1892-03-17 to Clement Shorter

Autograph letter signed, British Library, xx words

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

8 Kings Bench Walk, Temple

Thursday [17 March 1892]

My dear Shorter

I send you the inundation story.

I have another idea for a short story and should like to write it for you, but I think it will be better to tell you the subject first. It seems to me to be absolutely 'pure’ but I had better tell you the subject first.

It is about an elderly spinster who has led a most strict and virtuous life and whose whole knowledge of life is derived from French novels — she has read everything — Then a certain moment (the story) comes in her life and she wonders she remembers all the women she has read about, and their wilful lives afford a strange contrast with her own —- all she wants to do is to go to see Sarah with a young man to the theatre to see Sarah act, and even this little [illegible] is not permitted to her.

You see the idea. This is a woman we have all known and I think I could write the story well, but I do not know if one can describe in the News an elderly and virtuous spinster who reads Flaubert and Maupassant.

Yours always

George Moore