1892-02-01 to Charles Scribner’s Sons

Autograph letter signed, Princeton University, 891 words

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

8 Kings Bench Walk, Temple

[Monday] Feb 1st 1892

Dear Sir

Regarding the article on Fromentin about which you write, I beg to say that I shall be glad to write the article for you when I have advanced the novel Mother and Child a stage further.

I wrote to you about this novel in my last letter. I am convinced that, if I ever achieve a great literary and commercial success, it will be with this book. I hope you understood from my last letter that it is the drama of motherhood in the simplest and most rudimentary form that our civilization admits — the fight of a servant girl for the life of her illegitimate child.

Have you ever thought what this means? Have you ever realized the fact that every rich woman who takes in wet nurses causes the death of one or two or three illegitimate children. It is life for a life.

I have just written the scene between Esther Waters and the rich woman whose child she is nursing. I think I have succeeded in bringing out the callousness of the rich woman and the heroism of the working woman who at last finds words, simple words, and tells what she thinks.

Then there is the scene with the baby farmer. "Give me five pounds and I will take your child off your hands for you. Of course if it lives I shall be out of [pocket]; I must take my chance of that." A drama of motherhood in the middle of a complex civilization and yet beset with dangers worse than those of a primeval forest.

Briefly, I do not want to take my mind off this book for the moment, but I should like to write the article on Fromentin a little later on. He is a writer for whom I have an intense admiration. There are also other articles I should like to write for your magazine.

I have for the moment given up writing for the Fortnightly for really the price is not sufficient. Twelve, thirteen and fifteen pounds for an article is not enough. I do not believe that any writer of equal reputation ever made so little money by his writings. I believe you pay enormous prices. I do not want enormous prices, I only want possible prices and, if I am to continue to do good work, I must get them, for my Irish estates are going from bad to worse.

Now here is a list of articles I should like to write for you.

I should like to write on the future of the novel. The romantic novel will get more and more artificial, and of necessity because the world is getting more and more civilized. Literature will grow more and more reflective and less spontaneous. It will expire in triumph of the tall hat, the piano and mild dissent. I propose to look into the future and study its decline and death.

I should like to write an article on Protestantism as an inartistic religion with special mention of Newman and Manning, who were pure protestants in blood if not in faith. I should speak of the attitude of the Irish church in the Parnell affair. Rome is indulgent to the sins of the flesh, relentless to the sins against faith. I should like to write an article on Fromentin. I should speak of Ruskin in it (if you do not publish his works). I have the greatest admiration for his prose and the greatest contempt for his opinions. His teaching seems to me to be the most pernicious. Ruskin is always wrong.

I should like to write an article on Thackeray who has been over praised and the reaction is inevitable. I should speak of Turguenieff in this article whom I admire even more than I did when I wrote the article in Impressions and Opinions. As a satirist, Thackeray can be attacked; his satire is very cheap indeed.

I could name other articles which I should like to write but that will do for the present. You can write accepting them all without fear for should there be one that you do not think suitable for the magazine or not up to the mark, I will replace it or rewrite it for you. I am not sensitive. I much prefer to have an article sent back than to have a weak article printed.

In the meantime could you get me any money for the serial rights of Mother and Child? I am afraid it would not suit the magazine. It is a book that everyone must approve of when it is printed in book form, but I am afraid it is too unconventional, too human, for a magazine. It would however suit an outspoken popular newspaper very well; and it would be easy to omit a phrase or a passage. But pray, don't think there is anything immoral in the book, a more moral book never was written. It is merely unconventional and will surprise the hack reader, that's all.

Apologizing for this long letter

I remain truly yours

George Moore.

PS I hope you will send a copy or proofs of Vain Fortune soon.