Portrait of Mr. George Moore

IT seems that we can never weary of talking about Mr. George

Moore. His art is an inexhaustible theme for speculation, for the more one ponders it, and pries into it, the more its quietness responds. It is like morning and evening light, which though dusk and somewhat mournful, the one enwombs and the other entombs all the heat, lust, heartiness and light of noon. These

forces are merely hushed there, withdrawn and curtained so that they may be more calmlyand leisurely seen, as one looks at the sun through a smoked glass. Such is the art of this prose-master and prince Of story-tellers. So perfectly has he mastered it that he has been able to apply it even to the most fierce and annihilating spiritual experience in the history of mankind—Christianity, In The Brook Kerith he has shifted the direction of this gigantic religious force from the moral to the aesthetic plane, an achievement which one would believe to be impossible. At present—so great is mortal resentment against the idiosyn- crasies of his personality—the critics refuse to recognize the signficance of what he has done, and the possibilities of its effect on the future of our accepted religious belief. He

knows it himself, however, for I think that all his life subse- quent to the writing of that book has been shadowed by a certain awe for his accomplishment. He refers to it so often. It haunts him. And indeed it is a terrible thing to deal with a mystery so surely as he has, and to convert it into an art- form. There is danger of falling into the only blasphemy which concerns the artist ; that of inadequacy, of leaving his subject only partially exploited. The fear disturbs Mr. Moore perhaps. He knows he has done a great thing ; but even so, he may ask himself, has something escaped, something which,, by its extruded glory and neglected beauty, will finally damn him both aS man and artist ? Other and more religiously orthodox minds will condemn him ; but their judgment comes not so much from their religious strength as from the puerility of their artistic vision, and is therefore partial and worthless.

I don't believe there is an answer yet. Time will judge, as it has judged in the case of Cervantes' great tale, which is another example of the moral reality translated into the aesthetic. Cervantes did not stake so much, and therefore his challenge was less. As Miss Mitchell says in her brilliant, Dublinish essay on the master and his work : " yet beautiful as much of the book is, is not Mr. Moore in writing it like unto those rationalising writers who broke up the mould of the old pagan beliefs of Greece and.Rome, making indeed a literature but defrauding the world of deity ? He puts upon the Godhead feet of clay, successor to those who in turn have resolved into a philo- oophie rationalism every divine tale that blessed humanity. The Brook Iferich is an epilogue to a beautiful story written by a man tired of the theme, yet who cannot invent anything more beautiful than the story he wrecks. He has no faith in any new vision, nothing wherewith to build up a new spiritual romance to make the world breathless with fresh beauty."

That quotation shows the quality of thiS woman giving her estimate Of the author who, amongst English writers, most subtly and sympathetically; by a sort of refinement of sen- sualism, best portrays the souls and bodies of women. She appears to resent, on behalf of her sex, that he does not portray their intellect—a factor with which women are most jealously concerned nowadays. In this deficiency of interest, or faith, or vision, Mr. Moore is truly-Byronic ! It is strange, because

amongst the Dublin set, he must have known many brilliant women,' such as Miss Mitchell, who as dialecticians held their

own with him. Like most people who approach, or reproach, the opposite sex through animal magnetism, he may be blinded bSr a physical fantasy. Few people escape this danger ; Swift, Shaw, Milton ; they all distort women either by dis- paragement or worship. Shakespeare knew women ; and perhaps that malicious little creature, Jane Austen, knew men.

We cannot discover why.

Miss Mitchell knows how to scratch, and can take a feline revenge on Mr. Moore. She calls him an " eminent fare- weRise" ; and speaking of his father, she says that " G. H. Moore possessed a fine honesty and frankness which he be- queathed to his sons—the honesty to Maurice, the frankness to George."

Here is her portrait of his outward appearance :-

"George Moore seemed to me then to be a man of middle height with an egg-shaped face and head, light yellow hair in perpetual revolt against the brush, a stout nose with thick nostrils, grey-green eyes, remarkable eyes, a mouth inclined to pettishness, lips thick in the middle as if a bee had stung them."

But later on she adds :-

" let someone begin to discuss an idea and in a moment the contours change, the fat shapelessness falls away, the jaw lengthens, the bones become visible, the eyes darken, the brow straightens, a hawklike keenness is in the look. It is the face of the thinker, the man who handles ideas like a master."

That is a valuable picture, and will increase in value with the passage of time.

I have not said anything about this revised version of the Conversations in Ebury Street, into which is now introduced a

woman's voice, that of a Mrs. Harley-Caton. But it does not matter, for they speak for themselves. They show us again how the wife of Mr. Moore's bosom is—Writing ; but that,

lurking in the background, is another and earlier love, Painting, who has so often relieved his spirit when the drudgery of the domestic regime has become too tedious. We are reminded of his early days as an art critic, when he worshipped at the shrine of Manet, and provoked his group of London friends— Wilson Steer, Sickert, Tonks, Brown and MacColl—to exert themselves as theorists as well as practitioners of their art. We read again his malicious pen-portraits of them, and wonder how it is that a man can so make an art of perversity and indiscretion that his victims have to forgive him. At least, we hope they do.

Then there is the famous ventriloquial trio for one voice disguised as three—Moore, John Freeman, and Walter De La Mare—on the literary crimes of Thomas Hardy. Hardy's gothic style, a curious compound of drawing-office preciseness and the wild, loose passion of the melancholy poetic temper of the English countryside, rouses all the Irish-Parisian fury of Mr. Moore. We could talk for hours on this incompatibility.

One beautiful passage in Mr. Moore's fugal prose refers to the worst tragedy that can befall a writer :—

" Art is not with us always ; we know not whence it comes, nor whither it goes. The Muse was with us when we were poor and unhappy, and when we were rich she deserted us. Nor is the Muse faithful to young men ; she visits them and leaves' them helpless before half their lives have worn away."

Death is indeed a welcome friend then. However, that is a disaster which has not overtaken Mr. Moore.

RICHARD CHURCH.