The funeral of George Moore, at Golders Green on Wednesday,
was an occasion which, I am sure, could have- been possible only in England, where a strange farewell to an eminent man of letters may. provoke no comment. at all in the daily Press. The Prime Minister and Mr. Augustus John made a striking pair, sitting together .on the front bench in the small crematorium chapel. The authors present were very few, and they did not include any one of the famous Dublin coterie, which Moore immor- talized in Hail and Farewell. The painters, on the other hand, made a notable small company—Sir William Rothenstein, Mr. Wilson Steer, Mr. Tonks, Mr. a Sol MacColl. George Moore joined the Church of England in. his Dublin days, having been stung to action by a news- paper which described him as a Catholic novelist. Hence it was appropriate that Canon J. A. Douglas should read the Church burial service, markedly abbreviated. In Dublin a week before Moore's death Mr. G. W. Russell (A.E.) was talking of the great days before the War when the Yeats–Moore–Stephens junta was creating a more surprising legend than any .group of writers and artists. in the world. A chronicle of their marvellous words and deeds ought to have been written, A. E. declared. It would have been immense ; it might have gone on, and on—a modern Irish Arabian Nights.
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