My Contemporaries In Fiction

by David Christie Murray

  VII.--UNDER FRENCH ENCOURAGEMENT--GEORGE MOORE

  That salt of sincerity which saves 'Jude the Obscure' and 'Tess o' theD'Urber-villes' from being wholly nauseous, is absent from 'A ModernLover' and 'A Drama in Muslin,' and its flavour is but faintlyperceptible in 'Esther Waters.' Except on the distinct understandingthat Thomas Hardy and George Moore are bracketed here, for the sake ofconvenience, as being both 'under French encouragement,' it would be agross critical injustice to couple their names together at all. It isnot one man of letters in a hundred who has Mr. Hardy's mere literaryfaculty, which is native and brilliant, whilst Mr. Moore's has beenpainstakingly hunted for and brought from afar, and is, after muchpolishing, still a trifle dull. Mr. Thomas Hardy is distinctly one ofthose men who see things through an atmosphere of their own. Mr. GeorgeMoore has borrowed his atmosphere. The one is a man of genius as well aslabour, and the other is a man of labour only.

  It is very much of a pity that, a year or two ago, somebody's senseof Mr. Moore's position in the world of letters should have been veryabsurdly emphasised. It was solemnly advertised that a certain number ofcopies of a book of his might be had on large paper, with the autographof the author. This was to be regretted, for Mr. Moore, in his own way,is worth taking seriously, whilst the trick is one of those which, as arule, can only be played by the poorest kind of literary outsider. Butthat the author should have permitted himself to be thus made ridiculousis a characteristic thing, and one not to be passed in silence if wewish to understand him.

  Consulting the critics, one of the first things we find about Mr. Mooreis that he is an observer. As a matter of fact, that is absolutelywhat he is not. He is so far from being an observer that he is thatdiametrically opposite person, a man with a notebook. The man whoamongst men of letters deserves to be ranked as an observer is he whonaturally and without effort sees things in their just place, aspect,proportion, and perspective. The man who is often falsely describedby the title which expresses this faculty is a careful and painstakingsoul, who is strenuously on the watch for detail, and who takes muchtrouble to fill his pages with it.

  Let me offer a concrete illustration. In 'Esther Waters' Mr. Moore iscuriously and meaninglessly emphatic in his description of a certainroom in which the heroine of his action sleeps. Esther, we are told,slipped on her nightdress and got into bed. It was a brass bed withoutcurtains. There were two windows in the room. One of them was flushwith the head of the bed, and the other was beyond its foot. A chest ofdrawers stood between them. An observer, unless he had a special purposein it, would never have dreamt of writing down this bald detail. Nothingcomes of the statement of fact. Nothing hangs on the relative positionof the bed and the windows and the chest of drawers. Nothing happensin the course of the story which justifies the flat and flavourlessstatement. It is wholly without meaning, apart from the fact that itaffords rather a plain insight into the author's method of work. If achild of three after visiting a strange bedroom were able to tell asmuch about it as Mr. Moore has to tell about this apartment, his motherwould probably be proud of him, and his nurse would say that he was anotice-taking little creature; but the critics would hardly hold him upto admiration as an observer. Yet the child would tell us just as muchand just as little as Mr. Moore tells us in this particular instance.It goes without saying that this is not a fair specimen of Mr. Moore'sfaculty, but it is significant of his general literary knack. He makesit his business steadfastly to jot down what he sees, and it is notimpossible that in the course of a long and laborious life a man mightin this way cultivate to a reasonable growth a turn for observationoriginally less than mediocre; but it is not the natural observer'smethod of seeing things, and it is not the natural artist's method ofpresenting them. If the critics in this case were in the right we shouldhave to acknowledge an auctioneer's catalogue as a _chef d'ouvre_.

  To the sympathetic reader it was evident from the first that Mr. Moorewas not greatly enamoured of his work for its own sake, and that hechose his themes, not because of any imperative attraction they had forhim, but simply and purely for the use to which he could put them. Hischoice of subject has always been the result of a deliberate search forthe effective. The mental process which gave rise to 'A Mummer's Wife'is easily traceable. The domestic life of the class of people he made uphis mind to treat was as little known to him as to almost anybody, butif properly handled it was pretty sure to make good copy. He must knowit first, however, and so he set himself to learn it. This is the Zolamethod, but it is that method with a difference. The great French masterstarted with an inspired and inspiring scheme, his idea being no lessthan to paint the society of an epoch from top to base, to present in aseries of books, the writing of which should fill his literary lifetime,a completed portraiture of the whole people of his land and day. In thecourse of such a labour as he had courageously appointed for himself,many lines of special inquiry were necessarily indicated, but thedetails for which he searched were all employed with an artisticremorselessness in the building of that one great scheme of his, andeach successive book which left his hands was like one more nail drivenhome and clinched for the support of his argument. Mr. Moore, as thosewho are honoured by his personal acquaintance know better than those whoonly read his books, resents with some warmth the obvious parallel whichhas been drawn between Zola and himself; but he is a copyist of Zola'smethod for all that, and but for Zola's influence would never have beenheard of on his own present lines. In the writing of the 'Mummers Wife'the first obvious impulse came from Zola, It should be the writer'sbusiness to discover a section of English life not hithertoexploited--it should be his business to explore it with a minutethoroughness--and it should, further, be his business to depict it as hefound it. To be thoroughly painstaking in inquiry, and without fear inthe exposition of facts discovered, were the aims before the writer. ButMr. Moore forgot, as was inevitable in the circumstances, that no desirefor knowledge of things human is of real value without sympathy. Hefollowed the fortunes of a theatrical company touring in the provinces,and though it is true enough that people who know that kind of life findtrivial errors here and there, it has to be admitted that on the wholehe gave a true and characteristic picture of the outside life of such acommunity. How a certain class of theatrical people dress and talk, whattheir work is, and what their outer ways are like, he has discoveredwith infinite painstaking; but the fact remains that it is the workof an outsider. He has never once got under the skin of any one of hispeople, and this is true, because he was impelled to write about them,not because they were human, and therefore endowed with all humancharacteristics of hatefulness, and lovableness, and quaintness, andhumour, and vanity, and jealousy, but because he saw good copy in them.He neither loves nor hates, nor, indeed, except for his own sake, is fora. second even faintly interested. He is there to make a book, andthese people offer excellent material for a book. He is astonishinglyindustrious, and his minuteness is without end, but he never warms tohis subject. His aim, in short, is one of total artistic selfishness.It is very likely that he would accept this statement of his standpoint,and would justify it as the only standpoint of an artist. But it isanswerable for the fact that his pages are sterile of laughter andtears, of sympathy and of pity.

  In 'A Modern Lover' and 'A Drama in Muslin' we find him dealing with alife he knows. He is no longer on ground wholly foreign to him, and itis no longer necessary that he should grope from one uncertain standingplace to another, verifying himself by the dark lantern of his note-bookas he goes. He moves with a more natural ease, views things witha larger and more comprehensive eye, and has at least that outsidesympathy with his people which comes of community of taste andknowledge, and of familiarity with a social _milieu_.

  In 'Esther Waters' the earlier characteristics break out again, andbreak out with greater force than ever. What he calls--with one ofthose tumbles into foreign idiom which occasionally mark his pages--'thefever of the gamble' has never been truly diagnosed in English fiction,and the theme is undeniably fertile. He
knows absolutely nothing aboutthe manifestations of the disorder, to begin with; but that is of noconsequence, for the world is open to observation; and the note-book,the inquiring mind, and the sleuthhound patience are all as availableas ever. Then a combination occurs to him. Servantgalism awaits; itspainter. The life is picturesque from a certain point of view: itimpinges more or less on the lives of all of us, and nobody has hithertothought it worth while to search into its mysteries, and to tell us whatit is really like. He knows nothing at all about this either, buthe will make inquiries. He does make inquiries, and they result in apicture which is, on the whole, a piece of surprising accuracy. Butstill all the fire is for the work. The subject is sought for, thedetails are gathered, the workman's patience and labour are trulyconscientious--at times they excite admiration and surprise--but thenet result is lifeless. In the way of waxwork--it would be hard to findanything more effective than the people in 'Esther Waters.' They areclothed with an exactitude of detail which would do credit to MadameTussaud's exhibition in its latest development. They are carefullymodelled and coloured and posed. They are capital waxwork, and if theauthor had only cared a little bit about them, they might have even thatmystic touch of life which thrills us in the finer sorts of fiction. Itis eternally true that the wounded is the wounding heart, and the meredescriptive and analytical method not only misses the natural humanmovement, but it is untrue in its results. Vivisection teachessomething, no doubt, but it does not bring a knowledge of the naturalanimal. To get that knowledge you had better live with him a little, andeven love him a little, and teach him to love you. All the scientificinquiry in the world is not worth--in art--one touch of affectionateunderstanding.

  Esther Waters is to go to a lying-in hospital, and thither goes herauthor before her, bent on what he can picturesquely set down abouther surroundings. Her husband is to go to a hospital for consumption.Thither goes the author, and sets down things seen and heard with thewooden, conscientious precision of a bailiff's clerk. The conception ofthings inquired into seems never to move him to interest, though oneis forced to believe that once, at least, he has narrowly escaped thecontagion of a great scene. Esther's illegitimate child is born, andthe mother, who has temporarily left him for his own sake, to accept aposition as wet-nurse, is inspired by a hungry maternal longing, whichdrags her irresistibly from warmth and comfort to a poverty whosebitterness has but a single solace--the joy of satisfied motherly love.There are writers who have not a hundredth part of Mr. Moore's industrywho would have moved the reader deeply with such a scene. But, if Mr.Moore feels at all, he is ashamed to show it. This mother-hunger isapparently just as affecting a thing to him as the position of thechest of drawers between the two windows--a fact made note of, and,therefore, to be chronicled. Either the writer is content coldly tosurvey this rage of passion, or he would have us believe he is so; andin either case he misses the mark of the artist, which is, after all, toshow such things as he deals with as they truly are, and to seize upontheir inwardness. We do not ask for a slavering flux of sentiment, oran acrobat's display in gesticulation. But, from a gentleman whosecorns when trodden on are probably as painful as his neighbours', we arecontent with something less than a godlike indifference to the emotionsof humanity. Let us suppose, charitably, that this is no more thana pretence, and that Mr. Moore is neither at heart so callous nor invanity so far removed from mere emotional interests as he would seem.

  The most patient of investigators in strange regions will make slipssometimes. Mr. Moore, for instance, investigating the racing stable,treats us to a view of a horse whose legs are tightly bandaged fromhis knees to his forelocks, and his vulgarest peasants and servants say'that is he,' or 'if it be.' One characteristic of the common speech ofour country he has caught with accuracy, though it can scarcely be saidthat it needed much observation to secure it. The very objectionableword 'bloody,' as it is used by the vulgar, is Mr. Moore's 'standby'in 'Esther Waters,' It is very likely that it takes a sort of daring tointroduce the word freely into a work of fiction, but the courage doesnot seem very much more respectable than the word.