Thomas Moore Part 4

But go, deceiver! go,-- The heart, whose hopes could make it Trust one so false, so low, Deserves that thou shouldst break it."

And the closing refrain has a real energy:--

"Go--go--'tis vain to curse, 'Tis weakness to upbraid thee; Hate cannot wish thee worse Than guilt and shame have made thee."

Moore wrote to Power in the early part of 1815, after a visit to Chatsworth, where he had spent his days in a whirl of fine company:--

"You cannot imagine what a sensation the Prince's song created. It was in vain to guard your property; they had it sung and repeated over so often that they all took copies of it, and I dare say in the course of next week there will not be a Whig lord or lady in England who will not be in possession of it."

The other notable number is the poem to the tune Savourneen Deelish, which begins:--

"'Tis gone, and for ever, the light we saw breaking, Like Heaven's first dawn o'er the sleep of the dead-- When Man, from the slumber of ages awaking, Look'd upward, and bless'd the pure ray, ere it fled.

'Tis gone, and the gleams it has left of its burning But deepen the long night of bondage and mourning, That dark o'er the kingdoms of earth is returning, And darkest of all, hapless Erin, o'er thee."

Moore wrote this after Napoleon had been sequestered in Elba, when the Holy Alliance were left masters of the field. He was well pleased with the verses, and his comment to Power is extremely typical of his att.i.tude at this period:--"It is bold enough; but the strong blow I have aimed at the French in the last stanza makes up for everything." The lines referred to are these:--

"But shame on those tyrants who envied the blessing!

And shame on the light race unworthy its good, Who, at Death's reeking altar, like furies caressing The young hope of Freedom, baptized it in blood!"

The same desire to conciliate English public opinion is shown by another song which represents Erin as drying her tears:--

"When after whole pages of sorrow and shame She saw History write, With a pencil of light That illumed the whole volume, her Wellington's name."

In one of the prefaces which Moore wrote, with ebbing faculties, for the collected edition of his works, readers will find him claiming for this lyric the spirit of prophecy, because Wellington ultimately "recommended to the throne the great measure of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation."

If indeed at last the Duke heeded the singer's closing injunction--

"Go, plead for the land that first cradled thy fame,"

it was with no good-will: and there is far more sincerity in Moore's note somewhere in the journals that his song had been wholly wasted on the recipient of the homage. Still, there is no good ground for bringing against the poet a reproach of time-serving. His state of mind, if one endeavours to realise it, must have been strangely complicated. In the victories of Wellington, so largely won by the bravery of Irish soldiers, he felt, no doubt, as did most Irishmen, a kind of proprietary gratification; but the dethronement of Napoleon caused him no unmixed joy. Like Byron, and many another man of that day, he had a fascinated admiration for this prodigious master of legions; and moreover, Napoleon's ruin meant the establishment of the Holy Alliance, and, as one of many corollaries, the perpetuation of helotry in Ireland. Ireland had reason to bless the movement towards liberty which came from France, and not less to execrate the excesses which strengthened the hands of liberty's opponents. There is nothing in the poem that requires defence; what requires either apology or condemnation is Moore's attempt to flavour with abuse of England's detested opponent an expression of his own convictions--involving, as they did, a condemnation of English rule.

The truth is that the business of adapting Irish nationalist sentiment to the taste of English drawing-rooms was perilous to sincerity; and, in this period of his life, Moore was steadily losing touch with Ireland. The number of the Melodies under discussion closed with the beautiful lyric in which the singer bade farewell to this way of poetry:--

"Dear Harp of my Country! farewell to thy numbers, This sweet wreath of song is the last we shall twine."

The farewell, as it proved, was only temporary, but it indicates that Moore felt the inspiration failing him; and, as a matter of fact, the four later numbers of the Melodies are by far inferior to their predecessors. Their inferiority, however, was due to no lack of sympathy; it indicates only that the artist's instinct was right, and that Moore's thought about Ireland, in later days, took naturally other forms of expression.

But in 1815 he had been absent from his country for four long years, during which his life had been engrossed with other things; and the Catholic cause, which had always been foremost in his mind, was now losing its attraction, for two reasons, sufficiently indicated in his correspondence with Lady Donegal.

In the spring of 1815, his third child, a little girl, aged only a few months, died at Mayfield; and, in hopes to soothe the mother by change of scene, Moore decided to hasten on a long-projected visit to Ireland.

Lady Donegal wrote that she heard this with regret, "for it is not a safe residence for you in any way"; and she pressed on him warnings against the "Irish democrats." Moore replied, certainly with sufficient emphasis:--

"If there is anything in the world that I have been detesting and despising more than another for this long time past, it has been those very Dublin politicians whom you so fear I should a.s.sociate with. I do not think a good cause was ever ruined by a more bigoted, brawling, and disgusting set of demagogues; and, though it be the religion of my fathers, I must say that much of this vile, vulgar spirit is to be traced to that wretched faith, which is again polluting Europe with Jesuitism and Inquisitions, and which of all the humbugs that have stultified mankind is the most narrow-minded and mischievous; so much for the danger of my joining Messrs. O'Connel, O'Donnel, etc."

That was written in March, after the escape from Elba. A month after Waterloo, Moore put sharply enough, to the same correspondent, his detestation for the Bourbons, and his general dissent from Lady Donegal's Toryism. But, although written from Ireland, the letter expresses the sentiments rather of an English Whig than an Irish Nationalist:--

"Reprobate as I am, I am sure you will give credit to my prudence and good taste in declining the grand public dinner that was about to be given me upon my arrival in Dublin. I found there were, too many of your favourites, the Catholic orators, at the bottom of the design--that the fountain of honour was too much of a _holywater_ fount for me to dabble in it with either safety or pleasure; and though I should have liked mightily the opportunity of making a treasonable speech or two after dinner, I thought the wisest thing I could do was to decline the honour. Being thus disappointed in me, they have given a grand public dinner to an eminent toll-gatherer, whose patriotic and _elegant_ method of collecting the tolls ent.i.tles him, I have no doubt, to the glory of such a celebration. Alas! alas! it must be confessed that our poor country altogether is a most wretched concern; and as for the Catholics (as I have just said in a letter written within these five minutes), one would heartily wish them all in their own Purgatory, if it were not for their adversaries, whom one wishes _still further_."

Following that is a letter to Rogers, in which Moore writes of a visit to the "foggy, boggy regions of Tipperary."

"The only thing," he goes on, "I could match you[2] in, is _banditti_; and if you can imagine groups of ragged Shanavests (as they are called) going about in noonday, armed and painted over like Catabaw Indians, to murder t.i.the-proctors, land-valuers, etc., you have the most stimulant specimen of the sublime that Tipperary affords. The country, indeed, is in a frightful state, and rational remedies have been delayed so long that nothing but the sword will answer now."

Very similar views would have been expressed by any member of the Whig aristocracy, whose detestation of the Holy Alliance would certainly have extended itself to the Holy Water fount, and who would have shared Moore's fastidious dislike of O'Connell's method of raising party funds.

It must, however, be remembered that these pa.s.sages represent Moore's immature opinions; and against the description of the Shanavests as murderous savages must be set the _Memoirs of Captain Rock_, which give the natural history of agrarian crime, denouncing, not the Shanavests or Whiteboys, but the circ.u.mstances which bred such crime, as naturally and as regularly as filth breeds fever. For Moore wrote _Captain Rock_ after reading Irish history and making something of an exhaustive tour through the south of Ireland, while in 1815 his sense of Irish grievances was largely theoretical. "I love Ireland," he wrote to his friend Corry, "but I hate Dublin"; and it is not very cynical to say that when he wrote this, Dublin was all he knew of Ireland. The influence of his early a.s.sociation with Emmet and others, renewed periodically by his visits to his home, was mainly an affair of sentiment, and spent itself during his long sojourn away from contact with Irish minds. It revived in him later, and it was nourished, by reading Irish history, into a steady conviction. But the first impulse that revived in Moore the enthusiasm for his own country was, I think, grat.i.tude for its recognition of his services; and one may not unfairly trace something of his temporary alienation, if not from Ireland, at least from Irish Nationalists, to his feeling that his merits were not adequately valued among his own people. When he is blaspheming against the "low, illiberal, puddle-headed, and gross-hearted herd of Dublin," it is because his _Melologue_ "never drew a soul to the theatres in Dublin."

In England, during these years, his reputation was at its height. Byron in 1814 dedicated _The Corsair_ to "the poet of all circles and the idol of his own." Leigh Hunt the same year admitted, in his "Feast of the Poets," only four to dine with Apollo, and Moore, with Scott, Southey, Campbell, made the company. Stray pieces, such as the lines on Sheridan's death--Moore's finest piece of satire--caught like wildfire; and the _Edinburgh_, in reviewing the sixth number of _Irish Melodies_, made ample amends for its earlier onslaught. More than that, Jeffrey approached Moore, in the most honorific manner, through Rogers, to enlist him as a contributor, and a contributor Moore accordingly became.

His first article, a review of Lord Thurlow's poems, was simply a light piece of amusing criticism; but his second choice of subject astonished Jeffrey. Taking for a peg Boyd's translation of Select Pa.s.sages from the patristic writings, Moore proceeded to hang upon it his views of the Fathers and their works generally. These views are perhaps a little remarkable as coming from a Catholic, and the tone of the article may be fairly inferred from a pa.s.sage:--

"At a time when the Inquisition is re-established by our 'beloved Ferdinand'; when the Pope again brandishes the keys of St. Peter with an air worthy of the successor of the Hildebrands and Perettis; when canonisation is about to be inflicted on another Louis, and little silver models of embryo princes are gravely vowed at the shrine of the Virgin;--in times like these, it is not too much to expect that such enlightened authors as St. Jerome and Tertullian may become the cla.s.sics of most of the Continental Courts."

Nevertheless, even those who respect the Fathers most, will hardly deny the wit of Moore's comment: indeed, few things enable us so well to guess at the nature of his admitted brilliancy in conversation as these early articles, coming from his unjaded pen. Another quotation may be given:--

"St. Justin, the Martyr, is usually considered as the well-spring of most of those strange errors which flowed so abundantly through the early ages of the Church, and spread around them in their course with such luxuriance of absurdity. The most amiable, and therefore the least contagious, of his heterodoxies was that which led him to patronise the souls of Socrates and other Pagans, in consideration of those glimmerings of the divine Logos which his fancy discovered through the dark night of Heathenism. The absurd part of this opinion remained, while the tolerant spirit evaporated. And while these Pagans were allowed to have known something of the Trinity, they were yet d.a.m.ned for not knowing more, with most unrelenting orthodoxy."

In any case, most readers will be of the same mind as Jeffrey, who wrote that he "was far from suspecting" Moore's "familiarity with these recondite subjects." But it must be remembered that Moore was always a bookish man, a poet who derived his inspiration largely from out-of-the-way literature--and this article contains references in which we see the germinal ideas of his _Loves of the Angels_. I have noted a touch of pedantry, oddly a.s.sociated with exuberant youth, in his version of _Anacreon_; and something of the same combination is to be found in the _magnum opus_ which, for a while at all events, set the seal upon his fame.

Nothing could more practically show Moore's position in the literary world of his day than the negotiations for the copyright of _Lalla Rookh_. In 1814 Murray offered two thousand guineas for it, but Moore's friends thought he should have more, and, going to Longman, they claimed that Mr. Moore should receive no less than the highest price ever paid for a poem. "That," said Longman, "was three thousand pounds paid for _Rokeby_." On this basis they treated, and Longman was inclined to stipulate for a preliminary perusal. Moore, however, refused, and the agreement was finally worded:--"That upon your giving into our hands a poem of the length of _Rokeby_ you shall receive from us the sum of 3000." This was in December 1814. The poem was ready for publication in 1816, but that year (in the confusion after Waterloo) being very adverse to publishers, Moore generously offered the Longmans the chance to postpone or rescind their bargain; and postponed it accordingly was till May 1817.

It is worth noting that in the January of that year Moore writes to ask Power if he can "muster me up a few pounds (five or six), as I am almost without a shilling." A heavy blow had also fallen upon him, as the retrenchments then proceeding had occasioned John Moore's removal from the barrack-mastership in Dublin, with a consequent reduction of his income from 350 to 200. But the publication of _Lalla Rookh_ set all right for the moment. A thousand pounds was drawn to discharge all Moore's liabilities; the other two thousand was to remain in the publishers' hands, and they undertook to pay Moore's father a hundred pounds a year as interest on it. Moore himself and his family moved up to a new house at Hornsey in Middles.e.x, much more expensive than his Derbyshire cottage; and here for two months he was busy with the proofs, and naturally anxious. By May 30th he was clear of all scruples as to the publisher's pockets, and with justice. A quarter of a century later Longman still looked on _Lalla Rookh_ as "the cream of the copyrights."

One may take this moment for the height of Moore's prosperity. His success was emphasised by many flattering offers, one of which was to conduct a paper for the Opposition--a suggestion which Moore set aside, partly on the ground that he had lost his taste for living in London. In the middle of the first flourish of eulogy, Rogers, to whom _Lalla_ had been dedicated, and who in June was housing Bessy and her young ones, carried off the poet for a trip to Paris. Moore wrote in raptures with the French capital; but that was the end of his good time.

Bad news recalled him: Barbara, the eldest little girl, was dangerously ill from the effects of a fall, and a month after his return she died.

The loss fell heaviest on the mother, and it is noticeable that Moore was then the one to a.s.sume control. This seems natural enough, when one remembers that his wife was only three and twenty; but in later days, the relation was very different. The family moved for a while to Lady Donegal's house, 56 Davies Street, Berkeley Square, and thence Moore made an excursion to look for a new home. A great Whig peer, the Marquis of Lansdowne, had suggested that the poet's residence should be fixed near Bowood and its library; and three houses were offered for his inspection. Only one proved to be at all within the reach of his means, a little thatched cottage with a pretty garden. Bessy went down a week later, escorted by Power, to look at it, and returned delighted--very probably with its cheapness, for it was offered to them furnished at 40 a year. Under these rather sad circ.u.mstances, Moore and his wife moved into their definitive home. On November 19th, 1817, Moore wrote to Power from "Sloperton, Devizes," to say that they were in possession, and that he himself was just sallying out for his walk in the garden, with his head full of words for the Melodies.

It was always his habit to compose out of doors, and pilgrims to Sloperton are still shown a little gravelled path round the garden, which keeps the name of Poet's Walk. Such pilgrims can easily enough imagine the house as Moore first knew it. The thatched roof has been replaced by slates, probably when the addition was built on for Moore's accommodation. This addition consisted of two rooms, a good-sized sitting-room with windows opening on to the green lawn and garden, and over it a bedroom to match--the room in which Moore died, and which, according to tradition, his ghost still inhabits. This addition has an ordinary sloping roof, joined on to the original front, which consists of three gables. All about are great elms and chestnut trees, and the whole countryside is rich in the beauty that Moore delighted in--"sunniness and leanness," to quote his own happy phrase. The quiet little country town of Devizes is three miles off to the north, and in that direction Bromham, the hamlet which gives its name to the parish, nestles among trees across a small valley. A roughly paved lane, deep sunk between profuse hedges, leads from Sloperton to the lovely fifteenth-century church in whose grave-yard Moore lies with his wife and children, among generations of squires and yokels of a race not his own.

From this valley the ground rises gently, and the road from Devizes to Chippenham has to crest a hill or swelling ridge. Astride of the ridge is Lord Lansdowne's demesne, and from Moore's house to the nearest entry to the park, the distance must be something over a mile. Thence it is another mile's walking through glades and lawns to the great house--"dear Bowood," as Miss Edgeworth called it, famous in those days for its hospitality to men and women of letters. Altogether the neighbourhood was as pleasant as could be found, but at first Bessy Moore was uncomfortable in it. She wanted "some near and plain neighbours to make intimacy with and enjoy a little tea-drinking now and then." The Lansdownes had every wish to be kind, but they and their friends belonged to a set of which Moore had for years been a privileged member, and if Bessy entered it, she found herself, as Moore said, "a perfect stranger in the midst of people who are all intimate."

She consoled herself however with works of charity, visiting the poor about her, and helping them with her clever fingers. In the meantime Moore was busy with another collection of light verse--_The Fudge Family in Paris_, for which his visit to Paris with Rogers had given the suggestion; and a seventh edition of _Lalla Rookh_ was printing within less than a year after publication. Thus all omens seemed hopeful, when suddenly a bolt from the blue came down.

Moore's deputy in Bermuda had proved thoroughly untrustworthy, repeated letters having elicited no accounts from him for the last year of the war. It appeared now that he had embezzled the proceeds of a ship and cargo--representing a sum of 6000, which had been deposited with him, pending an appeal to the Court at home. Moore was fully liable, and his only hope lay in the conscience of a certain merchant, uncle of the defaulter, who had recommended his nephew to Moore, and might therefore feel bound in honour to make good the defalcation. Moore bore himself, however, cheerfully enough, though antic.i.p.ating sequestration in a debtor's prison. The advice of business men in London rea.s.sured him somewhat, and the _Fudges_ came out at the right moment with great eclat, bringing in 350 to the author within the first fortnight.

Consolation of another kind was administered, when, in May of the same year (1818), the poet ran over to Dublin, and for a fortnight lived in a bustle of acclamation. A great public dinner was organised in his honour, and when he appeared in the theatre, he was called repeatedly during the performance to make his bow from the front of the box. All this, he said, "was scarcely more delightful to me on my own account than as a proof of the strong spirit of nationality of my countrymen."

Another great exultation helped to dispel the gloom of his Bermuda prospects, for in October Bessy became at last the mother of a son.

Little comfort as this child proved to be in the long run, he was for years the apple of Moore's eye. The G.o.d-parents were, as usual, a strange and interesting a.s.sortment--Miss G.o.dfrey, the shrewd and tried friend of so many years, Lord Lansdowne, and old Dr. Parr, the famous Grecian. This last was a recent acquaintance, sprung out of the work on which, during the year, Moore had been engaged--a new literary departure marking the incipient change in him from poet to man of letters.

His lines on the death of Sheridan showed plainly the hold which the one brilliant Irishman had on the other's imagination, and Murray suggested in 1817 that Moore should be Sheridan's biographer. By August 1818, Moore was at work, visiting Sheridan's sister, Mrs. Le Fanu, in Bath; and at her house he first met Dr. Parr, who warmed to the scholar in Moore. They talked together of Erasmus, the Wolfian theory of Homer, and such like things; hobn.o.bbing generously the while.

Material in plenty for the Memoir was forthcoming, from a diversity of sources, but difficulties arose as to the share in the prospective profits claimed by the Sheridan family, and Moore occupied himself with other researches: reading _Boxiana_, visiting Jackson the pugilist, and studying other repositories of "flash" dialect, in order to fit himself for the task of writing his new squib _Tom Crib's Memorial to Congress_, in which a professional boxer, Crib, was the spokesman. It appeared in the spring of 1819; the seventh number of _Irish Melodies_ had been issued in the preceding year, so that it will appear that Moore's industry was constant. Work on the _Sheridan_ continued briskly, as we find by entries in his diary, it having been settled that Murray was to be the publisher and to pay 1000 guineas for the book. In the meantime Moore was turning over subjects for another poetical _opus magnum_, and something in his omnivorous reading suggested a story drawn from ancient Egypt--a first hint of the material which he ultimately wrought into his prose romance, _The Epicurean_.

In the summer he made his usual visit to town, and Bessy with the children went off by boat to Edinburgh to visit her mother and sisters.

The d.y.k.e family appear to have dropped pretty completely out of Moore's existence, but occasional references show that they continued to keep in touch at least with Bessy, and to receive small sums. Moore's cause was now at last up for hearing, and his sanguine nature had led him to hope for a dismissal of it: but on July 10th the blow fell. He learnt that in two months an attachment would be put in force against his person, and therefore there was nothing left for it but to decide on a place of retreat. The Liberties of Holyrood were suggested, and Moore had all but decided on going there, when Lord John Russell--most unfortunately, as he came to think--urged the alternative of a visit to the Continent in his company, with a view to final settlement in Paris. The Longmans backed the suggestion by saying that a few poetical epistles from places of note would pay all expenses; and accordingly in the beginning of September 1819, Moore set off for Dover in Lord John's coach.

This break-up of so pleasant a home was distressing, and friends were eager to prevent the necessity. Promptest of them was Jeffrey, who, immediately the report of the calamity came, made excuse for writing a letter on business of the _Edinburgh_, and then went on:

"I cannot from my heart resist adding another word. I have heard of your misfortunes and of the n.o.ble way you bear them. Is it very impertinent to say that I have 500 entirely at four service, which you may repay when you please; and as much more, which I can advance upon any reasonable security of repayment in seven years?

"Perhaps it is very unpardonable in me to say this; but upon my honour, I would not _make_ you the offer, if I did not feel that I would _accept_ it without scruple from you."