Because of AE’s gentle nature, critics have been hard-pressed to explain his satiric picture of George Moore in Avatars (1933). John Eglinton, friend of both, can serve as an example. According to Eglinton, it “was not in Russell to feel personal resentment, and if he felt any such inclination he ... schooled himself instantly to repress it.” [1] While Eglinton’s pronouncement that AE felt professional, aesthetic, and national resentments - and he undoubtedly felt these at various times - like most pronouncements, this is still an oversimplification. The truth is that between 1916 and 1923. when Moore and AE were quarreling most bitterly in private, Russell ignored Moore publically; but, between 1913 and 1916, when relations were cordial, and from 1923 on (i.e., after peace had been restored) AE felt free to discuss Moore’s weaknesses. As might be expected, AE’s satiric treatment of Moore is most often in connection with Hail and Farewell, which Russell thought malicious. In the Irish Homestead and Irish Statesman, references to Moore and his work are of three kinds: personal anecdotes as illustrations for lead articles, dispraise of Moore in contrast to another, more favored, author in book reviews, and direct subjective judgments of Hail and Farewell. After these, the caricature in Avatars begins to make sense.

For most of the decade Moore lived in Dublin, AE was his closest friend. For seven years (1904-1911), AE spent each Saturday evening at Ely Place and went there daily during his lunch hour. [2] After Moore returned to London, Russell was lonely. He told John Quinn that GM was the only one of his acquaintances with any ideas, and that he was “alive all the time.” [3] Still, in his lead article for 5 April 1913. “Suffering from Enemies and Friends,” AE used Moore as a disparaging illustration of the plight of the Irish Agricultural Organization Society: “George Moore is reported to have left one religion and adopted another in the hope that his reasons for deserting one faith and accepting another would injure both equally.”[4] Since Moore resented any reference to his ever having been a Catholic, this comment was not designed to please him. Somewhat more favorable but still mixed was the comment of 6 October 1923, “Light in Dark Places”:

Mr. George Moore is not always a safe guide when he enlarges upon what are in his eyes the manifold defects of his countrymen. Unfortunately his gibe that he had met Irishmen who admitted that they were not educated and could not be educated, but never anyone who was not prepared to educate others, is truer now than when it was first uttered. [5]

More frequently, AE used Moore as an unfortunate contrast when he reviewed the books of others. He may have had Moore’s compositional habits and fluid style in mind, for example, on 22 November 1913. when he reviewed James Stephens’ Here Are Ladies. {97} Stephens’ work possesses abundant energy and should be preferred to “the flavourless prose of many novelists who seem to consider writing a business to be tackled every day after breakfast for a certain number of hours.” [6]  With the next review there is no doubt. Johnson Pasha’s translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, reviewed 31 January 1914, reminded AE of Susan Mitchell’s quip about Moore: “We sometimes suspect Omar with regard to the wine cup he praises was rather like the famous Irish novelist whose tales of his amorous adventures led a witty Irishwoman to speak of him as one ‘who never kissed but told.’” [7] Katherine Tynan’s Twenty Five-Years, reviewed 25 April 1914, was deemed more truthful than Hail and Farewell, for George Moore has dealt with his characters in his book as Corot dealt with his landscapes. He has invented a group - invented with genius, it is true - but nonetheless invented people who never existed in Ireland and has called them by well-known Irish names. ... . Twenty-Five Years has a kindly realism, Hail and Farewell only malicious fantasy.” [8]

Most damaging of all, however, was AE’s review of Susan Mitchell’s George Moore. With pardonable pride for his secretary’s effort, here he may have exhibited some of the personal malice Eglinton denied he was capable of. Although the book was simply a collection of Dublin anecdotes about Moore, AE found it “apt, witty, and just the proper treatment of one who had similarly treated Dublin.” [9] As Monk Gibbon remarked, in a letter to me, an author of Moore’s stature deserved better than “Silly Susie” gave him. [10] Moore was understandably angry about the book and Russell’s championing of it and quarreled with AE over it from 1918 to 1923, when Gibbon was instrumental in restoring friendly relations. [11]  Between those years, AE carefully refrained from mentioning Moore in any articles or reviews.

The memory of Hail and Farewell, however, continued to annoy AE. The death of Edward Martyn (Irish Statesman obit, 15 December 1923) gave him another opportunity to discuss it:

Such is the power of literary genius that it is possible, seventy years hence, the literary historian will turn to these vivid and malicious portraits in his effort to recreate the intellectual society at the beginning of this century in Ireland! though the portraits throw much more light upon the writer than upon his subjects. Indeed, if all the characters in Ave, Salve, Vale, were rolled into one they would constitute an admirable picture of the writer. ... [12]

Only when he, himself, was annoyed with his country did AE publically concede the achievement of Hail and Farewell. In an article in the Irish Statesman (March 1927), he recognized it as saga literature in modern times, a saga, in fact, which {98} combined fantasy, imagination, and irony. He felt that another saga could pick up where Vale leaves off, but

it will never be written - that epic. Nothing will remain but the Ave, Salve, Vale. The censorship and the law of libel forbid. But I, who could never tell what I know here, when I go back to Tirnanoge will tell to Finn, Oscar and the other ancients of our race tales of adventure as astonishing as their own. What is forbidden here will make me welcome in Tirnanoge. [13]

Avatars, however, proves that Russell could tell at least part of what he “knew.” His satiric picture of the visiting writer whose “soft caressing voice” often expressed untruths is reminiscent of GM’s caricatures:

You know I am a creature of this world. I only come to this country looking for local colour, a romantic background for a tale which I think will be my masterpiece. You living here must, of course, be familiar with the story of the two who disappeared. A beautiful woman who might, I believe, be a queen, met a peasant poet or musician. You understand the attraction opposite grades of society have for each other. ... Of course she became his mistress. But none here believe it. They get angry at the thought ... . But you and I understand life. We know the platonic affection is the most enchanting approach to bodily love ... . Life has given me a tale better than any I had imagined. Oh, I will make it beautiful, the tale of these two. ... I will send you the greatest of my love stories when it is printed. I know you will like it better than anything I have yet written. Well, after hail, it is now farewell. [14]

The details of the caricature make clear that, for AE, Hail and Farewell would always evoke unpleasant associations. Moore’s realism, his obsession with physical love, and his use of Ireland as subject-matter are all assailed. The portrait of Moore, however, is primarily unpleasant because it is a dramatization and because it makes explicit AE’s feeling that Moore had had base motives in staying m Ireland for ten years. In other respects, it simply continues the criticism of Moore and Hail and Farewell which AE had offered consistently in-the Irish Homestead and Irish Statesman during the years he was not quarreling with Moore. This fact is important, not only because it tends to corraborate [sic] Eglinton’s judgment of AE’s character, but because it also suggests that Russell intended Moore to see this critical stricture. Unfortunately, press copies were not available until 8 July 1933,  and Moore died in January [15].