The Diner-Out

Abstract

Unfortunately, the names of those who assembled at Harris’s bidding,¹ to meet her as she flitted through London are long since lost. But it is at least remembered that among the guests was George Moore.² No longer a young man, nor yet middle-aged, but, like his host, on the hither side of forty, Moore also was a well-known figure in the Bohemian society of that time. He has himself described, in delusively frank phrases, his abortive attempts to be either painter or poet, his yellow hair, sloping shoulders, and the twisted course by which he found his style and his soul. In 1891 he was already a remarkable and marked man, who had introduced Realism and Emile Zola to English readers, and was himself the author of novels banned by the libraries, and an autobiography praised by Walter Pater. These circumstances combined not only to give others a good opinion of him, but also to give Moore a good opinion of himself; he was accustomed to the centre of the stage, even if he had to behave outrageously to get it. So it was with all an Irishman’s resentment of a rival for the ear of the audience that he nodded when Frank Harris, directing his attention to a late arrival, murmured in a whisper heard all round the room, ‘I think you know Oscar?’

Extracted from Horizon iv, no. 22 (Oct 1941) 251–8.