2002), 320.

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enables the heroine to regain gradual control over fate: “when Esther passed over the level crossing she noticed that the line of little villas had not increased; they were as she had left them eighteen years ago, laurels, iron railing, antimacassars. For it was about eighteen years ago, on a beautiful June day, that she passed up this lane for the first time.”33 Interestingly, in his analysis of the concept of boundary as a trope, Bhabha asserts that the act of going beyond a barrier is “unknowable, unrepresentable, without a return to the ‘present’ which, in the process of repetition, becomes disjunct and displaced”.34 Indeed, Esther does not return to the same place with the same role to play: “as all the bedrooms were empty Esther had better sleep in the room next to [Mrs Barfield’s].”35 In the same way as the heroine’s migration to London had signified a different future for her, her return to Woodview heralds many changes. Passing the level crossing represents, therefore, an unforeseeable moment, inaugurating a new phase in the heroine’s life, implying “the blasting of the monadic moment from the homogeneous course of history”.36 The diegesis is often interrupted by the act of crossing the boundaries that limit the narrative spaces and represent moments of explosion, to use Lotman’s term, since they undermine the conventional, “homogeneous” unwinding of the story. At the end of the novel, Esther is an experienced woman; she becomes part of the lush vegetation whose branches and ramifications twine round the ruined buildings. Capitalizing upon the traditionally feminine connotations of nature, the fiction eventually allows Esther to cancel the barrier between the natural realm and the man-made order which stands in the novel for the corrupted world of betting and gambling.37 The final pages reflect the novelist’s heightened interest in natural details and human vestiges that, through their chromatic contrasts, fade into the protagonist’s memory. Reality is depicted from a feminine perspective: [The women] entered a miniature wilderness. The espalier apple-trees had disappeared beneath climbing weeds, and long briars had shot out 33

Moore, Esther Waters, 376-77. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, London and New York: Routledge, 1994, 6. 35 Moore, Esther Waters, 384. 36 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 6. 37 See Gilbert, “In the Flesh: Esther Waters and the Passion for Yes”, 63. 34

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from the bushes, leaving few traces of the former walks – a damp, dismal place, that the birds seemed to have abandoned. Of the greenhouse only some broken glass and a black broken chimney remained. A great elm had carried away a large portion of the southern wall, and under the dripping trees an aged peacock screamed for his lost mate.38

Conclusion In settling for good at Woodview, Esther and her former mistress have taken possession of a space that once belonged to men. The remapping of space at the end of Esther Waters authorizes the “development of new fictional territory, ... never staying within the boundaries of the already mapped”.39 Although the heroine’s return to starting-point marks the end of her journey, Woodview turns into a new, if fragile and temporary, ideological space. Moore makes a point of darkening the picture in the final pages and has Mrs Barfield wistfully comment, on seeing her ruined estate: “Nature does not take long – a few years, a very few years”,40 thus shutting out the possibility of any subsequent developments. However, the one attainable certainty is in the two women’s new lifestyle: since the big house is now virtually empty, Esther is put to sleep in the room next to Mrs Barfield’s – “dressed in long cloaks”, the narrator adds, “the women went for walks together” and “came to live more and more like friends and less like mistress and maid”.41 The remains of what used to be a place of biblical greed and corruption henceforth also symbolize the collapse of the rigid class and gender boundaries, best reflected in the heroine’s egalitarian relationship with Mrs Barfield. Optimists will read here a novel approach to women’s issues on the eve of the twentieth century.

38

Moore, Esther Waters, 391. Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, 106-107. Regarding the novel’s rehearsal of Victorian elements, see Marroni, Miti e mondi vittoriani, 231-35. 40 Moore, Esther Waters, 391. 41 Ibid., 384, 388. 39

“A LETTER CAME INTO HIS MIND”: FICTIONAL CORRESPONDENCE IN THE LAKE FABIENNE DABRIGEON-GARCIER

The Lake1 was originally conceived as a story in The Untilled Field collection, but it had to be excluded from the volume essentially because of its length. Concerned that the story should not lose “in range and power”2 from being published separately, Moore compensated for that eventuality by intensifying “the drama [that] passes within the priest’s soul”.3 Instead of focusing on outward conflict between the individual and society, as most stories in The Untilled Field do, The Lake charts the painful struggle to consciousness of a mind enmeshed in prejudices, codes and dogmas. To trace that mind’s awakening, Moore crossed generic borders by including epistolary writing, a genre much in vogue in the eighteenthcentury European novel, along with interior monologue, a modern technique supposedly invented by Moore’s friend Edouard Dujardin, to whom the novel’s 1905 “épître dédicatoire” is addressed.4 Moore’s major technical achievement in The Lake was to interweave the two 1

George Moore, The Lake, London: William Heinemann, 1905; revised edition, William Heinemann, 1921. All references in the text will be to the 1921 edition (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1980), with an Afterword by Richard Allen Cave. 2 “The concern of this preface is with the mistake that was made when ‘The Lake’ was excluded from the volume entitled ‘The Untilled Field’, reducing it to too slight dimensions, for bulk counts; and ‘The Lake’, too, in being published in a separate volume lost a great deal in range and power” (George Moore, Preface to the New Edition of 1921, The Lake, ix). 3 Ibid., x. 4 In spite of James Joyce’s claim that Dujardin was the precursor of Ulysses’ “interior monologue”, Dujardin himself was aware that he had not invented the technique, but only improved and systematized it in Les Lauriers sont coupés. See Jean Paris, “Du Monologue intérieur et de ses précurseurs”, Europe, DCLVII-LVIII (JanuaryFebruary 1984), 56-57. See also Edouard Dujardin, Le Monologue intérieur. Son apparition. Ses origines. Sa place dans l’oeuvre de James Joyce. Avec un index des écrivains cités, Paris: Albert Messein, 1931.

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genres successfully by having letters written and read by the three main characters, and having the framing third-person narrative reflect both on the process of writing letters (“a letter came into his mind”5) and on the effect of reading them. What this essay proposes to investigate is first the dialogic interplay created by the fictional correspondence between the letter-writers; turning then to the interplay between letter-writing and narrative, it will examine how the two genres co-operate to foreground subjectivity and render the struggle of the central consciousness towards self-expression and selffulfilment. Fictional correspondence: pragmatics and dialogism Fictional correspondence, like its real-world model, is based on a series of speech acts.6 The letters which correspondents write to each other in fiction are fully-fledged speech acts, with one significant difference however: they are simulated, and beyond the fictional world to which they belong, they have no ontological existence or consequence. As speech acts, they have pragmatic properties but as fiction, they are dependent on narrative structuring, notably emplotment. The letters in The Lake are written by three protagonists in two reciprocal exchanges: between Chapter 3 and Chapter 7, Father Oliver Gogarty, the parish priest of Garranard in Mayo, and Father O’Grady, an Irish priest in a London parish, exchange eight letters. All are about Nora Glynn, the former schoolmistress in Gogarty’s parish, who fled to London after the priest alluded to her from the altar as pregnant and unmarried. Fr O’Grady reproves Gogarty for his unnecessary harsh treatment of Nora and for his over-strict conception of pastoral duties.7 Oliver Gogarty then starts writing letters to Nora Glynn, allegedly to beg her forgiveness and to provide her with spiritual advice. The latter exchange, the more important by far in terms of number and length (twenty letters in Chapters 4 to 14), establishes much more complex pragmatic interrelations between the two correspondents. 5

Moore, The Lake, 66. Speech act is here taken in J.L. Austin’s sense of “doing things with words”, and “pragmatics” will refer to the objective facts of an utterance (time, space, circumstances of letter-writing) as well as to the interrelations between writer and reader, in terms of the meanings and effects on the recipient intended by the writer. 7 Moore, The Lake, 31. 6

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Inserting letters was by no means an innovation in Moore’s fiction: there are letters in Confessions of a Young Man, The Untilled Field, Evelyn Innes, A Mummer’s Wife, Spring Days, but they had never previously been used to such an extent. The ventriloquism of the epistolary form – impersonating various characters, matching each with a style of his own, creating a polyphony of voices and an interplay of consciousnesses – suited the versatility of his temperament and his life-long urge to experiment with prose. Besides, Moore was a dedicated and prolific letter-writer himself8 and the diversity of his correspondents may have furnished him with originals, written chiefly by women, which he could draw on. In his correspondence with his lady friends, especially at the time he was writing The Lake, Moore enjoyed being their confidant, their father confessor, according to Helmut Gerber.9 A number of them, namely Lady Cunard and Virginia Crawford, were in various ways involved in The Lake. It was on Lady Cunard that Moore first modelled the character of Rose Leicester in the 1905 edition, “reproducing her conversational manner as an epistolary style”,10 but after unfavourable criticism of Rose’s chattering exuberance by several reviewers, he fashioned another heroine for the 1921 edition. In October 1903, another friend of Moore’s, Virginia Crawford, who had collaborated in the writing of Evelyn Innes and Sister Teresa, was asked to write some of Rose’s letters because he was having trouble finding the right tone. It is almost certain that Moore used Crawford’s letters verbatim in the 1905 edition, but for the reissue of the novel in 1921, he suppressed two of Rose’s letters, the longest and most offending ones, and he shortened or altered her other letters.

8

Selections of the several thousand letters George Moore wrote have been published in the following collections: Letters from George Moore to Edouard Dujardin, ed. John Eglinton, New York: Crosby Gaige, 1929; The Letters of George Moore, with an introduction by John Eglinton, Bournemouth: Sydenham and Co., 1942; George Moore: Letters to Lady Cunard, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis, London: Hart-Davis, 1957; George Moore in Transition: Letters to T. Fisher Unwin and Lena Milman, 18941910, ed. Helmut E. Gerber, Detroit: Wayne State U, 1968; The Letters of George Moore, 1863-1901, ed. Robert Becker, diss., U of Reading, 1980; George Moore on Parnassus: Letters (1900-1933) to Secretaries, Publishers, Printers, Agents, Literati, Friends, and Acquaintances, ed. Helmut E. Gerber, Newark: U of Delaware P; London and Toronto: Associated UPs, 1988. 9 Gerber, George Moore on Parnassus, 24-25. 10 Cave, “Afterword”, in The Lake, 228.

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The new figure that emerged from the revisions is called Nora Glynn: her typically Irish name with its Ibsenite (The Doll’s House), among other, overtones11 replaces the English-sounding name with its obvious rose-symbolism. Nora Glynn’s voice is much softer, more sympathetic, generous. Moreover, unlike Rose, she does not divert the novel’s focus from the priest’s flux of consciousness. On the contrary, in her letters she creates a personality expressly tailored to Gogarty’s needs – an independent, original and joyful self which he tries to emulate as an ideal: “Nora, he said, would answer that self is all we have, and to destroy it and put in its place conventions and prejudices is to put man’s word above God’s.”12 By attuning her voice to the priest’s, she gives him the occasion to write about himself, to test his experience against her own in a foreign world of art, culture, and sensory stimulation which is unknown to him and to which he readily responds. He in turn tells her of Rubens’ The Descent from the Cross in Antwerp, writing: “you will go to see it, and in Munich Mr Poole will treat you to the works of Wagner and Mozart”,13 thereby inviting himself into Nora and Mr Poole’s travels. The resonance of Nora’s letters in Gogarty’s consciousness allows intersubjectivity to filter into the enfolding third-person narrative, the main function of which, from Chapter 3 onwards, is to prolong the communicative interaction initiated by the letters, reverberating their effects on the recipient and relentlessly urging him to write a new letter: “As he sat thinking, a letter came into his mind; the first sentences formulated themselves so suddenly that he was compelled to go to his writing-table.”14 The focus on Gogarty as letter-writer and recipient in The Lake gives such prominence to the enunciative frame that even the diegetic events or nature descriptions, which would logically be the domain of the third-person narrative, find their way into the letters. In Chapter 8, the priest insists on sharing with Nora the beauty of autumn on the lake and he writes a three-page description of it, because the desire to commune with her and to re-connect her with the Ireland she used to 11 All there is in the name is suggested in the following passage: “He became vaguely but intensely conscious of all the beauty and grace and the enchantment of the senses that appeared to him in the name of Nora Glynn” (Moore, The Lake, 135). 12 Ibid., 114. 13 Ibid., 99. 14 Ibid., 66.

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know is the leading impulse of the priest’s writing: “You have been to Derrinrush; you know how mystic and melancholy the wood is, full of hazels and Druid stones.”15 Nora, in turn, sketches out the places she visits for the priest. Her aim is to open up his mind to the non-Irish world and to urge him petulantly to come abroad, leaving the old Irish ways behind: “I wrote to tell you ... to come abroad and see pictures and statues in a beautiful country where people do not drink horrid porter but nice wine, and where Sacraments are left to the old people who have nothing else to interest them.”16 Fictional correspondence, like real-world correspondence, is ubiquitous, operating in the space- and time-gaps between the two letter-writers. Both Oliver Gogarty and Nora Glynn get a feel of the place where the other lives, through the evocations of native landscapes or foreign lands, as the case may be, or through the influence of the geographical and social milieu the other senses in the letters. The priest discerns a process of change in Nora when he contrasts the Irish Nora he used to know in Garranard, “not without a sense of duty, of kindness towards others”, with the English Nora, “bent upon a life of pleasure, intellectual and worldly adventures”.17 In another instance, his rambling mind imaginatively tracks down his farewell letter through the Middle East: “It would lie in the post-office at Jerusalem ... or maybe a dragoman attached to some Turkish caravansary would take charge of it, and it might reach Nora by caravan.”18 Each correspondent is thus vicariously connected with the other’s world. The interplay of the different time-schemes in The Lake is even more intricate. Not only is epistolary fiction (a juxtaposition of fragments separated by blanks on the page) by definition discontinuous, but it builds on this discontinuity: it isolates each letter as a self-contained unit bounded by its formulaic beginning (date, form of address) and its conventional closure (final greeting and signature). Each letter is defined by the time and place of writing: the time of writing is the present of the enunciative act, but it is a present that encompasses both the past experience being recounted and the 15

Ibid., 102. Ibid., 132. 17 Ibid., 99. 18 Ibid., 161. 16

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future of its reading. The addressee, inscribed in the act of writing, is somehow invited to step out of his own time into that original present and participate in the mood or action re-presented with a delay, a deferral actually discontinuing the exchange and allowing différance, in both senses, delaying the message and producing differentiation: First, différance refers to the (active and passive) movement that consists in deferring by means of delay, delegation, deferral, detour, postponement .... Second, the movement of différance, as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all oppositional concepts that mark our language, such as sensory/intelligible, intuition/signification, nature/culture, etc.19

In The Lake, each further step east (from Italy through Egypt and Palestine to Central Asia) that Nora takes, on her journey back to the sources of Christianity with Walter Poole, the biblical scholar who employs her as his secretary, estranges her ever more from the selfenclosed world of her former parish and its dogmatic religion. Thus, around the ubiquitous structure of the epistolary form in The Lake, Moore composes a polyphony of voices speaking to each other, with a deferral across space and time, and giving expression to opposed views of life, self, art and religion. Father Gogarty’s religious dogmatism, stifling the self, denying the life of the senses, is very close to the paradigm of Irish Catholicism Moore featured in most stories of The Untilled Field, but here, it is tempered by the character’s imaginative and susceptible nature. Father O’Grady represents a more charitable version of Catholicism, and though O’Grady himself disappears from the plot at the end of Chapter 7, his tolerance and compassion have worked some change in the younger priest. Nora Glynn’s natural independence of mind, valuing art and the self over the strictures of religion, is still reinforced when she becomes Walter Poole’s secretary. Walter Poole himself represents an interesting paradigm of temperate agnosticism based on fine biblical

19 “Premièrement, différance renvoie au mouvement (actif et passif) qui consiste à différer, par délai, délégation, sursis, renvoi, détour, retard …. Deuxièmement, le mouvement de la différance, en tant qu’il produit les différents, en tant qu’il les différencie, est donc la racine commune de toutes les oppositions de concepts qui scandent notre langage, telles que: sensible/intelligible, intuition/signification, nature/culture, etc” (Jacques Derrida, Positions, Paris: Minuit, 1972, 17).

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scholarship, and his growing influence on Nora can be traced in the double-voiced utterances of her letters: Why don’t you come to Italy? Italy is the place for you. Italy is your proper mind. Mr Poole says that Italy is every man’s proper mind.

Or “Mr Poole says self-deception is the very law of life”. Mr Poole’s words and phrases come across as a second voice incorporated into Nora’s speech, intruding upon her correspondence with Oliver Gogarty: “Perhaps I should have gone on writing to you if Mr Poole had not one day said that no good would come of this long correspondence.”20 Not surprisingly, Gogarty tries to compete with this second voice that he perceives within Nora’s utterances: he somehow launches a battle of the books by sending her a valuable Elizabethan edition of The Imitation of Christ21 in order to counteract the agnostic influence of Poole’s The Source of the Christian River and by planning, at Nora’s suggestion, to write a book of his own about the history of the Lake Carra islands and the hermits who lived there in the thirteenth century. Such subtle dialogic interweavings brought about by the correspondence in the novel allow the paradigms embodied by the characters to move from stark opposition towards the assimilation of their differences in Gogarty’s conversion to a self-fulfilling paganism in the last chapters.22 Dialogism in epistolary fiction also stems from the pragmatic interactions that take place between correspondents. Letters in The Lake deploy an impressive arsenal of performative strategies aimed at eliciting, forestalling or modifying the reader’s anticipated responses: offer/refusal, reproach/apology, inquisitive questions/elusive or pert replies, begging forgiveness or offering thanks, sending new letters to apologise for previous ones, making assumptions about the recipient’s reactions. Perhaps the most significant of these performative strategies, as concerns the denouement and given the clerical context of the novel, 20

Moore, The Lake, 118, 131, 132. The story of the exemplary life of Thomas à Kempis, the fifteenth-century Catholic monk. 22 “This quest was the personal life – that intimate exaltation that comes to him who has striven to be himself, and nothing but himself” (Moore, The Lake, 175). 21

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is confession. In The Lake, it retains some of the religious solemnity of the confessional and some of the meanings attached to it: an honest disclosure of wrongdoings and request for forgiveness, a commitment to truth, a desire for atonement. It is confession that opens the road to self-knowledge and revelation for Gogarty. The shock of Nora’s letter from Rapallo in Chapter 10, which he reads as her confession23 and the key to the whole of their correspondence, forces him to confront the long-dormant revelation of his love for her. Three months later, he sends her his own confession, acknowledging to himself and to her that what motivated his harshness in the first place and all his further actions was his unrecognized love for her. This truth, as he realizes then, was the constant undertow of the correspondence, perceptible to all the other characters and to the reader, but not to himself: “the truth was hidden from me .... I didn’t understand myself until now.”24 It is this confession that puts an end to the tension, within Gogarty’s utterances, between the blatant truth and his unconscious resistance to it. The performativeness of letters is suggested by violent images: the image of a death-blow on first receiving Nora’s letter in December (“She intended these words as a coup de grâce”25), an image of surgery to connote painful healing in his delayed letter of March (“Your letter from Rapallo cured me: like a surgeon’s knife, it took out the ulcer that was eating my life away”26). Performatively still, in order to disclose the last lineaments of truth, Nora responds to his epiphanic confession with her own confession: “It seems to me that to allow you to confess yourself without confessing myself, without revealing the woman’s soul in me as you have revealed the man’s soul in yourself, would be unworthy.”27 This reciprocal confession is what disentangles the knot of misunderstanding between them and ultimately liberates the priest from “the dead wisdom of codes and formulas, dogmas and opinions”.28 Dialogical interplay in the correspondence results in the priest’s final swim across the lake, which takes him across many borders, 23

Ibid., 127. Ibid., 128. 25 Ibid., 120. 26 Ibid., 127. 27 Ibid., 130. 28 Ibid., 129. 24

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from priesthood in the West of Ireland to hack journalism in New York, from parish life to urban solitude, from belief to unbelief, from the sterilizing inhibition of instinct to the “life of the senses” which he has learnt from Nora. Refining the interior monologue Letters, given their paramount importance in and for the plot, proved a remarkable way for Moore to refine Dujardin’s “monologue intérieur”. He could retain precisely what he admired in Les Lauriers sont coupés: “the daily life of the soul ... a kind of symphony in full stops and commas”,29 an observation which is echoed in his own appreciation of The Lake in the Preface: “the weaving of a story out of the soul substance without ever seeking the aid of external circumstances seems to me a little triumph.”30 But the greater triumph came from introducing the dialogism of fictional correspondence into the monologic stream of consciousness which Dujardin used in Les Lauriers. In so doing, Moore was able to break up the monotony which, he feared, threatened the method31 without putting at risk the overall cohesion of the novel. Indeed, the two fictional modes which the novel combines co-operate and complement each other in many effective ways. One obvious way is simple arithmetic: balance is structurally achieved between epistolary and narrative sections since approximately half of the novel is composed of letters and half is written as a third-person subjective narrative whose focus of consciousness is unfailingly Oliver Gogarty. Secondly, the two modes are bound together by theme. Both build their variations on the construction of a self, a constant motif in Moore’s works – autobiographies, essays, fiction, correspondence, imaginary conversations – as Elizabeth Grubgeld has remarkably shown in George Moore and the Autogenous Self.32 In Wagnerian terms, which Moore himself was prompt to use in speaking of literature,33 the prose of The Lake tries to approximate the “melodic 29 Cited in Adrian Frazier, George Moore, 1852-1933, New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2000, 155. 30 George Moore, Preface to the 1921 edition of The Lake, x. 31 “All I am afraid of is monotony” (Frazier, George Moore, 155). 32 Elizabeth Grubgeld, George Moore and the Autogenous Self: The Autobiography and Fiction, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1994. 33 See Moore’s vindication of the “melodic line” in his “Advertisement” to Celibate Lives (London: William Heinemann, 1927, vi). See also in this volume Stoddard

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line” of Wagner’s music dramas. Two sorts of melodic modulations, the equivalent in literature of Wagner’s leitmotiv, create a fluid continuity between the two modes: 1) Variations on words and metaphors To take but one example, the word “pondering”, referring to the joint activities of reading and interpreting, recurs several times in The Lake, both in the letters and in the interior monologue. In one letter, Gogarty applies it to the philosophical meditations inspired by Nora’s letters: This question [the divorce between the world of sense and the world of spirit] is as difficult as the cognate question of what are our duties toward ourselves and our duties toward others. And your letters raise all these questions. I ponder them in my walks by the lake in the afternoon.34

The interior monologue later shows him “pondering” on the signifier rather than on the signified: “Pondering on her words for the hundredth time, they seemed to him stranger than ever.”35 Generally speaking, “pondering” points to a hermeneutic process involved in reading letters, to the difficulty of ascribing meaning to the words and to the intentions behind them. In a letter to Nora, Gogarty accurately describes his bewilderment: “You follow the current of your mood, but the transitions you omit, and the reader is left hopelessly conjecturing ....” The following narrative immediately takes up the suspended sentence and attempts to make sense of the baffling opacity of Nora’s self: She seemed so strange, so inconclusive. There seemed to be at least two, if not three, different women in the letters she had written to him.36

Martin’s “George Moore and Literary Wagnerism: A Revisitation”, as well as Ann Heilmann and Mark Llewellyn’s “The Quest for Female Selfhood in Evelyn Innes (1898) and Sister Teresa (1901): from Wagnerian Künstlerroman to Freudian Family Romance”. 34 Moore, The Lake, 99 (my italics). 35 Ibid., 134. 36 Ibid., 105.

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The failure of the priest’s unceasing hermeneutic effort explains the recurrence of metaphors in the novel. At a loss for interpretive clues, Gogarty resorts to metaphors as a substitute. Their multiplication is simultaneously a symptom of his confusion and an effort to get beyond it. For example, the metaphor of spring, repeatedly used for Nora, is a tool for understanding both her nature and his own attraction to her. The coming of spring in Chapter 11 suggests an association of the woman with the season in the interior monologue: “this woman was moved merely by impulses; and what is more inexplicable than an impulse? What is the spring but an impulse? and this woman was mysterious, evanescent as its breath, with the same irresponsible seduction”; and in his next letter to her, this same metaphor is given a quaint poetic turn, with subliminal sensuous connotations: “As the spring-tide advanced, I discovered a new likeness to you in the daffodil; it is so shapely a flower.”37 As the metaphor of spring stands for Nora and the renaissance she is bringing about in him, the transparent simile of the curlew with its tied legs stands for Gogarty himself. In Chapter 12, he tells her the story of the wounded curlew, how this “bird escaped from captivity”, was shot and then discovered with its legs tied with a piece of string.38 To him, the story is a “bird-augury”,39 and later, it comes back to his mind, prompting him to organize his own escape, as he writes to Nora: I wrote to you about a curlew (I can still see it in the air, its beautifully shapen body and wings, its long beak, and its trailing legs; it staggered a little in its flight when the shot was fired, but it had strength enough to reach Castle Island: it then toppled over, falling dead on the shore); and I ask you if it is wonderful that I should have been impressed? Such a thing was never heard of before – a wild bird with its legs tied together! At first I believed that this bird was sent to warn me from going, but it was this bird that put the idea into my head how I might escape from the parish without giving scandal.40

37

Ibid., 134, 144. Ibid., 142, 141. 39 Ibid., 141. 40 Ibid., 159. 38

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2) Retellings The primal scene – Gogarty’s sermon on unchaste women that drove Nora Glynn away from Garranard – actually preceded the events of the novel by a year, but it is ever-present in the characters’ minds and in their letters. It is thus endlessly echoed in the novel, from the straight account given by Nora to Father O’Grady, who in turn reports it in a letter to Oliver Gogarty,41 to Gogarty’s four successive and diversely modulated retellings of the story. This primal scene is the nodal point to which the priest’s mind returns obsessively: telling the story aright becomes a necessity. Each retelling is accordingly an assessment of his past experience that strives for complete understanding but achieves only a partial expression of the truth. As Richard Cave argues, “his conscious mind interferes with the retelling of the story in the hope that he can shape it in a manner that will afford some excuse for, or condone his own conduct. Each time the narrative resists such manipulation and forces him to begin the tale afresh, Gogarty’s sense of inadequacy and dejection increases.”42 The tonality of the retellings reflects Gogarty’s fluctuating states of mind, just as a Wagnerian leitmotiv introduces modulations into the musical theme: remorse and bitter self-reproach predominate at first, giving way to a stinging sense of guilt and a desire for atonement, until Gogarty’s final, liberating recognition of his love for Nora as the key to the whole story.43 Thirdly, letters and interior monologue collaborate to produce a mise en abyme of the writing process, the monologue’s main function being to prolong, question, reflect or comment upon the correspondence. Letters to be written or to be read claim the full attention of the focal consciousness well beyond any other event or activity, luring the priest away from parish life and his clerical duties. Writing letters to Nora becomes compulsive because it is motivated by an impaired sense of self and the desire to connect vicariously with the lost object. There are innumerable variations on the modal expression of compulsion, external or internal, both in the letters and in the interior monologue: “I have to write to you in order to get some respite from purposeless thinking”; “I write this to you because I have

41

Ibid., 30. Cave, “Afterword”, in The Lake, 188. 43 Moore, The Lake, 20-24, 52, 128. 42

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been suddenly impelled to write ...”; or the impressive concentration of compulsive forms in Chapter 12: I am, as it were, propelled to my writing-table. I must write: my emotion must find expression. Even if I were sure you would not get this letter for months, I should write it. I believe if I knew you would never get it, I should write.44

Oliver Gogarty must write not only to construct Nora as his confidant, but also to give discursive reality to the fantasized images of her that have supplanted the real woman in his imagination. He projects her as a life-giving fountain: Nora Glynn had come into his life like a fountain, shedding living water upon it, awakening it. And, taking pleasure in the simile, he said: “A fountain better than anything else expresses this woman.”45

Or, wandering in the wood at night, his distraught mind sees in the patches of mist visions of Nora tantalizingly eluding his grasp. In a mythic scenario of quest and loss, reminiscent of Orpheus leading Eurydice out of the underworld, he cannot resist the temptation to look back at her: “She had descended again into his arms and this time he would have lifted the veil and looked into her face, but she seemed to forbid him to recognize her under penalty of loss.”46 If writing allows him to reconstruct the missing and unrecognized object of his desire, it is also prompted by an urgent need for selfexpression. “Self is the essence of letter-writing”, Moore once wrote,47 but in The Lake, both the epistolary and the narrative modes cooperate in the writing of the self; both focus less on actions and external circumstances than on the subject’s moods and impressions, with surprisingly slight stylistic differences. The impressionist flow of fleeting emotions in the interior monologue gives way to a greater restraint and a more formal verbalisation in the letters for the sake of communication and propriety, but most often, the boundaries between the two modes are porous: the shifts from letter into monologue are 44

Ibid., 160, 91, 140 (my italics). Ibid., 135. 46 Ibid., 115. 47 George Moore, “To Lena Milman” (end of 1892), in George Moore in Transition, 59. 45

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less an interruption of the mood than an amplified continuance of selfexploration.48 It is by consistently writing, and seeking thereby the terms in which to understand his own story, that the priest liberates himself from the fetters of “impersonal conscience”:49 “My pen is running fast, I hardly know what I am writing, but it seems to me that I am beginning to see much clearer.”50 Significantly, once the long-deferred revelation he was looking for is achieved through these letters, his correspondence with Nora comes to an end and the creation of a new self, with a baptismal-like swim across the lake towards a hoped-for journalist’s future, is performed in the narrative. Writing the self in the letters has made possible the emergence of the writer-to-be. Conclusion The letters in The Lake confirm Moore’s enduring fascination with epistolary art and its specific style, spontaneous, subjective, conversational and yet more formal, more elaborated than oral conversation. Though fictional, the letters retain much of the interactive and self-expressive qualities of their real-life counterpart: through their correspondence, distant characters achieve a higher degree of presence and individualization than if they were only reflected in the focal consciousness. This is particularly true for Nora Glynn. But in turn, the other characters send reflections of this focal consciousness, allowing the ripples sent forth by its moods to multiply and subjectivity to develop into intersubjectivity. Endless reflections from letter to letter, from correspondence to narrative, thus contribute to blurring both self- and genre-boundaries. Moore’s Lake, like Lake Carra in the novel,51 is a reflective, polymorphous space where genres, literary currents and techniques 48 Interrupting a letter to Nora: “You follow the current of your mood, but the transitions you omit, and the reader is left hopelessly conjecturing ...”, Gogarty drifts into a reverie about his correspondent’s elusive character: “She seemed so strange, so inconclusive. There seemed to be at least two, if not three, different women in the letters she had written to him” (Moore, The Lake, 105). 49 “By the impersonal conscience he meant the opinions of others, traditional beliefs, and the rest” (ibid., 173). 50 Ibid., 144. 51 About the interpretation of the lake as a subliminal space, featuring Gogarty’s psychic geography, see Elizabeth Grubgeld’s “George Moore’s The Lake and the Geography of Consciousness”, English Studies, LXVII/4 (August 1986), 331-44.

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come innovatively and yet fluidly together: epistolary fiction, literary Impressionism, literary Wagnerism, and not the least, the modernist emphasis on reflexivity resulting in a mise en abyme of the writing process.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY A. WORKS BY GEORGE MOORE (IN ORDER OF PUBLICATION)

Collected editions The Collected Works of George Moore, Carra Edition, 21 vols, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924. The Works of George Moore, Ebury Edition, 16 vols, London: William Heinemann, 1937. Novels A Modern Lover, London: Tinsley, 1883. A Mummer’s Wife, London: Vizetelly, 1885. A Drama in Muslin, London: Vizetelly, 1886. A Mere Accident, London: Vizetelly, 1887. Spring Days, London: Vizetelly, 1888. Mike Fletcher, London: Ward and Downey, 1889. Vain Fortune, London, Henry, 1891. Esther Waters, London: Walter Scott, 1894. Evelyn Innes, London: Fisher Unwin, 1898. Sister Teresa, London: Fisher Unwin, 1901. The Lake, London: William Heinemann, 1905. Muslin, London: William Heinemann, 1915. The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story, Edinburgh: Riverside, 1916. Lewis Seymour and Some Women, New York: Brentano’s, 1917. Héloïse and Abélard, London: Cumann Sean-eolais na h-Eireann, 1921. The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, done into English by George Moore, London: William Heinemann, 1924. Daphnis and Chloe, Perronik [sic] the Fool, New York: Boni and Liveright, 1924. Ulick and Soracha, London: Nonesuch Press, 1926. Aphrodite in Aulis, London: William Heinemann, 1930.

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Short story collections Celibates, London: Walter Scott, 1895. The Untilled Field, London: Fisher Unwin, 1903. A Story-Teller’s Holiday, London: Cumann Sean-eolais na h-Eireann, 1918. In Single Strictness, London: William Heinemann, 1922. Celibate Lives, London: William Heinemann, 1927. In Minor Keys: The Uncollected Short Stories of George Moore, eds David B. Eakin and Helmut E. Gerber, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1985. The Collected Short Stories of George Moore, eds Ann Heilman and Mark Llewellyn, 5 vols, London: Pickering and Chatto, 2007. Poems Flowers of Passion, London: Provost, 1878. Pagan Poems, London: Newman, 1881. Essays Literature at Nurse, or Circulating Morals, London: Vizetelly, 1885. Parnell and His Island, London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, 1887. Impressions and Opinions, London: David Nutt, 1891. Modern Painting, London: Walter Scott, 1893. Reminiscences of the Impressionist Painters, Dublin: Maunsel, 1906. Avowals, London: Cumann Sean-eolais na h-Eireann, 1919. Autobiographical writings Confessions of a Young Man, London: Swan Sonnenschein, Lowrey, 1888. Memoirs of My Dead Life, London: William Heinemann, 1906. “Hail and Farewell!” A Trilogy, London: William Heinemann, I, Ave, 1911; II, Salve, 1912; III. Vale, 1914. Conversations in Ebury Street, London: William Heinemann, 1924. Letters Letters from George Moore to Ed. Dujardin, 1886-1922, ed. John Eglinton, New York: Crosby Gaige, 1929. Letters of George Moore, ed. John Eglinton, Bournemouth: Sydenham, 1942.

Bibliography

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Letters to Lady Cunard 1895-1933, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis, London: Hart-Davis, 1957. George Moore in Transition: Letters to T. Fisher Unwin and Lena Milman, 1894-1910, ed. Helmut E. Gerber, Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1968. The Letters of George Moore, 1863-1901, ed. Robert Becker, Diss., U of Reading, 1980. George Moore’s Correspondence with the Mysterious Countess, eds David B. Eakin and Robert Langenfeld, ELS Monograph Ser. 33: U of Victoria P, 1984. George Moore on Parnassus: Letters (1900-1933) to Secretaries, Publishers, Printers, Agents, Literati, Friends and Acquaintances, ed. Helmut E. Gerber, with the assistance of O.M. Brack, Newark: U of Delaware P, 1988. Plays Martin Luther: A Tragedy in Five Acts (in collaboration with Bernard Lopez), London: Remington, 1879. The Strike at Arlingford: Play in Three Acts, London: Walter Scott, 1893. The Bending of the Bough: A Comedy in Five Acts, London: Fisher Unwin, 1900. The Apostle: A Drama in Three Acts, Dublin: Maunsel, 1911. Esther Waters: A Play, London: William Heinemann, 1913. Elizabeth Cooper: A Comedy in Three Acts, Dublin, London: Maunsel, 1913. The Coming of Gabrielle: A Comedy, London: Cumann Sean-eolais na h-Eireann, 1920. The Making of an Immortal: A Play in One Act, New York: Bowling Green, London: Faber and Gwyer, 1927. The Passing of the Essenes: A Drama in Three Acts, London: William Heinemann, 1930. Diarmuid and Grania: A Play in Three Acts (in collaboration with W.B. Yeats), 1951; privately rpt. from The Dublin Magazine (April-June 1951).

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Bibliography Gilcher, Edwin, A Bibliography of George Moore, DeKalb: Northern Illinois P, 1970. Gilcher, Edwin, assisted by the shared expertise of Robert S. Becker and Clinton K. Krauss, Supplement to A Bibliography of George Moore, Westport, CT: Meckler, 1988. Langenfeld, Robert, George Moore: An Annotated Secondary Bibliography of Writings about Him, New York: AMS P, 1987. Biography Cunard, Nancy, GM: Memories of George Moore, London: HartDavis, 1956. Frazier, Adrian, George Moore, 1852-1933, New Haven, CT and London: Yale UP, 2000. Gray, Tony, A Peculiar Man: A Life of George Moore, London : Sinclair-Stevenson, 1996. Hone, Joseph, The Life of George Moore, London: Victor Gollancz, 1936. Mitchell, Susan L., George Moore, New York: Dodd, Mead and Co, 1916. Criticism Books Bridgewater, Patrick, George Moore and German Pessimism, Durham: U of Durham P, 1988. Brown, Malcolm J., George Moore: A Reconsideration, Seattle: U of Washington P, 1955. Cave, Richard Allen, A Study of the Novels of George Moore, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1978. Collet, Georges-Paul, George Moore et la France, Genève: Droz, 1957. Dunleavy, Janet Egleson, ed., George Moore in Perspective, Irish Literary Studies 16, London: Colin Smythe, 1984. Freeman, John, A Portrait of George Moore in a Study of His Work, London: T. W. Laurie, 1922.

Bibliography

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Goodwin, Geraint, Conversations with George Moore, London: E. Benn, 1929. Grubgeld, Elizabeth, George Moore and the Autogenous Self: The Autobiography and Fiction, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse UP, 1994. Hughes, Douglas A., ed., The Man of Wax: Critical Essays on George Moore, New York: New York UP, 1971. Jaime de Pablos, Maria Elena, Mujeres y religión en la narrativa de George Moore, Colección Estudios 10, Almería: Universidad de Almería, Servicio de Publicaciones, 2000. Jeffares, Norman A., George Moore, London: Longmans and Green, 1965. Mays, J.C.C., ed., Diarmuid and Grania: Manuscript Materials by W.B. Yeats and George Moore, Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2005. Morgan, Charles, Epitaph on George Moore, New York: Macmillan, 1953. Noël, Jean-Claude, George Moore: l’homme et l’oeuvre 1852-1933, Paris: Didier, 1966. Pierse, Mary, ed., George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars P, 2006. Seinfeld, Frederick W., George Moore: Ireland’s Unconventional Realist and Two Companion Essays, Wagnerian Elements in the Writing of George Moore, Thomas Mann and Some American and British Writers, Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1975. Welch, Robert, The Way Back: George Moore’s The Untilled Field and The Lake, Dublin: Wolfhound P, 1982.

Articles and chapters in books Blanche, Jacques-Emile, “George Moore”, in Mes Modèles, Paris: Stock, 1928, 207-46. Cronin, John, “George Moore and The Untilled Field”, in The Irish Short Story, eds Patrick Rafroidi and Terence Brown, Lille: Université de Lille, 1976, 113-25. Curtis, Simon, “Hardy, George Moore and the ‘Doll’ of English Fiction”, in Celebrating Thomas Hardy: Insights and Appreciations, ed. Charles P.C. Pettit, New York: Macmillan, 1996, 103-14.

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Devine, Paul, “Leitmotif and Epiphany: George Moore’s Evelyn Innes and The Lake”, in Moments of Moment: Aspects of the Literary Epiphany, ed. Wim Tigges, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999, 155-75. Dorré, Gina M., “Reading and Riding: Late-Century Aesthetics and the Cultural Economy of the Turf in George Moore’s Esther Waters”, in Victorian Fiction and the Cult of the Horse, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006, 121-56. Elam, Harry, “Feminist Aesthetics and the Male Director: The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs by Simone Benmussa”, in Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics, eds Karen Laughlin and Catherine Schuler, Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1995, 286-98. Frederico, Annette, “Irony and Self-Fashioning in George Moore’s Confessions of a Young Man”, in Marketing the Author: Authorial Personae, Narrative Selves and Self-Fashioning 1880-1930, ed. Marysa Demoor, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, 96-113. Freitag, Barbara, “From George Moore to Brian Moore: Irish Writers Making a Fetish of Exile”, in Exiles and Migrants: Crossing Thresholds in European Culture and Society, ed. Anthony Coulson, Brighton: Sussex Academic, 1997, 72-82. ––, “O, To Be Out of Ireland! Joyce Clandestinely Follows in Moore’s Footsteps”, in The Classical World and the Mediterranean, eds Giuseppe Serpillo and Badin Donatella, Cagliari: Tema, 1996, 34450. Goetsch, Paul, “The Country House in George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin”, in Ancestral Voices: The Big House in Anglo-Irish Literature, ed. Otto Rauchbauer, Hildesheim: Olms, 1992, 79-92. Hassaine, Féthi, “The Influence of Bergson and Dujardin on Moore’s The Lake and Joyce’s “The Dead”, in Literary Interrelations: Ireland, England and the World, eds Wolfgang Zach and Heinz Kosok, Tübingen: Narr, 1987, 273-81. Jones, Paul, “Gustave Flaubert and George Moore in James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’”, in James Joyce and the Nineteenth-Century French Novel, eds Finn Fordham and Rita Sakr, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011, 146-59. Kiberd, Declan, “Feudalism Falling: A Drama in Muslin”, in Irish Classics, London: Granta, 2000, 287-301. Law, Jules, “Tempted by the Milk of Another: The Fantasy of Limited Circulation in Esther Waters”, in “Soldiers and Mothers: Nursing the Empire in George Moore’s Esther Waters and Bram Stoker’s

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Dracula”, Part III of The Social Life of Fluids: Blood, Milk, and Water in the Victorian Novel, Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2010, 12745. Mitchell, Judith, “Naturalism in George Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife (1885)”, in The New Nineteenth Century: Feminist Readings of Underread Victorian Fiction, eds Barbara Harman and Susan Meyer, New York: Garland, 1996, 159-79. O’Donovan, Gerald, “Hail and Farewell: George Moore and Revival Ireland”, in Fictions of the Irish Literary Revival: A Changeling Art, ed. John Wilson Foster, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987, 117-41. Swafford, Kevin, “Reification and Respectability in Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and George Moore’s Esther Waters”, in Class in Late-Victorian Britain: the Narrative Concern with Social Hierarchy and its Representation, Youngstown, NY: Cambria P, 2007, 117-46. Weaver, Jack, “George Moore”, in British Short-Fiction Writers 1880-1914: The Realist Tradition, ed. William B. Thesing, Detroit, MI: Gale, 1994, 234-46.

Articles in journals and magazines Alvarez, David, “The Case of the Split Self: George Moore’s Debt to Schopenhauer in Esther Waters”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XXXVIII/2 (1995), 169-85. Ammen, Sharon, “Transforming George Moore: Simone Benmussa’s Adaptive Art in The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs”, Text and Performance Quarterly, XI/4 (October 1991), 306-12. Bassett, Troy J., “Circulating Morals: George Moore’s Attack on Late-Victorian Literary Censorship”, Pacific Coast Philology, XL/2 (2005), 73-89. Bensyl, Stacia L., “Cecilia: Irish Catholicism in George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin, 1886”, Eire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies, XXIX/2 (Summer 1994), 65-76. Birlik, Nurten, “Two Different Cases of the ‘Self’ Myth Which is Not ‘Self’-Reliant: George Moore’s The Untilled Field and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land”, Studia Neophilologica: A Journal of Germanic and Romance Languages and Literature, LXXXIII/2 (2011), 21119.

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Blissett, William F., “George Moore and Literary Wagnerism”, Comparative Literature, XIII/1 (Winter 1961), 52-71. Brown, Calvin S., “Balzac as a Source of George Moore’s Sister Teresa”, Comparative Literature, XI/2 (Spring 1959), 124-30. Cary, Meredith, “George Moore’s Roman expérimental”, EireIreland: A Journal of Irish Studies, IX/4 (1974), 142-50. Chaikin, Milton, “The Composition of George Moore’s A Modern Lover”, Comparative Literature, VII/3 (Summer 1955), 259-64. ––, “A French Source for George Moore’s A Mere Accident”, Modern Language Notes, LXXI/1 (January 1956), 28-30. Chapman, Siobhan, “‘From their point of view’: Voice and Speech in George Moore’s Esther Waters”, Language and Literature: Journal of the Poetics and Linguistics Association, XI/4 (2002), 307-23. Christensen, Lis, “George Moore’s Portrait of AE in Hail and Farewell”, Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies, IV (1974), 248-67. Christensen, Peter G., “The Aestheticized Image of Aphrodite in George Moore’s Aphrodite in Aulis”, Classical and Modern Literature: A Quarterly, XIV/2 (Winter 1994), 127-40. Cirillo, Nancy R., “‘A Girl Need Never Go Wrong’: Or, The Female Servant as Ideological Image in Germinie Lacerteux and Esther Waters”, Comparative Literature Studies, XXVIII/1 (1991), 68-88. Cordasco, Francesco, “George Moore and Edouard Dujardin”, Modern Language Notes, LXII/4 (April 1947), 244-51. Deane, Paul, “Conversion to Doubt: George Moore’s The Lake”, Notes on Modern Irish Literature, IV (1992), 35-41. Elam, Harry J. Jr; “Visual Representation in The Singular Life of Albert Nobbs”, Text and Perfomance Quarterly, XI/4 (October 1991), 313-18. Fleming, Brendan, “Re-Gendering the Nation: Representations of Ireland and the Figure of the New Woman in George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin and George Meredith’s Diana of the Crossways”, BELLS: Barcelona English Language and Literature Studies, XI (2000), 41-49. Frazier, Adrian, “Moore’s Hail and Yeats’s Farewell”, New Hibernia Review/ Iris Eireannach Nua: A Quarterly Record of Irish Studies, VI/4 (Winter 2002), 108-19.

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––, “On His Honor: George Moore and Some Women”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XXXV/4 (1992), 423-45. ––, “Paris, Dublin: Looking at George Moore Looking at Manet”, New Hibernia Review/ Iris Eireannach Nua: A Quarterly Record of Irish Studies, I/1 (Spring 1997), 19-30. ––, “Rapprochement with a Very Old Man: Joyce’s London Meetings with George Moore”, Joyce Studies Annual III (Summer 1992), 228-36. Frederico, Annette, “Subjectivity and Story in George Moore’s Esther Waters”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XXXVI/2 (1993), 141-57. Gandolfo, Anita, “A Portrait of the Artist as Critic: Joyce, Moore and the Background of ‘The Dead’”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XXII/4 (1979), 239-50. Gaspari, Fabienne, “Dans les coulisses de la société dublinoise: A Drama in Muslin de George Moore”, Etudes Irlandaises, XXXIII/1 (Spring 2008), 57-68. ––, “Mysterical Characters in George Moore’s Work: Body, Religion, and Disease”, Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, LII (October 2000), 161-76. ––, “‘La Peur du désir’: A Mummer’s Wife et Esther Waters de George Moore”, Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens, LXVII (April 2008), 253-67. Gilcher, Edwin, “Remembering George Moore”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XXXIV/4 (1991), 419-23. Grubgeld, Elizabeth, “George Moore’s The Lake and the Geography of Consciousness”, English Studies, IV (1986), 331-44. ––, “George Moore’s Parnell and His Island: Autobiography and the Discourse of Repudiation”, Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly, XIV/4 (Fall 1991), 336-48. Heilmann, Ann, “Deferred Desire and Textual Consummation in George Moore’s Memoirs of My Dead Life: Beyond the Pleasure Principle”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, LIV/3 (2011), 337-61. ––, “Emma Bovary’s Sisters: Infectious Desire and Female Reading Appetites in Mary Braddon and George Moore”, Victorian Review: The Journal of the Victorian Studies Association of Western Canada and the Victorian Studies Association of Ontario, XXIX/1 (2003), 31-48.

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––, “‘Neither Man nor Woman’? Female Transvestism, Object Relations and Mourning in George Moore’s ‘Albert Nobbs’”, Women: A Cultural Review, XIV/3 (Winter 2003), 248-62. ––, “What Kitty Knew: George Moore’s ‘John Norton’, Multiple Personality and the Psychopathology of Late-Victorian Sex Crime”, Nineteenth-Century Literature, LIX/3 (December 2004), 372-403. Hughes, George, “Writer and Artist in George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin”, BELLS: Barcelona English Language and Literature Studies, XI (2000), 133-40. Jernigan, E. Jay, “The Bibliographical and Textual Complexities of George Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife”, Bulletin of the New York Public Library, LXXIV (1970), 396-410. ––, “The Forgotten Serial Version of George Moore’s Esther Waters”, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, XXIII/1 (1968), 99-103. Llewellyn, Mark, “George Moore and Literary Censorship: The Textual and Sexual History of ‘John Norton’ and ‘Hugh Monfert’”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, L/4 (2007), 371-92. ––, “Masculinity and the Introjected Self in George Moore’s Mike Fletcher: ‘I’m Weary of Playing at Faust’”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XLVIII/2 (2005), 131-46. ––, “‘Pagan Moore: Poetry, Painting and Passive Masculinity in George Moore’s Flowers of Passion (1877) and Pagan Poems (1881)”, Victorian Poetry, LIV/1 (Spring 2007), 77-92. Mitchell, Judith, “Fictional Worlds in George Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife”, English Studies: A Journal of English Literature and Language, LXVII/4 (August 1986), 345-54. ––, “Huysmans and George Moore’s A Drama in Muslin”, Dalhousie Review, LXV/1 (Spring 1985), 89-98. ––, “A New Perspective: Naturalism in George Moore’s A Mummer’s Wife”, Victorian Newsletter, LXXI (Spring 1987), 20-27. Murray, Alex, “Forgetting London: Paris, Cultural Cartography, and Late-Victorian Decadence”, The International Journal of Travel and Travel Writing, XI/2 (2010), 30-50. Newton, Joy, “Whistler, Octave Mirbeau, and George Moore”, Romance Quarterly, XXXVII/2 (May 1990), 157-63. Noël, Jean-Claude, “George Moore at Nina de Villard’s Fête: A Reconsideration of Memoirs of My Dead Life”, Cahiers du Centre d’Etudes Irlandaises, IX (1984), 31-44.

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Orel, Harold, “A Reassessment of George Moore’s Achievement in The Brook Kerith”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XXXIV/4 (1991), 419-23. O’Toole, Tess, “The Servant’s Body: The Victorian Wet-Nurse and George Moore’s Esther Waters”, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, XXV/4 (June 1996), 329-49. Parkes, Adam, “Moore, Snow and ‘The Dead’”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XLII/3 (1999), 265-82. Pierse, Mary, “Paris as ‘Other’: George Moore, Kate Chopin and French Literary Escape Route”, ABEI Journal: The Brazilian Journal of Irish Studies, VIII (June 2006), 79-87. Roberts, Jane, “George Moore: A Wild Goose’s Portrait of His Country”, Irish University Review: A Journal of Irish Studies, XXII/2 (Fall 1992), 305-18. Robins, Anna Gruetzner, “George Moore’s A Modern Lover: Introducing the French Impressionists to London”, French Studies: A Quarterly Review, LXI/1 (January 2007), 47-56. Russell, Richard Rankin, “Escaping the Examined Life in George Moore’s ‘Home Sickness’”, Journal of the Short Story in English, XLVIII (Spring 2007), 25-42. Scott, Bonnie K., “Joyce’s Schooling in the Field of George Moore”, Eire-Ireland: A Journal of Irish Studies, IX/4 (1974), 117-41. Seibert, Margaret, “George Moore and Paul Alexis: un cas de plagiat”, Les Cahiers Naturalistes, LXII (1988), 127-38. Shields, Agnes, “Religion as Trope in the Naturalistic Novels of George Moore: A Mummer’s Wife, A Drama in Muslin and Esther Waters”, Excavatio: Emile Zola and Naturalism, XVIII/1-2 (2003), 363-71. Tillinghast, Richard, “The Asymmetrical George Moore”, New Criterion, XX/5 (January 2002), 30-36. Ware, Thomas C., “The Function of Memory in George Moore’s The Brook Kerith”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XXX/1 (1987), 27-37. Woulfe, Honor E., “George Moore and the Amenities”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XXXV/4 (1992), 447-61. Youngkin, Molly, “George Moore’s Quest for Canonization and Esther Waters as Female Helpmate”, English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920, XLVI/2 (2003), 116-39.

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Michel Brunet is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of Valenciennes and Hainaut-Cambrésis, France. A graduate of the Universities of Paris and Lille, he wrote his doctoral thesis on William Trevor’s short stories (2004). His main areas of research lie in Irish literature, with a particular focus on Anglo-Irish writing. He also has a strong interest in Irish minorities and issues related to identity. His forthcoming publications include essays on George Moore and on contemporary Irish fiction. Eamonn R. Cantwell graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering from University College Cork in 1960. He worked in engineering and management positions for thirty-six years with the Irish Electricity Board (ESB). Having taken early retirement in 1997, he completed an M.Phil in Anglo-Irish literature at Trinity College, Dublin, followed by a Ph.D on W.B. Yeats. He has presented papers on Yeats and George Moore at IASIL conferences and most recently was co-author of two sections of a book on “The Reception of W.B. Yeats in Europe” edited by Peter Jochum. Fabienne Dabrigeon-Garcier (co-editor) is Docteur-ès-Lettres and Emeritus Professor of English and Irish Literature at the University Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3, France. Her doctoral thesis traces the history of the Irish short story (1880-1960). She has published many essays on Irish short story writers (Oscar Wilde, George Moore, James Joyce, Elizabeth Bowen, Frank O’Connor, Samuel Beckett) in books and journals. She co-edited The Book in Ireland (Cambridge Scholars P, 2006). She is a member of the international Advisory Board of Etudes Irlandaises. Konstantin Doulamis studied Classics in Cyprus, and at Oxford and Exeter Universities and has taught at Exeter and Sheffield Universities. Since 2004 he has been lecturer in Classical languages,

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literature and culture at University College Cork, Ireland. His research work focuses on ancient narrative fiction, especially the Greek novels, on which he has published several articles, including “Lost in Translation? George Moore’s The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe and rewriting Longus”, in George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds, ed. Mary Pierse (Cambridge Scholars P, 2006). He is currently editing a collection of articles on the ancient Greek and Roman novels, which will be published in the Ancient Narrative Supplement series. Isabelle Enaud-Lechien is a Senior Lecturer at the University Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3, France, where she teaches Art History. Her doctoral thesis was on James McNeill Whistler. She has since published a number of articles and books on this painter, notably Whistler et la France and Whistler: Le Peintre et le Polémiste. She is also the author of books on J.M.W. Turner, Edward Burne-Jones and Degas. She is currently co-editing Postérité de John Ruskin: l’héritage ruskinien dans les textes littéraires et les écrits esthétiques, the proceedings of the Ruskin Conference which was held in Lille in June 2009. Her current research concerns the links between Victorian painting and the nineteenth-century French “avant-garde”. Adrian Frazier is the author of George Moore 1852-1933 (Yale UP, 2000). He is the Director of the MA in Writing and the MA in Drama and Theatre Studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He has contributed many reviews and essays to scholarly journals (New Hibernia Review, The Dublin Review, The Irish Review), to the Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Irish Drama (2003), to the Cambridge Companion to Irish Fiction (forthcoming), to the Cambridge History of Irish Literature (2006), and to the Oxford Encyclopedia of Literature. His publications include Behind the Scenes: Yeats, Horniman, and the Struggle for the Abbey Theatre (1990), and, as editor, Playboys of the Western World: Production Histories (2004). He has just been enrolled as a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Fabienne Gaspari is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Pau, where she teaches British literature. Her doctoral thesis was on the body in George Moore’s novels. Amongst her publications are articles

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269

on Conrad, Ruskin, Wilkie Collins and George Gissing, and on The Untilled Field, Confessions of a Young Man, Hail and Farewell, The Lake, A Drama in Muslin, A Mummer’s Wife and Esther Waters. She has contributed to an annotated translation of selected writings from Modern Painters by Ruskin on Turner. While still addressing the issue of the representation of the body in Victorian art and literature, she is currently studying the text/image relationship in Moore’s fiction and art criticism and more generally in nineteenth-century literature. Elizabeth Grubgeld is Professor of English at Oklahoma State University. Her publications include George Moore and the Autogenous Self: The Autobiography and Fiction (1994), Anglo-Irish Autobiography: Class, Gender, and the Forms of Narrative (2004) and essays on Irish writing in books (Representing Ireland: Class, Gender, Nationality, 1997; The Well Dreams: Essays on John Montague, 2004; The Cambridge Companion to the Irish Novel, 2006; George Moore: Dublin, Paris, Hollywood, 2012, George Moore and His Contemporaries, forthcoming 2013) and scholarly journals (Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, The New Hibernia Review, EireIreland, Etudes Irlandaises. Marie-Claire Hamard is an Honorary Professor of English at the University of Franche-Comté, Besançon in France. She is a specialist on caricature in England, notably by Max Beerbohm, and is the author of a thesis on this artist, Le Miroir et les masques, la vie et l’œuvre de Sir Max Beerbohm (1872-1956). She has published extensively on Victorian and Edwardian literature and art. She is Honorary President of SFEVE (Société Française d’Etudes Victoriennes et Edouardiennes) and a member of a team of French translators of Rudyard Kipling’s prose works for the Pléiade (Gallimard Publications), under the leadership of Professor Pierre Coustillas of the University Charles-deGaulle Lille 3. Ann Heilmann is Professor of English Literature at Cardiff University, UK, having previously held chairs at Swansea and Hull. The author of New Woman Fiction: Women Writing First-Wave Feminism (Palgrave, 2000), New Woman Strategies: Sarah Grand, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird (Manchester University Press, 2004) and Neo-Victorianism (with Mark Llewellyn, Palgrave, 2010), she has co-

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edited a critical edition of The Collected Short Stories of George Moore (with Llewellyn, Pickering and Chatto, 2007), three essay collections on Victorian to contemporary women’s writing, and four anthologies on Victorian/Edwardian (anti-)feminism. She is the general editor of Routledge’s History of Feminism and Pickering and Chatto’s Gender and Genre series and is now working (with Llewellyn) on a monograph and essay collection on Moore. Christine Huguet (co-editor) is a Senior Lecturer at the University Charles-de-Gaulle Lille 3, France. Her doctoral thesis was on Moore’s Esther Waters. Amongst her publications are articles on Victorian and Edwardian fiction, on the picaresque heritage and the Don Quixote tradition in British literature. She has translated Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and edited the two volumes entitled Spellbound, George Gissing. She is also editor of two collections of essays, Writing Otherness: The Pathways of George Gissing’s Imagination and Charles Dickens, The Inimitable, and is currently co-editing (with Dr Simon J. James) Gissing and the Woman Question: Convention and Dissent, and (with Professor Nathalie Vanfasse) Dickens, Modernism, Modernity. Alain Labau graduated in Contrastive Linguistics and English Literature. His doctoral thesis was a critical study of deforming tendencies in English-French literary translation. A Senior Lecturer at the University of Caen-Basse-Normandie, France, he teaches translation and Translation Studies and coordinates a professional Master’s Degree in Project Management specialized in European and transnational projects. He is also a literary translator and has worked on numerous occasions for the French dubbing industry as well as the French stage. A member of the Research Group in Irish studies of the University of Caen, he is currently engaged in a long-term translation project aiming at a re-evaluation of the status of George Moore as a writer and a critic by making his fiction and non-fiction accessible to the French public. Mark Llewellyn is John Anderson Research Leadership Chair in English at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. His research interests are focused on the nineteenth century and contemporary literature and culture. His publications include the edition The

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Collected Short Stories of George Moore: Gender and Genre (with Ann Heilmann; Pickering and Chatto, 2007), and the collections Metafiction and Metahistory in Contemporary Women’s Writing (with Ann Heilmann; Palgrave, 2007) and Conflict and Difference in Nineteenth-Century Literature (with Dinah Birch; Palgrave, 2010). Mark’s most recent book is the co-authored (with Ann Heilmann) Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century (Palgrave, 2010). He is currently working on a book entitled Incest in English Culture, 1835-1908. Stoddard Martin’s books include Wagner to the Waste Land (1982), Art, Messianism and Crime (1986), Orthodox Heresy (1989) and The Great Expatriate Writers (1992), all published by Macmillan. He has edited small anthologies of Byron, Nietzsche and D.H. Lawrence and has written for a variety of journals, notably The Times Literary Supplement, The Jewish Chronicle and Quarterly Review, of which he is on the editorial board. He has taught at universities in the United States and in Europe, including Harvard, Oxford and Warsaw. He runs his own press, Starhaven, which received the Western Heritage Award for publishing the outstanding poetry book of 2008. As Chip Martin, he is the author of a sequence of interlinked novellas. He has served on the management committee of English PEN and is an associate fellow at the Institute of English Studies, University of London. Mary Pierse has, since 1999, taught at the English Department, University College Cork where she was IRCHSS Post-Doctoral Research Fellow (2004-2006) and Research Fellow (2006-2007). She currently teaches on the MA course in Women’s Studies. She compiled the 5-volume Irish Feminisms 1810-1930 (Routledge 2010) and is editor of George Moore: Artistic Visions and Literary Worlds (2006). She has published on the writings of George Moore, Kate Chopin, Arthur Conan Doyle, Antonio Fogazzarro, and the poets Dennis O’Driscoll and Cathal Ó Searcaigh. A board member at National Centre for Franco-Irish Studies, she also serves on editorial boards and scientific committees for publications in France and Spain. Michele Russo completed a Ph.D in English Studies on Nabokov’s Russian and English novels at the G. d’Annunzio University of ChietiPescara, Italy. He was a Visiting Professor at the Nazareth College of

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Rochester, New York. He has published essays on George Gissing, Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Caroline Lee Hentz, Phyllis Shand Allfrey and Vladimir Nabokov. He is currently working on nineteenth- century American poetry and the Victorian novel. Nathalie Saudo-Welby is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Amiens, France, where she teaches nineteenth-century literature and translation. Her doctoral thesis was on degeneration in the British novel (1886-1913). She has published essays on Dracula, the New Woman and the influence of scientific discourse on fin-de-siècle literature (Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard, William Morris). She is currently working on the representation of women in late nineteenthcentury fiction.

INDEX

aesthetic(s), 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 26, 33, 55, 259, 260; aestheticism, 18-20, 25, 70 America, 93, 108, 110, 127; American, 57-66 passim, 85, 92, 94, 110, 126, 208, 259 Archer, William, 7, 74, 90 Aristophanes, 178, 179, 180 art(s), 2-12 passim, 15-31, 39, 43-55, 57-72, 76, 91, 94, 114-22 passim, 140-46, 151, 161, 168-74, 177-78, 183, 186-90, 210-20 passim, 231, 234, 242, 244, 252; architecture, 4, 5, 1531 passim, 193, 199; music(al), 4, 5, 9, 15, 19-30 passim, 37, 39, 40, 54, 86, 88, 101, 114, 122, 130, 133, 135, 140-56 passim, 248, 250; musician, 63, 142, 144; music novel, 25, 27, 36, 40; opera, 4, 15-19, 2428, 38, 41, 88, 140-47, 151, 152, 155; painter(s), 5, 6, 43-55, 57-67, 71, 76, 80, 161, 194, 198, 206, 256, 264; painting(s), 2, 4-6, 23, 43-55, 59-71, 76, 93, 134, 172, 183, 204, 205, 264 authority, 4, 7, 8, 11, 83, 114, 147, 179, 189, 200, 203,

222, 224 authorship, 4, 7, 8, 85-89 autobiography, 2, 5, 26, 43-47, 89, 115, 136, 157, 174, 193-202, 208, 247, 256, 259, 263 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 115, 235 Balderston, John Lloyd, 58-60, 62, 64, 69 Balzac, Honoré de, 22, 25, 47, 49, 80, 114, 126, 129, 151, 202, 206, 261 Bayreuth, 27, 37-39, 133, 139 Bazin, André, 204-205 Beerbohm, Max, 7, 73-81; Works: Caricatures of Twenty-five Gentlemen, 73; Fifty Caricatures, 76, 78; Mainly on the Air, 74, 76; More Theatres 1898-1903, 74; Observations, 80; The Poets’ Corner, 75 Best, Richard, 87 Bhabha, Homi K., 236 biblical, 130, 175, 237, 244 Blanche, Jacques-Émile, 46, 69, 259 Blissett,William F., 35, 36, 37, 140, 150-51, 261 body, 7, 10, 11, 27, 28, 48, 49, 53, 67, 74, 142, 143, 145, 193, 196, 199, 205-209,

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211, 214-17, 222, 223, 224, 229-32, 249, 263, 264 borders, 4, 11, 12, 13, 19 36, 55, 99, 110, 115, 135, 177, 204, 227-28, 240, 246 Bourget, Paul, 134 Brunet, Michel, 8, 9, 125-36 Bullen, Arthur Henry, 107, 110-11 Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 16, 39, 49 Cantwell, Eamonn R., 8, 99112 Catholicism, 4, 15, 16, 17, 26, 29, 30, 94, 141-44 passim, 150, 168, 207, 244, 245, 261; Catholic Church, 89, 93, 140 Cave, Richard Allen, 41, 143, 144, 150, 177, 190, 239, 241, 250, 258 Celtic, 16, 24, 35, 102, 113, 141, 142 Christensen, Peter G., 177-86 passim, 262 classics, 4, 113; classical, 10, 38, 59, 89, 163, 169, 174, 177-86, 210, 260, 262 collaboration, 5, 8, 26, 34, 38, 85-97, 99-112, 203, 257; collaborative, 7, 8, 27 Conrad, Joseph, 194 correspondence, 8, 12, 22, 39, 65, 87, 89, 100, 103, 108, 110, 111, 116-17, 125-35, 217, 239-53, 257 Crawford, Virginia, 85, 121, 144, 157, 241

Cunard, Lady Maud Bache, 8, 37-41 passim, 96, 97, 11624 passim, 144, 241, 257 Cunard, Nancy, 67, 78, 79, 9597, 123, 258 Dabrigeon-Garcier, Fabienne, 1-12, 39, 239-53 The Daily Chronicle, 74 Dana, 105 Danby, Frank (Julia Davis Frankau), 90, 91 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 22, 36 Decadence, 2, 20, 33, 68, 210, 264 Degas, Edgar, 47, 55, 65-66, 130 Derrida, Jacques, 244 determinism, 61, 218, 229, 233-34 Devine, Paul, 21, 24, 140, 143, 259 dialogism, 12, 240, 245-47; dialogical, 114, 235 Dolmetsch, Arnold and Hélène, 88, 144 Doulamis, Konstantin, 10, 174, 177-90 Dublin, 1, 35, 51, 100, 101, 103, 110, 125, 135, 193-98, 202, 262, 263 Dujardin, Edouard, 8, 9, 12, 20, 22, 23, 37, 40, 41, 88, 89, 116, 125-36, 143, 239, 241, 247, 256, 260, 262; Les Lauriers sont coupés, 12, 37, 41, 239, 247 Dulwich, 16, 21, 141, 144, 152, 156; Dulwich Art Gal-

Index lery, 15, 24 Dunleavy, Janet E., 57, 120, 187, 231, 234, 258 Eden, Sir William, 38, 66, 143 Eglinton, John (W.K. Magee), 22, 23, 89, 126-35 passim, 183, 206, 241, 256 Eliot, George, 49, 142, 149, 196; Works: Adam Bede, 196; Daniel Deronda, 9, 142, 145, 152; Middlemarch, 149 Eliot, T.S., 33-39 passim, 261 Enaud-Lechien, Isabelle, 6, 57-72 England, 3, 5, 12, 16, 33, 57, 58, 260; English, 38, 48, 54, 94, 134, 243; countryside, 48, 54; culture, 3, 144, 234; language, 8, 40, 47, 60, 101, 114, 119, 126-128, 131, 139, 169, 170, 242, 255; literature, 33, 35, 14041, 195, 196, 259 The English Review, 85, 194 epiphany, 21, 24, 140, 142, 143, 150, 246, 259 epistolary, 116, 123, 125, 130, 133, 136, 195, 239-53 passim Euripides, 179-83 passim; Iphigeneia in Aulis, 181, 182 feminism, 167, 173, 195, 230, 232, 260 fin de siècle, 2, 3, 12, 18, 19, 22, 28, 68, 142, 233, 234

275 Flaubert, Gustave, 21, 22, 145, 151, 209, 212, 223, 224, 260; Un Cœur simple, 212, 224 Fleming, Brendan, 162, 262 Ford, Ford Madox, 194, 204 Foster, Roy, 102, 103, 108, 109, 261 Foucault, Michel, 86, 230 France, 2, 3, 8, 12, 21, 34, 37, 54, 58, 60, 61, 71, 86, 114, 125-36 passim, 258; French, 9, 40, 71, 86, 135, 195, 198, 265; culture, 4, 25, 34, 49, 76; language, 8, 9, 40, 45, 60, 78, 89, 96, 101, 114, 126-36, 195, 201; literature, 86, 172, 209, 213, 234, 260, 262, 265 Frazier, Adrian, 2, 7, 8, 38, 39, 40, 57, 73, 74, 76, 80, 8597, 100, 103, 109, 111, 139, 141, 143-44, 189, 195, 202, 208, 234, 237, 247, 258, 262 Freud, Sigmund, 9, 139-58, 248; “Family Romances”, 153-55, 158; “Mourning and Melancholia”, 9, 153 Gaelic League, 135 Gaspari, Fabienne, 5, 6, 43-55, 263 gender, 3, 4, 140, 142, 162, 165, 171-74 passim, 193207, 230, 237, 262 geography, 11, 15, 48, 62, 181, 193, 199, 230, 243, 252, 263

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Gerber, Helmut E., 1, 20, 22, 23, 85, 95, 114-19 passim, 127, 157, 234, 241, 256, 257 German, 33, 38, 40, 54, 135, 139, 140, 258, 264 Gilcher, Edwin, 1, 162, 208, 258, 263 Goncourt, Edmond and Jules de, 11, 196, 209-24; Germinie Lacerteux, 11, 209-24, 229, 262 Gosse, Edmund, 75, 80, 89, 90, 169, 205 Gough, Margaret, 85, 121 Greece, 177, 180, 186, 188 Greek, 61, 186-87; culture, 10, 23-24, 49, 61, 177-90; language, 51, 174 Gregory, Lady Augusta, 38, 99-112 passim Griffith, Arthur, 106, 110 Grubgeld, Elizabeth, 2, 11, 46, 47, 136, 157, 174, 193-208, 247, 252, 259, 263 Hall, N. John, 74-76, 80 Hamard, Marie-Claire, 6, 7, 73-81 Hardy, Thomas, 2, 3, 233, 234, 259, 261 Harter, Mrs Arthur (Ethel Maud de Fonblanque), 8, 93-97; The Love Conference, 8, 95, 97 The Hawk, 65, 93 Hawthorne, Hildegarde, 115, 117, 120 Heilmann, Ann, 140, 162, 201-

207, 263 Heilmann, Ann and Mark Llewellyn, 9, 139-59, 162, 165, 193, 248, 256 Herodotus, 183, 186-88 Hesiod, 181 Homer, 10, 74, 150, 180, 18388 passim Hone, Joseph, 57, 73, 131, 134, 140, 144, 180, 181, 183, 258 Huguet, Christine, 1-12, 15-31, 36 Huysmans, Joris-Karl, 54, 142, 264 Hyde, Douglas, 87, 107 Ibsen, Henrik, 22, 145, 242 Impressionism, 2, 204; literary, 12, 253; Impressionist, 12, 49, 51, 53, 59, 62, 6870, 76, 161, 172, 251, 256, 265 interior monologue, 12, 239, 247-51 passim; monologue intérieur, 37, 41 intertextuality, 22, 39, 113-15 Ireland, 2, 3, 12, 38, 85, 100, 109, 135, 162, 170, 173, 194, 195, 198, 242, 247, 259, 260, 262; Irish, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 37, 40, 57-66 passim, 75, 85, 105, 125, 134, 143, 169, 240, 242, 243; culture, 1, 3, 87, 110, 135, 140, 170, 193, 205, 244, 261; language, 101, 114, 162, 169, 170; literature, 101, 111, 174, 195, 260; Literary

Index Revival/ Renaissance, 139, 140, 195, 261; Literary Theatre, 34, 100, 105, 106, 107, 140 Italy, 21, 151, 244, 245; Italian, 39, 93, 94, 228, 231 James, Henry, 80 Joyce, James, 1, 5, 6, 33-41 passim, 44, 150, 239, 260, 262, 263, 265; Works: Chamber Music, 35, 40; Finnegans Wake, 41; Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, 37, 44 Kristeva, Julia, 113 Labau, Alain, 8, 39, 40, 41, 113-24 Lanza, Clara, 86, 87, 92 Laurie, T. Werner, 95, 114, 120, 126, 134, 203 Lawrence, D.H., 5, 33, 35, 36 Léautaud, Paul, 113, 121 Leicester Galleries, 75 leitmotif, 21, 24, 36, 37, 41, 140, 143, 248, 250, 259 Llewellyn, Mark, 2, 140, 264 London, 1, 6, 24, 31, 35, 38, 40, 57, 86, 93, 99, 111, 125, 133, 134, 147, 151, 162, 194, 205, 228, 229, 230, 236, 240, 262, 264, 265 Lorenz Meyer, Emily, 114 Louvel, Liliane, 45, 51, 53 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 22, 35, 38

277 Magee, W.K. (John Eglinton), 85, 127, 204, 206 Mallarmé, Stéphane, 7, 34, 39, 49, 60, 66, 74 Manchester, City Art Gallery, 76 Manet, Edouard, 3, 7, 47, 49, 55, 58, 76, 80, 124, 130, 262 Martin, Stoddard, 5, 33-41, 140, 143, 151, 248 Martyn, Edward, 22, 37, 74, 87, 88, 139, 140, 144, 195, 207, 208 Mays, J.C.C., 101, 259 melodic line, 12, 48, 49, 140, 175, 247 metafiction, 9, 26, 27, 271 metanarrative, 11 Milman, Lena, 20, 22, 117, 118, 121, 234, 241, 251, 257 Modernism, 12, 20; modernist, 39, 41, 194, 207, 253 Monet, Claude, 68, 130 Moore, Augustus, 65 Moore, George; Works: Aphrodite in Aulis, 10, 119, 177-90, 255, 262; Avowals, 58, 59, 60, 62, 161, 175, 256; The Bending of the Bough, 31, 87, 257; The Brook Kerith, 17, 33, 39, 41, 140, 174, 175, 203, 255, 264, 265; Celibate Lives, 140, 195, 201, 247, 256; Celibates, 20, 121, 139, 140, 154, 168, 171, 172, 173, 195, 208, 256; The

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Collected Short Stories of George Moore, 2, 140, 162, 165, 193, 202, 203, 206, 256; The Coming of Gabrielle, 87, 114, 117, 257; Communication to My Friends, 144; Confessions of a Young Man, 5, 43-55, 59, 60, 63, 70, 85, 115, 117-18, 126, 130, 134, 195, 215, 223, 241, 256, 260; Conversations in Ebury Street, 130, 135, 136, 174, 256; A Drama in Muslin, 6, 43-55, 99, 172-73, 228, 232, 233, 255, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265; Esther Waters, 1, 11, 19, 73, 85, 99, 171, 173, 196, 209-25, 227-37, 255, 259, 260, 261, 262, 263, 264, 265; Evelyn Innes, 4, 5, 7, 9, 15-31, 33, 34, 36, 39, 40, 88, 119, 121, 139-59, 241, 248, 255, 259; A Fashionable Beauty, 86; A Flood, 162-66, 175; George Moore’s Correspondence with the Mysterious Countess, 87, 116, 257; George Moore in Transition: Letters to T. Fisher Unwin and Lena Milman, 1894-1910, 20, 22, 23, 117, 118, 121, 234, 241, 251, 257; George Moore on Parnassus: Letters (19001933) to Secretaries, Publishers, Printers, Agents, Literati, Friends

and Acquaintances, 85, 95, 114-21 passim, 127, 134, 157, 241, 257; Hail and Farewell [Ave, Salve, Vale], 5, 34, 37, 58, 63, 73, 107, 111, 115, 121, 139, 140, 144, 174, 201, 208, 256, 261, 262; Heloise and Abelard, 93, 96, 119, 255; Impressions and Opinions, 60, 62, 66, 67, 256; In Single Strictness, 96, 140, 195, 208, 256; The Lake, 12, 17, 18, 21, 24, 30, 34, 39, 41, 85, 117, 119, 135, 140, 144, 239-53, 255, 259, 260, 262, 263; Letters from George Moore to Ed. Dujardin 1886-1922, 22, 23, 89, 125-36, 256; The Letters of George Moore, 1863-1901, 86, 203, 241, 257; Letters of George Moore, 88, 90, 92, 126, 127, 206, 256; Letters to Lady Cunard 1895-1933, 96, 116-23 passim, 241, 257; Lewis Seymour and Some Women, 5, 43-55, 203, 255; Madeleine de Lisle, 119; Martin Luther, 31, 86, 257; Memoirs of My Dead Life, 85, 97, 174, 256, 263, 264; A Mere Accident, 139, 207, 255, 262; A Modern Lover, 5, 43, 47, 99, 203, 255, 261, 265; Modern Painting, 6, 57-71 passim, 144, 256; A

Index Mummer’s Wife, 115, 120, 233, 241, 255, 260, 263, 264, 265; Muslin, 53, 54, 255; Parnell and His Island, 31, 175, 256, 263; The Pastoral Loves of Daphnis and Chloe, 174, 255; Sister Teresa, 4, 9, 1531, 36, 119, 139-59, 241, 248, 255, 261; Spring Days, 241, 255; A Story-Teller’s Holiday, 86, 193, 194, 201203, 206, 256; The Strike at Arlingford, 31, 86, 99, 257; Ulick and Soracha, 119, 255; The Untilled Field, 166, 169, 170, 239, 241, 244, 256, 259, 261; “Agnes Lahens”, 154, 173; “Albert Nobbs”, 11, 193-208, 260, 261, 263; “Art and Science”, 61, 64; “Art for the Villa”, 62; “Art Patrons”, 69; “The End of the Season”, 71; “Euphorion in Texas”, 85; “The Exile”, 169, 170; “Free Trade in Art”, 64; “How England Lost her Picture”, 71; “In Sight of Death”, 162, 165; “John Norton”, 139, 140, 171, 208; “Liadin and Curithir”, 114; “The Lovers of Orelay”, 97; “Mildred Lawson”, 171, 172; “The New Art Criticism”, 64, 68; “The Organisation of Art”, 64; “A Reaction”, 149, 151,

279 159; “The Royal Academy”, 64; “Sex in Art”, 144, 145; “Shakespeare et Balzac”, 126; “The Society of Portrait Painters”, 71; “So on He fares”, 166; “Tannhäuser”, 139; “A Tragic Novel”, 20, 22; “Whistler”, 67, 70 Moore, George, and William Butler Yeats: Diarmuid and Grania: A Three-Act Tragedy, 5, 34, 87, 100102, 112, 140, 257, 259 Moore, Maurice, 115 The Musician, 36 National Gallery, 50, 71 National Library of Ireland, 85, 103 Naturalism, 2, 11, 16, 19-20, 90, 151, 169, 209-25 passim, 233, 234, 261, 264, 265 “naughty nineties”, 16 neo-Gothic, 4, 20, 26 New English Art Club, 7, 76 New Woman, 2, 18, 171, 232, 262 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 36, 4043, 47, 102 Noël, Jean C., 55, 168, 178, 259, 264 O Mordha, Seorsa, 169 Paris, 1, 4, 6, 16, 21, 25, 35, 44, 48, 55, 57, 58, 62, 68, 78, 92, 103, 104, 106, 125,

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126, 133, 151, 213, 234, 262, 264, 265 Pater, Walter, 2, 39, 54, 143 Pennell, Elizabeth R. and Joseph, 65-67 Pierse, Mary, 1, 9, 10, 19, 16176, 177, 198, 259, 265 Pinero, Arthur Wing, 22, 80 psychology, 9, 10, 20-23, 36, 39, 90, 139-57,161-75, 195, 201 readership, 171, 193, 201, 205 Realism, 1, 10, 18-22, 53, 103, 119, 167, 190, 193-208, 259, 261 religion, 16-29, 35, 89, 102104, 133, 142-48, 157, 187, 218, 220, 228, 232-34, 244, 246, 259, 263, 265 La Revue Indépendante, 125 La Revue Wagnérienne, 37, 88, 143 Riewald, J.G., 74-80 passim Riggs, Pádraigín, 169-70 Ruskin, John, 49, 69 Russell, George (AE), 40, 102, 107-10, 141 Russo, Michele, 11, 227-37 Saudo-Welby, Nathalie, 11, 196, 209-25 self-referential, 23, 189-90 self-reflexive, 9, 19, 28, 190 sensational fiction, 16, 20 sex, 11, 16, 28, 49, 91, 142, 144, 153, 155, 158, 186, 193-208, 217, 263, 264; sexuality, 18, 145, 194-95,

197, 198, 207 Shakespeare, William, 49, 86, 126, 151 Shaw, George Bernard, 38, 74 Sickert, Walter, 66, 76, 80 The Speaker, 60, 144, 148, 172 storyteller, 4, 57, 120, 196, 200, 231, 234; storytelling, 10, 177-90 Symbolism, 20, 30, 34-39, 68, 134, 151, 168, 180, 182, 229, 242 Symons, Arthur, 5, 33-41 Thucydides, 178 Tourgeneff, 202, 206 translation, 40, 60, 113, 12635, 139, 160, 169-74 The United Irishman, 106-11 passim Unwin, T. Fisher, 20, 117, 121, 141, 231, 233, 234, 241, 257 Vanity Fair, 74 Victorian(ism), 13, 18, 23, 2627, 61, 89, 142-43, 167, 168, 171, 174, 227-31, 237, 260, 261, 263, 264 Wagner, 4, 5, 9, 12, 15-28, 3341, 48, 49, 80, 88, 116, 118, 130, 139-59, 242, 247, 248; literary Wagnerism, 2, 3341, 140, 141, 248, 253, 261 Walden, Lord Howard de (T.E. Ellis), 5, 38-40 Whistler, James McNeill, 6,

Index 57-72, 264; The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, 6, 57, 59, 60, 64, 65, 69; “Mr. Whistler’s Ten O’Clock”, 6, 57-70 passim Yeats, William Butler, 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 24, 33-41, 75, 87-88, 99-112, 140-41, 143, 174, 195, 262; Works: Autobiographies, 107, 108, 111; The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats 1896-1900, 100, 101; The Collected Letters of W.B. Yeats 1901-1904, 100, 102, 108, 111; Collected Works, 107, 112;

281 The Countess Cathleen, 99, 100; Essays and Introductions, 106; Letters to W.B. Yeats, 100, 108; Plays for an Irish Theatre, 114; Plays in Prose and Verse, 107; The Secret Rose, 106; The Unicorn from the Stars, 102, 112; The Variorum Editions of the Plays of W.B. Yeats, 107, 112; Where There Is Nothing, 8, 99, 102, 107, 112 Zola, Émile, 25, 47, 53, 54, 196, 207, 209-18 passim, 233, 265