360
GEORGE MOORE AND JOHN FREEMAN
Freeman: You do admit that we see Tess at work in the turnip fields.
Moore: A solitary figure in a turnip field is a distinct feature in the landscape, and Mr Hardy did not miss it; indeed, we could almost wish that he had, so often have we seen this figure in pictures, as often, or very nearly as often, as we have seen harvesters returning with a dancing step from the fields, scythes over their shoulders, and a moon three times too big behind their heads.
Freeman: You are thinking, surely, of George Mason's picture of harvesters?
Moore: Perhaps I am; it would not surprise me if the picture you speak of got mixed up in my memories of Tess, so entirely in keeping are the dancing harvesters and the moon three times too big with the seducer, who returns in clerical garb and disappears from the story, returning again for Tess to murder him with a carving knife and the blood to soak through the ceiling, and for Tess to be hanged later on, after spending a splendid honeymoon among the monoliths of Stonehenge, with Angel Clare waiting outside the prison to see the black flag run up.
Freeman: Have you ever seen any plays by Mr Henry Arthur Jones?
Moore: Yes; I have seen a good many.
Freeman: You know what Oscar Wilde's advice to dramatists was? He said that there were three rules to be observed; the first rule was not to write like Mr Henry Arthur Jones.
Moore: And what were the second and third rules?
Freeman: They were the same as the first. And if you were called upon to give advice to young novelists, I think you would adopt Oscar Wilde's formula.
Moore: It's curious that you should mention Mr Henry Arthur Jones, for if Henry Arthur had written novels I think they would have been very like Mr Hardy's, only better written. I remember speaking these words to William Archer, who asked me if I had ever seen Mr Hardy. I said that I hadn't, and he answered: Well, you'd be surprised at the likeness. I am not speaking of the mental likeness, but of the physical likeness, which is very striking: same height, same build, same type of face, same complexion. A few days afterwards in the Academy Mr Hardy was pointed out to me going round the pictures with
