/ LIBRARY IHlVEhSITX O; CALtPORNIA SAN DI6«0 VA,-Vv-Xi-«S^-1^ xi^ :X^ V. e^^ r ~-C, CK '/¥- \IH (47 / MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE /'-' WORKS BY GEORGE MOORE A MODERN LOVER. A mummer's wife. A DRAMA IN MUSLIN. SPRING DAYS. CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG MAN. ESTHER WATERS. ESTHER WATERS (Play). CELIBATES. EVELYN INNES. SISTER TERESA. MODERN PAINTING. IMPRESSIONS AND OPINIONS. THE LAKE. THE STRIKE AT ARLINGFORD. MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE. HAIL AND FAREWELL : I II III AVE SALVE. VALE. Alemoirs of My Dead Life OF ^alanteries , c/Keditation^ and ^ememlrrance^ Kjoliioquu^ or t^dvtce to (/overs ^ ^ witA many mucel/anecu^^lecteons en Virtiie Sf c/fCerit George AIoore/yW^creHa/ZGAI. JLOJSTDOJV' Published hy \i^\t%^mQ:m, . London: William Etine.iuinn, 1921. MEMOIRS OF MY DEAD LIFE Thw edition^ printed from hand-set type on English hand-made paper, is limited to one thousand and thirty copies, of which one thousand are for sale. This is Xo ^.A..K.... ^vv/ f^ApCvcn^'^—^ EPISTLE DEDICATORY My dear Gosse, In the sunset of our lives we are dedicating books to each other, and I am fortunate enough to obtain from you a gathering of those delightful literary essays which, for the past two years, have kept me looking forward to the coming of Sunday, making Sunday for me a day of solace and indulgence, when after breakfast I fling myself into my armchair and open the Sunday Times. In obtaining your acceptance of this book I am not less fortunate than I was in your dedication to me of Books on the Table, and I hope that our love of France and of Paris, and the stories of our many French friends which enliven these pages, will make plain to you that no other book that I have written comes to you so naturally, so amiably solicits the protection of your name, as this one. It is not necessary, and it might even seem unbecoming, for me to mention here all the French craftsmen whom we have met and shaken hands with at the parting of the roads, but there is one that it would be disgraceful for me to omit to mention, MaUarme, our friend of many yeais, one of the saints of literature, who during his life envied no man, who spoke ill of none, and bore without resent- ment or querulous words the contempt of many, who knew how to accept poverty without complaining, and the vii of a ssmU carde as kcs recMBpatsr. .\ik1 m>w, kaew MiBiiT' panw— Wt, studs apart ■—mug TTTT MMb as PMer wd JoIm did after tke of J«s«& I Ma wntHMT to To« fiwa Ckasf^, a Tflfai^ within a Mie «r less of Valra, ^e bcv GaKW. wliftlwr pOgiiMS coae m Mcreast^ waidbas. Thi^« vx?i^ condscted bf Me Tcsfeerdar thro^k die Ibvest bj a pav^ Raman way t» the SeiBC. We crossed the brid^ nndo- wiKk^e piexs I «>eK OBce aeazir drowned, a caplal of bost iffiet the boat ^at he had bo^h* for tT the price he l ec eiie d for L'Jprh Ifitf ^n Fmmte. Had I not thrown mjsdf oole^ mrr on the other side, and MaDanae not let -o tike sheet tha held the sail, we shoaU hav^ ccne oirer. It was with vr hat that the boat was bailed. If I MRste this incident it is fcr that all thin^ T^lAtin^ to Ma&anac, hewei^er tmial, are ande precioBS by bis I had iMof of this as I iciited onr ftde adrentnre to poHtoi^the exact paart of thecncBtniwtedhthe accident b^eflns; ud, after I conld icnacndier of h^a, we proceeded with gni« s^^s aaid denManoar to the He ilighlM.whoMi iftis thepi^Li'— ro^dthe sat at we turned to kare Valrin ; tfae gesture and I aaid, '-^ The imposztkn of hands," not to tfaem, bat to iBTsdf, for I woald not distract tbdr tikoogfats froB tfe bm^n master. We retomed acroas tiie bridge and throng tiie fiirest iq> the pared Boman vaj to the supper that awaited as at Le Val Qiangis — a loag, low hoose, bk trair ■■I'fw iTe^, the rooms ninning into each other, all orerioc^dng a stone terrace, omaanented with flower Tases, and a lawn siielnng oo either side of a groap of noUe trees, mder wliiefa a statue stands. The doors q€ the great saloon open on to the terrace, and the long table at which we sat breaking bread, oar words hashed in resKflibcance of the master, set me thinking again of old Galilee, addng mrseif if perchance a blackbird whistled in a thidLet, or &om a tree hard bv, when the compiiiior sopped with the stiai^er thej met on their war to riiwiiiii Ever TOUTS; Geosge Moor£ PRELUDE WT WAS on hearing somebody hint that this volmne should he adoiiied with a portrait of the author that a vision rose before me of many bearded or moustached men, bald-headed and pompous, of young men cast into pensive attitudes, book in hand, of deep-bosomed matrons whose billonjy nakedness is barely restrained from overfow in too brief bodices, of budding spinsters exhibiting backbones to the last joint, beyond which ike camera may not look tvithout indecency, for its eye is not sensitive to colour or modelliiig ; it cannot stress or soften a line, transpose, add to or omit ; it is without the ma^c of touch, relating only the facts in front of it impartially, the significant and the trivial, the ugly and the pretty. Imparti- ally, I have said, but without attaining to the great impartiality of N attire ; photography is finite, and whatever truth it is capable of refecting is disparate and fragmentary ; if we ham anything from a photograph it is an apprehension of the ugly, for photography being strictly circumstantial, the ugly is tiglier m the plate than in Nature. " Yet it is proposed," I said, " that I should place my natural defects at the mercy of a mechanism which registers only the casual and unimportant." On arriving home I began to consider the question anav, and rising from my arm-chair, I said, " The photograph' s fat, grey, unifoiin surfaces are repugnant to all who have become aware that Art resides not in proportions and anatomy, but in xi xu touch. U'ilhoHt touch there can be no Art in painting, in sculpture, in literature, in music or in printing; Art is not in the brain, but in the hand, and Apollo s great gift is no longer in our sercice; the machine has taken its place. Only in the Sational Gallery " At the words "National Gallery;' the great array of the lienaiisance came into my ken— Italy, France, Germany, Holland— and I said, ''Man arose from the ape gbrioudy, but it would seem that he is 7iow descending whence he came, for tvithout our seme of AH man would be no better;'' and I fell to thinking thai although it be true that the gorilla and chimpanzee are disappearing, we need not despair. " Their absence," I continued, " will be bid tem- j)oran/ ; the jnissing link will soon be amongst us again " / .stopped, brought to bay by a memory of the daguerreotypes of old time, .sharp, clear, explicit portraits that Van Eyck would have stopped to admire. " The daguerreotype ivas a mechanism, it is true" I said, " but it was a fine mechanism, almost beautiful, and it is now buried among the handicrafts, of ivhich it was not one. Alas / there is none amongst us now who can design a chair or a clock, and we have to buy old tea-services. When these are all broken ?" I asked, and my thoughts ttiming abruptly towards the last Art movement in England — Pre-RaphaeUtisin — / began to ponder on the meeting of Millais, Holman Hunt and Rossetti in a studio in Newman Street in eighteen forty-nine, till the remembrance of a photograph of a little boy in short jacket and trousers, wearing a belt, whose portrait I had not seen for quite half a century, interrupted my thoughts and propelled me towards the wiiting-table. And having written for it I forgot it till it arrived some weeks later in a box amid so many various ivrappings that it seemed as if my hands would never come upon the many-enfolded portrait. " A too meticulous caretaker," I said, " who puts me past my patience." At last the portrait came forth out of a cloud of tissue, delighting my eyes and putting the thought into my mind that the old and XIU the new pkotograpky differ as widely as Van Eyck and Kneller. " Herein," I said, " is a fundamental likeness that the years could not wipe away, hut in a modern photograph the likeness is shadowy and evanescent, as it is in j)ortraits hy Kneller and his fellow Lely ; " and then, stirred by a desire of tridh, I rang for my servants, who recognised the little boy as the original shoot from which I sprang. It was taken across to the apothe- cary, who knew it, a7id afterwards to my publisher, who said, " What a dear little hoy !" I answered him, " Yes, and it is pleasing to think that I was once not as I am no7v." " Bid why did you never think of this portrait before?" " Becatise Providence kept it back in my mind, reserving it hy decree for the hook that you are now publishing. This portrait will prove valuable to you, for it will persuade the pnides into reading the hook in the hope of discovering in the stories traces of the dear little boy in the frontispiece ; he will be, I do asstire you (if I may drop into the language of the journaUst), your great asset, for on turning the pages to escape from some jarring incideid or apophthegm, the prudes will come upon the portrait agai7i, and of a certaijity the ?vinning features will bring belief that the little boy must have fallen into evil company or been neglected in his yoidh, for if he had been broiight up jjroperly he would be quite diff^erent from his book — no, not his book, his ascendant's book ; and fortified by the memory of the dear little fellow {jvho followed the photographer into the dark room in rvhich the plate was developed in baths filled tvith various evil-smelling acids, and Ming over him while he tinted, passing blue over the necktie and a touch of fesh coloiir over the face), they will return to the book and in a differe^d mood. Without a dotibt of it, Pawling, the portrait will make many fnends for the hook." We are always a-dream, from tottering childhood to tottering old age, and that little boy, whose thumb is in his belt (put there by the excellent photographer), was on his way in the 'sixties to a Catholic school, where he might have been made XIV inlo a Utile Catholic if he had not lost his health from the had food and the piercing draughts that ranged up and donm the corridors and whirled in the classrooms. He was taken home to recover, and when he returned to Oscott, some two years Inter, he brought hack with him Shelley s poems for clandestine reading, and the Jlowers in " The Sensitive Plant " that " . . . . gaze in the stream's recess Till they die of their own sweet loveliness" helped him to withstand the pressure of Catholicism and gave him courage to resist threats of foggings if he did not confess his sins. In the influence of " Queen Mab '' he pleaded that he had no sins to confess, hid this claim was regarded as an untruth — no one heing without sin. He claimed the right, however, to lay his case before the president, and was given leave to nrite to his father. It would please me to tell here the story of his father's journey from Ireland to inquire into his son's Uick of belief in priests and their sacraments, but the ston/ is related in " Hail and Farewell," and eschewing paraphrase and quotation, I will return to the little boy who stands bt/ the chair with his thumb in his belt, our budget of information about him not being nearly exhausted. I hnve to tell the reader that he was of an amiable and happy disposition, a docile child, yet a ivilful one, for although acquiescing in all that was said to hiin, he failed to deviate from the path that Nature had set for him to follow, thereby introducing into this prelude the momentous question of pre- destination, on which the lightest and the weightiest minds have pondered without being able to discover how Fate and Free Will may " double up " under the Christian blanket. It would seem that only this is clear, that everything is pre- ordained or nothing, doctrines equally inaccessible to our intelligence ; and turning to the photograph, we begin to wonder why Nature should have given suck witty eyes to George {eyes that mu,