The Happy Author

The Observer, 25 January 1920, page 13, 2,397 words

[This transcript is based on a muddy facsimile provided by the Newspapers.com; I have noted illegible words to be transcribed later from physical media.]

Mr. George Moore Interviews Himself.

Two Types of Novelist.

“Best Seller” Recipes.

The Fallacy of Cheap Literature.

(From a Correspondent.)^[1]

A maid in black and white moved silently to announce me. Off the entrance hall a door opened into a chastely furnished living room. Mr. Moore, a figure in cool colours, stood against a background of a fire kept neat behind polished brass fender, his white hair and fresh-coloured face in harmonious contrast against a bronze figure and two magenta gold-filleted vases on the mantel. His yellowish moustaches, which droop a little, and the bright light in his pale blue eyes are younger than the man. Otherwise he looks beyond middle age, through apparently taking his years with self-satisfaction.

From the point of view of work on my part he was an interview de luxe. Characteristically Mr. Moore had chosen his own subject and asked his own questions. He had his stenographer there to take down in shorthand everything he said; and told me he would have the typewritten “interview” sent to me. He dictated slowly, questions and answers, feeling for his phrases and stopping to repeat fortunate [illegible]. There were a number — “Palestinian folk-lore,” in referring to the popular misconceptions of the life of Christ as compared with his own “The Brook Kerith”; a capital parody of the opening of a society novel; a daring effective characterisation for the popular sex-novel; luminous phrases; [illegible] touches. And about and above it all there was the play of lambent [illegible].

***

It was entirely a solo performance. The stenographer had her silent part in it; the interviewer had none. Once in a pause I asked a question — with disastrous results. Mr. Moore’s mind became caught in an eddy and circled several times before it was able to flow on again. When he resumed, however, he seemed himself again — a most interesting soloist. I was surprised, therefore, when at the end of the interview he turned to his secretary.

“I wasn’t very good to-day, was I?” he asked.

“No, Mr. Moore,” she said frankly. “Not so very good.”

I hastened to express my own enjoyment at the excellence of his talk and to assume whatever blame there was. But he kindly commended me and laid it all to himself. Which should have prepared me — but did not — for the letter which came next day with what I expected to be the “interview” I had witnessed: —

“The dictation I did on Saturday in your presence,” it read, “did not turn out well, and I dictated another this morning, which I enclose, and I hope that it will be printed practically as it stands. You will notice that I have left out some things that [illegible] you, but I left them out for the sake of unity; I left out the piece about ‘The Brook Kerith’ for that reason….”

***

In the new version I recognized neither the “interviewer” nor the man I had listened to. But the result is interesting as Mr. Moore’s own interview with himself, carried out somewhat in the manner in which were composed the conversations with Edmund Gosse that make up Mr. Moore’s latest book “Avowals.” The typewritten version of the “interview” underlined by Mr. Moore’s [sic] himself was as follows: —

Interviewer: “I think, Mr. George Moore, that you will be glad to hear that wherever English literature is talked about in America your name is one of the three or four we usually speak of — “

Mr. Moore: “You need not mention the names that are on the tip of your tongue, for they would lead us into by-paths away from the subject. You have come to speak about literature, I understand?”

Interviewer: “Yes, certainly, I have, for the American public would be interested to hear from you why do you not intend to offer your books to the general public and have made arrangements — “

Mr. Moore: “That will exclude all from my circle of readers who regard literature as a mere abstraction like cinema and cycling. Have you seen any of my private publications?”

Interviewer: “Yes; they are most beautifully printed; and the paper is quite extraordinary in texture; real English hand-made rag paper. But the price, two guineas!^[2] And a thing that I would like to ask you is if you think that a limited edition of a thousand copies is quite fair to the general public? There are many who would like to read you but cannot afford to pay two guineas for a book. I put it to you, is it quite fair, Mr. George Moore?”

***

Mr. Moore: “I am not aware that I am under any obligation to the general public in England or America to supply cheap literature. To put it simply, the general public has never done anything for me, and I should like to hear from you why I should spoil my literature by addressing myself to the general public?”

Interviewer: “You need not spoil your literature by publishing your works at a price that workaday people can afford to pay.”

Mr. Moore: “There I join issue with you.”

Interviewer: “Do you make more money by limiting your circulation?”

Mr. Moore: “No; I do not make more money. But to make money has never prompted me to write a book. I have but three reasons, three excellent reasons, for wishing to limit the circulation of my books. But in setting forth three reasons I have to speak at some length….

“The writers of prose narrative are divided into two classes. The first class is by far the most numerous, and the procedure of all belonging to this class is to consider before writing a book if the subject they have in mind is likely to attract a hundred thousand buyers; and when the novelist is satisfied that he is on the trail of a popular subject he writes it. He is determined to omit everything that will limit the sale and to include everything that will increase it. If there is a war going on he writes about patriotism, heroism, and the sacrifice of self. I have not read any of the war novels, but there can be little doubt that they are [illegible] in this way: heroism abroad and anxiety at home. If there is no war, the novelist is divided between the evil of the white slave traffic and the evil of inadequate cleanliness in the industry of pork-packing. The suicide of a packer into the boiling liquid and his subsequent conversion into sausages is a subject that will interest millions. And if there be no white slave traffic in the public mind and no pork-packing scandal to be utilised, well, then the novel begins:

Lady Cecilia and her aunt, the Duchess of Colchurch, were sitting in one of the large windows in Carlton House-terrace taking the evening air. Lady Cecilia was finishing an embroidered cushion, and both were waiting for the Prime Minister

 “It seems to me,” Mr. Moore continued, that the popular novelist with his eye and heart on the best seller of the season cannot do else than to consider the public taste in its many and various interests. Detective novels play a large part in the literary industry. And the result of the commercialisation of prose narrative is that the pubic may be looked upon as the author of nearly all the novels published in England, the novelist being a mere go-between, a sort of general secretary to the public, who writes the jargon the public speaks and about the subjects in the public mind.

“I stop without having said all, and will turn to another type of novelist — to him who would relate the immortal instincts rather than the mere passing spectacle of contemporary life. The man who is interested in mankind rather than with prejudices and conventions finds himself beset with all kinds of enemies. When he answers that he does not find himself under any obligation to spend his life trying to live up to public taste, and that he is not a clown, nor a low comedian, trapezist, or trick cyclist, the librarians begin to look upon him as a dangerous man and refuse to circulate his books on the ground of morality.”

Interviewer: “But if no sex problem is introduced?”

Mr. Moore: “The general public cannot forgive a man for the vice of not wishing to make money. Not to wish to make money is a sort of challenge. Society is impugned. The home and the chapel have their roots in money and cry aloud that this man is not like us. The general public cannot express itself clearly, but that is how it thinks, or rather that is how it feels; for the general public does not think; it feels, however.

***

Interviewer: “I think, Mr. George Moore, that you are rather hard on the general public, and if I may venture an opinion, I would say that it is not as gross as you seem to think it is. I can assure you that — “

Mr. Moore: “When you are as old as I am, sir, and have written some beautiful books and have heard your books argued about before a court magistrate and in the higher courts — “

Interviewer: “Forgive me for interrupting you, sir, but the applicant in the case of ‘The Brook Kerith’ was invited to go about his business. And the libel suit brought against you for the use of the name Lewis Seymour was dismissed by the jury.”

Mr. Moore: “Quite true, but the desire to insult literature was equally apparent in both cases.”

Interviewer: “But do you think that people would spend their money merely for the somewhat abstract pleasure of insulting literature?”

Mr. Moore: “There was nothing abstract in these prosecutions. But we will leave the unsavoury for time to deodorise. And if I mention these cases it is only to make plain to you my reasons for withdrawing from the public arcade of letters. The prosecutions began with my first book, ‘Flowers of Passion,’ published something like forty years ago, and have never ceased. Even the publication of ‘Esther Waters’ did not bring them to a close — a book which is now looked upon as a beautiful development of the beatitudes. It was refused by three eminent publishers: Appleton, Harper, and Scribners. And Mr. Smith’s librarian, Mr. Faux, declined to admit it into his library. ‘A Mummer’s Wife’ is still forbidden, not because anyone thinks that it is an immoral book, but for the reason that it was refused by the libraries five years ago, and the librarians think that to continue to walk persistently in the wrong is equivalent to walking in the right road. Now, sir, that you have heard in partial outline some details of my literary journey, do you not think that I did well to take my leave of the general public with its librarians and law courts, police and high courts?”

***

Interviewer: “You see, sir, I am a journalist, and I am sure that no editor would like to call the taste of the public into question. Our papers are not sold at two guineas net.”

Mr. Moore: “An answer so sensible that it may be counted as witty. I was going to say that I belong to the very small class that wishes to write a personal literature, and in the present democratic circumstances a personal literature is not possible in prose narrative. Prose narrative has fallen into the hands of the general public and certain librarians who think they represent the public, but who are inferior to it. There is always somebody inferior to the general public, incredible though it may seem.”

Interviewer: “And you think that man is the librarian?”

Mr. Moore: “Yes, if the library is a circulating one, certainly. And to limit my editions to a thousand copies each and to fix the prices at two guineas is to escape from the dungeon in which democracy and its librarians have imprisoned literature. I have purchased my freedom and am now free to follow the current of my own literary taste — “

Interviewer: “But you have always done that.”

Mr. Moore: “True, I have made no concessions, not even when times were hardest. But I was always fighting a battle. And after thirty years one wearies even of fighting. And now the battle is over, and in perfect calm and serenity of mind I am writing with that freedom which none has enjoyed since Elizabethan times. No publisher worries me. The books are sold before they are written. No newspaper writings tease me with superficial opinions. Briefly, I am writing as Homer, Aristophanes, Catullus, and Apuleius wrote. And if the work I am engaged upon, ‘Heloise and Abelard’ — in which not only the love-story, but the life of the middle ages is related — falls short of my hopes and those of my small circle of readers, still, my book will remain for some little while as an exhortation to others to walk in the thorny  rather than the primrose path. ‘Heloise and Abelard’ will remain, after the interest in the story has subsided, as an example of beautiful printing, an art once practised with genius, but which lately has fallen under the rule of democracy, which requires cheap books. You tell me, sir, that you have seen my “Avowals.” I should like to hear you say that you have not met with any other book in modern times that compares with it.”

Interviewer: “I think that both in America and in England your books have been beautifully printed — but the prices!”

Mr. Moore: “My books are in one sense the only cheap books. The six-shilling book is such an ugly thing that it is thrown away. My book is kept, if not for the sake of its contents, at least for the sake of the paper and printing, and if the possessor wishes to make any money he can always do so, for in six months the book can be sold for  twice as much as the subscriber paid for it. So you can see that I am in the last analysis a public benefactor.”