by George Moore
I never said I was. If the plays were going to be acted in London it would be a different thing, but to ally myself to such folly as the bringing of literature to Ireland! Les Cloches de Corneville is what they want over there. And next morning in the hansom I continued to poke Edward up with the sharpest phrases I could find, and to ask myself why I had yielded to his solicitations. For his sake, or for the sake of his play — which? He is an amateur; that is to say, a man of many interests, one of which is literature. Edward is interested in his soul, deeply interested; he is interested in Palestrina and in his property in Galway, and the sartorial reformation of the clergy. He would like to see the clergy in cassocks. Then there are his political interests. He wants Home Rule, and when he is thinking of none of these things he writes plays.
But I am always ready to stretch out a hand to save a work of art, however little merit it may have, if it only have a little. Yeats is like me in this. Other men write for money, or for fame, or to kill time, but we are completely disinterested. We are moved by the love of the work itself, and therefore can make sacrifices for other men’s work. Yeats is certainly like that, and for disinterestedness in art I’m sure he would give me a good character. My reverie was interrupted by Edward crying: There’s Yeats, and I saw the long black cloak with the manuscript sticking out of the pocket, and the rooklike gait, and a lady in a green cloak. My stick went up, the cab stopped, and as we entered the theatre Edward told me that Yeats and the lady had been in and out of the bun-shop ever since rehearsals began.
I knew it, I knew it; I can see it all — talking continually of the speaking of verse.
Two or three people on a stage, repeating as much as they can remember of something they have been trying to learn by heart, and a man with a script in his hand watching and interrupting them with some phrase like: I think, old man, the line you’ve just spoken should get you across; whoever is in the habit of conducting rehearsals can tell at the first glance if things are going well or badly, and, above all, if the stage-manager knows his business. A play is like music; it has to go to a beat; and it did not take me long to see that The Heather Field was not going to a bad or a good beat; it was just going to no beat at all, and I said to Edward: Which is your stage-manager? The one reading from the script? But he isn’t rehearsing the play; he’s prompting, that’s all.
Edward begged me to be patient, but in a very few minutes it was clear to me that patience meant wasting time.
We shall have to make some alteration in the cast. Mr —— , I don’t think the part of Carden Tyrrell altogether suits you; the second part, Barry Ussher — The gentleman who was playing Barry Ussher objected. You’ll play, I said, perhaps, one of the doctors in the second act. Now, Edward, who is your leading lady? Edward whispered: The fair-haired lady — But she looks as if she had come from the halls. So she has. She’s been doing a turn. And you expect a music-hall artist to play Mrs Tyrrell! Edward besought me to try her.
Will you, Miss —— , if you please, read your part from your first entrance. With some reluctance the lady rose out of her seat, and went upon the stage. She did not think the part suited her, and it was with evident relief that she agreed to give it up and accept two pounds for her trouble. Then I entered into discussion with the gentleman who had been told that he was not to play Barry Ussher. Now, sir, if you’ll read me the part of one of the doctors from the first entrance. A few words from him on the stage convinced me that, like the fair-haired lady, he would be of no use; but when he was told so he caught up a chair, threw it at me, and swore and damned the whole company and all the plays. An irate little actor interposed, saying that Mr —— should try to remember that he was in the presence of ladies. Edward was appealed to, but he said the matter was entirely out of his hands, and in the course of the next half-hour three or four more members of the company received small doles from Edward, and went their several ways.
We’ve got through a very nice rehearsal, I whispered, taking Edward’s arm — very satisfactory indeed, dear Edward. For it was just as well to show a bold front, although, indeed, I was a little frightened. The responsibility of collecting an efficient company was now my share of the Irish Literary Theatre, and if I failed and the plays did not go to Dublin.... Even so, it were better that the project should fall through than that the plays should be distributed among such odds and oddments. One can go out hunting, I said to Edward, on bad horses, but one can’t go out hunting on goats. And I impressed this point of view upon Yeats too, begging of him to try to find a small part among the peasants in his play for the gentleman who had thrown the chair at me; he had since apologised, and seemed so distressed at his own bad conduct that I thought I must do something for him. A few words to speak, that is all I ask, Yeats. Edward and I are going to the Strand to find a Carden Tyrrell and a Mrs Tyrrell. And we’re going to the bun-shop, where we have an appointment with Miss Vernon’s niece. Her speaking of verse — Don’t trouble; I’ll bring you back a Countess Cathleen, my good friend. Edward sat back in the hansom, too terrified for speech, and as we went along I explained to him the disaster that had been averted. At last we came to the Green Room Club, and opposite two friends of mine were living. The wife is just the woman to play Mrs Tyrrell. She wouldn’t do the Countess Cathleen badly, either. Be that as it may, she’ll have to play it. And we went up the stairs praying that we might find her at home; she was, and after a little solicitation agreed to come with us.
Now, Edward, do you follow in another cab. I’ll jump into this one with Miss —— , and will tell her about the Irish Literary Theatre, and that we want her to play leading parts in Dublin, in two of the most beautiful plays of modern times. Mrs Tyrrell and the Countess Cathleen whiled the miles away. There’s Yeats — and putting up my stick I stopped the cab — the man in the long black cloak like a Bible reader, coming out of the bun-shop. With the woman in the long green cloak followed by a pretty girl? the new Countess Cathleen asked. Deeply engaged, I said, in conversation.
It was difficult to attract his attention, and his emotions were so violent that he could hardly collect himself sufficiently to bow to the new Countess Cathleen, and for the first time this master of words could not find words to tell us of the joy he had experienced at hearing his verses properly spoken. Miss Vernon’s niece had recited the monologue in the second act —
I’m glad, Yeats, very glad; and now you’ll have the pleasure of hearing somebody else recite the monologue. But won’t you hear —
The monologue isn’t the part. My dear young lady, I said, turning to a girl about sixteen, we’ve reserved one of the fairies for you, and you’ll look enchanting in a blue veil. The Countess Cathleen requires an experienced actress. Now, Miss —— , you who can speak verse better than any living actress, will you read us the monologue, for your pleasure and for ours? I have told Mr Yeats about you, and ... now, will you be so kind?
The experienced actress went on the stage, and while she recited my mind turned over all the possible Carden Tyrrells in the Green Room Club, but Yeats had been listening, and as soon as I had congratulated her he began to talk to her about his method. My anger was checked by the thought that the quickest way, and perhaps the only way, to rid ourselves of Yeats would be to ask him to go on the stage and read his verses to us. There was no choice for him but to comply, and when he left the stage I took him by the arm, saying: One can hear that kind of thing, my dear fellow, on Sunday, in any Methodist chapel. Yeats’s face betrayed his disappointment, but there is a fund of good sense in him which can be relied upon, and he had already begun to understand that, however good his ideas might be in themselves, he had not had enough experience to carry them out, and that there was no time to experiment. What I would do with his play would not be what he wanted, but I should realise something.
Now, Edward, I’ll say goodbye; I must get back to the Green Room Club. I may find your husband there, Miss —— , playing cards; if I do I shall try to persuade him to undertake the stage-management.
I’ll write and let you know about the next rehearsal; Notting Hill is too far away. We must find some place in the Strand, don’t you think so, Miss —— ?
Miss —— agreed with me that Notting Hill was too far for her to go to rehearsals, and as I handed her out of the cab, she pointed with her parasol across the street, and looking along it, I spied a man in a velvet coat going into the Green Room Club. She said he might play Carden Tyrrell. A friend introduced us; I gave him the part to read, and he came to rehearsal next day enthusiastic. A boy presented himself — and an excellent boy-actor he showed himself to be, giving a good reading of his part, and a few days after Miss — — ‘s husband relieved me of the stage-management, and seeing that things were going well, I bade everybody goodbye.
I’m going back to my writing, but will give you a look in some time next week, towards the end of the week, for my publishers are pressing me to finish some proofs.
The proofs were those of Esther Waters, not the proofs of the original edition (they had been corrected in the Temple), but the proofs of a cheap edition. I had been tempted by the opportunity a new type-setting gave me of revising my text, and had begun, amid many misgivings, to read a book which I had written, but never read. One reads when the passion of composition is over, and on the proofs of the original edition one correction alone amounted to the striking out of some twenty or thirty pages, and the writing in of as many more new pages, and there were many others nearly as important, for proofs always inspire me, and the enchanted period lasts until the bound copy arrives. Esther Waters was no exception; and turning the pages, seeing all my dreams frozen into the little space of print, I had thrown the book aside and had sat like one overcome until the solitude of King’s Bench Walk became unendurable, and forced me to seek distraction in St James’s Theatre, for I did not think that any one had yet read the book, and was genuinely surprised when an acquaintance stopped me in the lobby and began to thank me for the pleasure my story had given him. But I could not believe that he was not mocking me, and escaped from him, feeling more miserable than before. A little farther on another acquaintance stopped me to ask if I had written the book with the intention of showing up the evils of betting, and his question was understood as an ironical insinuation that the existence of my book might be excused on account of the moral purpose on the part of the author. Or was my intention merely to exhibit? His second question struck me as intelligent, but strange as coming from him. His writings have since gained some notoriety, but not because he has ever confined himself to the mere exhibition of a subject.
The old saw that everything is paid for came into my mind. I was paying for the exaltation I had experienced when rewriting my proofs, and when I returned to the Temple I had fallen into an armchair, without sufficient energy to take off my clothes and turn into bed, wondering at my folly in having supposed that there could have been anything worth reading in Esther Waters. How could there be, since it was I who wrote it? I repeated to myself over and over again.
For it is difficult for me to believe any good of myself. Within the oftentimes bombastic and truculent appearance that I present to the world, trembles a heart shy as a wren in the hedgerow or a mouse along the wainscoting. And the question has always interested me, whether I brought this lack of belief in myself into the world with me, or whether is was a gift from Nature, or whether I was trained into it by my parents at so early an age that it became part of myself. I lean to the theory of acquisition rather than to that of inheritance, for it seems to me that I can trace my inveterate distrust of myself back to the years when my father and mother used to tell me that I would certainly marry an old woman, Honor King, who used to come to the door begging. This joke did not wear out; it lasted through my childhood; and I remember still how I used to dread her appearance, or her name, for either was sufficient to incite somebody to remind me of the nuptials that awaited me in a few years. I understood very well that the joke rested on the assumption that I was such an ugly little boy that nobody else would marry me.
I do not doubt that my parents loved their little boy, but their love did not prevent them laughing at him and persuading him that he was inherently absurd; and it is not wise to do this, for as soon as the child ceases to take himself seriously he begins to suspect that he is inferior, and I had begun to doubt if I would ever come to much, even before I failed to read at the age of seven, without hesitating, a page of English written with the long ff’s, whereas my father could remember reading the Times aloud at breakfast when he was three. I could see that he thought me a stupid little boy, and was ashamed of me, and as the years went by many things occurred to confirm him in his opinion. The reports that were sent home from school incited him to undertake to teach me when I came back for the holidays, but the more I was taught the stupider I became, and, perhaps, the more unwilling to learn. My father was trying to influence me directly, and it is certain that direct influence counts for nothing. We are moulded, but the influences that mould us are indirect, and are known to nobody but ourselves. We never speak of them, and are almost ashamed even to think of them, so trivial do they seem. It requires some little courage to tell that my early distaste for literature was occasioned by my father coming into the billiard-room where I was playing and insisting on my reading Burke’s French Revolution; nor does it sound very serious to say that a meeting with a cousin of mine who used to paint sign-board lions and tigers awakened a love of painting in me that has lasted all my life. He sent me to Paris to learn painting; I have told in My Confessions how I found myself obliged to give up painting, having no natural aptitude for it; but I do not know if I tell in that book, or lay sufficient stress on the fact that the agony of mind caused by my failure was enhanced by remembrances of the opinion that my father formed of me and my inability to learn at school. I think I am right in saying that I tell in My Confessions of terrible insomnias and of a demon who whispered in my ear that it would be no use my turning to literature; my failure would be as great there as it had been in painting.
The slight success that has attended my writings did not surprise my relations as much as it surprised me, and what seems curious is that, if the success had been twice what it was, it would not have restored the confidence in myself that I lost in childhood. I am always a novice, publishing his first book, wondering if it is the worst thing ever written; and I am as timid in life as in literature. It is always difficult for me to believe that my friends are glad to see me. I am never quite sure that I am not a bore — an unpleasant belief, no doubt, but a beneficial one, for it saves me from many blunders, and I owe to it many pleasant surprises: that day at Steer’s, when Tonks interrupted me in one of my usual disquisitions on art with — Isn’t it nice to have him among us again criticising our paintings? I had come back from Ireland after an absence of two years, and I shall never forget the delicious emotion that his words caused me. I never suspected my friends would miss me, or that it would mean much to them to have me back again. I was overwhelmed and were I Rousseau, my pages would be filled with instances of my inherent modesty of character, but my way is not Rousseau’s. Out of this one instance the reader should be able, if he be intelligent, to imagine for himself the hundred other exquisite moments that I owe to my inveterate belief in my own inferiority. True that it has caused me to lose many pleasant hours, as when I imagined that some very dear friends of mine were bored by my society, and did not wish to see me in their house again. Mary Robinson did not say a word to suggest any such thing, only there are times when the belief intensifies in me that nobody does, or could, care for me; and I did not go to see her for a long while, and would never have gone if I had not met her at her railway-station, and if she had not asked me if I were on my way to her, and on my answering that I wasn’t, had not cheerfully replied that I ought to be, it being nearly two years since she had seen me. But you don’t want to see me? The last time, just as I was leaving — She looked at me and I tried to explain, but there was nothing to explain, and I walked by
her side thinking of the many delightful visits that my imagination had caused me to lose.
No doubt something of the same kind has happened to everybody, but not so often as it happens to me — I am sure of that, and I am quite sure nobody believes he is in the wrong so easily as I do, or is tempted so irresistibly to believe the fault is his if anything goes wrong with his work. If an editor were to return an article to me tomorrow, it would never occur to me to suppose he returned it for any other reason that its worthlessness, and those who think badly of my writings are always looked upon as very fine judges, while admirers are regarded with suspicion. Symons used to say that he could not understand such a lack of belief side by side with unflagging perseverance, and he often told me that when a manuscript was returned to him, he never doubted the editor to be a fool.... The Confessions are coming back to me. Rousseau realised in age that in youth Rousseau was a shy, silly lad, with no indication, apparently, of the genius that awaited him in middle life, always blundering, and never with the right word on his lips. But I do not think Rousseau was obsessed by a haunting sense of his own inferiority — not, at any rate, as much as I am — and I am not sure that he realised sufficiently that the braggart wins but foolish women and the vain man has few sincere friends. If it had not been for my unchanging belief in my own unworthiness, I might have easily believed in myself to the extent that my contemporaries believe in themselves, and there is little doubt that many of them believe themselves to be men and women of genius; and I am sure it were better, on the whole, to leave St James’s Theatre heart-broken than to leave it puffed up, thinking oneself a great man of letters, representing English literature. Even from the point of view of personal pleasure, it were better that I should learn gradually that Esther Waters was not such a bad book as I had imagined it to be when the first copy came to me. It were enough that my friends and the Press should succeed at length in hammering this truth into me; it were too absurd that I should continue to think it worthless; an artist should know his work to have been well done, and it is necessary that it should meet with sufficient appreciation, though, indeed, it is open to doubt if the vain fumes that arise from the newspapers when a new masterpiece is published be of any good to anybody.
