An Introduction to George Moore: Artist and Craftsman

312 there were many moments of tension and anxiety and exasperation, most of them caused by Maman, Gabrielle's mother, the tyrant of the kitchen and patronizing Gallic matriarch. Nor does Mr. Coustillas portray Gabrielle's character as flawless. Especially after Gissing's death, Gabrielle, in Coustillas' portrait of her, is revealed as fanatically faithful to Gissing's memory but also as distrustful of most of Gissing's friends, except Clara Collet. She became increasingly more hostile toward the Wellses; vehement toward Morley Roberts, although not wholly without justification; unjustifiably antagonistic toward Edward Clodd; and resentful toward Ellen and Margaret Gissing. Of Mr. Coustillas' editorial work I can say little, since I have not had the opportunity of examining the letters closely. A cursory examination of some of the letters a few years ago, however, compel my respect for the difficult task of transcription Mr. Coustillas undertook. That he has been able to rescue many cancellations in the manuscript and make other restorations bespeaks much patient labor and arduous scholarship. That there "are numerous errors in transcription," as Arthur C. Young can write with greater authority than I [GISSING NEWSLETTER, I (Oct I965), 1-2, 6-7, espec p.7], is regrettable but perhaps understandable. In view of the increased attention Gissing's work has been receiving during the past ten years or so, we must be grateful to have these letters available in a handsome hardcover edition, for they contribute much to a fuller portrait of Gissing between the years I898 and 1902. Purdue University H. E. Gerber 5. An Introduction to George Moore: Artist and Craftsman A. Norman Jeffares. GEORGE MOORE. Writers and Their V/ork: No. 180. Lond: Longmans, Green, 1965. 2s 6d. Mr. Jeffares' pamphlet is a well-balanced performance for so brief a scope and in view of the fact that it deals with an author of extremely varied talents. Quite properly, Mr. Jeffares gives about ten pages to Moore's life, fifteen to the novels and stories, two to thé plays, four to the autobiographies and essays, and one-half page to a summary statement of the novelist's achievement. One might perhaps wish that more space had been devoted to Moore as memoirist, essayist, and critic. The select bibliography is useful, on the whole a little fuller than most such bibliographies. Within the several sections of his essay, Jeffares treats more briefly than is usual such works as ESTHER WATERS, which are well known and which have been much discussed by others, and gives more space to such relatively little read or discussed books as A DRAMA IN MUSLIN, THE BROOK KERITH, and HELOISE AND ABELARD, with long illustrative quotations from the last two works. On the other hand, Mr. Jeffares' treatment of THE LAKE and especially of THE UNTILLED FIELD seems disproportinately skimpy for two such quite extraordinary works. In THE UNTILLED FIELD Jeffares does single out "The Wedding Gown," "The Window," and "So on He Fares" as "masterly pieces of story-telling, spare, economical but highly emotive." In the conventional reference to the "anti-clerical ism" Mr. Jeffares may be overstating the total effect of the stories. While writing an anti-clerical polemic was one of Moore's initial intentions, it was much modified in the course of writing and revision even before the appearance in print of Unwin's first English edition. 313 On the whole, this is a very just brief appraisal of Moore's work. One can only applaud Mr. Jeffares' conclusion that "Moore's achievement needs reconsideration," that "his merits should not be ignored," and that "he was a man in whom imagination and narrative skill, capacity for industrious work and artistic conscience so fused that he produced fiction and fictionalized autobiography which has the timeless quality of all great art." Purdue University H. E. Gerber 6. Max Beerbohm. LETTERS TO REGGIE TURNER, ed. Rupert Hart-Davis. Phi la and NY: Lippincott, I965. Admirers of Max Beerbohm must be in Rupert Hart-Davis' debe for presenting this attractive collection of letters to "dear Reg." Although the letters span 47 years (1891-1938), however, students who turn to them for enlightenment about the period, or Max's inner...