1889-11-23 to Clara Lanza

Autograph letter signed, New York Public Library, 630 words

[Edited for paragraph breaks, capitalization, spelling and punctuation.]

8 King’s Bench Walk, Temple

[Saturday, 23 November 1889]

Dear Clara Lanza

Saturday and four o'clock. I put aside my article: The mail must not go without a line for you.

Your letter showed me that we experience in the same way the influences in which life draws and passions us; only I am a Celt and there is a tinge of melancholy in all my gaiety, you are bluffer, you accept life more cordially and I can hear you say with Goethe, ”in my case at least life was a perfect gift.”

We are both however free of all the folly that makes up the sum of the lives of nine tenths of the people we meet. We both enjoy life and our natures are perfectly honest and healthy. And like all honest and healthy livers we have been both profoundly affected by sex.

A woman is to me always the most charming thing in the world. Dear me, a nice woman is fascinating as nothing else. Her dress, her odour, her colour, all the gracious mystery of her presence and her mind thrills one as neither pictures nor literature has ever done.

This confession would shock many: but I am rather proud of my nature in this respect; I am proud of its health for never have I been for a moment tempted into any of these byways of passion of which you speak — women who sigh after women, men who sigh after the innocence of sweet seventeen etc.

Nature has given me health à toutes éprouves and I have never played fast and loose with it; one should treat one's good health honourably, so think I.

You have, I should think, lived your life just as honourably, if not as frankly. I always feel a little contempt for people who do otherwise and I maintain that those whose names live in our memories have lived very much in this fashion.

Who does not love George Sand's heroic human nature and Byron's dissipations, what enchantment they weave about his head. I must say the healthy animal is full of attraction for me.

I quite understand what Mrs. Atherton says about Heron-Allen. He has been teasing me to dine with him to meet Saltus. I didn't go. He has, however, made me promise to listen to some of his new book. It really is a great bore for I fully believe his brains are equivalent to those of a squirrel and no more.

I have read the first part of your story and think it goes very well indeed. I should not be surprised if it came out as well as anything you have done.

Mike Fletcher is not good. I wish I had known that it was not good, I would not have published it. The articles I write attract a great deal of attention and are better than what I used to write in that line five years ago; but my fiction is not up to the mark; my subjects are not good. That is about the truth of my failures. However I have a subject which Harris is enthusiastic about and perhaps I shall write another good book. But I shall not begin it just yet a while.

I am glad indeed to hear that you want to see me. But I am afraid I know you will be disappointed. I am very fearful of our first interview. I think of it as a young girl thinks of la premiere nuit de noce. It will destroy this present so full of illusion and charm and it will give me what?

Most truly yours

George Moore