Domestic strife

Monday, December 30th., Bath Spa Hotel, Bath.

If truth be told I am here to get away from my wife. I regard myself as a quiet, peaceable sort of chap, but if I stayed in Essex much longer I might do her serious damage. It is all getting to be too much for me to bear.

The bone of contention at the moment is Lockyer, the gardener. I don't know why but she dislikes him and wants to get rid of him. In fact she has been scheming to get rid of him for some time. I think myself that he is too assertive a character for her, too inclined to say what he thinks and to do what he considers best, even when it goes against her wishes. I like him for more or less the same reasons.

He has been fighting in France and has just recently returned. When he was called up Marguerite wanted me to take advantage of the situation to dismiss him. Think of that! I positively refused to do so. No man of honour and decency could have contemplated such a thing. Now she wants me to terminate his job at Comarques which would mean of course his leaving Thorpe and breaking up his home. Some reward for going through all the discomforts and dangers of a soldier's life at the Front. She is trying to blackmail me by saying that she will refuse to do her domestic duties unless I comply with her wishes. Well, I shall give no ground and we shall see who has the greater will. If my wife, aged 40, chooses to behave like a girl of 14 I shall have to respond accordingly.

I intend to stay here for at least another week. The spa facilities are excellent and the water appears to agree with my digestion.

I wrote to George Moore last week to, amongst other things, tell him that it was the first chapters of "A Mummer's Wife" which opened my eyes to the romantic nature of the district that I had bindly inhabited for over 20 years. He is indeed the father of all my Five Towns books and stories.

George Moore

Tuesday, September 6th. 1910

At Villa des Nefliers, in France

Being unable to get rid of influenza-ish inquietudes of the stomach, and having had several bad nights de suite, I have spent a good deal of time in bed, reading and writing. 


Today I finished the third or fourth perusal of "A Mummer's Wife" by George Moore. This book really is original and fine and beautiful. The Islington scenes are superb. You have squalor and sordidness turned into poetry. And the painter-like effects of visualisation are splendid throughout. Language a bit clumsy and coarse occasionally. "Booze" and "Boozed" are amazing words! There are others, but what an amazing and powerful work! I think I have given credit elsewhere in these pages to Moore as an important inspiration for my own writing. "A Mummer's Wife" first opened my shut eyes to the extraordinary romantic quality of that sinister district from which I emerged. In fact I came to recognise that the feeling of romance which permeates the district is quite as wonderfully inspiring as any historic memory could be. The great and wholesome influence of George Moore on modern English fiction has not yet been adequately appreciated - hardly even noticed. But it exists.

Here is an example of the wisdom of George Moore:
"Does anyone know, or has everyone forgotten, that genius discovers itself? ... Genius can be likened unto apples. This year you complain that the apples are not as red as they should be; maybe they are too red, or maybe they are too plentiful, but small. But the apples go on just the same. They alone are unconcerned as to what the world says or thinks of them."