Aet. 45, to a man of letters. 8 July 1887 [a Thursday] was inscribed on the manuscript by an unknown hand.
The “great ass” in this letter was the French novelist Paul Bourget, whose Les Voyageuses (cameo portraits of women) finished serial publication in Cosmopolis magazine in July 1897. The magazine was evidently named after Bourget’s novel Cosmopolis (1892).
George Moore’s view of Bourget as “a shit” was reported by Vincent O’Sullivan in Opinions (1959), page 22. George left his opinion of Frank Dicksee in “Money and Art,” the Speaker (4 July 1891).
Arthur Quiller-Couch, in a Pall Mall Magazine causerie, asked readers to guess who, in his opinion, was the best prose writer of the preceding decade. He named Andrew Lang in the July issue (no one guessed George Moore).
L.T. Meade’s article “A School of Fiction” appeared in the New Century Review (March 1897, followed by letters to the editor in May and June. In line with Walter Besant, Meade proposed a new school for training aspiring novelists. Q commented on the proposal in the Pall Mall Magazine (August 1897).
In “The Organization of Art,” the Speaker (17 September 1892), George had refuted Besant’s views of creative writing instruction. He believed that literature like art must be allowed to drift, “titleless, R.A.-less, out into the street and field, where under the light of original stars, the impassioned vagrant might dream once more, and for the mere sake of his dreams.”
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