George Moore and the Revival of Irish (The Untilled Field / An t-Úr Gort)

George Moore was caught up in the enthusiasm for the revival of the Irish Language and offered to do his bit. The idea was that he would produce a collection of simple tales that could then be translated into Irish and serve as headline for writers in the native language. The originals would then be destroyed. Tadhg Ó Donnchadha and Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin did the translation and it was published as An t-Úr Gort, The Untilled Field in the original. I have never seen a copy and it seems that it plunged into the pool of indifference without a splash like an expert diver. T.W. Rolleston translated it back into Sacsbhréarla (Speech of the Saxons) and Moore declared it improved by its bath in Irish. And I’ve never seen that either.

Scholars of Joyce claim The Untilled Field as an influence on Dubliners. There’s a nice blog entry by David Wheatley on Joyce and Beckett under the influence:
influence
My own modest claim is that the story The Wedding-Gown has elements in it which seem translated from the Gaelic tradition picked up by Moore who if he had more that one hundred conversations with stable boys, jockeys and servants about Moore Hall would surely have heard. One of them is ‘bhiseach an bháis’ or the improvement in condition or lucidity that happens just before death to enable recollection and repentence. If you have seen or read Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh the Irish Priest (Niall Tobín) at the deathbed of Lord Marchmain explains. It was the sign that Charles Ryder sought.
the divil in the room

The moiedered old woman comes to her senses and passes on the wedding gown to her niece. The garment has kept her chained to this plane but when the perfect moment has come she can let go. Fear of death in both the young woman and the old is vanquished. It’s a perfect story translated in so many ways, out of the grrreat Miiind as Yeats would say Out of the Grrreat Miiind . Indeed.

George Moore: 1852 - 1933 by Adrian Frazier

In the Moore Family there is no doubt that George took the part of Fredo. Old Moore, though it would be unwise thus to sneer, was a parliamentary thorn in the side of the landlord class to which he equivocally belonged, as he fought for reform of the system of land tenure but would not consider its total derogation. Peasants and land not the yearning for independence is the spiritual core of the Irish struggle and albeit as I previously recounted, an excellent landlord during the Famine of '47, his life was threatened and rents were tardy landing in the hat of the steward on gale days. Adrian Frazier tells the tale of how George Père sensing that the peasants were not so much restless as ebullient and requiring the calm of the cold metal spoon of the Master's pewter eye. The Moores were grey eyed hard riding men who did not baulk shocking English jockeys by their abandonment of due pause before a fence. Therefore in 1870 he came home to his 12,481 acres. He was dead within the week not from the uncertain discharge of a rusty fowling piece but twas apoplexy that took him. Dr. Barron a sound local man gave his diagnosis:

Mr.Moore has an attack of apoplexy such as statesmen very often get.

George Fils and his capers at boarding school in England from which he was expelled may well have contributed to that brick red congestion of the face which marks the condition but it is also certain that the long thin upper lip formed barbs of sarcasm which crushed back the already otter-like shoulders of his eldest son. The cover of the book shows the Edouard Manet portrait in which George looks like a whiskery otter that has emerged from the stream with a vaguely puzzled appearance.

By right of primogeniture George was now master with all the dwindling revenues of the estate, half afraid of the stove pipe hatted tenantry with their knee britches and their clay pipes and land league notions. Begob, says George, I'll go for an artist which he did, first to London and then to Paris in 1873. Excellent timing.

The French bohemians liked him and his landed credentials gave him an entrée into the salons of the Mme de Staël manques of the raffish upper class. He had a fine time soon realising that his talent as a painter was slight and here his characteristic lack of self-belief which kept him from settling in mediocrity moved him on to the writing of bad poetry. As a result of all the contacts that he made he later became Zola's man in England and the promoter of Impressionism there through his reviews.

Adrian Frazier's excellent biography runs to 604 pages of smallish print, copiously annotated and referenced. The scholarship runs smoothly without breaking up into lumps of sidebar disputation. Very readable indeed. The adventures of George in the book trade in which he took on the three volume tyranny of the circulating libraries is well covered as are his rows with everyone in the Irish Literary scene during his ten years residence in the heart of the Hibernian metropolis. It seems his impudent self-revelations seduced others to admissions which he gossiped about. One has the feeling that his squabble with Yeats who wrote with spiteful inelegance about him may have damaged his literary reputation. Frazier does not flinch at judging the seedier aspects of Moore's character.

Esther Waters by George Moore part II

If there was ever a novelist with the background knowledge of the world of horse racing it was George Augustus Moore. The Moore's of Moore Hall were horse mad like the Barfield's of his best selling Esther Waters and there is a little tribute to his Uncle, Arthur Augustus Moore, who was killed riding in the Aintree Grand National of 1845 on a horse Mickey Free. Mrs. Barfield is worried about her son Mr. Arthur aka Ginger, who is a famous gentleman rider and is relieved that he came through but only placed fourth. From the Irish National point of view the greater fame attaches to George's father George Henry who won the Chester Gold Cup with Coranna in 1846. His prize money was augmented by £17,000 from on course bets. This he used for Famine Relief on his estate and the purchase of a cow for each of his tenants. No one was evicted from the Moore place in hard times and this is remembered to this day. The incendiarybosthoons that burnt down the house in 1922 have commemorated this with a plaque. That's nice!

So then George Augustus Moore came from fine stock and he supplied the literary credentials to a family that was prominent in sporting and political life. His family must have resigned themselves to a hiatus with the poor specimen that he presented and the lack of confidence in his own powers is evinced by the surprise that he got with the success of Esther Waters. Receiving the first bound copy from the printers he writes:

...turning the pages, seeing all my dreams frozen into the little space of print, I had thrown the book aside and had sat like one overcome until the solitude of King's Bench Walk became unendurable, and forced me to seek distraction in St. James's Theatre, for I did not think that anyone had yet read the book and was genuinely surprised when an acquaintance stopped me in the lobby and began to thank me for the pleasure my story had given him. But I could not believe that he was not mocking me, and escaped from him, feeling more miserable than ever

(from Ave first vol. of Hail and Farewell.

This was Moore's 16th. book and 9th. novel and it was published in 1894. It was a massive success perhaps helped by its banning by that guardian of public morals, Mudie's Circulating Library. As an author Moore had arrived and in his way of retreating to the absurd poles of his personality, moi the whoremaster extraordinaire or the sad clown mocked and despised; claimed that it was the ruination of his access to the common people. He had come to know well one of the charladies of the King's Bench apartments. From her came all the inside dope about life in service during the Old Queen's reign. This would all end with success and in his Rousseauist way he relates how he forgot to answer the letter requesting aid from his char's son in her poor old age.

Esther Waters is pure realism with its mixture of sun and shade that even the most wretched life has. Moore describes the evils of baby farming and the connection between it, infanticide and the 'wet nursing' of the offspring of fine ladies that do not wish to spoil their figures. Esther is a battler with that degree of natural irascibility that will help her deal with obstacles while being part of why she faces them in the first place. Her sullenness and sulking drives William her lover away from her before she knows that she is pregnant by him. The enabling and disabling elements of character are well described. The people that she meets as she struggles to maintain a grip on life and rear her boy to manhood are a mixture of the good, the bad and the ugly. The wheedling baby farmer who offers to snuff her baby for £5 is a portrait of evil shocking because utterly normalised. Moore affected to believe that his novel was the inspiration behind the outlawing of the baby farming parlour industry.

This is a novel that is well worth reading and not just for historical reasons or Eng.Lit. requirements. It's a classic. Find the American edition on Internet Archive.

Esther Waters by George Moore

George Moore loved to revise but when faced with two versions of his classic Esther Waters one from Internet Archive on my ereader and the other a Dent Everyman paperback in an edition first published in 1936 and reprinted in 1976, I couldn't decide which was the later revised version. My preference was for the ereader version and I hoped that my assessment coincided with that of Moore but you never know. They say that Yeats's father, who was a portrait painter, did excellent work but you had to find out how many more sittings it would take to finish it. When he said 2, at that point you should insist on taking it with you.

A little more research and I found out that the British and Irish editions are based on the earlier work and the American is the revised. Very gratifying to discover ones taste coincides with that of a modern master. The initial opening of the book puts a lot of information into the mouth of a station porter who becomes that creaky expository device, the bystander explainer.

'So they do,' he answered, 'near Shoreham yonder,' and he pointed to a belt of trees,'they be too fine folk for the town. Shoreham, you see, isn't what it was in days gone by with shipyards about the harbour, and ships from all parts dropping their sails as they come within the breakwaters. Not much doing in the way of building down this way- a three ton boat or two on the stocks, not much more.'

MRV: (the porter is shunted)

That was the way to Woodview, right up the lane. She could not miss it. She would find the lodge gate in that clump of trees. The man lingered, for she was an attractive girl, but the station-master called him away to remove some baggage.

Moore in the Impressionist manner composes the landscape:

It was a barren country. Once the sea had crawled at high tide half way up the sloping sides of these downs. It would do the same now were it not for the shingle bank which its surging had thrown up along the coast. Between the shingle bank and the shore a weedy river flowed and the little town stood clamped together, its feet in the water's edge. There were decaying shipyards about the harbour, and wooden breakwaters stretched long thin arms seawards for ships that did not come. On the other side of the railway apple blossoms showed above a white washed wall,, some market gardening was done in the low lying fields whence the down rose in gradual ascents. On the first slope there was a fringe of trees. That was Woodview.

Two Versions A and B
A:

It opened into a handsome avenue, and the gatekeeper told her to keep straight on, and to turn to the left when she got to the top. She had never seen anything like it before, and stopped to admire the uncouth arms of elms, like rafters above the roadway; pink clouds showed through, and the monotonous dove seemed the very heart of the silence.

B:

He told her to keep straight on and to be sure to turn to the left when she got to the top; and having never seen an avenue before, she stopped to admire the rough branches of elms, like rafters above the roadway, and to hear the monotonous dove.

I am just a little way along the avenue that is Esther Waters myself and likewise stopping to admire the view. She is a chapel girl of the Plymouth Brethern sect, and is to find herself a kitchen maid in a gambling mad establishment. This won't end well. More anon.