Dear naughty George Moore--sad, bad, mad--has reformed. He tells us why in his book, Vale, the English edition of which I was lucky enough to read; for, the American edition is expurgated, nay, fumigated, as was the Memoirs of My Dead Life by the same Celtic Casanova. Vale completes the trilogy; Hail and Farewell, Ave and Salve being the titles of the preceding two. In the first, Moore is sufficiently vitriolic, and in Salve he serves up George Russell, the poet and painter, better known as "Æ." in a more sympathetic fashion. When Vale was announced several years ago as on the brink of completion I was moved to write: "I suppose when the final book appears it means that George Moore has put up the shutters of his soul, not to say, his shop. But I have my serious doubts." After reading Vale I still had them. Only death will end the streaming confessions of this writer. He who lives by the pen shall perish by the pen. (This latter sentence is not a quotation from the sacred books of any creed, merely the conviction of a slave chained to the ink-well.)
I said that Vale is expurgated for American consumption. Certainly. We are so averse to racy, forcible English in America--thanks to the mean, narrow spirit in our arts and letters--that a hearty oath scares us into the Brooklyn backyard of our timid conscience. George calls a spade a spade, and he delights on stirring up rank malodorous soil with his war-worn agricultural implement. When he returned some years ago to Dublin, there to help in the national literary and artistic movement, he found a devoted band of brethren: William Butler Yeats, Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, John M. Synge, Edward Martyn, Russell, and others.
I shan't attempt even a brief mention of the neo-Celtic awakening. Yeats was the prime instigator, also the storm-centre. He literally discovered Synge, the dramatist--in reality the only strong man of the group, the only dramatist of originality--and, with his exquisite lyric gift, he, also discovered a new Ireland, a fabulous, beautiful Erin, unsuspected by Tom Moore, Samuel Lover, Carleton, Mangan, Lever, and the too busy Boucicault.
As I soon found out, when there, Dublin is a vast whispering gallery. Delightful, hospitable Dublin is also a provincial town, given to gossip and backbiting. Say something about somebody in the smoking-room of the Shelbourne, and a few hours later the clubs will be repeating it. Mr. Moore said things every hour in the day, and in less than six days he had sown for himself a fine crop of enemies. To "get even" he conceived the idea of writing a series of novels, with real people bearing their own names. That he hasn't been shot at, horsewhipped, or sued for libel thus far is just his usual good luck. Vale is largely a book of capricious insults.