TALK AS A FINE ART.

A BOOR must go to a tune," writes Mr. Moore towards the end of his book, and it is a phrase which, in more meanings than perhaps he intended there, might be used to define

Conversations in Ebury Street, for it is not only the exquisite style but also the matter and the mood which go to a tune, a

,continuous, unflagging, ever-varied tune, an improvization, it seems, uncurling like an arabesque, upon which, with

endless felicity of invention, criticism, conversations, vivid word-portraits, letters, and reminiscence blossom like flower- patterns. It is one of those rare books which, coming to the

end of it, one feels it would be a pleasure to begin over again— a classic as surely as Landor or Jeremy Taylor or the Eliza- bethan lyricists to whom we return untiringly not for their words and thoughts but for the way they say them and

think them.

In the present book and those to which it is akin—Memoirs of My Dead Life, Hail and Farewell, Avowals, and the rest— Mr. Moore appears as the perfect talker.. He confesses in his dialogue with Mr. John Freeman to his love of talk

Moore : You are welcome to interrupt my reading. I am always ready to lay aside a book to talk.

Freeman : To anybody ?

Moore : I prefer a man of wit ; but since I am confessing myself I will disclose all. I would lay aside the wisest book to talk to a stupid woman."

Talk, then, being Mr. Moore's hobby, he has formed the habit of talking not only in the spoken, but also in the written word ; and in order to do so he has made for himself, by years of patient practice, a medium which is entirely his own, a medium so exquisite and so replete with personality that it is a delight to read whatever is conveyed in it. Because of the style and the mind which it reflects, all his sins arc forgiven. The Hardy-worshipper will forgive him his unwarrantable attack on that passage from Far from the Madding Crowd, because it is a natural condition of Mr. Moore's especial quality of mind that he should be violently opposed to Mr. Hardy's methods. His antagonism is instinctive and right in him, even though much of his attempt to rationalize it will hardly hold water. "It seems to me," Mr. Freeman

is made to say in the conversation in which Mr. Hardy is discussed, "that you are bringing into this criticism a great deal of your own temperament." That is always true of Mr. Moore : it is, in fact, his great virtue, for it Means that he is primarily the artist, that he always has the courage of his intuitions and temperament. These, above all, he feels, are sacred : as for reason—logical proof—she must pick up

what sustenance she can out of the crumbs which fall from their table. It is the old distinction of heart and head. In discussing St. Paul's farewell in the Acts of the Apostles, Mr. Moore discloses this fundamental quality in himself :--

• • • all men should understand that the farewell did not come out of the mind, the conscious mind, but out of the heart ; and that is what I mean by heat, that which comes straight out of the heart unchilled by thought. I_would say dimmed, but reason 1. does not dim ; chilled is the right Word, for all &St %some., from reason strikes cold ; nor-shall we look long for passages of a gentler heat, showing Paul in that kindly nature which won for him the love of all men. . . . Why did I not writo in the Sunday Times my own simple appreciations of Paul, refraining from pseudo learning and trite admonitions that modem and ancient literature might be searched in vain for heat ? I understand it all now. I wrote about heat in icy phrases ; argument is always ice, and scholarship, reason, thought, reflection and deduction. For over and a day scholars will be the last to understand that the farewell is Paul and nothing but Paul, for scholarship does not dream but loses itself in grammar, in Paul's Greek, never realizing fully, if at all, that the grammar book is of no consequence, as is sufficiently proved by Theocritus and Burns."

In this book, again, Mr. Moore attempts the literary portrait, and the five or six studies of certain of his friends are, whatever those friends' personal feelings about them may be, delicious works of art illuminated by a subtle and whimsical humour. These portraits—a form invented by Mr. Moore—are the most perfect that he has produced. In those of Mr. Siekert, Mr. Milks, and Mr. Steer, a lightly touched history of a perioi in the fortunes of the Slade School forms the background. We see the School threatened by a rival establishment : Mr. Sickert has returned from the continent with a ncw method, a sort of painting-without-tears which turns out artists like hot cakes :—

" What we are after is quality, or something that will pass far quality. A gable-end with a sweep of pavement is enough for our purpose. Nor need the pupils trouble about values ; tone—yes, but a picture may have quality without having values. . . . . The young ladies who wore attracted by Sickert's delightful manners and what remained of his original beauty (for Sielcort as a young man—but of that anon) packed their trunks and in groups of twos and threes and single figures journeyed all over Europe painting gable-ends."

At this rate the Slade School would be emptied of pupils by the rival establishment. Happily it was saved by an accident :—

" ` The question,' said Tonks, 'is, shall we adopt Sickert's method of teaching in the Slade ? If we don't, shall we be able to compote with Westminster ? That is the question." But, my dear Tonics, there is no reason why you should modify your teaching ; there is room for both schools and for Cubism." My dear Moore, you're untroubled with a conscience, and wijl never understand a certain side of life. I cannot teach what I don't believe in. I shall resign if this talk about Cubism does not cease ; it is killing me.' And pleasantly conscious that I held my audience in the hollow of my hand, I said : ' Sickert has fallen in love with one of his pupils. I have forgotten her name, but she has the most wonderful cream - neck.' And you think,' said Tonics, 'that a man in love has not time for anything but love ? " Not if he be truly in love,' I answered. 'So,' said Steer, 'the attractions of the lady will save the Slade from the trick of laying on the paint in dots!' ' Beauty coming to the aid of art,' I answered."

The book is full of such examples of Mr. Moore's irresistible humour. In the portrait of Mr. Amon we read of "an accidental meeting of Steer and M'Coll in the gardens of Hampton Court, Steer having gone thither to enjoy the flowers, M'Coll to verify some doubts that had arisen in his mind regarding Nature's genius in the disposal of her colours.

M'Coll had arrived before Steer, and after many hours of close scrutiny and meditation, he walked convinced of many false shades in the peonies ; some few roses might be allowed to pass, but the too florid abundance of the Gloiro do Dijon clouded his brow, and feeling, no doubt, that Steer's unconsidered admiration of tha parterres and urns might provoke a remark that would jar their friendship, he bade his friend good-bye."

Of Conversations in Ebury Street we may say that we like it or that we don't, but the origin of such like or dislike is as much the result of temperament as the book itself. The book, in fact, by its very nature escapes outside the province of reasoned criticism, and all that is left for the incorrigible critic is to turn schoolmaster and blue-pencil mistakes, marking. a misquotation of Shelley on page 162, an obvious ignorance of the meaning of the word wanton on page 33: a futile occupation which will bring him small satisfaction.

This book, again, shows us Mr. Moore in his old age, without any flagging of his powers of imagination, still conscientiously perfecting his prose style, for much of the prose in Conversa- tions in Ebury Street is the most perfect he has written. It is books such as this which we have in mind when we speak of literature as "the humanities," for it springs of a love of life in all its most human and also its most cultured aspects, and it relies, in its appeal, on readers of a sensibility acquired through contact with a traditional culture which is as familiar to them as the food they eat. Such a book is the crystalliza- tion of a special mode of life, a special type of society, a product with as fine a bouquet and colour as a famous wine. It is

hardly to be doubted that in days to come Mr. Moore will be regarded as the finest writer of English prose of his time and among the finest of any time.

MARTIN ARMSTRONG.