Moods and Memories

Introduction

George Moore's memoirs and observations differ than his Victorian counterparts in many ways, marking his realistic writing styles as examples of Modernism. Moods and Memories was published in multiple parts in issues of the Irish periodical Dana. Despite being an Irish journal, it is of interest to note Moore's focus is on London and Paris rather than his own Irish homeland. His narrative voice is present in this recolection, and the memory itself is presented as if it could be a story. Like other Modernist writers, Moore focuses on the individual experience and psychology (as it pertains to memory) with great attention to detail. Moore seems to paint a picture with his words, but rather than romanticize this urban community, he seeks to portray the city as it is. As he explains the changes within London, there is a definite attitude of loss and melancholy, another characteristic often attributed to modernist short stories.

Transcription

I.

As I sit at my window on Sunday morning, lazily watching the sparrows--restless black dots that haunt the old tree at the corner of King's Bench Walk--I begin to distinguish a faint green haze in the branches of the old lime. Yes, there it is green in the branches; and I'm moved by an impulse-the impulse of spring is in my feet; india rubber seems to have come into the soles of my feet, and I would see London. It is delightful to walk across Temple Gardens, to stop--pigeons are sweeping down from the roofs! to call a hansom, and to notice, as one passes, the sapling behind St. Clement's Danes. The quality of the green is exquisite on the smoke-black wall. London can be seen better on Sundays than on week-days; lying back in a hansom, one is alone with London. London is beautiful in that narrow street, celebrated for licentious literature. The blue and white sky shows above a seventeenth century gable, and a few moments after we are in Drury Lane. The fine weather has enticed the population out of grim courts and alleys; skipping ropes are whirling everywhere. The children hardly escape being run over. Coster girls sit wrapped in shawls contentedly like rabbits at the edge of a burrow; the men smoke their pipes in sullen groups, their eyes on the closed doors of the public house. At the corner of the great theatre a vendor of cheap ices is rapidly absorbing the few spare pennies of the neighbourhood. The hansom turns out of the lane into the great thoroughfare, a bright glow like the sunset fills the roadway, and upon it a triangular block of masonry and St. Giles' church rise, the spire aloft in the faint blue and delicate air. Spires are so beautiful that we would fain believe that they will outlast creeds; religion or no religion we must have spires, and in town and country—spires showing between trees and rising out of the city purlieus.

The spring tide is rising; the almond trees are in bloom, that one growing in an area spreads its Japanese decoration fan-like upon the wall. The hedges in the time-worn streets of Fitzroy Square light up-how the green runs along! The spring is more winsome here than in the country. One must be in London to see the spring. I can see the spring from afar dancing in St. John's Wood, haze and sun playing together like a lad and a lass. The sweet air, how tempting! How exciting! It melts on the lips in fond kisses, instilling a delicate gluttony of life. I should like to see girls in these gardens, walking in the shadow and light, hand in hand, catching at the branches, dreaming of lovers. But there are no girls, only some daffodils. But how beautiful the curve of the daffodil when the flower is seen in profile, and how beautiful the starry yellow when the flower is seen full face! Why do - these flowers remind me of the grace of bygone times? So does this old canal, so pathetic; a river flows or rushes, even an artificial Jake harbours water-fowl; children sail their boats upon it; but a canal does nothing.

Here comes a boat! I had hoped that the last had passed twenty years ago. Here it comes with its lean horse, the rope tightening and stretching—, a great black mass with ripples at the prow and a figure bearing against the rudder. A canal reminds me of my childhood; every child likes a canal. A canal recalls the first wonder. I remember the wonder with which we watched the first barge, the wonder which the smoke coming out of the funnel excited. When my father asked me why I'd like to go to Dublin better by canal than by railroad, I couldn't tell him. Nor could I tell anyone to-day why I love a canal. One never loses one's fondness for canals. The boats glide like the days, and the toiling horse is a symbol! how he strains, sticking his toes into the path!

There are visits to pay. Three hours pass. At six I am free, and I resume my meditations in declining light as the cab rolls through the old brick streets that crowd round Golden Square; streets whose names you meet in old novels; streets full of studios where Hayden, Fuseli and others of the rank historical tribe talked of art with a big A, drank their despair away, and died wondering why the world did not recognise their genius. Children are scrambling round a neglected archway, striving to reach to a lantern of old time. The smell of these dry faded streets is peculiar to London; there is something of the odour of the original marsh in the smell of these streets ; it rises through the pavement and mingles with the smoke. Fancy follows fancy, image succeeds image, and I look into the face of London. I would read her secret now while she wraps herself in draperies, the mist falling like a scarf from a pensive arm; and to attempt a reading of London I send away the cab. Oh, the whiteness of the Arch, and the Bayswater Road, fading like- an apparition amid the romance of great trees.

The wind thrills in the cheek and a dusky sunset hides behind Kensington. The Park is full of mist and people, it flows away dim and mournful to the pallid lights of Ken­ sington; and its crowds are like strips of black tape scattered here and there. By the railings the tape has been wound into a black ball, and, no doubt, the peg on which it is wound is some preacher promising human nature deliverance from evil if it will forego the spring time. But the spring time continues, despite the preacher, over there, under branches swelling with leaf and noisy with sparrows, the spring is there amid the boys and girls, boys dressed in ill-fitting suits of broadcloth, geraniums in their buttonholes; girls hardly less coarse·, creatures made for work, escaped for a while from the thraldom of the kitchen, now doing the business of the world better than the preacher; poor servants of sacred spring. A woman in a close:-fitting green cloth dress passes me to meet a young man; a rich fur hangs from her shoulders ; and they go towards Park Lane, towards the wilful little houses with low balconies and pendant flower baskets swinging in the areas. Circumspect little gardens! There is one, Greek as an eighteenth century engraving, and the woman in the close-fitting green cloth dress, rich fur hanging from her shoulders, almost hiding the pleasant waist, enters one of these. She is Park Lane. Park Lane supper parties and divorce are written in her eyes and manner. The old beau, walking swiftly lest he should catch cold, his moustache clearly dyed, his waist certainly pinched by a belt, he, too, is Park Lane. And those two young men, talking joyously--admirable specimens of Anglo-Saxons, slender feet, varnished boots, health and abundant youth--they, too, are characteristic of Park Lane.

Park Lane dips in a narrow and old-fashioned way as it enters Piccadilly. Piccadilly has not yet grown vulgar, only a little modern, a little out of keeping with the beauty of the Green Park, of that beautiful dell, about whose mounds I should like to see a comedy of the Restoration acted.

I used to stand here, at this very spot, twenty years ago, to watch the moonlight between the trees, and the shadows of the trees floating over that beautiful dell; I used to think of Wycherly’s comedy, "Love in St. James's Park," and I think of it still. In those days the Argyle Rooms, Kate Hamilton's in Panton Street, the Cafa de la Regence were the fashion. Paris drew me from these, towards other pleasures, towards the Nouvelle Athenes and the Elysee Montmartre; and when I returned to London after an absence of ten years I found a new London, a less English London. Paris draws me still, and I shall be there in three weeks when the chestnuts are in bloom.