1891-08-12 to Clara Lanza

Typed transcript signed, University of Washington, 440 words

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

8 Kings Bench Walk, Temple

Wednesday, August 12th [1891]

My dear Clara Lanza

I am feeling wretchedly unwell but I must not delay writing to you any longer. If I did you would be sure to think that our friendship was drawing to a close and not for a great deal would I wish you to think that. A little summer sickness, that is all, but those who are never ill feel the slightest indisposition acutely.

I saw our friend Miss Foote once this summer. She has gone to some German town with an extravagant name but I shall probably see her again in the autumn. I did not see her alone but in the presence of some dry and upright citizen of the States, so very little was said.

Mrs. Moulton is in town and spoke to me yesterday about you: a good deal of praise but nothing sufficiently personal or intimate to interest me. She told me that you liked me very much. That was in a way agreeable to hear, although I knew it only meant that she knew it would be an agreeable thing to say. She said however that you impressed her as being of a singularly platonic nature; on this point she seemed to be quite convinced; and she may be right, but somehow I think that women do not reveal much of their inner natures to one another. I don’t believe that a really nice woman was ever very platonic, do you?

My book Impressions and Opinions has been more praised than any book I ever saw reviewed. The Athenaeum gave me the front page and five columns. But of course all this gobble does not change me in [the least] — I am what I am; I don’t know what that is and I am sure the reviewers know still less.

Vain Fortune is finished and is now appearing in the Lady’s Pictorial. On second thoughts I decided not to send you the great heavy unwieldy paper; far better to send you the story when it appears in book form. I shall alter it a good deal.

Now don’t you put off writing; write at once and tell me what you have been thinking and doing. If Mrs. Moulton is not right, tell me about your last caprice; I shall not be very jealous, I shall only regret and, like Mlle de Maupin, I ask you to think sometimes between… (you know the passage)... of your very sincere and devoted friend.

GEORGE MOORE