1889-09 to William Tighe Hopkins

Autograph letter signed, St. John’s Seminary, 460 words

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

8 Kings Bench Walk, Temple.

[September 1889]

Dear Hopkins

With the exception of the political leader which it seems clearly desirable to leave unsigned, I think there is little doubt that every first rate article ought to bear the writer’s name. If the article is first rate the reader wants to know who wrote it. It were vain to deny that this is so: we want to know the maker and the possessor of all first rate things — essays, books pictures, statues, race horses, yachts etc. To withhold the name of the writer of a first rate article is therefore to withhold from the public something that the public wishes to know, and to do this is clearly bad journalism.

At the same time it seems to me to be distinctly advantageous to journalists that the greater part of their work should be anonymous, for were a journalist to sign every scrap of stuff he wrote, his name would become common and would lose its weight when it came at the close of an excellent piece of writing. Journalists should remember that it is to their advantage to abstain from signing anything that is not first class. If the article is not in itself individual it seems to [me] useless to attempt to individualise it by affixing the writer’s name.

But it is of course of great advantage to the newspaper if the writer’s name is known to the public But he should sign his article; if it is a good article it becomes doubly interesting; if it is a bad article the name will relieve the newspaper of a measure of responsibility and the name will secure a number of readers, for the public is a docile brute that will walk where it has walked before however arduous the way may have become.

To conclude, the French press seem to me to publish too many signed articles, the English press not enough. The Pall Mall was the first to make a speciality of signed articles and I remember the interest with which I used to turn to the second article which some years ago was always written by a well known writer.

Very truly yours

George Moore.

PS Come and see me when you come up to town. I made Runciman’s acquaintance and am delighted with him. He is a real man.

Come to tea some afternoon.        I want to see you badly. My book will be published in a fortnight. I am hard at my book on servants. I spend my afternoons with a Hampstead cook and my evenings with a footman. I find it very hard.