The first time I met this usually merry man, he was in no Anacreontic humour. It was in the spring of 1829, when he was mourning for the recent loss of his only daughter. To all appearance this sorrow did not last very long, but it was deep while it endured; and was, I believe, all the deeper from the attempts he made to suppress or conceal it, and to keep his own as songster and wit in fashionable and literary society.
“Give sorrow vent,” is an excellent maxim; and I think, with Jeremy Taylor, we ought not to bear too philosophically the extreme visitations of Providence, but should show by tears and otherwise that we feel them at the heart’s core.
“All Solomon’s sea of brass and world of stone Is not so dear to Thee as one good groan.”* |
The place of our meeting was John Murray’s Albemarle Street dining-room, by the fireside, and just under the portrait of Lord Byron by Phillips, which then hung over the mantelpiece. I was at my ease with Moore in a minute; and before we parted, after a talk of nearly two hours, I felt as if we had been old familiar friends. What Walter Scott says of him is perfectly true. Though so fond of society and pleasure, and though so very small in person—smaller even than myself—Moore was thoroughly a manly fellow, and except on certain rare occasions, utterly devoid of pretension and affectation. He
* George Herbert’s “Sion,” 1633. |
| 68 | THOMAS MOORE | [CHAP. VII |
He was editing, for old Jeremy
Bentham, who paid the piper, the Westminster Review, which went the whole length and breadth of Utilitarianism
and Radicalism. He was living in that recondite nook of London, Queen Square. Though rather
in low water, John liked to make a display and give
soirées, whereat there was nothing but talk, and that talk
nearly all his own. His entertainments must have been cheap to his purse, but I fancy they
must have been very costly to the patience of his guests. One evening, Moore and I were dining at John Murray’s with a very choice and cheerful party. Just as we were
getting into full swing, at about ten o’clock, I rose to take my departure.
“Where are you going so
| CHAP. VII] | A “SOIRÉE” AT BOWRING’S | 69 |
No doubt it was very wonderful—but at the same time it was quite as ennuyant. I never saw such a display of vanity, and never heard such volubility: the Doctor was one continuous torrent of talk. His foreigners, as in duty bound, turned up their eyes, clapped their hands, and expressed astonishment and enthusiastic admiration.
Neither Moore nor I could do this;
but I think that we behaved with discretion and politeness, and I know that we stood it all
for nearly the space of two hours. “Good heavens!” said Byron’s biographer, when we got out into the Square and
the streets, “was there ever such a talker as this! And nothing to wash it all
down with! People may well call him ‘Boring’! I am exhausted, quite done! I
must really have some sherry and water.” We
| 70 | THOMAS MOORE | [CHAP. VII |
The man had almost been down on his knees to the poet to beg for the
“honour” of his company, and had extracted from him a positive promise that he
would be at the soirée. Murray laughed at us, and triumphed over us with little mercy. “I
told you how it would be! You had your warning, and yet you would leave me to go to
that Radical’s! There is one comfort: I don’t think his review will do
either of you much harm.” It certainly did not. After this, I was rather
frequently in the same room, or at the same party, as the Doctor, who would have been as free and familiar as ever; but though my
anger had subsided, my aversion to the man and to his rampant conceit remained, and I
always avoided him as much as it was possible to do consistently with the forbearance and
politeness to which one is bound in mixed society, or in chance meetings at the dinner
table. One summer evening in the next season (1830), I met him at a dinner party at
Henry Lytton Bulwer’s, who then had a house
in Hill Street. There were present, among others, Edward Lytton
Bulwer, the author, our host’s brother; one of the sons of Count Lieven, the Russian Ambassador; and Mr.
Fitzgerald—not he of
Freemason’s
| CHAP. VII] | A DINNER AT BULWER’S | 71 |
Lieven, however, started the guitar, and all we who were
anti-Boring kept the fellow going for a full
hour or more. Edward Lytton Bulwer was even then rather
deaf, and did not much enjoy the music, which was only just tolerable; he went into an
inner room, whither the Doctor followed him, and there, during all the time the minstrel
stayed, he pinned the novelist in the corner of a sofa, and kept entire possession of his
ear. When the party united, the man of many tongues was as full of tongue as ever. As I was
walking homeward with young Lieven, who had been educated in England
and was more than half an Englishman,he said to me: “Whereever did Bulwer pick up that eternal talker? Who is he?”
“They call him Dr. Boring,” I replied.
“And not without reason!” said the Russ. When I described this party
to Moore, he laid his hand upon
| 72 | THOMAS MOORE | [CHAP. VII |
I thought Luttrell’s manner perfection itself, and his wit was of that quiet sort which I could best enjoy, being, like Stewart Rose’s, blended with humour, and in fact being on the whole rather humour than wit. I now regret that I did not see him more often; I did not see him half so often as I might have done. It grieved me to hear how he had gotten married in his old age, and quite broken up. Moore had an amazingly rich repertory of his sayings and good things, but I do not see the best of them in Moore’s letters and journals which Lord John Russell has so mis-edited.
In spite of the vast deal of bad in the noble rhymer that had come to his
knowledge, in the famous autobiography which the executors withdrew from Moore and committed to the flames, in suppressed letters
and journals, and from numerous other sources, Moore seemed to me to
retain a strong affection for the memory of Lord Byron,
and to be averse to hearing any man speak ill of him. Leigh
Hunt’s
statements about the author of “Childe Harold” I believe to be, in the
main, correct and unexaggerated. Every detail he gives, and every bit of conversation he
quotes, is so like Byron, is “Byronic” all over. It will
be remembered that there was a feud between Hunt and
Moore, and hence it may be suspected that
Hunt would not report favourably the words that
Byron was accustomed to say of Moore! I am
happy to say that this feud was made up several years before the death of the Irish
melodist. Hunt declares that Byron used to
ridicule Moore’s tuft-hunting, or veneration for rank, and to
say:
| CHAP. VII] | HIS INDEPENDENT SPIRIT | 73 |
To within a very few years of his death, whenever not depressed by family
troubles, Moore’s spirit was most hilarious.
It was impossible to be with him and not be caught by it. His hearty, though not very loud
laugh, was irresistibly catching. I have been in his company at times when I was beginning
to feel, like himself, the heavy weight of family anxieties and worldly cares,
disappointments, and troubles, but I could never hear that laugh without joining in
| 74 | THOMAS MOORE | [CHAP. VII |
He found the poet, much aged, walking in his limited grounds, which he had rather abundantly planted with laurels. He appreciated Creswick’s exquisite talent in delineating rural, rocky, and watery scenes; he was cordial, and for a short time rather cheerful; but the merry mirth-provoking laugh was no longer to be heard. He made one joke; and, I think, only one. “You find me,” said he, “reposing upon, or among, my laurels.” The painter had heard that he was engaged on some work in prose. “No,” said Moore with a tremulous voice, and with a cloud on the brow which had so long reflected little else but fun, drollery, and wit, “no! I have done with prose, and—what is worse!—with poetry too.”
Creswick set me right in one rather important particular. I had long understood that the Marquis of Lansdowne, to whom Sloperton Cottage and its little entourage belonged, had placed the poet in it free of rent, and without the quarter-day’s annoyance—a small matter for so wealthy a man and so near a country neighbour, and for one who had had the closest intimacy with the poet, and was one of his most frequent hosts. Moore was, and always had been, a paying tenant; the Marquis, through his agent, received the rent. For the present, enough of Tommy Moore, of whose acquaintance I was proud, and whose memory I shall cherish until the curtain drops upon me, as it has upon him.
| CHAP. VII] | A POET’S HAPPY DEVICE | 75 |
This good old poet, and excellent old priest and prebend, who did good to literature by inspiring Coleridge and Southey, and who did still more good to society by setting an example of charitableness, contentment, and cheerfulness, had many little peculiarities, in addition to his amusing, quite amiable little vanities. He was very short-sighted, but, being fond of the saddle, he nearly always rode to dinner parties in the country on horseback, and returned in the same way. In these excursions, which often ended at rather a late hour of the night, he was attended by a hybrid-fellow, half gardener, half groom, who did not ride behind in groom fashion, but in front, to guide his master.
Notwithstanding this good arrangement, the reverend old poet rather frequently lost sight of his man, diverged from the road, and got a tumble, or fell into some other disaster. At last he hit upon this happy device. When the night was at all dark he made his man slip a snow-white smock over his dress, and carry a big lantern fastened to the cantle of his saddle.
It was thus next to impossible to lose sight of him, and by steering close in his wake, or by keeping the nose of his own horse close to the tail of the man’s horse, he could travel through a dark night in comfort and safety. With this oddly-equipped attendant before him, and the grins and titters of all the flunkies in the hall behind him, he would often ride from the Marquis of Lansdowne’s door at Bowood. But often his road from other houses lay across a part of Salisbury Plain, or through solitary, haunted lanes. The Wiltshire peasantry of the neighbourhood were very superstitious, and it took time and practice to reconcile them to the sight of a sheeted ghost on horseback, with a trail of fire, followed by the devil on horseback, dressed all in black.
| 76 | WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES | [CHAP. VII |
Several benighted clowns were scared out of their wits, and told frightful stories of what they had seen; but by degrees the mystery was explained, and it became known all over the country that the supposed devil was good Parson Bowles, and the ghost his man Tom.
He was very fond of sheep and the sound of sheep-bells. A good flock was always feeding on his glebe, or on the lawn close to his house. One day a great musical idea seized him. “Those bells,” thought he, “are all tuned to one key, and produce only one note. If I get bells made in different keys, hang them on different sheep, and disperse them through the flock, I shall get a tune, a harmony; at least something as musical and regular as a peal of church bells.” It was easy enough to make or to obtain sheep-bells of different keys, but when he came to hang them upon his fleecy, four-footed ringers, somehow or other they never would run about and ring them at the proper time, or in any accord with their fellow-ringers. When the poet wanted C sharp from some of his muttons or lambkins, the rogues were sure to come out with a G sharp; whenever he wanted a bass for his treble, he was sure to get more treble, and the further and further continuance of it. In short, he could make nothing of it; but he never could make out why his experiment should not have succeeded, and have given constant music to his rural parsonage.
Bowles and Tommy Moore were for a long time dwellers in Wiltshire, and agreed much better than might have been expected from two near neighbours, being poets both; but the prebend was thoroughly a kind, easy, gentlemanly old gentleman; and Moore, in essentials, was always a good fellow. Tommy, like W. S. Rose, would often “quiz” the veteran sonneteer, but it was in a way to make one love him, and love him all the better for his whims and oddities.
I never knew so ardent an admirer of Bowles’s
| CHAP. VII] | HIS ADMIRED SONNETS | 77 |
“As on we went beneath the summer wind.” |
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