1900-04-26 to Virginia Crawford

Autograph letter signed, National Library of Ireland, 397 words

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

92 VICTORIA STREET. S.W.

Thursday 26 [April 1900]

Dear Nia,

It would be impossible for me to give a reason why it should be so, and it is, I know, quite impossible for you to understand why I should be unable to say whether I intend to go to Paris or to stay at home. However subtly psychological the explanation might be you are the person more than all others who could not understand; you cannot sympathise with such a state of mind. Truly I cannot tell you if I am going to Paris. If you had seen me on the morning I went to Ireland declaring to Jane that I had made up my mind not to go and to disappoint those who were waiting for me at the station. I was perfectly sincere: Yet I went.

But I don‘t think I can get to Paris. In the first place, I cannot travel cheaply as you can. I should spend 25£ for certain and I cannot afford it at the present moment; and then the journey would break the continuity of my work. I have written 30000 words in a month — think of it, 30000! I hope I am putting the right number of naughts: an average of a thousand words a day! for thirty days! Think of it! If I sit here I shall finish the first writing by the first of June.

We can go to see other pictures here but Oh, the Manets and the Ingres! What is to be done? These awful irresolutions... I'll talk of something else.

I don’t think the sale of your book so bad — I did not think it would sell more. Symons' Studies in Two Literatures only sold 350, and my Impressions and Opinions only sold 1000 700. I assure you that 450 is not bad for that kind of book.

I wish I could be with you in Paris. I wish I knew at what hotel you stayed so that I might wire at the last moment. But perhaps it is better that I don’t. Every book I have written is beset with these resignations. I cannot tell you how much I should like to go to Paris.

Au revoir

Always yours

George Moore