HOW I WROTE 'ESTHER WATERS.'

Evening Star, Issue 9582, 31 December 1894, Page 4 (Supplement)

HOW I WROTE 'ESTHER WATERS.'

1 A CHAT WITH MR GEORGE MOORE. Few "novels with a purpose" have had 1 so powerful a vogue as ' Esther Waters'—a book which was not written on purpose at all. A moral tale, in very truth, that story is, if ever there was one ; and its place in Pope Smith's Index Expurgatorius will long remain among the perversest of the curiosities of literature. A representative of the ' Westminster Gazette,' having been much struck both by the book itself and its impressment into the service of the antigambling crusade, thought it would be interesting to know how the author wrote it and why. Mr Moore was asked if he would mind stating what studies he had made for his book : " What studies did I make for ' Esther Waters' ? Pray, my dear sir, tell me how you ' make studies.' The phrase is going the round of current criticism, I know; but what it means I honestly have not the slightest idea. What are 'studies,' and does anybody ' make' them ; and, if so, how?" The name of M. Zola naturally occurred. "Oh, M. Zola; he goes for an outing with his %vife, puts down in a note book what he sees and hears, and the papers says he has been 'making studies.' But I do not-even do that. No, 'Esther Waters' originated not in any studies, but in the Strand, and by chance. One day I happened to buy a paper. I don't remember what it was, but a remark in it struck me. The eternal servant question was up at the time, and some writer in this paper said : ' It's all very well to talk about what we suffer from servants, but do not let us forget what servants suffer from us.' That remark was'the origin of my book. ' How true,' I said to myself, ' and upon my word it is a good subject for a novel—a novel of servant-life. But what sort of servant shall I take ? A footman ? No, he won't do. A girl? Yes, one who has to learn her trade—cooking will do as well as another. There will be an illegitimate child—there so often is ; aud in after years she will meet the man again. Yes, that is it—a capital subject.' There only remained the choice of a background. It might be Ireland, where my father—a very remarkable man in his way—lived and kept his horses. But no; I cannot manage Ireland. I don't know why, but I cannot feel it. So I decided to set my story in Sussex, which I know intimately, and with wnich I feel myself en rapport. And so I sat to work.on ' Esther Waters.'" But this did not explain the betting interest in the book ; and Mr Moore, in reply to further questions, resumed his x reminiscences: "Why, the fact is just this. My father, as I have told' you., used to keep racehorses, and, like all boys, I was fond of hanging about the stables. I daresay I hung about the kitchen too. It seems/ almost incredible to me now ; but children have strange ambitions, and mine, I distinctly remember, was to be a jockey ! Some of the horses which my father bred turned out very well. One in particular, called Croagh Patrick, did well in Ireland, and my father then sent him over to Eugland, and he won the Goodwood Cup. I remember well how, when he was quite young, he used to beat the others in his first trials, and the servants used to say ' Croagh Patrick is the best of the lot.' I suppose it is often from stable gossip that the odds are arrived at. Certainly when Croagh Patrick was first entered the odds against him were very long. Then, as facts about his form began to leak out, the odds were more reasonable, and he started, perhaps, at 30 to 1. But I don't really know much about it. Certainly at the army tutor's I was at I saw something of bcttiug; and I can remember betting occasionally myself at a public-house—no, in real life I think it was at a tobacconist's. And the different types of betting men arc familiar enough. There is, for instance, and always has been, the superstitious betting man—the kind of man who goes to church and hears a sermon on 'Vanity, vanity, all is vanity',' and straightway backs Vanity for the Derby. Then there is the learned man, who knows everything recorded about every horse, and who can do calculations about weights and distances. Also, there is the large class who put together little Bcraps of information picked up haphazard—who do, in fact, very much as I did in putting together my casual information for ' Esther Waters.' If there is any merit in the book it comes from my not knowing too much about the subject, and so having scope for such creative imagination as lam capable of. There are, I suppose, three orders of the creative imagination in literary work. There is the supreme Shakespeare, who can re-create even himself, as in Hamlet. Then there is the second order, of men like Tolstoi, who can re-create the life he leads himself; he can see his environment from a distance, and so re-create it. And the last class, of whom it is my ambition to make myself worthy, is composed of writers who can re-create life when they are not too familiar with it. And that is why low-life often proves much better material for a novelist than the life which he himself lives. If one writes a novel of the drawing room the temptation is to reproduce what one has heard and seen and known, without any act of creative imagination at all; and if that is what is wanted for a work of literary art, why, then, some Lady Jeune, let us say, should have been our great novelist. But what I found so satisfactory in the subject of 'Esther Waters' was this: that I knew just enough about, it to set my imagination at work, and just not enough to deaden it by the substitution of merely recorded knowledge. And so I believe it is the best work I have done. The subject, I feel sure, was a grand one. If some great master—if Tolstoi had chanced upon it, he might have written another ' Anna Karenine.'" Tapley: "I won't need your services longer, doctor. I've found a'cure for my loss of appetite." Physician: "What's that ?" Tapley : " Come down in the morning without money enough to buy my lunch With. Workn like a charm,"