Backlisted - Esther Waters by George Moore

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

In this episode we discuss the controversial and ground-breaking novel, Esther Waters by the Irish novelist George Moore.  We are joined by Tom Crewe, author of the prize-winning New Life (Chatto & Windus) and one of this year’s crop of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. Esther Waters was first published in 1894 and is told almost entirely from the point of view of an illiterate working-class woman, who falls pregnant by a fellow servant, is abandoned by him, and decides to raise their child on her own. Telling her story allows Moore to catalogue the glamour and sordidness of 1890s London society in astonishing detail and his refusal to judge his heroine led to it being banned from W.H. Smith’s railway bookstores. Despite (or because of) this, it sold over 24,000 copies in its first year and has been in print ever since. We examine what sets Moore apart from other writers of the time, including Émile Zola, Thomas Hardy and George Gissing, why it has had such a positive influence on later admirers like James Joyce, Jean Rhys and Colm Tóibín, and how its simplicity of style and detailed presentation of Esther’s inner life feel so surprisingly contemporary. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted Esther Waters plot summary (from Swift Editions) The story of the life of a “fallen woman”, Esther Waters caused a sensation when it was first published in the late nineteenth century. Calls for it to be banned on account of its sexual frankness were rejected by Gladstone himself. The plot follows the misfortunes of Esther, driven from home by a drunken stepfather and forced into domestic service at the age of seventeen. Esther is seduced by a fellow servant who deserts her, causing her to lose her position and descend into a life of poverty, hardship and humiliation in London, where she is forced to fend for herself and her baby boy. Her fortunes change for the better when she marries, but her husband is a bookmaker and publican operating outside the law and their luck is destined not to last . Set against a backdrop of horseracing, and the gambling and drinking that goes with it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BetterHelp.com. meeting with friends before the show, we can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance. Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. How's your week been, John, by the way? Sort of okay.

I mean, busy. I lost a thing that's not supposed to happen anymore. I lost a big piece of work completely and irretrievably. Oh, shit. So I spent most of the day doing it and then had to spend most of the next day doing it again and didn't feel it was as good. Recollily from my memory i'm so sorry that's right you know that terrible story about carlisle and the french revolution yeah this always makes me feel better when

something like that happens he wrote the entire first volume of the book and then it got put in the fire by john stewart mill's servant yeah and he had to rewrite the whole thing just like joe and little women yeah oh yes hey i lost a book irretrievably this week not one i'd written but there was a flood at the storage unit where we keep some stuff and a box of books was ruined and had to be thrown out and it was a box of ironically in safekeeping in a safe place a few rare signed first editions which I tucked away so they've gone forever if you're passing by a skip in Favisham you might be able to fish out a signed first edition of birdsong with my best wishes oh I'm sorry I once bought a first edition of Birdsong with my best wishes. Oh, I'm sorry. I once bought a beautiful edition of Hazlitt's biography of Napoleon.

It's quite rare. I was very pleased with it. It came from America, and the postman gave it to the wrong address, gave it to a community centre, and by the time I got there, they'd put it on their market stall and sold it for about 10p. Oh! It was absolutely devastating never saw it yeah oh listen listen nicky was starting a minute but listen i i've had an lp

delivered here it's the first pressing of yoko ono's approximately infinite universe you know of interest only to specialists right and um it didn't turn up and it had been tracked and when i checked the tracking a week later the person that addressed it didn't turn up and it had been tracked and when i checked the tracking a week later the person had addressed it to some flats up the road so i went to knock on the flats and there's no sign of it and i was walking past one of the bins and i idly opened the bin and in the bin was the packaging for the lp but no lp So some fucker up there is currently enjoying a copy of Yoko Ono's Approximately Infinite Universe, and good luck to them.

I thought you were going to say that you heard the sound of the record drifting over the cityscape. That's what you should do, isn't it? You should just bump... Every time I walk past, if someone comes out, I should just go, yeah, are you enjoying? Yeah, Yoko, yeah. See how they react

anyway also like the idea of you idly opening a bin were you were you really is that something you do regularly or were you scrutinizing one of the things about my peripatetic life is i do just idly open bins as i go past anyway no i don't normally do that if any of my neighbors are listening to this of course your secrets are safe um right should we um should we start let's go hello and welcome to backlisted the podcast which gives new life to old books today you find us in the 1880s strolling along a road in the sussex downs as they tumble towards the sea ahead of us is a young girl in a faded yellow dress and a black jacket weighed down by a large bundle. She's walking

purposefully towards a fringe of trees on the horizon. Ahead of her, leaning against a fence, a young man smokes a pipe. I'm John Mitchinson, the publisher of Unbound, where people crowdfund the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And I'm Andy Miller, author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And we are joined today, making his first appearance on Backlisted, by the novelist, critic and long-time listener, Tom Crewe. Hello, Tom. Hello, it's a pleasure to be here.

Does it feel strange seeing our faces as well as hearing our voices at the same time? It's like watching EastEnders for years and then joining the cast and chatting with Dot and Pauline. Dot and Pauline! Thank you, Tom. That's lovely. Thank you so much. And yes, that is the visuals that helped me arrive at that. Good. Well, it's my house coat that does it, really. Cigarette drooping out of my mouth.

Anyway, Tom is a contributing editor at the London Review of Books, to which he has contributed nearly 40 essays on politics, history, art and fiction. His first novel, The New Life, was published in January and has since won the All World Prize for Political Fiction and the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. Fiction and the South Bank Sky Arts Award for Literature. It's currently long listed for the Polari First Book Prize and in France for both the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger and the Prix Feminar Etranger. And earlier this year, he was chosen as one of Granter's Best of Young British Novelists. Tom, would you say this run of success began when I interviewed you on stage in February? I'm glad I didn't have to say it.

But yes, that's exactly what happened. I love the new life. I was lucky enough to be the first person out of the gate to interview you about it in Faversham and at the Faversham Literary Festival. Big hello to everyone there. And we had a really interesting conversation on stage. And I'm not asking you to say, well, it's never been as good since. But how... I'm not asking that. It's never been as good since. Oh, that not asking that it's never been as good since it's never been

so nice of you to say but um you hadn't really done much of that before had you and i can remember us having a conversation where you were saying i don't know how what this is going to be like how you must be a road warrior by now i am that was my first festival appearance, but also my first ever literary festival. And so it was a special occasion. But since I've done many and I'm doing one tomorrow, I'm at the Hastings Book Festival tomorrow. So I am becoming a sort of seasoned pro, I hope. Though every time is different.

It does depend on the quality of the chair, I must say, Andy. Oh, God. The interlocutor. Yeah. And we met at a Hay Festival, Tom. We did. In rather more kind of relaxed circumstances. I've met John twice and both times it was in a bar.

Yeah. So I don't know what that says. That's unusual. About either of us. That's how it happened. I was down at Hastings a year ago, actually, where I was talking about the work of Jean Rees. And, which is a nice link to this novel, because this novel was one of Jean Rees' favourite novels,

which she kept with her throughout her life. Well, we should say the book that Tom has chosen for us to discuss is Esther Waters, the eighth novel by the Irish novelist George Moore, first published by the radical publisher Walter Scott Limited in 1894. Moore's novel tells the story of the eponymous heroine, a young working-class woman brought up with strong religious beliefs who falls pregnant to a footman and is promptly abandoned. But unlike the usual trajectory of the fallen woman genre, Esther survives her descent into poverty and social ostracism and defiantly raises her child as a single mother. Moore had spent most of his 20s in Paris and became friendly with many artists

and writers, including Degas, Renoir, Tegenev, and most importantly, Emile Zola, whose gritty novels of French urban life inspired Moore to turn to fiction. Generally considered his finest work, Esther Waters generated a great deal of controversy upon publication. Moore's refusal to condemn Esther, his pioneering presentation of her complex thoughts and feelings, and his detailed portrait of the full social sweep of 1819's London life was too much for the literary establishment. The book was banned by W.H. Smith but it found a huge popular readership and won the admiration of many writers both at the time and in the years since. These include James Joyce, Catherine Mansfield, George Orwell and Jean Rees who we just mentioned. Esther Waters is now also considered

to be one of the great London novels as Joyce Riley observed. It is strange that it should have been left to an Irishman to write the best novel of modern English life. Well we'll talk a little bit about how we found reading this novel at this point in literary history. But we must ask Tom first. Esther Waters and George Moore. Would I be right in thinking that Esther Waters was the first of George Moore's novels that you had read? Or are you going to surprise me and say

you had read some other work by George Moore first? No, I'm afraid I'm going to be very predictable. Esther Waters was the first, and it wasn't even so long ago that I read it. I was looking to find out when I read it first, and it was only last year, early last year. But it was a novel that had been on my mind for a long time, or more had been on my mind for a long time, as a piece of the jigsaw in the story of the novel in the late 19th century. I felt like I needed to get round to him. And the book had been staring at me on the shelf for a very long time before I

finally picked it up. And it didn't disappoint. It's one of the very few books that has made me cry with tears rolling down my face. I don't know if it did that for you, but it's in that rare category for me. If I say no, it didn't make me cry. That shows me in a bad light, doesn't it? It didn't make me cry. I thought it was wonderful. Mitch, how were your emotions? My emotions were well churned.

I was desperate to finish it and kept trying to find excuses to not have Zoom calls or finish emails to just go and read a bit more. I get pulled up for saying this too often, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting to. I was expecting to find it intellectually stimulating, but just as a sort of, as a story,

this visceral bit of storytelling, it's really strong, really strong. I agree. It's actually gripping. It is genuinely gripping it is genuinely i presume people who go to the beach to read take books like this with them am i right they should they should they should tom i it made me think actually funnily enough one of the books it reminded me of was your novel the new life because the new life is a novel about how forward-thinking people in the 19th century prefigure developments in the 20th century in ways that we can only see in hindsight and is for them bravery of a particularly

unrewarded kind and I felt with Esther Waters that's true both inside that novel and outside it as well that the consciousness that Moore gives Esther allows her to both express herself in a way that's very unusual for a novel of that time but also Moore is writing in a way that looks forward to developments in fiction in the 20th century? Yes, I think so. I was struck by it in the same way, rereading it. I thought, oh, God, did I get some of my ideas from this book? And then I realised that I read the book subsequently to writing my novel.

Yes, OK. So maybe it's one of the reasons I love the novel so much, is that it already chimes with some of my my own preoccupations one of the things it made me think of was 1960s kitchen sink drama it made me think of a taste of honey or something along those lines it has that gritty quality and the same feeling of presenting a corner a side of life that has not been seen before telling a story from the perspective of a disadvantaged pregnant woman and yet Moore was doing it in the 1890s and so you do have that feeling of of being in touch with the past and the future at the same time and because it's a self-consciously modern novel in terms of its prose, the way it's written, I kept finding myself thinking of other Irish writers

from the 20th century, William Trevor or John McGahan or Colm Tobin. I think possibly because more influenced Joyce, particularly the Joyce of Dubliners, whether he is a subliminal influence on Irish fiction. But there is something very modern about that very restrained prose, that restricted, simple, maybe deceptively simple prose. Colm Toy Bean is a great admirer of this novel, isn't he, John?

He is. I remember, I think. great admirer of this novel isn't he John? He is. I remember rightly. And you can sort of see that in the I mean that simplicity is obviously it's simple but it's also the most kind of detailed I mean whatever he may or may not have picked up from Zola that ability to really

capture the detail of a particular uh a particular landscape or a particular interior or a street scene or a complex um kind of set of human interactions this uh this is i i mean you also end up learning. I learned quite a bit about betting from this novel. I still don't think I know enough, actually. Pubs and betting. It's Patrick Hamilton ahead of his time, right? And also Brooklyn by Colm Toybin.

That was when that was on publication. I remember that was compared to Esther Waters. Now, I'd never read esther waters then but contoy been seems to have not you know seems to have been influenced it in a certain kind of plainness of style and as he said allowing the heroine to be fully cognizant and and able to interpret events around her, despite lacking particular kinds of education. Esther Waters can't read. Yeah. But one of the great liberating elements,

I suppose one would say, of the novel is that Moore allows her to be as human, as civilized, or as not civilised as any educated person or any uneducated person. And she's a great reader of her society. You know, when she has her great moments of expressiveness, when she bursts into articulateness about her position as a woman, the ways in which she's been let down or trampled on or abused.

She is a phenomenal reader, an insightful reader of the society she lives in. She is able to point out hypocrisy and falseness and the situation she inhabits as a woman with a real distinctiveness. And that's, again, part of the book's modernity is that that consciousness feels very fresh and very contemporary, sadly, in some ways, very contemporary still. Would you be kind enough to,

if listeners haven't read Estoril, it's occasionally on Batlister, we like to help them into the novel by reading them the beginning so that then they've, technically speaking, they've started it and they can pick up where Tom, where you leave off. So could we just hear the opening couple of paragraphs, maybe first page or so of Esther Waters? She stood on the platform watching the receding train.

The white steam curled above the few bushes that hid the curve of the line, evaporating in the pale evening. A moment more and the last carriage would pass out of sight, the white gates at the crossing swinging slowly forward to let through the impatient passengers. An oblong box, painted reddish-brown and tied with a rough rope, lay on the seat beside her. The movement of her back and shoulders showed that the bundle she carried was a heavy one, and the sharp bulging of the grey linen cloth that the weight was dead. She wore a faded yellow dress and a black jacket, too warm for the day. A girl of twenty, firmly built with short, strong arms and a plump neck that carried a well-turned head with dignity. Her well-formed nostrils redeemed her somewhat thick, fleshy nose, and it was a pleasure to see her grave, almost sullen face light up with sunny humour, for when she laughed a line of almond-shaped teeth showed between red lips. She was laughing now,

the porter having asked her if she were afraid to leave her bundle with her box. Both, he said, would go up together in the donkey cart. The donkey cart came down every evening to fetch parcels. The man lingered, and she heard from him that all the downed lands she could see right up to Beeding belonged to the squire. Maybe I should leave it there. Wonderful. What was so interesting about John,

I felt hearing that read aloud, is if you asked me to pin when that had been written, I would not have said in the 1890s. It's not, I mean, there's so many ways in which this novel is interesting and quietly revolutionary, but I think you can hear it right there. That is so plain for a fiction of its era, isn't it? I think there's another passage that really illustrates that point, the quiet revolutionary nature of this prose.

And it's so simple I might have to try and explain why I think it's revolutionary afterwards. The moment is that the silver braid, the horse, the moment is that the silver braid the horse um owned by esther's employers has just won the stewards cup and the entire household has been obsessed with this race and silver braids chances and esther hasn't gone to the race she stayed at home she's taken the afternoon off and she um has found herself even against her religious principles becoming very excited about the race and so she decides to walk along the sea road to meet the carriage coming back with people from the house she walked on and on until the sound of the horn came through

the crimson evening and she saw the leaders trotting in a cloud of dust. Ginger was driving and he shouted to her, he won. The gaffer waved the horn and shouted, he won. Peggy waved her broken parasol and shouted, he won. Esther looked at William. He leaned over the back seat and shouted, he won. And there's something about that repetition, which is actually very unusual. You wouldn't see that in James or Dickens or Eliot. It's a deliberate, almost crudity, that repetition, the bluntness, feels stylistically exciting, even though it's such a restrained effect.

It's an example of when repetition can be quite radical in the way it disturbs the prose. And of course, with each he won, he won, we wait for Esther to see William, who she's falling in love with, and he gets to say that final he won. And it's almost as though we follow her gaze as it goes from person to person before it falls on that last image of William,

the person she really cares about. And that's an example, I think, of that quiet prose doing quite a lot of work. Yeah, he's very, very good at that. As you say, you're reading it and you do have this strange sensation that although the mise-en-scene is definitely 19th century and 1890s, the sensibility, particularly throughout Esther's kind of refusal to follow the usual kind of pattern,

refusal to to follow the usual kind of pattern the test pattern of a fallen innocent is uh is is really extraordinary well in fact tom the passage you've just read is tremendously reminiscent to me of a similar passage in test of the d'urbervilles where they're riding on a cart and and they're talking to one another and um moore was a famous and outspoken critic of Thomas Hardy's and he loathed Tessa Thurberville's, as indeed do I. That's more than any man since George Moore. And listening to you read that section, I was thinking, yes, OK, well, that's because the way Hardy does this scene is progressive rock and the way George Moore does it is post-punk.

It's a sort of strip it all back, take it all down, allow these people to be people, not tiny symbols in a landscape to be shunted around. And yet, at the same time, one of the peculiarities of Moore's career is he is tremendously prolix in much of his other work, flowery Rococo. Why is he not like that whatsoever in Esther Waters?

I think he was playing, I mean, as you said at the beginning, this is his eighth novel. And I think he was very plain, restricted in his sort of first decade, maybe, of being a novelist. He was influenced by Zola. I think he was also influenced by Flaubert. And I think even that opening passage with the curl of steam above the train, I think Flaubert has an image of a train with the steam like a feather behind the train. So I wonder if that's a nod. But, you know, he was he was doing it deliberately.

I mean, I think that's the important thing to keep emphasizing. restricting his style, to make a sort of political point in a way about what the novel was there to do, that it was in the tradition of Zola, it was scientific, it was detached, it was objective, that we have a kind of very studied view of Esther's life with almost no authorial intervention, no sense really of a narrator, with a few exceptions. And so that required that very impersonal style. And I think he just became, I think all through his life, he was a man of enthusiasms. He threw himself into things and then literally threw himself back out of them again uh the irish revival his involvement with yeah with the irish revival in dublin being an example at the turn of the century he goes all in and then he goes all out and rejects the whole thing and i think

this is a case with this naturalist prose naturalist style he just gets fed up of it and he falls in love with um the writing Walter Pater, a much more elaborate stylist with much more kind of measured cadences. And I think he then pushes that way. He becomes very influenced by Wagner. And Wagner is an underrated influence on the novel in all sorts of ways. But I think Wagner gives him an image of a more Rococo, overblown, swelling prose. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Books that it reminded me of. Kate Chopin's The Awakening. The sense of a sort of a rebellious woman who basically just wants life on her own terms. I mean, I think Esther, obviously, there's a certain amount of conformity. She ends up with William. But there's one of my favourite bits of the book.

I think this is a really, really kind of important passage, is where she's thinking about the options that she has in her life. And she stops outside. Mrs. Rice is the nice novelist who she cleans for is as a servant for and who saves her from from the probably the worst the lowest moment of the narrative and she's there she slept on the same landing as mrs rice and was moved by a sudden impulse to go in and tell her the story of her trouble.

But what good? No one could help her. She liked Fred. This is the Plymouth Brethren, then Salvation Army kind of man, who's asked her to marry him and who's solid. She liked Fred. They seemed to suit each other. And she could have made him a good wife if she'd not met William by the stage she's then re-met William the footman who who did her wrong in the first quarter of the book she thought of the cottage at Mortlake which is Fred's cottage and their lives in it and she sought to stimulate her liking for him with thoughts of the meeting house she thought even

of the simple black dress she would wear and that life seemed so natural to her that she did not understand why she hesitated. If she were to marry William, she would go to the King's Head. That's the pub in Soho. She would stand behind the bar. She would serve the customers. She had never seen much life and felt somehow she would like to see a little life. There would not be much life in the cottage at Mortlake, nothing but the prayer meeting. She stopped thinking, surprised at her thoughts.

She'd never thought like that before. It seemed as if some other woman whom she hardly knew was thinking for her. She seemed like one standing at a crossroads, unable to decide which road she would take. If she took the road leading to the cottage and the prayer meeting, her life would be henceforth secure. She could see her life from end to end, even to the time when Fred would come and sit by her and hold her hand as she had seen his father and mother sitting side by side. If she took the road to the public house and the race course, she did not know what might happen. But William had promised to settle 500 on her and Jackie. Her life would be secure either way.

Not exactly how it turned out, but I just think that's, I can't think of another writer of this period, this particular, who would write something that clean, that plain, that's psychologically penetrating right yeah tom i was going to say i'm just that that last point john made one of the things we should remember about george moore is certainly in this novel while he knows a great deal about the ggs um he he he this is a tremendous act of the imagination ester waters right he didn't know anything about her the the plight of the serving uh woman or the barmaid i mean he had a cook that

he relied on the bit that john's just read is tremendously psychologically insightful for somebody who was Irish landed gentry and, you know, not a woman. I think so. And I think it is pointed out that in his sort of first experiment in autobiography, in his Confessions of a Young Man, he's very critical. He writes very dismissively of the servant he has in when he's living in the Strand.

And later, you know, there's mention of him being quite prepared to throw a pair of boots at a servant who wasn't behaving well. So I think one way of looking at this is this is a man who is a consummate artist. He sees an artistic subject in the servant. And he allows himself to almost to dissolve himself into her situation, her plight. And it doesn't mean that he was a perfect guy, but he also was. On the other hand, if we want to give him some credit he was a he was a radical figure he was involved with almost every radical um artistic thing you can

think of he was interested in new ways of painting he was a patron and a promoter of the impressionists he was very involved in the new theater he was involved in setting up some of the early productions of Ibsen. He was in dialogue with radical thinkers about socialism, women's rights. He was someone who, George Bernard Shaw, he was a radical figure always pushing

at the limits. And so I think in that sense we can give him some more credit and say that he was socially conscious. Yeah. And he was wanting to push the limits of the novel further out and show that the novel shouldn't just be about middle-class people.

It should be about that. I think he says somewhere that, you know, there is grandeur, there is maybe something epic in the most ordinary, normal lives. And that's a beautiful sentiment. I mean, I think the thing about Moore, which I absolutely love and which he has in common with Jean Rees, is that we might describe Moore as a product of his time and place, except the time and place are a time and place of his time and place, except the time and place

are a time and place of his choosing. That's to say, fin de siècle of Paris. And if you look at the way Moore is influenced by Impressionism, because he spends time in Paris with Degas, and there's a famous portrait of him by Manet. And you also think about other writers who were influenced by painting. I think the fascinating thing about Esther Waters is actually it didn't make me think of Zola. I mean, there is an influence of Zola, but there's no will to reform anything really in Esther Waters. You know, Zola is a newspaper man.

Yeah, he's a journalist. And a marketeer. And he knows how to create a sensation and push out a hot topic. That, it seems to me, is not what Moore is doing. Moore is much more interested about mapping the consciousness of figures who have been up until that point largely ignored by literature. And in that respect, he's much closer to the Goncourt brothers and their much neglected fiction, especially their novel, Germany Lackateur, if listeners have read that. This novel strongly reminded me of Germany

Lackateur because they have that similar of what we see to be true while not proposing a solution necessarily. And I think, Tom, one of the remarkable things about this novel is how there is so little Dickensian authorial intervention, right? intervention, right? Yes, and I think that's maybe why betting, the role of betting and the races is so important because what it introduces is a theme of luck and hope. And what we see in Esther's life is also a story of luck and hope.

And in a way that the horse racing sort of dramatizes life, that life in Moore's conception is simply the facts on the ground, whether you have a bit of luck or whether you don't, and you just have to make it through. And you either do that with hope, the bet, or you do it with resignation, which I think is what the religion is there for as an element. You know, you surrender to religion

and religion sort of beautifies your circumstances or gives them meaning. Or like Esther, I think Esther, I think more allows Esther to find a middle ground. She doesn't support the betting. She doesn't, she sees the damage that betting and gambling can do, but she also, in the end, doesn't follow all of her religious instincts. She doesn't fall in with Fred, the Plymouth Brethren man

and the Salvation Army man. She actually follows something like instinct. She follows her will to bring her child up and to be a good wife and i think she says somewhere you know it's i've got to be what's close to me is what's good i think that's she says something along those lines and i think more allows us to see all of those choices all of those options and allows us to see the way she proceeds through life. And he doesn't encourage us to make an opinion about it. And I think that's why some people thought this book was a great moral crusade.

Mr Gladstone, the Prime Minister, said it was a wonderful book against betting, against racing. But I don't think it really is. You see what you want to see, right? And she's pragmatic the the lines i think tom that you were saying is one doesn't do the good that one would like to in the world one has to do the good that comes to one to do of my husband and my boy to look to them as my good at least that's how i see things that's what she says to fred but i the the thing that i was i've been kind of puzzling about,

which is that superficially, you say Zola, but superficially, the other writer that you would imagine George Moore in this book resembles is George Gissing. Okay, we're going to pause there, because this is a cliffhanger in keeping with the tradition of the three-volume novel. We're going to explore the subject of George Gissing. Just hang on, everybody. Hold on where you are. We're going to come back to this subject directly after this break. Okay, welcome back, everybody.

John, are you talking about George Gissing? Yeah. Author of New Grub Street and, of course, we have made an episode about the odd women. The odd women, yeah. Street and of course we have made an episode about the odd women. Gissing was pretty dismissive of Moore and particularly of this book. Why?

I just didn't like it. Oh, okay. I think they're doing very different things with their fiction. Gissing is a much more, you know, melodramatic, is he? While under the guise of realism, I don't know. What do you think? I think in some ways Gissing was a more traditional novelist, actually, than Moore, certainly in this period. I mean, Gissing is still more in the three-volume sort of,

you know, he's writing the big three-volume novel, where actually Moore is a pioneer also in writing these slim one volume novels and i think that involves and it's part of this stylistic restraint but it's also a restraint on the level of plot and character and esther waters is a very slim novel in in more than one way because it's really about one woman proceeding down a narrow line a narrow track of events and we don't have many recurring characters we don't have um a stable setting for her and i think gissing actually was more traditional in in having maybe more of a circular novel a a novel that contains a situation and a group of characters that then inhabit the circle together and interact.

And I think he probably didn't like that boldness maybe. But he also might have resented more trespassing on his territory. But, I mean, Gissing wrote about the book that some pathos and power in the latter part, but miserable writing, the dialogue often grotesquely phrased. I love these little bitches attacking one another in the 19th century. It's tremendous. I think in the way that you feel sometimes that Gissing is kind of turning, you know,

Henry Mayhew's work into fiction. What I love about Moore is that he makes, he's somehow able, because he knows a lot about horse racing, he knows obviously a lot about gambling. Yes, Moore was born a Catholic and then became a Protestant, but there's something much more Protestant in Gissing's work and moralistic in Gissing's work. I mean, there's a bit where

he writes, he just writes a bit about the gold after the silver braid has won. The gold continued to roll into the town, decrepit and colorless by its high shingle beach and long reaches the muddy river. The dear gold jingled merrily in pockets, quickening the steps, lightening the heart, curling lips with smiles, opening lips with laughter. The dear gold came falling softly, sweetly as rain, soothing the hard lives of worthing folk. Now, you could maybe imagine Dickens writing a passage like that, but you could never imagine George Gissing or Zola

writing passages like that. So I think he's got a more interesting range. There's also a significant factor, Tom, isn't there, with the reputation of George Moore in his time was that people generally didn't like him. He seems to have been a bit of an arse. And I just wanted to share this with you both. Here is a piece from the Manchester Guardian in 1920 in which Mr George Moore interviews himself.

You know, Tom, if you were to run a piece in the paper where you interview yourself about your own work, people might not warm to you. I mean, I've offered it, but no one's taking it so far. OK, so I'll just read you a couple of paras of this, and I think you'll see it starts like this. A maid in black and white moved silently to announce me. Off the entrance hall, a door opened into a chastely furnished living room.

Mr Moore, a figure in cool colours, stood against the background of a fire kept neat behind polished brass fender, his white hair and fresh coloured face in harmonious contrast against a bronze figure and two magenta gold filleted vases on the mantle. His yellow moustaches, which droop a little, and the bright lights in his pale blue eyes are younger than the man. Otherwise, he looks beyond middle age, though apparently taking his years with self-satisfaction.

From the point of view of work, on my part, this was an interview deluxe. Right? He's playing the part to the hilt there. And he did not endear himself to his contemporaries, such as Gissing or whoever, or posterity for that matter. You know, Tom, when you read, I know we've all been reading about Moore and about Esther Waters, This comes up again and again.

There seems to be a constant question of people going, how did this dick write this wonderful novel? Yeah. We have to bear in mind that Moore was an autobiographer. Yeah. In a way, an auto fictioner he he did produce these um quite again in so many ways he's a pioneer he produced these sort of fictionalized autobiographies or autobiographies that use the techniques of fiction so more like auto fiction about his life. He produced this Confessions of a Young Man in 1888. He wrote a book called Memoirs of My Dead Life in 1906. He wrote a trilogy of books about his time back in Ireland.

candid about himself and about others. So he was rude about people. He dismissed them. He expressed negative opinions about their work or their personalities. But he was also brutal about himself. He didn't resist showing himself in a bad light or, in some cases, maybe playing up to a negative image of himself. Yeah.

This is exactly, can I just, sorry, interject, which is exactly what the Gunther brothers did for what it's worth. The idea, they understood the value of, you know, lampooning their contemporaries while also putting themselves in the same crosshairs. Yeah. I think he saw himself in that tradition and going back to Rousseau. Yeah. But neither of those things are a recipe for success, I think.

Being rude about other people and making yourself look like an idiot is probably going to end up pissing people off and making people think you're an idiot. So it's a risky, it's a high-risk strategy. He was something of a figure of fun. Do you know the story about his neighbours in Dublin? No, no, go on. It's a very good story that Yates tells.

So he lives in a square in Dublin, in Ely Place, and all the tenants have agreed that they're going to paint their doors and their railings the same colour. But as an art critic, he rails against the landlord and says, I need a green door. So he paints a big green door. So his next door neighbours, who I think are called the Miss Beams, the indignant young women bought a copy of Esther Waters, tore it up,

put the fragments into a large envelope, wrote thereon, too filthy to keep in the house, and dropped it into his letterbox. Anyway, Yates takes up the story. I was staying with Moore. I let myself in with a latchkey some night after 12 and found a note on the hall table asking me to put the door on the chain. As I was undressing, I heard Moore trying to get in. When I had opened the door and pointed to the note, he said, oh, I forgot. Every night I go out at 11, at 11 at 12 at 1 and rattle my stick on the railings to make the miss beams dog spark then i saw in the newspaper that the miss beams had hired organ

grinders to play under moore's window when he was writing and that he had prosecuted the organ grinders anyway this this goes on he i, but it's like nightmare neighbor, really, really kind of annoying and full of himself. And the other lovely, not lovely, but you know, his relationship with Joyce was quite strained. He wrote in 1922, Joyce, Joyce, why he's nobody from the Dublin docks, no family, no breeding.

Someone else once sent me his portrait of the artist as a young man, a book entirely without distinction. Why? I did the same thing, but much better in the confessions of a young man. Why attempt the same thing unless you can turn out a better book? Tom, what are the 20th century innovations that we can detect in Esther Waters? water. Restraint, that discipline, stripping out of the narrator, of sentiment, of judgment. It is a more radical way of doing that than Henry James. You know, if Henry James is showing, not telling, then Moore is doing that in an even leaner fashion. So I think he's part of that move away from the form of the Victorian novel. Obviously the subject matter, he's a crucial figure

in changing the subject matter of the novel, what the novel can deal with, what's legitimate for the novel to deal with. And also that willingness to offer muddy morality, a kind of mixed picture, a determination to allow people to embrace the normal in a way. I mean, Esther says at one point, it would be so much easier with William if he was wicked. If he was wicked, that would be simple. I wouldn't go to him. But he's just ordinary. He's just an ordinary type of person. And I think the ordinary type of person

is what Moore allows us to see in fiction for the first time, which is not what Hardy's doing. Which of those elements do you think endears Esther Waters to Joyce and to Jean Rees? I mean, there may be different answers according to the person, but, you know, these are 20th, important 20th century writers for whom Esther Waters was a core inspiration and a core text. What is it in Esther Waters that those writers see that they want to carry forward? Yeah, I thought Joyce, it has to be the the finding poetry in in the everyday i mean it is pretty remarkable that the whole of this book is in in the consciousness really apart from a few uh little side passages where he's sort of slightly inside sarah her friend's head but he's for the most part you are absolutely inside the head of a working class illiterate servant for the for the

whole of this book i think reese similarly liked that there was very little made up as she saw it very little that drew attention to itself as fictionalizing and a great deal of um emotional truthfulness i think that's the the element that Rhys found endearing. She said that lovely thing. She said, it's beautifully done and doesn't date a bit. I suppose reading about someone strong, quiet, and simple helps me. And I thought, what a beautiful thing to say about another book. There's a lot in that sentence. And I think the very powerful ending of the book, which is powerful because, like, I mean, it's very quiet, isn't it? They end silently walking up to the house.

That's like the ending of a very modern novel. There is something Chekhovian, but also maybe Joycean, about more selectiveness. He knows when to stop a chapter in a kind of muted way. He knows how to move the action on quickly. He doesn't elaborate. He doesn't get lost in detail. You can see Dubliners in the way he chooses to close these stories

and indeed close the book in a quiet, muted way. And also I think Jean Rees, I didn't know this thing about Jean Rees, but that's interesting because, of course, Jean Rees writes a prequel to Jane Eyre, and I actually think Esther Waters has something of the Jane Eyre about it. I was reading Esther thinking, where else have I come across a slightly stubborn, difficult, across a slightly a stubborn difficult um sort of plain woman battling against life i thought that's jane eyre and then i thought well jane also has this three-part structure of

starting with mr rochester moving away meeting an evangelical christian do-gooder who wants to marry her, Cyngell Rivers. And Esther has that experience with Fred. And then Esther, like Jane, ends up back where she started, with Mr. Rochester. Esther ends up back with William and back with Mrs. Barfield. So I think it's fascinating if there is a Bronte thing

running through George Moore onto Jean Rees. Esther Waters has been adapted for film and television several times, most notably in the 1940s. There's a film starring Dirk Bogard, who you're going to hear now, in the Rochester role of William. William comes to an unfortunate end where consumption catches up with him

and he decides, as an inveterate gambler that the sensible thing to do is place, rather than pass money onto his wife and child, to place it on one last horse. So you're going to hear now a clip of Dirk Bogard as William, speaking to two of his friends in the TB ward of a hospital in the Brompton Road, one of whom is Rafe Richardson doing a terribly good Cockney accent.

So here we go. How are you feeling, Will? Fine, fine. And what about the derby? French horse aside, there are only two in it. Aye, Paradox and Melton. Paradox has it on four. And Archer chose Melton.

That's the problem in a nutshell, Will. But Archer didn't choose Melton. He was retained by the stable. They famed him. Well, what's the difference? Now, look here, you two. I've got nothing else to do here but think. I've thought this race out.

Now, Archer could ride Paradox if they let him, but they've put Webb up instead, see? Now, Webb's the best of the lot by Archer. What, even Archer can't beat the form book? He always said he could, well... I'm serious, John. Dead serious. Paradox is at sixes. The other horses are tombs. Why? For hero worship.

All the big money's following Archer. But you've got to consider form, isn't that right, Walter? I mean, sentiment about jockey's one thing, but... There's too much at stake in this for me. I've got to get sixes for my hundred or I don't get to Egypt. And if I'm in this country by next winter, well... Will 600 get you to Egypt? Well, yeah.

With a bit left over for Esther and the kid. That's how it is, see? It's lucky I'm lucky. It's great! You know what? It's really good, that film. It's really good, and it doesn't, you know, it doesn't totally

reproduce the texture of the novel, but it's true to a lot of the elements of it. One thing I would like to talk about, Tom, is Moore revisited his work over and over again in his lifetime. Several of the novels go through three or four editions with revisions every time, and particularly Esther Waters is first published in serial form,

then it's expanded for its first publication in 1894. Then he revises it in 1899, and again in 1917, and again in 1920, and again in 1931. And we realized when we were all talking about the novel at the start, we've all got different editions of this novel. We're talking about three or four different books. There are thousands of differences between the editions. Now, why does he do that? Well, it's a very interesting impulse that some novelists have indulged over the years.

I guess famously Henryry james though i know john updyke was correcting the rabbit books uh shortly before he died what was he i didn't know that apparently his wife said to him you can't do that you know they're important texts you can't change them he said well if i'm not going to change them who will you know this is the last chance it's the last chance for them to get better. And I think maybe Moore had a similar impulse on a basic level. He had an ideal of art. He was one of those people who saw himself as having given up his life to art. He once was in dialogue with a relative, a cousin, I think,

or a niece who had become a nun. And he said, you've given up your life to God and I've given up my life to art. And they both involved sacrifices. So I think he had a conception of himself and a kind of perfectionism. I think the idealism and perfectionism often go together. And I think he wanted to create the perfect object, the perfect Esther, and he couldn't let that go. And I think it's probably another thing that harmed his reputation because you start flooding the market with different versions of books and books with different titles.

I think it becomes harder to pin someone down. I accidentally, I borrowed a copy of the Oxford Classics paperback edition of this novel from the library. And I read the first half before I picked up a copy from a shop. And they're different editions. And with the result that the first half of this novel I read in the 1931 version, the final version, and the second half I read accidentally in the 1896 or 99 version.

And I didn't know this. I was going to tell you both this story that I suddenly, because I was reading them the wrong way round, when I started reading Esther Walsh, I was thinking, goodness me, this is an austere and realistic and naturalist text. And as I got into the second half, I was thinking, that is strange. It's suddenly become more romantic and it's developed these strange flourishes. What a peculiar thing for him to do.

Of course, I got it the wrong way round. One of the things that he does in the revisions is remove any hint of the Rococo, right? Even though as a writer, as his career goes on, he becomes more Rococo in style. And I would like to suggest that one of the reasons he does that, okay, artistically, yes, Tom, I think that makes sense. But we know that he was a celebrity literary personality with an eye on how he would be judged posthumously, with an eye on his reputation. And it strikes me that what he's doing is editing the book and rewriting the book constantly to bring it into

line with its reputation as this pioneering text, which is how it will be remembered. And let's be quite clear, that's not me being cynical. That is just a realistic, I would say, appraisal of how he seems to work as a writer. You know, he had a clear sense of why people continued to read his work. I mean, he wrote 50 books, but it was only one book that's come down to us, really, and that book is Esther Waters. And he knew it. And he knew it.

It was a big hit as well, 24 000 copies in in its first year it was endorsed by gladstone and banned by the wh smith circulating library and then as now that's all you need tom i was going to say tom has the new life been banned by wh smiths sadly not sadly no not openly sadly no but they never they never banned him again so they'd been the circulating libraries Smiths. Sadly not. Not openly, sadly, no. But they never banned him again. So they'd been, the circulating libraries had been banning him all the way through the 1880s. And

he had written a sort of scorching pamphlet attacking Mr. Moody, who was the biggest circulating library man in the country. And he'd been battling against this for 15 years at that point. And Esther Waters was the last book of his to be banned because it had such a big sale in 1894 that they couldn't do it again.

And so that's a victory. It's a victory for George and another victory for Esther. W.H. Smith, the line, Mr. Foe of W.H. Smith said, for certain pre-Raphaelite nastiness that Mr. Moore cannot keep out of his writings. Pre-Raphaelite nastiness. It's not a phrase you hear very

often these days. I'm afraid that's where we're going to have to leave Esther and Mrs. Barfield and her son Jackie walking in silence towards the house. Huge thanks to Tom for giving us the chance to explore this rich, rewarding and surprisingly contemporary novel and to Nicky Birch for making us sound and feel like we're all in the same room. If you would like show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show, and the, good Lord, 195 that we've already recorded.

Imagine if we'd recorded 195 and, like Salinger, never put them out. That would be quite a thing, wouldn't it? Anyway, you can find them all at our website at backlisted.fm. If you want to buy the books discussed, visit our bookshop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your bookshop. And you can contact us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and by the time this goes out, possibly Blue Sky as well, but I haven't quite got round to it yet.

Excellent. If you want to hear Backlisted early and ad-free, you can subscribe to our Patreon, www.patreon.com forward slash Backlisted. Your subscription brings other benefits. If you subscribe at the lock listener level, about the price of a cab that Esther takes from Vauxhall Bridge Road to Edgware Road, you get two extra exclusive podcasts every month.

Yeah, half a crown, of course. We call it locklisted because it began in the Wenlock Tavern in London just before lockdown. You'll remember that. And it features the three of us talking and recommending books, films and music we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight. For those of you who enjoyed our What Have You Been Reading slot, that's where you find it now.

Plus, Locked listeners get their names read out, accompanied by lashings of thanks and gratitude like this. Christina Gross, thank you. Rebecca Dixon, thank you. Laura Davis, thank you. Jez Paxman, thank you. Rebecca Dixon, thank you. Laura Davis, thank you. Jez Paxman, thank you. It can't be, can it? It can't be that one, no. We don't think it is. Jez Paxman,

thank you anyway. And Linda Longmore, thank you. James Menny, thank you. Matt, thank you. I don't think you're our former producer, but if you are, it's very kind of you. And if you aren't, it's even kinder. All the Matts out there. Will Leatham, thank you. Catherine Ambler, thank you. And Nick Kish kind of you. And if you aren't, it's even kinder. All the maths out there. Will Leatham, thank you. Catherine Ambler, thank you.

And Nick Kish, thank you very much. Tom, thank you so much. Is there anything you wish to add about George Moore or his novel Esther Waters or the state of 19th century fiction that we haven't covered before we leave? No, only that I think reading more is a very famous book. It's been around for a long time, but I still think it's under-read.

And I think it's one of those books that actually allows people to see a different side of the Victorian period or a different side of the Victorian novel. I still think we have such a limited view of what the Victorians were up to and what Victorian life looked like, because we see it just through a very thin slice of literature. And Moore is one of those people that opens up a world for us and allows us to see something that's a lot more like our own world a lot less structured and filtered by particular tropes so I think you know he was a he was a candid man and

he offers a candid picture I think and that's that's valuable well everybody Tom Cruise and George Moore's novels are available to borrow from circulating libraries or purchase from station bookstalls. Across the land. I would have stood no chance with Mr Moody, that's for sure. That's true. I've read your novel. I can confirm that.

Anyway, listen, thanks so much, Tom. And thanks very much, everybody, for listening. John, anything, any last message? No, I think we've covered most of it. I just love, there's a marvellous bit where Miss Rice, the elderly lady novelist, after she's been kind of put right by Esther, thinks to herself, it seemed to her pale and conventional,

her novel that she's writing, pale and conventional compared to this rough page torn out of life. And I think that kind of, that image of Esther Waters as a rough page torn out of life is perfect. It's an amazing novel and should be, I agree, better known. Well, we'll see you soon everybody just to say we've got some uh proper special episodes coming up in the next few weeks we have a a commemorative episode from a great friend of this podcast we have our annual halloween uh treat uh or trick episode coming up in a few weeks time and we're just a few away

stick with us everyone for episode 200 of Backlisted and we have something very special planned for that or at least if not planned, being planned. Prospected You know

we won't just let it slide I can assure you of that. Anyway, thanks very much, everyone. Thank you. And we'll see you next time. Bye-bye. Bye.