1886-07-26 to Frans Netscher

Autograph letter signed, Letterkundig Museum, 436 words

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

Care of Mrs. Feist, The Green, Southwick. Near Brighton

[Monday, 26 July 1886]

Dear Sir

I was very glad indeed to get your letter. You are one of the few people in whose judgement I repose any confidence. I am glad you saw the criticism in the Pall Mall. It was very bombastic and the writer was very often wholly wrong. He accused me quite wrongly of bad grammar in one place and in another the printer had printed fatality for finality making nonsense of course of the sentence. Some of his remarks are Greek to me; worse than Greek, Chinese.

I was very glad indeed to hear that you did not consider there was any falling off in ADM, more glad than I can say. But you must not blame me for not doing what it was my aim to avoid doing — I did not want to describe the Irish peasants. My idea was the drama in muslin with the Land League — a kind of tragedy in tapistry — set behind my living figures.

You say my descriptions are too lyric — perhaps so, but then I do not believe in the realistic school or in any school, — I want each book to be different from the last, slightly different, and I want to be personal. When I have written one more novel I am going to write a long poem.

You may be right when you say that the local colour is not so strong in ADM as in AMW but you must remember in fashionable life the colouring is more delicate than in low life.

Perhaps it may interest you to hear that I am going to publish a series of articles descriptive of Ireland in the Figaro. The series will begin next Saturday. Did you read the article I wrote in the Figaro last May about Shelley?

You did not say anything in your letter about the novel you are writing. I wish you would tell me what the subject of it is. It would interest me to hear and I could tell my publisher about it.

One of these days I hope to go to Holland and then I shall make your acquaintance. Is it not curious? We have never met and yet I seem to know you quite well.

Mabel Robinson’s book is very good indeed — a great improvement on her first book. I am writing to her and I will ask her to send you a copy.

Yours very truly

George Moore