Muslin

Muslin, by George Moore

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Title: Muslin
Author: George Moore
Release Date: January 10, 2005 [EBook #14659]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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MUSLIN
By
GEORGE MOORE

Originally published under the title of 'A Drama in Muslin,' 1886.
New Edition, September, 1915.

PREFACE
My excuse for modifying the title of this book is, that A Drama in
Muslin has long seemed to me to be the vulgar one among the titles of
my many books. But to change the title of a book that has been in
circulation, however precarious, for more than thirty years, is not
permissible, and that is why I rejected the many titles that rose up in
my mind while correcting the proofs of this new edition. In Neophytes,
Débutantes, and The Baiting of Mrs. Barton, readers would have
divined a new story, but the dropping out of the unimportant word
'drama' will not deceive the most casual follower of literature. The
single word 'muslin' is enough. Mousseline would be more euphonious,
a fuller, richer word; and Bal Blanc, besides being more picturesque,
would convey my meaning; but a shade of meaning is not sufficient
justification for the use of French titles or words, for they lessen the
taste of our language; we don't get the smack, and Milord's epigrams
poisoned my memory of A Drama in Muslin. But they cannot be
omitted without much re-writing, I said, and remembering my oath
never to attempt the re-writing of an old book again, I fell back on the
exclusion of A Drama in Muslin as the only way out of the dilemma. A
wavering resolution was precipitated by recollection of some
disgraceful pages, but a moment after I was thinking that the omission
of the book would create a hiatus. A Drama in Muslin, I reflected, is a
link between two styles; and a book that has achieved any notoriety
cannot be omitted from a collected edition, so my publishers said, and
they harped on this string, until one day I flung myself out of their
office and rattled down the stairs muttering, 'What a smell of shop!' But
in the Strand near the Cecil Inn, the thought glided into my mind that
the pages that seemed so disgraceful in memory might not seem so in
print, 'and the only way to find out if this be so,' the temptation
continued, 'will be to ask the next policeman the way to Charing Cross

Road.' Another saw me over a dangerous crossing (London is the best
policed city in Europe), a third recommended a shop 'over yonder:
you've just passed it by, sir.' 'Thank you, thank you,' I cried back, and
no sooner was I on the other side than, overcome by shyness, as always
in these stores of dusty literature, I asked for the Drama in Muslin,
pronouncing the title so timidly that the bookseller guessed me at once
to be the author, and began telling of the books that were doing well in
first editions. 'If I had any I wanted to get rid of?' he mentioned several
he would be glad to buy. Whereupon in turn I grew confidential and
confided to him my present dilemma, failing, however, to dissuade him
from his opinion that A Drama in Muslin ought to be included. 'Any
corrections you make in the new edition will keep up the price of the
old,' he added as he wrapped up the brown paper parcel. 'You will like
the book better than you think for.' 'Thank you, thank you,' I cried after
me, and hopped into a taxi, unsuspicious that I carried a delightful
evening under my arm. A comedy novel, written with sprightliness and
wit, I said, as I turned to the twentieth page, and it needs hardly any
editing. A mere re-tying of a few bows that the effluxion of time has
untied, or were never tied by the author, who, if I remember right, used
to be less careful of his literary appearance than his prefacer, neglecting
to examine his sentences, and to scan them as often as one might expect
from an admirer, not to say disciple, of Walter Pater.
An engaging young man rose out of the pages of his book, one that
Walter Pater would admire (did admire), one that life, I added, seems to
have affected through his senses violently, and