by George Moore
About fifteen years ago I was asked if I would care to go over to —— College to see the sports. We walked across the downs, and while watching the racing I was accosted by the head master, who asked me if I would like to see the college. The sports were more interesting than refectories and dormitories, but it seemed a little churlish to refuse and we went together. No doubt we visited the kitchens and the chapel, but what I remember was a long hall wainscoted with oak and furnished with oak tables and chairs and benches, In this hall there were some thirty or forty boys, of ages varying from twelve to eighteen, reading the newspapers, reading the reports of the Oscar Wilde trial; each daily paper contained three or four columns of it. I asked the head master if it were right to allow the boys to read such reports and he answered that lately the newspapers contained a great deal of objectionable matter, “But how am I to keep the daily papers out of the college?” Now I am not easily scandalized, but I could not help feeling that a grave scandal was being committed in allowing these boys to read the newspapers during the week of that trial. But if you admit the newspapers one day how can you forbid them on another occasion? And while appreciating the head master’s difficulty I walked out into the open air unable to take any further interest in the sports. Nor has time obliterated anything of the shame I felt that day. I don’t want to make a fuss, I don’t want to pose as a moralist, but I cannot help thinking that while newspapers continue to be published, the Vigilance Society need not trouble lest certain books should fall into the hands of young people. My correspondent forgot that thousands of newspapers are published to-day when he wrote to me saying that my book roused sensuality. I am afraid I omitted the passage in which these words occur, fearing to burden my article with quotation. Here it is:
“The perusal of the episodes (Doris’ Orelay experiences) does certainly not ennoble me, it rouses sensuality, it lowers woman from a friend and helpmeet into a convenience and a minister to pleasure. I am less able and less willing to think ‘high’ after your book; poetry is distasteful, art is narrowed, I look out for the licentious, the suggestive, the low, and the mean; and don’t you? You seem in passage after passage to be world-weary in a sense that no sane man ought to be, sated, disgusted, tired of life — is it not so? You see I speak from what I am sure you will regard as a narrow platform, my ideals are certainly not yours but I am simply and frankly curious as to the ultimates in your book and in yourself.”
Let us suppose now that the Vigilance Association after a sharp crusade has succeeded in redeeming our literature from all reprehensible matter, and flushed with success has attacked the newspapers and obtained an interdiction against the publication of all reports of sexual crimes and misdemeanors. And having extended our imagination so far we may presume as the sequence a world of such highly developed moral susceptibilities that Miss Austen’s novels are beginning to cause uneasiness. Miss Austen’s novels are still permitted, but in current literature nothing is said that would lead the reader to suppose that men and women are not of the same sex. But men and women still continue to meet and hold conversation. Only some advanced members of the Association are in favor of that complete separation of the sexes which obtains in Ireland in the rural districts. In the imaginary time of which I am writing the Association has only obtained complete control over literature. The theaters are either closed or given over to the representation of plays on religious subjects; but private life has not been invaded by the Puritan missionary, and waltz tunes are still heard and figures seen whirling past lighted windows in Grosvenor Square and Fifth Avenue. Mr. Coote has at this time become a moderate, he is no longer among the progressives, and is in danger of losing his post, so I have no difficulty in imagining what he would do in such a dilemma. He would disguise himself as a waiter and at the next meeting of the Society tell how he had until now showed some reluctance to — the sentence would be a difficult one to finish, perhaps Mr. Coote would break off and say — reluctance to put restraint on the action of men and women as long as they kept within their own doors, but after what he has seen, he finds himself obliged to pass from the moderates to the progressives. What has Mr. Coote seen. How would he tell his tale?
He would tell of the length and the breadth of the ball room, of the parquet floor usually covered with an aubusson carpet but the carpet had been lifted and the gilded furniture taken away; the windows and the recesses had been filled with flowers, and to keep these fresh, great blocks of ice had been placed in the niches. He would tell of the lighting arrangements, for are not flowers and lights incentives to immorality? But his descriptions of the roses and the lilies would only lead up to his descriptions of the shameless animality that came up the staircase between twelve and one. A half-naked lady, the hostess, stood at the head of the stairs receiving her guests with smiles and words of welcome. The dresses the women wore resembled the dress worn by the hostess; young and old alike went about their pleasure with necks and bosoms and arms uncovered, and he saw these undressed creatures slip into the arms of men who whirled them round and round; it was but a whirling of silk ankles and a shuffling of glazed shoes; and every now and then the men and women looked into each other’s eyes, and the whole scene was reflected shamelessly in tall mirrors. Notwithstanding the fact that most of Mr. Coote’s time was spent behind the buffet serving out ices, he nevertheless contrived to find a spare moment for investigation. On the pretext of seeking a lady who had dropped a handkerchief he had crossed the ball room and was therefore in a position to give an accurate account of the waltzes he had heard, dulcet, undulating, capricious measures, far more provocative than Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata” which Tolstoy has denounced. The lady that Mr. Coote sought was not in the ball room, and so he had an opportunity of investigating all the retiring rooms, and I need not describe the pensive and shocked faces that listened to his descriptions of the shady nooks. Sometimes it was a screen, sometimes it was a palm that was employed to hide the couple from observation. Mr. Coote at last discovered the owner of the handkerchief in one of those shady nooks, she was there with a gentleman.... Mr. Coote, of course, would refuse to relate what he saw, he would hesitate, but the members of his Association would insist upon knowing everything, and he would at last confess: “Well, the gentleman had kissed the lady on the point of her shoulder.” From this scandalous incident he would pass to tell all that he remembered of the conversation he had heard at the table round which he had worked till nearly four o’clock in the morning handing cutlets, chicken patties, and other delicacies, the names of which he was not acquainted with.
Mr. Coote’s description of what he saw may be ingenuous, but is his description untrue? And when Mr. Coote finished up his speech as I imagine him finishing it, by stating that the dancing, the music, the dresses, the wines, and the meats were arranged and learnedly chosen for one purpose and one only, the stimulation of sexual passion, I cannot imagine anyone accusing him of having spoken an untruth. Mr. Coote added that no one went to the ball for the pleasure of the conversation — he was convinced that old and young derived their pleasure, consciously or unconsciously, from sex.
We will imagine the members of Mr. Coote’s Society being greatly moved by his description, and the sudden determination of everybody that dancing must be stopped. Had not Byron declared the waltz to be “half a whore”? Tolstoy has gone one better and asked people to say if a woman can remain chaste if a low dress is permitted and Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata” is played. Forgetful, of course, that they have prosecuted “Don Juan,” the Society accepts Byron’s dictum as their war cry, and henceforth the business of Mr. Coote is to inquire into what is immoral in dress, in music, in wine, and in food. After a long consultation with experts and expensive law proceedings the Vigilance Association has (in our imagination) succeeded in reforming society as completely as it succeeded in reforming literature; and the months go by, October, November, December, January, February, March ... but one night the wind changes, and coming out of our houses in the morning we
are taken with a sense of delight, a soft south wind is blowing and the lilacs are coming into bloom. My correspondent says that my book rouses sensuality. Perhaps it does, but not nearly so much as a spring day, and no one has yet thought of suppressing or curtailing spring days. Yet how infinitely more pernicious is their influence than any book! What thoughts they put into the hearts of lads and lasses! and perforce even the moralist has to accept the irrepressible feeling of union and growth, the loosening of the earth about the hyacinth shoots and the birds going about their amorous business, and the white clouds floating up gladly through the blue air. Why, then, should he look askance at my book, which is no more than memories of my spring days? If the thing itself cannot be suppressed, why is it worth while to interfere with the recollection? What strange twist in his mind leads him to decry in art what he accepts in nature? A strange twist indeed, one which may be described as a sort of inverted sexuality, finding its pleasure not in the spring day, but in odd corners of ancient literature read only for the sake of passages which he declares to be disgusting, and in spying on modern literature, seeking out passages and expressions which might be denounced in the newspapers or proceeded against in the police court. The psychology of one of these purity mongers is more interesting to the alienist than to a man of letters. Let us take a typical case, that of the late Lord —— . Forty or fifty years ago he was one of the most strenuous advocates of purity in literature, and more shops were raided at his instigation than at any other; yet when he died his library was found to contain the finest collection of impure literature in Europe, and his executors were left wondering whether the prosecutions were prompted by a desire to increase the value of his collection by the destruction of rare books, copies of which were in his possession, or whether he had been moved by conscientious scruples; a man might bamboozle himself in this way: “I am a man of letters and possess these books because they are rare, a curious corner of literature, but it would be highly inexpedient for others to possess them.” His conscience might take a still more curious turn, leading to a dizzier height: “I am a sinner; that, alas! is so; but I can prevent others from sinning likewise.” No doubt the greater part of the literature which the noble lord collected with so much industry was of that frankly indecent kind which is debarred from every library, Continental as well as English and American. There is a literature which does not come within the scope of the present inquiry, and there is what may perhaps be called a border literature, books which are found in public libraries in the German, the French, and the Italian texts. It seems pertinent to ask why a little knowledge of French and German and Italian should procure the right to read Brantôme’s “Femmes Gallantes.” It would be difficult for anybody to say that this book is not frankly obscene, and yet in the French text I suppose every library contains it. Casanova’s “Memoirs” is another book of the same kind; I am not aware of any complete translation of Boccaccio’s tales, but every library possesses an edition in the original Italian. The only reason that can be put forward for the suppression of a book is that it is harmful, and if Brantôme, Casanova, and Boccaccio are harmful in English, they do harm to those who can read them in the original texts. But perhaps I have pointed out enough inconsistencies, and the reader, growing weary, may say: “Are you so young, then, that you don’t know that the world is a mass of contradictions? that life is no more than a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, and signifying nothing?” Shakespeare did no more than to put into eloquent language every man’s belief, that we are all mad on one subject or another. If this be so, every race is mad on some point, for have we not often heard that what is true of the individual is true of the race? Anglo-Saxon madness is book morality. Madness has been defined as a lack of consequence in ideas, and can anything be less consequent than — we need look no further back than Ibsen? The great genius who died in May last was decried by the English people as one of the most immoral of writers; for twenty years at least this opinion obtained in the press, and even among men of letters; suddenly the opinion disappeared, it went out like the flame of a candle; the text is the same, not a comma has been changed, yet now everybody reads it differently. But I must not allow myself to be drawn into speaking of the moral crusades directed against other writers; the task is tempting, and I hope it will be undertaken one of these days. Here, at all events, my concern is with my own writings, as indicated by the title of the article, and it is doubtful if reference to any book would make my point clearer than the tale of what happened in America to my own book, “Esther Waters.” The proof sheets were sent in turn to three leading firms, Scribner, Harper, and Appleton, and all three refused the book on the ground that, while recognizing, etc., they did not think it was exactly the kind of book, etc. Even experts make mistakes; this is not denied; what makes my story so remarkable is that all three firms offered to publish an authorized edition of the book as soon as news of its success in England had been cabled to New York. Mr. Appleton, whom I met in Paris, expressed his regret that expert opinion regarding this book had been at fault. “The book,” he said, “was quite a proper book to publish, a most admirable book, which would do honor to any firm.” I answered: “Very likely all you say, Mr. Appleton, is true, but three weeks ago the experts thought differently. How is it that an immoral book can become moral in three weeks?” My next book, “Evelyn Innes,” disturbed the house of Appleton as much as “Esther Waters,” and a gentleman of leisure connected with the firm was deputed to mark out not the passages to which he himself took exception, but to which, being an expert, he felt sure that others would take exception. The gentleman was kind enough to insist on submitting his marked copy to me, and my wonderment increased as I turned over the pages, and it reached a climax when I happened upon the following passage, which had been marked to be omitted by the American printer. The passage was: “... in her stage life Evelyn was an agent of the sensual passion, not only with her voice, but in her arms, her neck, and hair, and in every expression of her face; and it was the craving music that had thrown her into Ulick’s arms. If it had subjugated her how much more would it subjugate and hold within its persuasion the listener — the listener, who perceived in the music nothing but its sensuality?” “But for what reason,” I asked the expert, “do you suggest the elimination of this passage? This is the Puritan point of view. I thought that your proposal was to draw my attention to the passages to which you thought the Puritan would object.” “Ah,” he said, “that is how I began, but as I got on with the work I thought it better to mark every passage that might give offense.” “And to whom would this passage give offense?” I said. “Certainly not to any religious body?” “No,” he answered, “not to any religious body, but it would give offense to the subscribers to the New Opera House. If parents read that the music of ‘Tristan’ threw Evelyn Innes into the arms of Ulick Dean, they would not care to bring their daughters to hear the opera, and might possibly discontinue their subscriptions.” Everybody will agree that “expert opinion” can hardly go further, yet the folly which this “expert” was betrayed into did not arise from any congenital stupidity; it is the mistake that you and I, every one of us, would make when we seek the truth in our casual experience instead of in our hearts.
One would have thought that my pointing out the absurdity of this expurgation of “Evelyn Innes” to the house of Appleton would have saved it ever afterwards from similar folly, and forgetful that experience is, as Coleridge describes it, only a lamp in a vessel’s stern which throws a light on the waters we have passed through, none on those which lie before us, the publication of “The Lake” was issued by Messrs. Appleton with my consent. The book, as the American public already know, is free from all matter to which the most severe moralist could take exception, yet the American edition did not conform entirely with the English; a dedication written in French was omitted, for what reason I do not know, but it was omitted. The matter may seem a small one, and it may seem invidious to allude to it at all, but on an occasion like t
he present nothing must be passed over. The English proofs of the “Memoirs” were read, and the book was accepted, but when it was set up in America it did not seem quite so moral in the American type as it did in the English and difficulties arose; these have been alluded to in the first paragraph of this article, and perhaps wrongly I agreed that the two stories, “The Lovers of Orelay” and “In the Luxembourg Gardens,” should be left out. On September 28th I wrote, suggesting that “In the Luxembourg Gardens” might be retained, that it was only necessary to drop out a few sentences to make it, as the expert would say, “acceptable to the American public,” but it never occurred to me that “The Lovers of Orelay” could be published in any form except the form in which I wrote it. This morning I received a letter from Mr. Sears.
