“MAIS QUI VOUDRAIT ME LIRE EN FRANÇAIS?”: READING GEORGE MOORE’S LETTERS TO EDOUARD DUJARDIN

Abstract

George Moore and Edouard Dujardin formed a deep and enduring friendship, as is borne out by the numerous letters they exchanged over their lifetime. Their correspondence covers the long stretch of years from 1886 up to, or nearly to, George Moore's death in 1933. Moore's first letter discloses the contextual beginning of their friendship. He was asked to subscribe to the third series of the monthly Revue Independante,1 whose young editor was Edouard Dujardin. They apparently first met in the offices of the periodical at n° 79 in the Rue Blanche in Paris. Within a few months, Edouard Dujardin was no longer a mere professional acquaintance but had become a close friend. Indeed, Moore's form of epistolary address rapidly shifted from a duly formal Monsieur, in the first letter dated November 1886, to a warmer Mon Cher ami in the subsequent ones. The relationship actually developed into one of the longest personal and mutual bonds Moore ever had in life. As Dujardin put it in one of last letters to Moore, they had become compagnons de vie.2Moore's letters to Dujardin are of interest on several counts. In the first place, they afford autobiographical glimpses of the man and the writer; they testify to what extent such a close literary association came to bear upon the Irish novelist's artistic development and literary production. They also throw interesting light on the border-crossing literary scene, in Paris, London and Dublin in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. And they finally constitute one of the largest corpuses in French Moore ever produced. Admittedly, Moore wrote some articles - occasional chroniques3 or lectures4 - directly in French but in small numbers and the drafts were duly corrected and revised, by Dujardin incidentally, before being published or delivered. Unlike these writings, the letters he wrote in French were left in their original form. They were not submitted to the usual process of constant revision. This was a matter of considerable concern for Moore when he leamt in 1922 that Dujardin had kept all letters from the beginning of their relationship and intended to sell them, and when a publication by the American publisher J.R. Wells was being considered in 1927.5 Moore apparently worried as much about the quality of the contents, his remarks on life and as about command of the French language. He was also very concerned with self-image, as projected in correspondence. Hence anguished question: Mais qui voudrait me lire en francais?6The corpusOf all the letters, probably more than 250, that Moore sent to Dujardin, most of them seem to be extant, for the good reason that Dujardin kept them all carefully. He also dated those without a date by their postmark or delivery date, making up for Moore's carelessness in that respect. More often than not, letters were imprecisely dated or not dated at all. It so happened that Dujardin was regularly beset with financial difficulties and had to sell many of the letters from most famous correspondents including Moore. Before he relinquished the letters however, he had them transcribed by a secretary.7Moore had doubts about the intrinsic value and literary merits of letters to Dujardin insofar as they were private letters, composed without primary thought of publication: Good letters are letters written to be published, not letters written to a private individual.8 He nevertheless gave permission to publish the letters in America on condition that old friend W.K. Magee, better known under pen name of John Eglinton, did the translation of a selection of the letters and wrote an introduction.It is noteworthy that at no point of the editing work in progress did Moore try to interfere with Eglinton's selection and translation of the letters: know nothing about the contents of the book as I refused to receive the proofs, knowing that I would want to rewrite the letters completely. …