The Pessimism of George Moore

Liverpool Post and Mercury, 3 April 1928, page 6, 871 words

Nothing Good in Art or Literature.

Mr. George Moore, the veteran author, was up yesterday for the first time in two months after his long illness, and when a Press representative visited him in a nursing home in London he seemed almost as pleased over that fact as he was over the production of his play, “The Making of An Immortal” at the Arts Theatre Club, London, on Sunday night.

After discussing the reception of the play, and the way in which it came to be produced, he gave his impression of modern literature, art, and women. He came to England forty years ago “like a troubadour to revolutionise English literature,” as he expressed it.

“I absolutely refuse to speak about my living contemporaries,” he said, “because there is not one worth talking about. As regards those who have died recently, Thomas Hardy could not write two lines of correct English together, and instead of being considered a master of English country life should have been considered more like a country schoolmaster. Besides, as is evident in “Tess,” he had no insight into human nature.

“Then, to take another example, Conrad’s works will be dead in a year. Anyone could write the sort of stuff he wrote about barges floating about in green-blue hazes. In my opinion this generation is the most sterile of any there has been in the way of literature. There is not one outstanding genius.

***

“It is much the same with music and art — just a mere spitting at the stars, and when women try to spit too, and do what men do, the position is worse than ever. It is as ridiculous for women to think that they can compete with men as it is to suppose that with a wave of a stick it is possible to turn a white rose bush into a red one.

“Women were far better off when they sat up in a tower embroidering beautiful tapestries rather than patting balls over a net from one year’s end to another. There was something lasting in that tapestry, but what is coming of all this ball patting? Nothing.”

He blamed education, of which, he said, there was far too much, particularly for women who ought to work with their hands rather than their brains.

“Then again, I hate all this Victorian convention which still lingers,” he went on. “What have girls got pretty faces and arms for if they are not to be kissed, and what are men for if they are not to kiss them? All the same, I confess that I would rather make love to a girl who wore stays than one who doesn’t. They give her a prettier shape, and I love the little laced-in waists rather than the hulking forms of the modern girls, who even ape the man so far as to ride horseback astride.

“But in spite of all this I love women, and I cannot think how I should have got through life without them. They have been my inspiration and help in many things and have showered all sorts of kindnesses upon me.”

Reverting to literature, he said the trouble as the present time was that writers seemed incapable of finding an original or a good subject. Modern novels are merely a sequence of events heightened sensationally by men waving flags or going and burying themselves because some girl went and kissed another man under the hedge. It was “all rubbish” and not in the least true to human nature.

***

Speaking of his play, he said he was thrilled about it, but not so thrilled as some people thought, because he had worked hard for forty years to gain that recognition and after all that time the keen edge of pleasure had worn off.

“It seems strange to me that after forty years of hard work, boycotting, and spurning I should, through the work of a short play, suddenly become one of the idols of the English public,” he said.

“Congratulations have poured in on me from all quarters and I am only a very weak old man barely able to stand.”

He started “The Making of an Immortal” four years ago and got tired of it when he was half way through. Later he determined to finish it and “wrote the second half anyhow” and in the ordinary idiom, whereas the first part was in the Elizabethan idiom.

“Two days afterwards an American came to ask me if I had any short thing which he could publish. I showed him the play, which he pronounced to be exactly what he wanted, and after altering the second half to fit the first half he walked off with the MS. and I with £450, which I thought was a very good sum for it. The result was that soon after it was printed the manager of the Arts Theatre saw it and this is the happy result.”

The only stipulation he made was that it should remain exactly as it stood, and that only one woman should be in the cast to play the part of Queen Bess.