Esther Waters and Mr. Moore

The Observer, 21 February 1932, page 5, 1,054 words

We are privileged to print below Mr. George Moore’s new preface to “Esther Waters,” which is to be added to the American complete edition of his works.

(By George Moore.)

I was pleased when a message came from Mr. Liveright telling he would like to add “Esther Waters” to his collection of my writings, and I rejoiced in the hope that the book would be reset. The resetting will include my emendations, I said to myself, and the ear and eye of those who have a taste for the English language will no longer be shocked.

I turned from the writing table to indulge in thinking, but as I was about to abandon myself to thoughts of the new favour I should acquire in America, my eye caught sight of the word “preface” in the second clause of the agreement, whereupon my heart misgave me utterly.

I would like to write the preface to “Esther Waters” if I had something to say, but I can think of nothing that would enhance the value of the book. Shall I tell Mr. Liveright the truth, and beg of him to excuse saying — “I am in no humour for prefaces”? But Mr. Liveright would not have asked me for a preface if he did not need one. So I went to my writing table in a mood of resignation and wrote some three or four pages which seemed to me excellent whilst undressing and seeking sleep. But evening and morning thoughts are different, as every man knows, and after breakfast the pages I had written overnight disappointed me, and I wrote other pages. These pleased me for a day, but very soon faults began to appear, and on the third day my new preface to “Esther Waters” went into the wastepaper basket/ Many other prefaces were written — eighteen or twenty — I have forgotten how many. Nearly a month had gone by; my table was littered with sheets of paper. On some there were but three or four lines; on others I had turned the page and was writing on the back before a new idea came into my mind. I began again, and feverishly. I have got it now! I said. But the new idea proved as false as others that had preceded it, and I took refuge in my armchair with the intention of seeking the reason why a man who had written so many volumes as I had, and revised as many more, could fail to produce the half-dozen pages that would content Mr. LIveright. He might even be content with three pages, I said, but neither three nor a dozen nor twenty could I write, and for why? My mind was empty, and too weary to struggle with adversity any longer. I yielded myself to the belief that the talent of other days had left me. Sight deserts the eyes, hearing the ears, love the heart. None escapes the appointed hour … and, my thoughts dying one by one, I watched the street darkening in the decline of day, repeating a certain nursery rhyme: —

Dickory, dickory, dock,

    The mouse ran up the clock.

The clock struck one,

    The mouse ran down,

Dickory, dickory, dock.

certain that literature had never found a more perfect expression of the nothingness of life. It was at that moment that I heard the noiseless approach of a new thought about to come into my mind. On velvet pads it moves out of the subconscious; a moment more and it will begin to speak its message; and it was whilst I was thinking that nothing could befall which would restore to me my lost faith in life that I heard my visitor proclaim her mission: I have come here to defend my life.

Thy life! cried I.

Every living thing hath the right to defend the life given it to live.

Given it to live, I repeated, amazed at hearing a book speak so clearly.

It was thine in the beginning, but as soon as a book is written, all right passes from the author to the book itself.

Thou wouldst have me believe, then, that the creator passes into nothingness and the thing created lives on?

About that there can surely be no doubt. A man’s life is brief; a book’s life may be prolonged century after century.

Thou wert an ignorant wench when I created thee….

One who has served thee well, therefore, speak no ill of me even to thyself. I shall outlive thee, for I live the life of a book; thou livest the life of the flesh. I should have to recreate thee to understand me.

But can a book create a human soul?

Books like me are doing that every day. But we are not here to sharpen our wits one against the other. I have come, as I have said, to save my life from a prefacer who would destroy it.

But, I said, interrupting, I have revised thee many times without protest.

Thy revisions were limited to the smoothing out of a rugged sentence, and not wishing to seem unfilial in thine eyes, I let thee have thy way with me as a dandy might allow his valet to remove a speck from his embroidered waistcoat, but beware — any larger license I cannot permit.

Am instance! I cried.

I belong to the nineteenth century. All its ideas are incarnate in me….

But thou wert written at the end of the century!

Something more than ideas I owe to thee: a faith in humanity which the nineteenth century repudiated, but which has been accepted by the twentieth century after much theological argument with priests and bishops.

Thou hast lost thy trust in me, I cried, in me who gave thee life!

That question has already been debated, she answered. To debate it again would be superfluous. Thou has suffered enough in the last month , and I would save thee further mental suffering if I may. Return to thy stories and leave Liveright to his own devices. And I beg of thee, if I should have occasion to visit thee again, that thou wilt, out of mere courtesy, refrain from the word “prefacer.” I have little liking for that word.