1889-11-12 to Clara Lanza

Typed transcript signed, University of Washington, 940 words

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

8 Kings Bench Walk, Temple

[Tuesday] November 12th [1889]

My dear Clara Lanza

I am getting on famously with the second act although I did not succeed in sending it to you last Saturday. The truth is that I went on a shooting expedition with the editor of the Fortnightly into Kent. I believe him to be the most brilliant man to talk to that ever lived. We sat up till four and even five in the morning talking, to the despair of his wife. What conversation! It is like reading the Human Comedy at a sitting, it is enchantment, a cerebral debauch.

There were many people staying in the house. I talked about you, but none could realize how two people who had never seen each other could be perfect friends, having complete confidence in each other. And yet this is so. They were astonished when I said that there was no one whom I trusted like you — I use trust of course in the very widest and most intimate sense that the word is capable of. The friendship which is so real to us I felt was a little out of their reach. And I was not sorry, for their want of comprehension of it seemed to make it more strangely personal and intimate.

You told me that no one saw my letters and that I might write what I pleased. I will avail myself of the permission and tell you a thought which has been haunting me for the last few days and which seems to me to be new; at all events it is one that belongs to ourselves and one which neither you nor I have known before we knew each other.

I have been thinking of the sexual side of our friendship. The word startles you but there is no other word that expresses my meaning. For it is quite true that the friendship which sprang from intellectual sympathy, pure and simple, has become coloured and modified by the knowledge that you are a woman, by the sympathies of sex. For you are certainly to me a woman and I know very well that were you a man you would not interest me as you do.

Of course there are people who regard sexual feeling only in its simplest form, but you are not one of those common livers; you know as well as I know that sex is full of mysteries and subtitles. Who has not seen for instance a young man paying compliments to and sincerely admiring an old woman — a beautiful old woman? Who has not seen an old woman in love (if the word can be used in such a sense) with a young man? I allude to this in Mike Fletcher. For the really healthy, sex never ceases and is full of magic quite unknown to the vulgar.

You are to me always a woman. I see the blond hair on the neck (la nuque est de santal sur les vife frissons d’or) — my thought ran into a French verse and not a bad verse either. I see your hands and feet and the movement of your skirt; in fine you are a woman always to me and not a sexless idea.

And you are too much a woman, I feel sure, to wish it otherwise. Search your own heart and ask yourself if you would take the trouble that you do take if I were not a man. I think you would not. And yet we have never seen each other, probably never shall.

I hope that I have made my meaning clear, for if I have not you would have a right to be angry with me. But I am insulting your intelligence; of course you understand.

And now leaving soul-searching for the publication of books, let me thank you again for all you have done for Mike Fletcher. I hope I shall be able to do as much for your book. My brother has a paper called the Hawk (I send you a copy) which has a very fair circulation; I shall review your book in it.

I had intended to write you a chatty letter such as you write to me. I should like to have written you an account of Margate Lodge, the yellowy woods, the pheasants and the habits of our pleasant English country life but you have caught me in a mood of yearning and aspiration and I have only sent you an analysis of my feelings. Forgive me, we do not write what we would write but what we must write.

Your gossip about Mrs. Atherton does not surprise me. I heard that she had been living with the editor of that excellent magazine. Her flirtation with Sharp was astonishing. Heron-Allen spoke of her depreciatingly, saying she was ‘'cold”.

I have just received two interesting letters on my Balzac article. One was from a Boston lady, Miss Wormley. She has published fifteen volumes of translations of his works. She sends me three beautifully bound and promises a fourth.

I have read her translation of Jesus-Christ en Flandre and it seems to me to be admirably rendered. I have written to tell her so. But I shall not allow myself to be drawn into a correspondence and I will not — je ne vous ferai pas infidelites epistolaires.

And now my dear friend I must say good-bye. I have come to the end of my paper.

Believe me, most sincerely yours,

GEORGE MOORE