Whenever I read a novel by George Moore I feel like dividing the English-speaking world into three parts: those who read Moore and like him—a determined and growing class; those who read him and hate him—a very much larger class; and those who never heard of him—to this class belong the admirers of Marie Corelli, Hall Caine, and Sienkiewicz. Yet for certain young men every stroke of his pen has a hieratic significance. I remember well when the Confessions of a Young Man appeared. With what eagerness was it not seized upon by a small section of the community, a section that represented the vanguard of a new movement and recognized a fellow-decadent. George Moore may be truthfully called the first of the English decadents—I mean the Verlaine crop of the early eighties, not the gifted gang that painted and sonneted under the name of the Pre-Raphaelitic Brotherhood.
It was George Moore who first brought to England’s shores the “poisonous honey of France.” In his Confessions were criticisms of acuity and several positive discoveries. He it was who introduced Arthur Rimbaud and Verlaine, Jules Laforgue and Gustave Kahn, to a public that speedily forgot them. To read these Confessions to-day is like stirring up stale musk. There is an odd comminglement of caviare and perfume in the book, and its author evidently had more to say.
He said it in A Mummer’s Wife, one of the strongest, most disagreeable books I ever read. But, while the hands were Moore’s, the voice was Zola’s. Moore has always been the victim of methods. He has dissected Tolstoy, Turgénieff, Flaubert, Balzac, and the de Goncourts to see how they do the trick; and as he possesses in a rare degree the mocking-bird voice, his various books were at first echoes of his passionate delvings in the minds of others. A Mummer’s Wife dealt with the English stage—certain phases of it. It was Zola Anglicized. Then followed the trilogy of brutal naturalistic novels, Spring Days, A Modern Lover, and Mike Fletcher, the last being the biggest. The writer exploited to the full his love for what he conceived to be the real, and there are certainly many telling passages in Mike Fletcher. To-day A Modern Lover is recognized as a very truthful study of artistic London, the London that paints and goes to picture galleries. The new man—he was very new then to the younger men—had the gift of gripping your hand with chilly, withal powerful, fingers. He forced you to look at certain surfaces and see them the way he saw them. Because nature had imposed upon him restrictions, he strove earnestly to see more clearly, and by dint of hard gazing he did see, and saw some extraordinary things.
Having studied Germinie Lacerteux until he had mastered her, George Moore transposed her into the key of Fielding. His Esther Waters, by far simpler and healthier than the rest, is the Goncourts’ gutter-martyr, Germinie Lacerteux, done into English. But it is admirably done, and the paraphrase became known to the novel-reading world. There was a brief silence, and Celibates appeared. And there were things performed within its pages that sent shivers to your stomach. An outrageous theme was fashioned superbly. One story was a recurrence to Moore’s favorite subject, the Roman Catholic church. Whether he is a Catholic or not, I cannot say, but the church literally obsesses him. Her ritual dominates his vision, and, like a sickly woman, he loves to finger the gorgeous livery of the Lord. He continually returns to this topic. He is exercised, almost haunted, by the notion that outside of her pale salvation is impossible. “What if this be true?” cries George Moore, as he arises from his midnight bed, fearing the dark and looking for some sign of a dawn! I suppose, being a product of our times, he enjoys this acrobatic flirting and balancing on the rope of faith swung over the chasm of doubt and despair. Religion is one of his leading motives, art the other.
The new story deals with several episodes in the life of a singer. She is the daughter of a devotee of archaic music and archaic instruments. She has a voice, but her father is so absorbed in the revival of Palestrina, of Vittoria, of old English writers, of the Plain Chant, that he neglects the girl’s vocal possibilities. She plays the viola da gamba and sings at sight. Her mother was a celebrated operatic singer, of chaste life and coloratura tastes. She died before the girl was developed. The dreamy father, the high-strung, ambitious girl, a dreary home at Dulwich, near London, and a rich baronet of musical tastes, crazy for notoriety in London musical life,—and you may imagine the rest.
Evelyn goes to Paris with him—and with a certain Lady Duckle as a chaperon. The scene at Marchesi’s—for of course Madame Savelli is Marchesi—is capitally done, and there is a Henry James lightness of touch and humor in the description of Lady Duckle and her dislike of Wagner’s music.
“No, my dear Owen,” she cried, “I am not a heretic, for I recognize the greatness of the music, and I could hear it with pleasure if it were confined to the orchestra; but I can find no pleasure in listening to a voice trying to accompany a hundred instruments. I heard Lohengrin last season. I was in Mrs. Ayre’s box—a charming woman—her husband is an American, but he never comes to London. I presented her at the last Drawing Room. She had a supper party afterward, and when she asked me what I’d have to eat, I said, ‘Nothing with wings!... Oh, that Swan!’”
Now, this is distinctly witty, and it is a pity that we get only a mere sketch of this chatty body.
Without explaining the processes, Evelyn becomes a great singer, a great interpreter of Wagner; and it is precisely this hiatus that deprives me of much pleasure. I dislike these persons in fiction who have become full-fledged artists at the turning of a page. Mr. Moore was treading upon dangerous ground, and he knew it; so he wisely omitted the study years. Evelyn, whose character shows little growth, conquers London, and at last goes to her father to ask his pardon. This episode is the strongest and most original in the book. Indeed, I cannot recollect anything in English fiction like it. She falls at his feet and is Brünnhilde kneeling to Wotan. As she phrases her petition for pardon she acts, consciously or unconsciously, the third act of Die Walküre: “War es so schmählich?” she mentally implores, and the simple instrument-maker is vanquished. It is very subtle, and the dual nature of the lyric artist is clearly indicated.
But such a father, such a daughter! If you were to ask me frankly if a girl could sacrifice everything for art I would as frankly reply, Yes; lots of them have. I have met a dozen myself. Moore does not believe that the moral sense can flourish in an artistic atmosphere. Perhaps he is right. Evelyn is dissatisfied with success. Her nature is too complex to find gratification in the society of Sir Owen Asher. A new man looms up. He is dark, has teeth, is a mystic, a Roscicrucian, perhaps a diabolist. He is a Celt and is composing to a Celtic legend a great music-drama; his musical forms are antique, and he wins Evelyn, after the first performance of Isolde. This scene caused all the bellboys of literature to cry “horrors!” I confess, however, that the second love is incomprehensible. It is entered into in too cold-blooded a manner. She becomes still more dissatisfied, and after a week of insomnia her early religious beliefs get the uppermost, and she goes to confession. But you feel that she has only met a third will stronger than her own. A Monsignor Mostyn, the best male portrait of the book, forces her to bend her knee to God, and she goes into conventual retreat. We get a few closing chapters—dreary ones—devoted to convent life, and then Evelyn goes forth once more into the world.