AE, George Moore, and Avatars

97 AE, GEORGE MOORE, AND AVATARS By Jack VJ. Weaver (Winthrop College) Because of AE's gentle nature, critics have been hard-pressed to explain his satiric picture of George Moore in Avatars (1933)· John Eglinton, friend of both, can serve as an example. According to Eglinton, it "was not in Russell to feel personal resentment , and if he felt any such inclination he . . . schooled himself instantly to repress it."1 Uhile Eglinton's pronouncement that AE felt professional, aesthetic, and national resentments and he undoubtedly felt these at various times - like most pronouncements , this is still an oversimplification. The truth is that between I916 and 1923. when Moore and AE were quarreling most bitterly in private, Russell ignored Moore publically; but, between 1913 and I916, when relations were cordial, and from 1923 on (i.e., after peace had been restored) AE felt free to discuss Moore's weaknesses. As might be expected, AE's satiric treatment of Moore is most often in connection with Hail and Farewell, which Russell thought malicious. In the Irish Homestead and Irish Statesman , references to Moore and his work are of three kinds: personal anecdotes as illustrations for lead articles, dispraise of Moore in contrast to another, more favored, author in book reviews, and direct subjective judgments of Hail and Farewell. After these, the caricature in Avatars begins to make sense. For most of the decade Moore lived in Dublin, AE was his closest friend. For seven years (1904-1911), AE spent each Saturday evening at Ely Place and went there daily during his lunch hour. After Moore returned to London, Russell was lonely. He told John Quinn that GM was the only one of his acquaintances with any ideas, and that he was "alive all the time."3 Still, in his lead article for 5 April 1913. "Suffering from Enemies and Friends," AE used Moore as a disparaging illustration of the plight of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society» "George Moore is reported to have left one religion and adopted another in the hope that his reasons for deserting one faith and accepting another would injure both equally."^ Since Moore resented any reference to his ever having been a Catholic, this comment was not designed to please him. Somewhat more favorable but still mixed was the comment of 6 October I923, "Light in Dark Places": Mr. George Moore is not always a safe guide when he enlarges upon what are in his eyes the manifold defects of his countrymen. Unfortunately his gibe that he had met Irishmen who admitted that they were not educated and could not be educated, but never anyone who was not prepared to educate others, is truer now than when it was first uttered.-5 More frequently, AE used Moore as an unfortunate contrast when he reviewed the books of others. He may have had Moore's compositional habits and fluid style in mind, for example, on 22 November 1913. when he reviewed James Stephens' Here Are Ladies. Stephens' work possesses abundant energy and should be preferred to "the flavourless prose of many novelists who seem to consider writing a business to be tackled every day after breakfast for a certain number of hours."6 With the next review there is no doubt. Johnson Pasha's translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, reviewed 31 January 1914, reminded AE of Susan Mitchell's quip about Moore: "We sometimes suspect Omar with regard to the wine cup he praises was rather like the famous Irish novelist whose tales of his amorous adventures led a witty Irishwoman to speak of him as one 'who never kissed but told.'"7 Katherine Tynan's TwentyFive Years, reviewed 25 April 1914, was deemed more truthful than Hail and Farewell, for George Moore has dealt with his characters in his book as Corot dealt with his landscapes. He has invented a group - invented with genius, it is* true - but nonetheless invented people who never existed in Ireland and has called them by well-known Irish names. . . . TwentyFive Years has a kindly realism, Hail and Farewell only malicious fantasy." Most damaging of all, however, was AE's review of Susan Mitchell's Ge orge Moore...