Avowals, Chapter 3

London: Privately Printed, 1 September 1919, pages 101-124, 8,162 words

Avowals is a nonlinear volume of sixteen chapters. Chapters 12 and 15 are essays in 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 GMi Kindle edition of Avowals.

CHAP. III.

MOORE. On an autumn evening by the fire, thinking is pleasanter, more soothing than writing; but talking, aestheticising, with one's feet to the blaze, is delightful, and of all, after a long day's work, when the brain is a little weary. And to this pleasure I can look forward, for at five o'clock BALDERSTON. a young American, whom I met some months ago in a house in the King's Road, among some American Quakers, is coming to see me, and that will be pleasant. It would be pleasanter still if he were a painter instead of a writer; for any young American between the ages of twenty and thirty carries my thought back to the years long ago in Julian's studio in the Passage des Panoramas, Galerie Montmartre, I think, for the first gallery on the left-hand side is Galerie des Variétés. With what strange vividness we remember the places we frequented in our youth! The shops are visible all the way down to the studio, and the studio itself in its every detail — the staircase leading to it, with Julian's kitchen on the first landing, and the old woman popping in and out, she who used to turn on Julian fiercely if he looked to see whether his coat had been brushed. Monsieur, je vous ai dit que j'ai brossé votre jaquette. Vous ne me croyez donc pas? Years have gone by but the things thereof are not dead; the smell of that staircase is in my memory, and the images of many Frenchmen: Boutet de Monvel, and the fellow with the red beard, Renouf was his name; he used to get his flesh tints too red, Monvel was prone to violet; Lefebvre's great pupil, Doucet, came to little despite his efforts to escape from what he had been taught. Lizzie Gardiner, she who married Bouguereau, must be an old woman if she is alive. Yet I loved her. What has become of the fair-haired girl who married the old naval officer? And her friend, the Creole, who spoke classical French and married Doucet? Où sont ils Vierge souveraine? Their faces look at me through the crowd, and go again, but I can see Chadwick more distinctly than ever, tall and elegant, a finely cut profile, a pale perplexed eye, not eyes, for I see him in profile, which is not strange, so clear-cut and distinguished is the profile and so possessed was he of distinguished and refined manners that be drove out my preconceived notions of Americans, derived from Dickens — from the types described by the Britisher when he walked down the gangway on the other side. It is a weakness of youth to believe travellers' tales, and the remembrance of my surprise at finding some Americans to be gentlemen and ladies amuses me still, though forty years have passed over. Mais où sont-ils? Gone to dust and ashes, no doubt: a camp that has passed away, passed out of my life, not one of its folk returning into my life, but Chadwick, and he only for a few hours. He took a chair opposite me some five or six years ago in a Bouillon-Duval. We looked at each other. I said: Chadwick; he said: Moore; and after breakfast we walked down the quays, for I would not part with my old friend till I had seen his pictures. He protested, saying his studio was on the fifth floor, but he led me thither, for I insisted, and we had not been looking at the canvases turned against the wall for long, when his wife came in, a Swede, a painter, bringing her daughter with her; Chadwick's daughter more than hers. The same thin, medallion-like profile, the same red hair, an echo of my old friend, I said; and my thoughts transferred to Mrs Chadwick put these words,into her mouth: elle est bien sa fille —

MAID. Mr BALDERSTON. sir.

BALDERSTON. I've not awakened you from a doze, I hope.

MOORE. No, I was not dozing, only thinking that I was fated to have American friends; and what is stranger still, to have kept them all. I've had many quarrels with my English, Irish and French friends, but never with an American, not even with an American publisher, unless, Indeed —

BALDERSTON. Don't try to remember a half-forgotten misunderstanding, for I judge from your manner that it is no more. Let it be as you say, you have never quarrelled with an American friend, and I hope I shall not be the first. You have many good friends in America.

MOORE. I know it.

BALDERSTON. And if I'm not mistaken the Fortnightly conversations with Mr Edmund Gosse will be appreciated in America. But do you not think that you were unjust when you said that prose narrative was not within the reach of the Anglo-Saxon genius?

MOORE. I'm afraid that I barely apprehend the word unjust in this connection: unjust! Will you mention a reasonable narrative, a serious prose narrative.

BALDERSTON. If we except the Iliad and Odyssey we shall seek the world over for a human narrative in verse.

MOORE. I had not thought of that, but I suppose you're right. The Divine Comedy and Paradise Lost are versified mythologies. Be this as it may, there is very little good narrative in the world.

BALDERSTON. No race has produced so much bad narrative as the Anglo-Saxon.

MOORE. I thought I had at least made that point clear in my conversations with Mr Gosse.

BALDERSTON. You did indeed, but the reason you gave was that the English novelist's first thought was how he could make most money. But all Englishmen cannot be mercenary. We know that in the art of painting they are not.

MOORE. Pray let me have the benefit of your thoughts.

BALDERSTON. We know that young men think a good deal about sex. I do not say they should not, and I do not say they should. I hold no brief for either side. I am merely stating a fact. We know that in life they do think a good deal about sex. But in the English novel, a young man never attempts more than a kiss, and repents profusely. We know too that in life he does not repent, and goes unpunished very often, but the law over the novel is that he must repent, and be punished. You will see my point in a moment, which is not that a measure of sordid intrigue is essential in a novel, but that an obligation to falsify in one direction brings in its train other falsifications. In your conversation with Mr Edmund Gosse you did not mention the pressure that the libraries put upon authors, and it is the censorship that libraries exercise that —

MOORE. Accounts for a singular lack of masterpieces. No, I'm not sneering. Fiction was issued in the eighties only in the three-volume form, which allowed the libraries to dictate what might and might not be written. And the strangest part of my story is, that the libraries were not to be moved out of the opinion they had formed by the Press, though The Spectator, then edited by Hutton, one of the great Victorian editors, and one of the great moralists, reviewed A Modern Lover, my first book, in two columns of praise, and the Fortnightly singled it out for review, a rare piece of good fortune to happen to an author's first book. The Fortnightly was then edited by John Morley, now Lord Morley; it will hardly be contended that he was given to reviewing pornographic literature; the writer of the article was Sir Henry Norman, who also bears a record as spotless as his editor in the eighties. But the libraries did not like to admit they had made a mistake, and mine would have been a Dreyfus case if my circumstances had not permitted me to issue A Mummer's Wife to the public at a popular price. At six shillings it reached the public, helped by an enthusiastic Press, which, however, did not succeed in convincing the libraries that their views regarding literary morality were exceptional, for it is not reason but prejudice that rules the world; and ten years later Esther Waters failed, as A Mummer's Wife failed, to move Smith out of the absurd position his libraries had placed him in. It is worth while to record his librarian's name, Mr Faux, for while telling authors that he could not circulate their books, he entertained them with the coarsest stories I've ever heard: a common man, no doubt, who distinguished between the spoken and the written word, and deemed himself virtuous when he told the reporter that because of certain Pre-Raphaelite nastiness in the narrative he could not circulate a book which, I would have you remember, has done more to awaken Christian virtue in the heart than any other book; which, incidentally of course, has been of much practical utility; for there is an Esther Waters Home for Girl Mothers. The very name has become so synonymous with goodness that it cannot be pronounced without causing an uplifting of the spirit. You think that I cannot advance proof. Listen to this; a friend sent it to me not many days ago; a page torn from The Shaftesbury Magazine, containing an article by Miss Kings­ford about The Fallow Corner Home for Homeless Children. She begins the article with this sentence: In 1898, a hospital nurse who dearly loved children read Esther Waters, by George Moore, and thereupon determined to forgo the dream of her life — a convalescent home of her own for little children — and made up her mind instead to start a home for the infants of unmarried working mothers, for whom practically no one seemed to care.

BALDERSTON. What do you think Mr Faux meant by Pre-Raphaelite nastiness?

MOORE. I don't suppose he attached any real meaning to the words, a ready-made phrase which came to his lips easily, whereby he might excuse himself for refusing to circulate an original book.

BALDERSTON. Esther Waters was your first popular success. But do you not think that if it had been preceded by other popular successes the libraries would have had to give way?

MOORE. It is probable that they would, but it is not likely that any writer whose aim is art will ever write many popular successes.

BALDERSTON. Pater regrets in the letter which you pub­lish in your preface to Heinemann's edition of The Con­fessions of a Young Man that you cut yourself off from many readers by what I think he defines as your Aristophanic joy of life.

MOORE. Pater cut himself off from many readers by his unfailing sense of beauty; and I can imagine the embarrassment that would have been aroused in his face if I had warned him that he was cutting himself off from many readers by insisting on a certain unfailing sense of beauty, not readily apprehended by the casual reader.

BALDERSTON. You would have it that even Pater sometimes wrote sentences that he had not considered sufficiently.

MOORE. I believe that to be the case, but in the interest of the present conversation it would be well to attach ourselves closely to the folly of the Anglo-Saxon, that the moral conduct of his race is dependent on the last novel published. You know the story of the old woman who was afraid to relieve herself into the sea lest she might bring about an inundation: and on the subject of the moral influence of prose narrative the Anglo-Saxon race seems to be the counterpart of the old woman, for just as the old woman failed to understand the depth of the ocean tides, and that her little drop could not increase these, the Anglo-Saxon race cannot understand that man's sexual conduct has not varied during the centuries, and cannot vary. Yet on all other subjects Anglo-Saxon minds are reasonable enough.

BALDERSTON. Shakespeare and his contemporaries seem to have been pretty free from this belief. It was Jeremy Collier who pointed out in the eighteenth century that shocking effects would follow if writers did not cease to produce comedies in which the husband was laughed at.

MOORE. I'd forgotten his name. Jeremy Collier! He attacked Congreve, who answered somewhat feebly that if vice was condoned during the course of the play virtue was always exalted in the concluding lines. Jeremy Collier's pamphlet was soon forgotten, and things went on very much as before, Sterne, Smollett and Byron writing as they pleased; Byron's Don Juan, it is true, provoked some protest from the editor of My Grandmother's Review, the British, for the disease was gathering strength, and in the nineteenth century Zola's novels were prosecuted under the Acts forbidding the sale of pornographic publications, and Henry Vizetelly, a man of letters, the author of several historical works, was put in prison. I have always looked upon Henry Vizetelly's death as a judicial murder. A false and hypocritical agitation that was, as you will see, when I tell you that Zola was received as a hero two years later in London, entertained by public bodies, and invited everywhere without the Vigilant Society that had instigated the prosecution against Henry Vizetelly uttering a word of protest.

BALDERSTON. The welcome given to Zola practically admitted that an injustice had been done to Vizetelly.

MOORE. It did, indeed, and I've often wondered if the members of the Vigilant Society ever woke in their beds asking themselves if they were murderers. But while I'm telling you of the Vizetelly case you may be asking yourself: what significance can this prosecution of long

ago have for me to-day? and I answer you that some things are for all time and never lose their significance, being part and parcel of humanity. I believe the Vizetelly case to be one of these, so packed is it with subterfuge, evasion, lies, hypocrisy, cunning, an ill-smelling midden, humanity at its very worst. It will surprise you to hear that this poor old gentleman, in the seventy-third year of his age, could not find a lawyer to defend him. If he had poisoned half-a-dozen nieces and nephews, brothers or sisters, he could have had the best advice the Bar could supply to prove him an innocent man, but because he published Zola's novels, he could find nobody. The Counsel he employed took the fees, but the Counsel was a very pious man, who said that he could not go on with the case because, to do so, he would have to read the books, so he persuaded Mr Vizetelly to plead guilty; Mr Vizetelly removed the passages that were said to be objectionable, the books were published without them; new passages were, however, discovered; he was prosecuted again, and again he could find no Counsel to defend him, and again he was advised by those who took the fees to plead guilty; and the old man, at his wit's end, in the seventy-third year of his age, enfeebled by illness, consented, and was sent to prison. Poor old man! He said to me, in Holloway Gaol: there was a good jury, and I should have been acquitted if the Counsel had gone on with the case, but they advised me to plead guilty, and I was in great bodily pain, and mental pain as well, and thought all the world was against me. Those were the words he spoke to me in Holloway Gaol; a few weeks after, he was dead.

BALDERSTON. Without doubt a painful story, and I can see it made a great impression on you.

MOORE. An ineffaceable impression.

BALDERSTON. In every court reformers who prosecute books present the same arguments, and they are familiar to everyone. Can you suggest how a book should be defended in order to show the jury the fallacy of the belief that morality depends upon literature, and at the same time expose the inconsistency of the crusaders in not attacking classics as well as new novels?

MOORE. I am not a lawyer, but I always had a taste for the Law, and were I not the only Irishman living or dead who cannot make a speech I should have had no difficulty in getting a verdict of acquittal from the jury:

GENTLEMEN OF THE JURY,

Certain passages have been read to you from a book which the Prosecution declares to be an immoral work, and if the charge can be established to your satisfaction the judge will be obliged to order the destruction of the book and to punish the publisher. The contention of the Prosecution is that man's moral nature and conduct are not only swayed but may be undone if certain societies do not keep strict watch over the latest publications, though it might seem more natural to believe that man's moral nature and conduct have come down to us generation after generation from the centuries unaffected by passing prejudices and conventions, as are the commotions in the air, the tides of the sea, and the seismic disturbances under the crust of the earth.

My first point is that the Acts under which this book is published were not intended by the author of the Acts to apply to literature but to pornographic publications that are quite distinct from literature. It is not true, as the Prosecution implied, that pornography and literature overlap, and that the frontiers are indistinct. On the contrary, the frontiers are extremely well defined, so much so that even if all literature was searched through and through it would be difficult to find a book that a man of letters could not instantly place in one category or in the other. The reason of this is that real literature is concerned with description of life and thoughts about life rather than with acts. The very opposite is true in the case of pornographic books. It is true, however, that in real literature a good deal of licence is asked for by the author. He must write about the whole of life and not about part of life, and he must write truth and not lies. I think everybody will agree to concede this point to me, but with it goes the corollary that a book is not to be condemned because it contains a coarse passage. If this be denied all literature would have to be prosecuted. I also contend that a book cannot be judged by a carefully selected passage. It would be impossible to judge of the literary value of a book by a few passages; how then can you judge of the morality of the book by a few passages? I shall have to maintain, in the interests of the case I am defending, that a book cannot be judged by certain passages, and availing myself of the ruling of a great number of learned expositors, who have always held that if portions be read from a letter the opposing Counsel is entitled to have the whole letter read to the Court, I shall read you this book in its entirety, and afterwards I shall meet the charge that these isolated passages upon which this prosecution is based are unpermissibly broad by reading you extracts from books which are, by common consent, among the classics of our language.

I'm very sorry to be obliged to keep you from your homes while my assistants and myself read to you representative selections from all periods of English literature, but this case is of the utmost importance, of far more importance than any trial for murder, involving, as it does, the moral and intellectual vigour of our race. The case which you are asked to try has never been tried before, In the case of Vizetelly every effort was made on both occasions, and was made successfully, to induce him to plead guilty. He was told that the jury selected were small tradesmen who could not understand literary questions and would surely convict him. But I'm not of the opinion that small tradesmen cannot try a case of this kind, if one condition be complied with: that the case be laid before the jury in its entirety. We cannot get any kind of fair verdicts if shreds of cases are laid before juries, and that is what the Prosecution proposes to do­ to judge the book by extracts. My intention is to get the whole of the case before the Court, and I can only do this by reading the book to you from cover to cover, and reading to you passages from authors of established reputations, authors with whom everybody is supposed to be acquainted. If your finding be that my client has exceeded the licence that has been tacitly granted by common consent to English literature you will be bound to condemn his book to be destroyed and himself to be punished for having issued it. If, on the contrary, you find that he has not written with more licence than the authors of the Bible or Shakespeare and the other Elizabethan poets and dramatists, the Restoration dramatists, Sterne, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson, Byron, Shelley, Swinburne — the list of names I have pronounced is by no means exhausted, I merely state those that rise up in my mind at the moment of speaking and do not pretend that I might not have made a much better selection — you will be obliged to acquit him. It cannot be maintained that there is anything in the book I am defending that exceeds the freedom of speech of certain passages which I shall read from Shakespeare and from other great writers. After reading each passage I shalI challenge my learned friend to deny that it is coarser than those of which he complains, and if he cannot do so it seems to me you must acquit my client of the charge of publishing a book that will damage the moral currency, one that is harmful to the health of the race, unless, indeed, it be your opinion that everybody has written immoral books who has availed himself of a licence of speech that would not be permitted in the polite society of, shall we say, Puddleton-on-Blink. If this be your opinion then, Gentlemen of the·Jury, as honest men, you will have to bring in a rider advising the society that is prosecuting this book to prosecute also the publishers of the Bible and Shakespeare. If the book before you goes: all that I shall read to you must go too. You see the dilemma in which this Prosecution has placed you. A verdict against my client involves a condemnation of the Bible itself.

And here is another point which, perhaps, has not been considered by the members of the Vigilance Society, that the literature of all the world is to be found in the libraries founded by the State or by Mr Carnegie. The Bible can be obtained in these libraries; all of the Latin and Greek writers are on the shelves in their original texts and some in translations, and can be had for the asking. Chaucer, Suetonius, Rabelais and Shakespeare unexpurgated — think of it, unexpurgated! — and the Elizabethan poets and dramatists! What dangerous places are our libraries — what horrible snares Mr Carnegie has set for the feet of our children! Plato and Horace must go, although we compel our children to read them in our schools. All ancient authors contain passages coarser than those complained of in this book, and if my client's book be condemned you are all accessories after the fact, for you pay taxes for the purchase of Homer, Aristophanes, Catullus, and in our own time, Balzac, Flaubert, Gautier, Hugo, Zola — the works of all of these have been purchased with your money. Out of your pockets came translations of Don Quixote which contain many coarse passages. You shall hear the scene in the inn, Gentlemen of the Jury; you shall hear it and you will be able to say then if my client has written anything exceeding the tale of the evil-smelling servant girl who goes to meet the waggoner and slides herself by mistake into Don Quixote's bed. And many are the passages in Goethe and in Heine that you shall hear, every one of which is likely to bring down with a crash our whole social fabric. You shall hear, too, some stories from Boccaccio, and if you do not weary, some from Brantôme. A passage or two from Plato may throw some light upon this matter. An ode or two from Horace. But we will not anticipate. Now, Gentlemen, listen to some passages from Chronicles —

BALDERSTON. Objection! As Attorney for the Prosecution, I object to the dragging in of other books as immaterial and irrelevant. We are not discussing the Bible or Shakespeare or Don Quixote, but the book in the dock, and you must conduct this case according to the rules of evidence.

MOORE. My Lord [addressing my black cat, who slept like a lordship on the Woolsack], there is no accepted standard as to what should be printed or published. No two men think alike on this subject, and no man thinks the same for any two days together. It is impossible, therefore, to try these cases as you would judge a case of theft. A man takes a pocket-handkerchief that doesn't belong to him and everybody is agreed that he shall be punished, but nobody can know what shall be printed or what shall not be printed unless a standard measure can be found. Furthermore, the laws under which this case is being tried have been applied capriciously and without regard to any standard, but there is a standard by which they ought to be applied, and the standard is English literature, a standard based upon the practice of dozens of generations, and shall these twelve men judge my client without a knowledge of the standard? Trials at law can only be judged by precedent, and every book that by common consent has passed into English literature has gone to make up the standard of what is permissible and is a precedent in this case. If, for instance, a really indecent book were prosecuted and the jury should acquit the defendant (the jury might be composed of men without regard for public morality), the book could be sold on a barrow in the streets next day, a miscarriage of justice so shocking that the verdict of the higher courts would have to intervene, and the plea would be that books of this kind can only be judged upon precedent, Now, my Lord, I submit that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and that you must permit this book to be judged upon precedent.

BALDERSTON. But, my Lord, even if this book does not exceed in licence books written in the past, because a crime was committed in the past with impunity it does not follow the crime should be allowed to-day. We are dealing not with the past but with the present.

MOORE. My Lord, I submit that there is no past in literature till it ceases to be read, and books I have mentioned are being printed and sold and people are reading them.

BALDERSTON. Well done, Moore. Your cross-examination of the society's secretary would be amusing.

MOORE. Thank you, Balderston. for your good opinion of my forensic talents. On direct examination he would have expressed his horror at the passages complained of, and when I took him in hand I would have him tell me why he disapproved of them, leading him to exaggerate their importance, and when I had got him to say he had never seen their like in print before I would ask him if he had read the Bible, Shakespeare and Plato; he would say he had, and then it would be my pleasure to read passages from Deuteronomy, The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Symposium, and to ask him if the passages I had read did not exceed in licence any in the prosecuted book. Don't try to wriggle, I say, answer yes or no.

BALDERSTON. If you have cast me for the role of the secretary — I answer: they do.

MoonE. Why then do you not prosecute the publishers of these books?

BALDERSTON. The books you mention are great literature; their authors wrote better than your client, and according to the taste of their time.

MOORE. We are not here to discuss aesthetics, Mr Balderston, but morals, and as life is more important than literature I ask you to agree that if a book be harmful it should be stopped, no matter how well it is written.

BALDERSTON. I am not so sure, for good writing -­–

MOORE. The Bible and Shakespeare have not proved harmful, for they are well written, that is your contention; then, my Lord, I should say, turning to the judge: the witness's admissions seem to me to entail a change in the pleadings. The pleading will have to be altered that on aesthetic grounds my client's book must be condemned, but there is no law whereby a book may be burnt and its publisher punished because it is not sufficiently well written. It might be well if such a law were in existence, but I submit that no such law is in existence.

BALDERSTON. I think the judge would here take the case from the jury and throw it out of court. But if the society won and suppressed the book in question, I am sure your cross-examination would prey upon the conscience of the secretary, and lead to attacks upon the publishers of classics.

MOORE. Let us see where logic will lead the crusaders if they be sincere. We will suppose them to be prompted by the conviction that all literature containing passages such as abound in the classical writers should be condemned, and that, after becoming conscientious objectors against the payment of taxes, to support libraries where people can read Boccaccio, they have been fortunate enough to secure juries willing to condemn all the writers that the world has hitherto been in the habit of regarding with reverence, and at length had finished literature off, leaving only Miss Austen. But there are some coarse passages in Miss Austen; she talks quite openly of ladies being in the family way, and novels should be written in accordance with the most susceptible conscience. So away with her to the burning. Even then the beginning of the end will not be in sight. Our crusaders will have to proceed against all the newspapers that publish stories of the unhappy marriages the divorce court dissolves. But the suppression of the Sunday papers will not complete the task; it is possible that the most energetic, the whole hoggers, if I may express myself so, will think that to look upon the Hermes of Praxiteles will tempt a woman to leave the spouse whose shoulders do not rise to the level of her aspirations. We must, therefore, so they say, proceed against public art galleries, break up many statues, and burn pictures, for nobody can deny that some of the greatest of all paintings which hang unmolested in art galleries, to which admission is unrestricted, depict mythological subjects — the Jupiter and Antiope of Correggio in the Louvre, for example — which could not be described in English literature with the same fidelity without drawing down upon the author immediate prosecution. Yet surely to describe an action in words is one degree further removed from nature than to portray it in paint, and it would be difficult to make plain to a jury that illicit emotions may be stirred up by a written description of a statue, and of a picture, whereas the picture and the statue do not awaken any such thoughts in the beholder.

But after the closing of our public galleries of paintings and sculpture, much work still remains for our reformers to accomplish; they must go into the theatre, and every skirt must descend to the ankle of its wearer, and then they must go into society — disguised as waiters, perhaps, but they will have to attend evening parties — so that they may inform themselves regarding the modesty of the dresses that are worn. In society, ladies wear their dresses cut low, and when these are brought into court it would be very difficult to convince a jury that the ladies wearing them are not influenced by a desire to attract the opposite sex. I should plead that no book can excite such emotions as a lady whose dresses are cut very low, and in answer to my argument the judge would make the order that henceforth all girls must be clothed to the ears. But whether dressed or undressed, a woman's eyes, as she looks across the table, make a more insidious appeal than a library full of books. So glances must be controlled; drink and meat inflame the passions, and will have to be rationed. The crusaders will have to give ear to table talk, and produce their shorthand notes, jottings taken down as they hand the dishes. And when the danger of champagne and talk is removed, there will remain a danger which I fear the crusaders, however vigilant, will find impossible to remove — the spring days.

BALDERSTON. Truly a grave danger, and one from which there seems to be no escape, so with your permission we will return to a subject easier of elucidation than what is to be done with the spring days — the motives actuating our social reformers. The word blackmailer I have heard pronounced by you, but you do not believe them to be all blackmailers, persecutors, hypocrites?

MOORE. I do not remember using those words, but I may have implied them, therefore I hasten to say that there are many sincere people among the crusaders, sincere but misguided, possessed, once more I say it, by the absurd idea that morality depends on the last novel. No doubt there are many dupes among our social reformers. But they are not all dupes. It is difficult to believe that the secretaries and treasurers of these associations who circularise the public when they succeed in getting a book condemned are dupes. The tone of the circular they issue betrays them to those who can read between the lines, and I believe it to be important to morality as well as to literature that publishers should combine against the blackmailer. The word slips out, so inherent is it in the subject, for blackmail plays a part in the crusade, though perhaps not a very large part. The original motive is the desire to persecute; for the desire to persecute is in us all. I should like to persecute the Post Impressionists, and am glad the means to do so are not at my disposal.

BALDERSTON. Who can say that he can withstand temptation? Increase the temptation sufficiently and every man is a sinner.

MOORE. It may be doubted if tidings of a sinless dio­cese would awaken much enthusiasm among the higher moralists, for without sin there would be no repentance. And in what trite and lack-lustre world would the moralists find themselves, yearning by the banks of the Thames for the good old days of sin to return to them. Has it not been said that without repentance we cannot rejoice over much?

BALDERSTON. The text you have in mind that joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth more than over ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance, is to be found only in Luke.

MOORE. And it is unlike Jesus, altogether unlike Jesus, a wholly unacceptable text. I suspect a Bishop. But let us return to the Vigilant Society at the time of the Vizetelly prosecution, for it provides us with an exemplar that will never be surpassed, one before whom Molière's Tartuffe sinks into insignificance — Captain Verney. Of the Captain's personal appearance a record is kept no doubt at the Old Bailey, but I have not asked to see it lest it should not conform to the image I have in mind, a tall, thin man, somewhat high shoulders, breaking out into short sentences occasionally. A slightly pompous man, he must have been, for a certain pomposity was necessary to win the admiration of the entire society of which Captain Verney was a prominent member, very much looked up to by all, especially the ladies, and it is interesting, indeed instructive, to imagine the little stir that animates the committee when he enters the office and takes a chair at the long table. The members might be waiting for their secretary, who has gone to fetch a number of books in which the Captain has marked doubtful passages, passages regarding which he would like his committee to express an opinion. It is pleasant to imagine the ladies' and gentlemen's voices murmuring among themselves: how very shocking; yes, very shocking. Would you care to look at this, Mrs A., and when you've read it, will you pass it on to Mrs B., who is anxious to see it? She has heard the book spoken about. Mrs B. agrees with Mrs C., and all look up approvingly at the secretary, a short, thick-set man with a beard, and a devout expression in his eyes as he handles the suspected books. His voice, we cannot imagine it otherwise than as subdued when he tells that the unbiased opinion of the committee regarding the sad necessity of a prosecution would be of great value. To examine all the passages, to read them aloud in hushed tones, to discuss them, occupies a great deal of time, and nothing is settled definitely until Captain Verney, turning the pages quickly, murmurs: shocking, shocking; quite shocking. Then everybody knows there is to be a prosecution, and faces brighten. But Captain Verney seems perplexed and restless, and it is not long before he takes out his watch, and the thought passes round: he has gotten an appointment — which is indeed the case. I regret it, he says, but I must leave you. There is not much more to say, and we are all agreed upon the painful necessity of stopping the circulation of this filth. You have my marginal notes, and if any difficulty should arise, I shall be here to give my opinion, whatever that may be worth, next Friday. I'm sorry to have to leave you. He looks at his watch once more. As it is I shall be a few minutes late, but perhaps by taking a cab and driving quickly I may arrive in time. On these words Captain Verney goes away to keep an appointment with a lady who has many acquaintances among young nursery­ maids aged from sixteen to eighteen years of age. And one day the news arrives at the office of the Vigilance Society that Captain Verney has been charged with the abduction of a young cook. It appears he took her to Paris, the secretary murmurs, in reply to questions, and the sisterhood claims that it must be a cleverly arranged plot laid by those who would obstruct us in our work; or it may be a mistake. Do you not think so, Mr X — ? The secretary shakes his head. I fear it is only too true. A few days after the magistrate sent Captain Verney for trial.

The story I'm relating came to pass not later than five and twenty years ago, and never a year goes by that I do not ponder on the psychology of the extraordinary Captain Verney, asking myself vainly how he justified himself to himself in the middle of the night when sleep was far from his eyelids, It is easy to answer that he did not try to justify himself, but it is hard for me to imagine a man leading a double life without trying to come to terms with himself, if I may so word it. A hundred times I have asked myself from what point of view he started on his extraordinary career.

BALDERSTON. But is not your curiosity tempting you into the very sin that you deplore, taking pleasure in the punishment of the sinner, if not in the punishment, in the psychology, for in doing this are you not congratulating yourself all the while that you are not as he is?

MOORE. It has been said often that nothing in humanity should be alien to us, but this man seems further from us than anybody in history. It is true that no man knows another man, no more than the beast that he tracks in the forest or the beast that leaps on his knees as he sits by the evening fire, and that is why justice is the delusion of the imperfectly educated. I'm sorry, Balderston. if any note of jubilation appeared in my voice when I spoke of Captain Verney's downfall. If there was, I apologise to his shade. All the same it is a terrible thing that a society that counted at least one Captain Verney among its members should have been allowed to do to death poor old Henry Vizetelly.

BALDERSTON. But is there no book you would condemn, not even such as certain are given to collecting?

MOORE. We are discussing literature, not indecency, and as I have already said, there can be no excuse for mistaking one for the other; literature cannot become pornographic, for the subject of literature is the normal life of man, the commonplace, which, when enlightened by genius, becomes the universal, and there are twenty other reasons why art is never pornographic.

BALDERSTON. But tell me, do you deny that literature has any influence upon conduct?

MOORE. Life is but influences. We are influenced by all we see, hear or smell; the touch of a hand, a flower may influence our conduct, but not literature, or rarely; the appeal of literature is mainly intellectual.

BALDERSTON. You have mentioned that our public libraries contain all modem and classical writers and yet remain unmolested by the crusaders, and you know, of course, that these books in their original languages are invariably displayed openly on the shelves, together, perhaps, with Bowdlerised English translations, while complete English renderings are kept in locked cases and doled out at the discretion of the librarian to persons thought qualified to read them. If books ought not to be read in English ought they to be read by persons of superior education, when, as Gibbon remarked in prefacing that Greek footnote on the behaviour of the Empress Theodora, they are veiled in the obscurity of a learned language?

MOORE. The argument put forward by our crusaders is that licentious literature (I use the word licentious in its literal sense) appeals to the passions, inflames them and undermines the health of the nation. If that be so, why should these books be lent to educated people and not to the uneducated? Are we to assume then that education does away with the passions? Sappho did not lack education, nor did George Sand, and how many more might be mentioned; every Don Juan will tell you that the only women worth while are learned women. The question we are discussing is beset with prejudices, conventions, subterfuges and obtusities. You spoke just now of Bowdlerised versions, but Bowdlerised versions of the Bible, of Shakespeare, of Plato are unacceptable and will always remain unacceptable, for nobody is agreed as to what should be left out and what should be retained. There is no agreement among the emendators themselves. If they were locked up in different rooms they would produce different versions of Plato, Shakespeare and the Bible, and be at quarrel the moment they were let out, and the locking up of books in the libraries to be doled out to persons qualified to read them calls up to my mind an amusing scene of a librarian questioning a girl as to her age and the education she has received, and looking into her face, trying to determine from the profile as well as from the full face whether she is qualified to read Sterne in an unexpurgated version — different expurgations set for different ages: one for fifteen, another for eighteen, another for twenty-one, and putting the same questions to a boy who saunters up while the girl is at the counter. Are the boy and girl to be called upon to affirm upon oath that they are not actuated by desire to read spicy passages, but are merely anxious to acquaint themselves with the literature of a certain period? How can the girl or boy take such an oath? They do not know why they wish to read these books; motives are complicated things; we are not governed by one motive, but by many. After scrutinising the boy's face and the girl's face, and asking himself again and again: is this one qualified? the librarian hands Roderick Random to one and The Sentimental Journey to the other and retires to his desk, to become a prey, soon after, to scruples of conscience. Was there not a look in that girl's eye which should have made it clear to him that she was not a person whose temperament allowed her to read The Sentimental Journey? And the boy? Hours later he wakes up in bed with the cry: I was wrong, he was not qualified; I must get that book back in the morning! The librarian himself does not know why he reads certain books; his motives are mixed, as yours or mine are. Only God can see into the heart. My dear friend, John Eglington [sic], could look at an applicant for ever without being able to decide what his motives were. The librarian need not trouble himself about motives as long as the applicant is content to read Boccaccio, Brantôme, Rabelais in the original: on the relation of literature to morals one can unwind for ever without coming to the end of Folly spool.

BALDERSTON. In New York City the Anglo-Saxon atti­tude with which you are familiar exists side by side, and on perfectly good terms with Continental tolerance. We have in New York two millions of people who read and speak and hear in their theatres their own language, and we let them read what books and attend what plays they like, without the slightest regard for the Anglo-Saxon laws of the land, so long as they leave the English language alone; and while vigilance societies prosecute new novels in English more stringently in New York than in London, there is no book in any other language that cannot be openly displayed for sale, whatever its character, without risk of interference.

MOORE. I never heard of a prosecution being brought in London against a book in a foreign language.

BALDERSTON. The vigilance societies in New York guard that other palladium of the Anglo-Saxon race, the sanctity of the Sabbath, as closely as they preserve morality by watching over new novels in English. No Broadway theatre is permitted to perform plays on Sunday, and not long ago, when a stage society tried to put on a serious play for its own members only, on Sunday evenings, the only night when theatres and actors were available, the police, at the instance of a vigilance society, occupied the house and prevented the performance.

MOORE. I see nothing surprising in that.

BALDERSTON. Only this, that in the foreign quarter of the city, as on the Continent, Sunday is the biggest theatrical day of the week. Two performances are given, in German, Yiddish and Italian, of plays by leading European dramatists which if presented on Broadway even on weekdays would land the managers in jail, or, alternatively, in bankruptcy, and the vigilance societies never object. It follows that what desecrates the Sabbath on Broadway does not desecrate it on the Bowery. Not only does morality, as you have said, seem to depend not upon literature but only upon literature in the English language, but our vigilance societies also seem to be of the opinion that the Sabbath can be desecrated only in the English language.

MOORE. The smut hound gives tongue at all kinds of game; an utterly undependable cur: at this very moment he is haying in the coverts. At what? rabbit, hare or fox. Hark to Priapus! cries Mudie. At him, Libertina! shouts Smith. A mixed pack, Balderston.