Conversations in Ebury Street, Chapter 18

London: William Heineman, 1 January 1924, pages 247-266, 6,419 words

Conversations in Ebury Street is a nonlinear volume of nineteen chapters. Chapters 7-11 are essays in art criticism; chapter 19 is worldbuilding; the rest are essays in literary criticism. The chapters appear separately in the Aesthetics and Worlds pillars of George Moore Interactive. All are included in the ebook of Conversations in Ebury Street in the GMi Shop.

XVIII

121, Ebury Street, London, S.W.1,

August 16th, 1923.

My dear Gosse, — Your letter asks for news of me, and I answer in reciprocating spirit that The Sunday Times will come to me to-morrow bereft of your prose, all that is left to us of the eighteenth century, which did not end in England till 1850, a year after your birth, for you were born in the 'forties, in 'forty-nine, I think and hope, else tumbles into nothingness my theory that your prose is the last echo of a time when style was a tradition rather than an ingenious manipulation of words — translations of popular speech into a personal jargon, a method of writing brought into fashion by Carlyle, practised by Meredith, Stevenson, and… or am I robbing wonderful Sir Thomas Browne of his due — was he the inventor of literary rococo? My sentence has come to a full stop in spite of my intention to carry it over the page, and I fall to thinking that I should have written better and more easily, pleasing you much more than I have ever succeeded in doing, if I had been born in 'forty-nine instead of in 'fifty-two. One thing is sure: had it not been for these three unfortunate years I should have come to the point quicker, leaving out my theory of how you came into your style and how Carlyle was watered down by Meredith and Stevenson and — But stay a moment! The eighteenth century was not all of a piece any more than the nineteenth or the twentieth; it produced the arch­ wanderer, Sterne — Heavens! shall I ever come to my news of myself, to the huge mistake made in the composition of The Apostle — Eunice, who, perhaps, ought not to have been in the play, and on whose introduction into it I would have you meditate, since you are taking the waters, for a man taking the waters needs a subject of meditation, and what better one could he have than a lost opportunity, I ask you?

Free your mind, dear Gosse, from all reminiscence of Joseph of Arimathea when you walk from your bath, and begin my play, this time in your imagination, in the cavern of the Essenes. The first act needs no change at all, and the second act remains unchanged except for some few lines that will tell how Paul fell on the pathway after crossing the bridge and was brought back by Jacob, the young shepherd. The Essenes assembled on the balcony will cry further news of the ascent. End of act. When the curtain rises on the third act a messenger from the balcony comes to Jesus and Hazael to tell them that Paul is unable to make the ascent, whereupon Hazael orders a litter to be prepared, and four litter-bearers are chosen to carry Paul up the terraces. Jesus would be averse from meeting Paul in argument, but he yields to Hazael's pleading that to save the Essenes from oath­-breaking God has brought Paul back to them: It is in God's purpose that the brethren should hear thy story, and that Paul should hear it. The litter-bearers bring in Paul, and the brethren assemble to hear the story of the crucifixion and the awakening of their brother in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Jesus would begin his story by reminding the brethren that it was in answer to the preaching of the Baptist he left them to preach in Galilee; he resisted Hazael, who tried to dissuade him, but so loud was the call within him that he could not do else but obey it. And after preaching for a year in Galilee, he went to Jerusalem and was taken prisoner in the garden of Gethsemane, where he had gone with his disciples to pray that he might be given strength to submit himself to the will of God: God's will must be fulfilled though it be no less than my cross. Here Jesus would stop suddenly to remark that he had kept part of the story from them when he returned to Kerith because it was against the rule of the Order for a brother to relate his past life. This would bring in Hazael, who would tell that Jesus had wished, now that he had left the hills for ever and come to live with them, to confide the whole story to him the night before, but was interrupted. Hazael would order Jesus to continue his story, and Paul would sit forgotten by the Essenes, getting back his wits as the story proceeds. At the end of the story the two protagonists stand face to face, Paul convinced that the story of the crucifixion, the awakening in the tomb and the recovery of Jesus from his wounds in the house of Joseph of Arimathea, is the true story of the man whose resurrection he has been preaching for the last twenty years; but Paul has to make a stand, and he begins by asking Jesus about the weeks he spent in Joseph of Arimathea's house and how and why he left it. His questions will bring in the story of the camel-driver, which Jesus would tell quite simply. He had hoped that God would send down angels to save him from the cross, but God had chosen to send Joseph of Arimathea instead, for God had wished him to spend a few more years of life. Why God had willed such a thing he did not know, for after the cross he had felt his mission to be at an end; but the ways of God are unsearchable. Paul would ask him then if be were satisfied with the result of his preaching which had brought him to the cross, and Jesus would answer very simply that it had seemed to him he had accomplished all God had asked of him, and that he had felt no desire to preach any more; and this being so, he could not do else but return to the brethren. Then Saddoc would announce that Jesus could not allow Paul to continue preaching a lie, but must go to Jerusalem to denounce him, whereupon Paul would say that the conversion of the world would be indefinitely delayed if Jesus went to Jerusalem, and that the Essenes would be answerable for the continuation of Paganism. Jesus's journey to Jerusalem would provoke a wrangle, and at the end of the wrangle somebody would ask Jesus if he were going to Jerusalem, and Jesus would answer that he had told Hazael he must go, but be had now come to understand that the thought of denouncing Paul in Jerusalem was but a passing thought that could not have come from God, for it could do no more than set one man against another; stirs and quarrels would be for certain the result of his intervention. God had called him to preach in Galilee, and after Galilee his inspiration had passed from him, and for the last twenty years he had lived as a shepherd on the hills, never in doubt that his life on the hills, leading his sheep from pasture to pasture, was as pleasing to God as it was during the year of his Messiahship in Galilee. Elijah was taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot when he had accomplished what God had created him to accomplish, And I, too, Jesus would say, was an inspired prophet when I preached in Galilee. I thought that when the prophet that was in me died, I would be borne up to heaven. This would give Paul an idea which he would avail himself of: that God in his desire to save the world from sin had intervened several times. Moses and Elijah were God's messengers; Pythagoras and Socrates, too, were prophets. The Jesus that I have always preached, the spiritual Jesus, died on the cross. The story I have preached is a true story, and the story that I go to preach in Rome is a true story, truer than I knew it to be, for now I have it from Jesus himself. Jesus offers to conduct Paul to Caesarea, but Paul says he will go alone. Again the Essenes watch from the balcony, and when Paul has passed out of their sight they return to Hazael, who has been forgotten during the discussion. Life has passed from him; he is put upon the litter and carried out, and the play ends with a monologue spoken by Mathias about the soul, which is to be found in The Brook Kerith.

It seems to me strange that I did not see that I had come upon an accumulation of evidence not unlike the OEdipus and that I should have followed the form of the OEdipus instead of straying off to Caesarea, and I have to suppose a temptation to explain my blindness, a temptation of which I was not aware — ah! if I had been aware of it I could have resisted it. A thought must have glided into my mind, inspired by an unaesthetic demon, that I should recompense the reader for the aridities of the first and second acts by exhibiting Paul in Caesarea bidding good-bye to Timothy's mother, Eunice, Paul's mistress, perchance — remember the thorn in the flesh. In other words, I mistook a temptation for an inspiration. I was tempted to bring in Probus with a basket of provisions, it seeming to me that I required a mirror in which I might show how Rome looked on the Jews. I availed myself of Probus despite Schopenhauer's wise words: The merely charming is never found in great art, and now I am in doubt if courage will ever be given to me to write the third act as it should be written; and a poor consolation the thought is that were I to write the third act as I have sketched it in this letter, I should not lack critics who would tell me that Paul's farewell to Eunice and to his disciples at Caesarea is among my good things. I dare say it is; indeed, I think it is; but in art we are always sacrificing good things. A plague upon good things! for they profit us nothing in the end.

Having asked you to meditate on my lost opportunity of writing a play on the Greek model, I fall to thinking that there are two roads, one leading to a bank and the other to a shrine, and that the choice of roads is given to us all in the beginning. Brown chooses to follow the road leading to the bank, and being a wise man he considers every project that the publisher or manager comes to him with from the point of view of the bank. He talks about food and drink and golf, and thinks about the play that's going on at the Criterion and the play that's going out on tour, or how much an edition will cost with paper at fourpence a pound. Robinson, who has chosen the road leading to the shrine, believes that perfection of form is virtue, and he continues to shape his plays or poems, turning a deaf ear to the managers and publishers; and at the end of ten years he commands an audience for his plays, or there is a public to buy his books. And when he and Brown meet at the Club they understand, vaguely, perhaps, but they understand that they have lived their lives wisely, always obeying the rule of the roads they followed. The rule is the same for both roads; Brown must never say: I have done a good deal with So-and-so, and may perhaps now write some little thing for myself, and Robinson must never say: I have written three good plays, or three good books, and now I might write a seller with something in it that will retain the public I have gotten and get me another public. I am sure this is true, Gosse, and that the best things we do are those in which we have not sought any compromise. So interested am I in the importance of keeping the bank and the shrine distinct, that I could easily fill another page, but a taxi-cab has just come to the door bringing me a visitor, and I must ask you to recall me to Mrs. Gosse's remembrance, and remain, in haste, yours always —

MAID. Mr. Aubry has called, sir. Will you see him?

MOORE. Yes, I 'II see him.

MAID. Mr. Aubry.

MOORE. Back again, Aubry, for a rest of some weeks; and then off again to teach from Paris to the Pyrenees literature, painting, and music.

AUBRY. In this last lecturing tour I have wandered from Paris to the Pyrenees, and when I go out again — ­

MOORE. You will go eastward, to Nancy?

AUBRY. I hope to lecture in Nancy some day, but the journey is a long one, and there are not as many towns in the east as in the west. But you said teaching, I think? I don't go out to teach, but to awaken dormant sympathies pour les quat’z arts.

MOORE. A veritable Paul! And in what corner of France are your beloved Galatians?

AUBRY. My Galatia is without latitude or longitude. Wherever there are ears eager to hear of beauty, I am among them.

MOORE. And you found so many ears eager for beauty that you have already begun to plan a new tour?

AUBRY. I confess it.

MOORE. And from town to town you will go, an enthusiastic welcome awaiting you everywhere, taking pleasure in buildings, monuments, and gardens which you will never see again.

AUBRY. You never forget to talk like Gautier.

MOORE. I would not forget Gautier if I could.

AUBRY. You would forget Baudelaire, but you cannoL

MOORE. For me it is always Ebury Street, and so I would hear of your faring. The first thing you do on arriving at a town is to prepare your lecture?

AUBRY. My lectures are all in my head, and for my words I rely on the inspiration of the moment.

MOORE. Your courage frightens me!

AUBRY. I do not see why it should; your friends are willing to accept the inspiration of the moment. And to speak to five hundred is not more difficult than to speak to five.

MOORE. You lie in a bed in which you never lay before, your eyes open on an unknown courtyard.

AUBRY. Are you not tired of Ebury Street?

MOORE. Ah! yes, indeed, and have begun to recognise Ebury Street as my all.

AUBRY. I hear of you in Paris, I hear of you in Fontainebleau, and you once journeyed down the Loire so that you might write Héloïse and Abélard, stopping at Tours, Blois, and Orleans. And that's about all you know of France — five towns!

MOORE. Five towns reminds me of Arnold Bennett.

AUBRY. And of the French people all you know are a few Parisians.

MOORE. And of French literature I know but a corner, and of the French language not much more.

AUBRY. I wish I could persuade you —

MOORE. To travel with you in France, to follow you from town to town. Ah! that would be an adventure. As soon as I have finished —

AUBRY. It's always as soon as you have finished something.

MOORE. I shall be free in a few weeks, and we shall spend some pleasant mornings together — town after town. I am really tempted, and you will hardly guess what has tempted me. The thought of French travel stole upon me when you said that you did not prepare your lectures in the morning. On leaving the hotel or the inn at which we lodge, our eyes will be attracted by a church spire, by the high-pitched roof of an eighteenth-century house; and in the fall of the year what sight more enticing than the glint of wide waters flowing under great trees? Yes; I can see all that. But shall we make acquaintances?

AUBRY. Passing acquaintances, yes. We shall make some acquaintances, that I can promise you, and in the homes of these you will meet with pieces of furniture that you would like to take away, some old china, and some pictures; but you will not be able to make any purchases, I warn you.

MOORE. Yes; I can see it all.

AUBRY. You have read Balzac, and though his Parisians have disappeared or been transformed, his Provincials live still almost unchanged. If you come with me when I go out lecturing again, we shall find ourselves in — I can't tell you in what town; accident will decide that; and at the dinner party to which we have been asked, you will suddenly become aware of the rich harmony of French life as it is lived in the provinces, as it existed long before Balzac, and as I hope it will always exist. My tour was a success everywhere I went, but apart from the pleasure of audiences that gave a willing and attentive ear whilst I talked about art, literature, and music, of yesterday and to-day, my best memories of my travels are of the acquaintances I made: amiable and fine-minded folk, possessed of a real and sincere culture quite different from the ready-made culture of Paris or London. Call it conventions and prejudices, if you wish to sneer; real, prudent, and considered culture, if you wish to praise. In the provinces you will hear better French than in Paris, and you will eat better than you have ever eaten before. The art of dining still continues in the provinces; the provinces hold out against the enemy: the international table d’hôte, which bears the same relation to la vraie cuisine as the newspapers do to literature. You do not know Besançon, except by name? Victor Hugo was born there, and you know the verse:

Alors dans Besançon, vieille ville espagnole….

In truth, hardly Spanish at all, much more Roman than Spanish, a sixteenth-century town, almost an island, built within a loop of the beautiful river, the Doubs, dear to Courbet. If I say a town of beautiful houses I hardly exaggerate; unfortunately, many of these have been turned into public offices, a cardinal's palace into the post office, the town residence of a great eighteenth-century noble into a bank — all the beautiful woodwork in perfect condition, pier-glasses still intact, the house which Balzac described in his novel, Albert Savarus. You know that he never was in Besançon, but hearing Charles de Bernard describe the house, he knew at once that Albert Savarus had lived in it. One night at a dinner given for me by the Committee which had engaged me to lecture, I told my neighbour, a very agreeable man, an erudite archaeologist, that no matter where I went in the town I never could escape from Balzac, yet I had always heard that Balzac had never seen Besançon. Whereupon he offered to show me over the house in which Albert Savarus had lived; and whilst admiring the old house I told him of an English writer who had read all Balzac and written about him with appreciation, and how sorry I was that he was not with us. The old house would have fired his imagination, I said; he would have discovered all Balzac's reasons for his belief that Albert Savarus could have only lived in this house. As we wandered from room to room I stopped often at the windows to admire the landscapes, dark-green and white, with here and there glimpses of the banks of the Doubs, recalling Courbet, and not un­naturally, for he painted along the Doubs again and again.

MOORE. Tell me more. You are talking charmingly, Aubry; do go on, I beg of you, for if you do I shall go to Besançon, and perhaps live there. Before I decide I should like to hear about some other town.

AUBRY. I spent some pleasant days in Lyons, but I think you would like Besançon better. The climate is foggy in the fall, like London. If you should ever go there, I hope you will make it a point to dine at a certain celebrated restaurant, la mère Filloux, and of all, do not forget to order a chicken. Even the descriptions you have printed of the wonderful chickens you ate in Auteuil are exceeded by the simple reality of those you will eat at la mère Filloux's restaurant. La mère Filloux's chickens are so wonderful that one is moved to lick the parquet that reflects them, as Laforgue said of the Rembrandts he saw in Dresden. There is but one fault to find with her restaurant: the bill of fare is always the same, and no one can eat every evening des oeufs aux quenelles, de la poularde, et des fonds d’artichaud au foie gras. But do not miss, should you ever be in Lyons, la mère Filloux's restaurant.

MOORE. I shall not miss la mère Filloux. Once a week I shall go there.

AUBRY. I wonder what you would think of Puy, a quiet town hidden away in the mountains of Auvergne, built about a mountain peak, with a chapel at the top dedicated to St. Michael. The town is difficult to reach, and I fancy that winter is a real hardship in Puy; mountain folks are silent and shy —

MOORE. Puy does not appeal to me. Tell me about another town. Whence comest thou, Aubry?

AUBRY. There's a biblical ring in the words.

MOORE. You are acquiring an ear for our language. Yes; the words are biblical. Somebody says them to Abraham, and the phrase is beautiful: Whence comest thou? An irreparable loss to our language is the second person singular, and it could be so easily restored if we had any thought for the language we write and speak. But you have heard me hold forth on this subject before.

AUBRY. Your Bible must be very beautiful, for no English writer has escaped biblical influence, except Shakespeare.

MOORE. I wouldn't say that. Spenser shows few traces, if any, and Shelley's idiom is pure eighteenth century. But to return to your travels. Whence comest thou, Aubry?

AUBRY. I come from Nîmes, a town which you should see, for you would appreciate the Roman remains, the circuses, the arenas, and La Maison Carrée; and whilst admiring it myself I often heard in my thoughts your outburst of admiration for those balanced proportions of doorway and window so instinctive in eighteenth­ century architects. If you ever undertake this long­ talked project of French travel, you must not overlook Nîmes.

MOORE. A return to the eighteenth century is inevitable, unless, indeed, there be truth in the theory that to have culture we must have long periods without culture.

AUBRY. Another thing. The garden at Nîmes will delight you, the garden of la Fontaine, a garden that recalls Watteau and Verlaine and that Gainsborough knew or divined, divined, probably, for the garden is part of the thought of the eighteenth century. At every turn I came upon embowering trees under which I dreamed a lady and gentleman advancing in a pavane to the admiration of an assembly seated under a colonnade.

MOORE. And what use is this beautiful garden put to in these days of jazz?

AUBRY. The grocers and candlestick-makers of the town go there to listen to military music.

MOORE. And the next town?

AUBRY. You will like Montpellier and, if I'm not mistaken, be taken with the charm of its easy, affluent life, almost without accent; cafés occupy a large space of the pavement in la place de la Comédie, and after break­ fast you will be pleased to observe the Three Graces delightfully enlaced above their fountain; and when weary of them —

MOORE. Shall I find anybody to talk to — forgive me, besides you, dear friend?

AUBRY. In the south everybody wishes to talk, and in these cafés you will meet opera singers who will persuade you that music only exists between Toulouse and Béziers, and that all the music worth listening to was composed by Verdi and Halévy. And when you are weary of these, you will meet wine merchants and English, Swedish, and Spanish students, come to Montpellier to study medicine. The leeches of Montpellier and the climate are celebrated —

MOORE. Did you say leeches?

AUBRY. Yes, a leech is a doctor, isn't he?

MOORE. Ah! yes; an old word. Go on, Aubry; tell me about the south. You seem to know it so well. Talk to me about Toulouse.

AUBRY. I have never been to Toulouse; but I have been to Tarbes, which is close by, and you might like to go there, not because of Tarbes itself but because it is the birth-place of Gautier and Jules Laforgue. It lies under the Pyrenees, and there are wolves and bears in the forests; but you have long ceased to be a sportsman.

MOORE. I have long ceased to kill and maim wild animals, and have come to think that as we only hold the world on lease, we should hand it on to the next generation as we found it. But the town, Aubry?

AUBRY. Even Théo would have been embarrassed had he been asked to write about his native town. His pen would have paused when he had written: Tarbes has a public garden, and in the public garden is a pond, and in the pond a black swan that plunges eagerly after water-weeds when the children forget to bring it bread. All the same, Tarbes has got a place in my recollection that Théo's pen would not have given it. My ears still retain the sound of rain on the roofs and my eyes a dismal group of townsfolk collected round a billiard table watching a player pushing ivory balls up and down the green cloth with a cue.

MOORE. I think I shall leave Tarbes unvisited.

AUBRY. If you leave Tarbes out of your itinerary, you will have to leave out Moulins, the birth-place of your friend, Théodore de Banville.

MOORE. I suppose you are right. I must visit the birthplaces of all my favourite authors, of all my dear poets; all or none.

AUBRY, If they live in the next world and have not lost memory of this one, Gautier and Laforgue will be disappointed to see you turn aside from Tarbes, and how spiteful over their nectar and ambrosia they will be when Banville sits down beside them, Laforgue especially. You must go to Moulins. I am sure Banville has been looking forward to seeing you walk by the river Allier reading his poems. He would like you to read without lifting your eyes from his rhymes, but I must insist on your raising them now and then, for I would have you see the beautiful, rich country that lies round Moulins. chateaux everywhere, avenues, iron gates hanging on carved pillars, and walled parks that will awaken an almost irresistible desire in you to go to the doors and ring and say: I am a student of Balzac and you are all so like Balzac that I feel I must know you. Les hoberaux of Moulins may not know anything about Balzac, but they have all heard of Banville, so take care that you mention his name, else we shall not be invited to dinner.

MOORE. I am afraid we are speaking at cross purposes, for whilst giving me valuable information you miss no opportunity of treating my project to end my life in a French town as an exquisite joke.

AUBRY, I certainly mistook your interest in French towns for a literary one. You are not really thinking­ —

MOORE. I am really thinking of a quiet corner and a grave.

AUBRY. Whither pilgrims —

MOORE. I see, Aubry, that you still think I am putting a joke on you.... For On ne blague pas la mort. Levity ceases when the sinister skeleton appears above the horizon.

AUBRY. Somehow one doesn't think of you dying.

MOORE. One never really thinks of anybody dying, death being as incredible as life.

AUBRY. But literature is credible, and I have never thought of your death-bed, though I have often thought of you lying in state on a pyre built out of five hundred (or was it a thousand?) larches on one of the islands of Lough Carra.

MOORE. But you have heard of the burning of Moore Hall. You should have ceased to think of the pyre from that moment.

AUBRY. For what reason did they burn your house? Not wishing that Lough Carra should again be defiled by a pagan funeral?

MOORE. That, or another reason equally frivolous. Of course, les hoberaux will be but passing acquaintances —

AUBRY. But why turn your back on Paris?

MOORE. The Paris I know is a Parisian Paris long passed away, and for many years the Paris I see conflicts with the Paris I remember. No; I could not live in Paris. But my Paris is still to be discovered in the provinces, and I wish, Aubry, you would tell me all you know about the different towns you have visited, and the possibility of making pleasant acquaintances.

AUBRY. You have still friends in Paris, and you could get letters of introduction.

MOORE. Yes; I suppose I could. The first step we owe to accident, and an accident of some kind is sure to happen within six months.

AUBRY. But you are not going to live six months in Moulins?

MOORE. Well, in Moulins or elsewhere. Ebury Street is a long, lean and lack-lustre street, and I have been thinking a good deal lately of some place where I might pass the last years of my life, for I would not die in Ebury Street; Ebury Street is not a place to die in. I would die where I began — in France.

AUBRY. Ah! Now I begin to understand the strangely attentive ear you have given to my wanderings. But your pictures, your furniture — will you sell them all and start furnishing a house in Moulins?

MOORE, I have thought of all these things, and dread uprooting myself again.

AUBRY, You left France because your tenants wouldn't pay rents, and when they began to pay rents again you had taken a fancy to London. You left London because you didn't like the Boer War, and you returned from Ireland because the Irish wouldn't learn Irish. And now — well, the Allier is a fine river and in every fine river there are fish. Are you a fisher?

MOORE. I fish but little.

AUBRY. Are you a gardener?

MOORE. No; l tried gardening in Ireland, for I had a friend who knew by instinct before she went into the garden what the flowers and vegetables needed, and what they seemed to need always was to be freed from snails; I have killed a great many and to no purpose.

AUBRY, How, then, do you propose to spend your time?

MOORE, This last uprooting I have considered very carefully, and had I not a project in view I should not have allowed my imagination to be captured by the thought of ending my days in France.

AUBRY. What can this project be?

MOORE. I am thinking of learning French.

AUBRY, But, my dear friend, you have been speaking French all your life! You are speaking French now! You used to write in French, prose and verse.

MOORE. Yes; but without any exact knowledge of the language.

AUBRY, If you study the language you will cease to be yourself in the language and become, if I dare say it, for a long time a grammatical caricature. After you have studied our grammar we shall no longer delight in your conversation. We are interested in what you say and shall be bored by your attempts to acquire knowledge that we learnt at school: the sequence of tenses, and of all, the past subjunctive, which should be left to professors. In Avowals, you tell a story of a professor who surprised his wife in an Englishman's arms. The lover, whilst dressing, said: Il fallait que je m'en aille, and the husband was overheard to murmur: Que je m'en allasse. And at the end of the year you will be that husband, although you haven't got a wife to catch you tripping, for I suppose it must have been the wife who overheard. Of course, a great deal is forgiven to him who jokes well, but the mistake which you put upon the English lover seems to me rather far-fetched.

MOORE. But in the excitement of trying to find his shirt-stud, Aubry....

AUBRY. You don't look forward to writing a book in French, do you?

MOORE. No; not a book. My lecture on Shakespeare and Balzac does not contain more than ten thousand words, and in the last three thousand I grew very weary. It is possible to write a page, two pages, or a few verses, in a foreign language, but a book in a foreign language is apt to end in lead. A foreign language may be written correctly, but grammatical correctness satisfies nobody but schoolmasters who don't know that a book must go to a tune, and how is a foreigner to catch the tune of our language? The English tune is infinitely various and always recognisable to those who have ears to hear. We hear it in Morris and Meredith; the language unites two such opposites; and again the language unites Stevenson and Pater. The English tune is heard in both, but how differently! No foreigner has ever caught it and no foreigner ever will, not even those born in London. Is it race or climate? Our Jews are intelligent and animated often by a love of art, but they have never contributed to English literature.

AUBRY, Conrad is not a Jew, but —

MOORE. Mr. Conrad has paid us a pretty compliment by learning to write the English language correctly, and the journalists are so pleased that they have assigned to him a place in our literature, forgetful that a man gets a place in English literature by bringing into the language something that was not there before, or shall I say that was not obvious before. Something latent in the language must be raised to the surface, and how is a foreigner to do this? You are thinking of Hamilton, Aubry, whom you regard as a French writer. A pinch of snuff! And now I beg that you will not press me to speak more explicitly of Mr. Conrad's writings. I should feel that I was lacking in courtesy to a guest. Moreover, I am anxious to hear your opinions of Bordeaux and Toulouse.

AUBRY. I have never been to Toulouse, but I have always heard it spoken of as one of the finest towns in France, and its university as comparable to that of Paris. I know that great painters and sculptors have lived in Toulouse, and I think you will find a society more to your tastes in Toulouse than in Bordeaux. Moreover, Toulouse had, and perhaps still has, a language of its own. You are a language revivalist, and might find enjoyment in learning Provençal. True that Toulouse has no such theatre as Bordeaux — one of the finest in France; and to it all plays of interest come. On the whole, I would prefer to recommend Bordeaux to you for residence. Another thing, you will find many Gallicised English in Bordeaux and Anglicised French, very agreeable people, and though you may think that you would like to live in a purely French town, you will never be able to forget England. There are plenty of pretty women in Bordeaux.

MOORE. My dear friend, I would not hear of pretty women. No longer are they any concern of mine.

AUBRY, Is one ever done with pretty women in one form or another? Is one ever done with wine? I remember — you don't care for wine, and since you have lost your taste for women, acquire a taste for wine. Bordeaux is celebrated for its meals. And meal without wine is....

MOORE. Like love without indecency. I think, Aubry, I should like to follow you in one of your lecturing tours from town to town.

AUBRY, And that reminds me. I have a message for you. In many towns I have been asked if I know an Englishman who would give a lecture in French. Your face tells me you are willing. I'II think it over, and will be able to tell you in ten days. I shall know all my dates then and everything will be fixed: trains, arrivals, departures. And now I must bid you good-bye. I really must tear myself away; it's later than I thought it was. I lectured in Orelay and stayed in the hotel that you described in your Memoirs. The embroidered shirt that you wore in your great adventure is shown to sight-seeing Americans, who, after having viewed the battle-field, depart silently in an awe that is almost religious.

MOORE. I remember the Cathedral, a dark and masculine monument, with voices chanting in the darkness — Vespers, I think it was.

AUBRY. Impressive memories and accurate, no doubt, but I did not visit the Cathedral. The afternoon that I had intended to devote to verifying your impressions wore away by a fire of pine cones in an old eighteenth-century mansion listening to stories of the illustrious dead who spent their lives, or part of their lives, in Orelay. My informant was a librarian, daughter of a poet of old Provence, and I was moved by the sad story she told me of Stuart Mill, a political economist, whose wife died in Orelay. He loved her, it would seem, with love that was more than love, and for a long while, for weeks, mayhap months, he sat watching her tomb, which he could see from his window. Poe could have written the story, and two such stories should make Orelay as rememberable as Troy.

MOORE. When we have suffered a great, irreparable loss, the world seems small and insignificant, and our grief the only real thing in it.