LORD  BYRON  and  his  TIMES
Byron
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Reminiscences of a Literary Life
CHAP. VII
THOMAS MOORE
INTRODUCTION & INDEXES
DOCUMENT INFORMATION
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INTRODUCTION
PREFACE
CONTENTS
CHAP. I
SHELLEY
CHAP. II
JOHN KEATS
THOMAS CAMPBELL
CHAP. III
GEORGE DOUGLAS
CHAP. IV
WILLIAM STEWART ROSE
CHAP. V
SAMUEL ROGERS
SAMUEL COLERIDGE
CHAP. VI
HARTLEY COLERIDGE
CHAP. VII
‣ THOMAS MOORE
WILLIAM LISLE BOWLES
CHAP. VIII
THOMAS DE QUINCEY
JAMES MATHIAS
CHAP. IX
MISS MARTINEAU
WILLIAM GODWIN
CHAP. X
LEIGH HUNT
THOMAS HOOD
HORACE SMITH
CHAP. XI
SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH
MRS. JAMESON
JANE AND ANNA PORTER
CHAP. XII
TOM GENT
CHAP. XIII
VISCOUNT DILLON
SIR LUMLEY SKEFFINGTON
JOHN HOOKHAM FRERE
CHAP. XIV
LORD DUDLEY
LORD DOVER
CHAP. XV
SIR THOMAS LAWRENCE
WILLIAM BROCKEDON
CHAP. XVI
SIR ROBERT PEEL
SPENCER PERCEVAL
CHAP. XVII
MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE
MR. DAVIS
CHAP. XVIII
ELIJAH BARWELL IMPEY
CHAP. XIX
ALEXANDER I.
GEORGE CANNING
NAPOLEON
QUEEN HORTENSE
ROSSINI
CHAP. XX
COUNT PECCHIO
MAZZINI
COUNT NIEMCEWITZ
CHAP. XXI
CARDINAL RUFFO
CHAP. XXII
PRINCESS CAROLINE
BARONNE DE FEUCHÈRES
CHAP. XXIII
SIR SIDNEY SMITH
CHAP. XXIV
SIR GEORGE MURRAY
CHAP. XXV
VISCOUNT HARDINGE
CHAP. XXVI
REV. C. TOWNSEND
CHAP. XXVII
BEAU BRUMMELL
CHAP. XXVIII
AN ENGLISH MERCHANT
THE BRUNELS
APPENDIX
INDEX
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CHAPTER VII
THOMAS MOORE

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’sSion,” 1633.

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was then engaged in editing the letters and writing the
Life of Lord Byron, and most of our conversation turned upon or round that subject. He asked me for some information about the different parts of Italy where Childe Harold had resided, and for some Italian anecdotes about him. I did my best, on the spur of the moment, to satisfy him both ways. He inserted some of my anecdotes and omitted others. A day or two after we met at John Murray’s hospitable table, at that time frequented by some of the most amusing and best society of London. A little later in the season I met Moore at one of Lady Jersey’s “At Homes,” and before the season ended I encountered him rather frequently in other places. I think that it was late in June that I had with him a little adventure, which rather nettled me at the time, when I was young in authorship, but at which I have often laughed since. Through Count Pecchio, who had met the philologist at Madrid, and had there taken him for an active Member of Parliament, or for the head of a party, seeing the extent of his political correspondence, I became acquainted with Bowring, at that time designated Doctor, and now—with your bene placet—Sir John Bowring, Governor of Hong-Kong.

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’S69
early?” said King John II. I said that I had accepted an invitation to a soirée at Dr. Bowring’s. “Dr. Bowring be d——d!” said His Majesty. “Not so fast!” said Moore. “Remember, he edits a Review, and has some influence on the sale of new books. He has invited me, and I will go with
Mac. If we don’t go, he will take offence, and cut up my Life of Byron and Mac’s book of travels.” “And if you do go,” said Murray, “he will cut you both up all the same. As a Radical he must hate MacFarlane’s politics, and as a leveller he must hate Byron as a lord, and hate you as having the entrée with society from which he is excluded by his principles, manners, and eternal babbling.” I think that but for Moore and the sure pleasure of his company, I should have stayed where I was, but he ordered a hackney coach to the door, and we went. It was a tedious, desolating affair, full of foreigners and political fugitives from all countries, and the agreeable pastime was to hear the Doctor talking Magyar with a Hungarian, Slavonic with a Pole, German with a German, and Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Danish, and Dutch with representatives of these nations.

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
70THOMAS MOORE [CHAP. VII
went into a coffee-house near the British Museum, the first we found open; and there, over our tumblers, discussed the pleasures of our soirée. But we were not quit for this.
Murray turned out to be a true prophet. Only two mornings after our visit in Queen’s Square, out came the new number of the Westminster, and in it two violent, abusive articles, the one on Moore’s “Life of Byron,” the other on my first book, and both written by the Doctor himself, who must have had them printed and ready when he invited us, for the first time in our lives, to his house. I confess that I was very angry, and though Moore treated it as a jest and farce, I think he rather felt it, or at least that he inwardly resented Bowring’s impertinent duplicity.

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’S71
Hall and Literary Fund Dinner notoriety, but a minor poet, who wrote rather pretty vers de société, and was on the whole an accomplished young man. Before the soup was off the table, Boring took the lead of the talk, and he kept it. How the two Bulwers, both of them rather impatient, impulsive men, and both of them men of fashion if not quite dandies, stood it all, I could not imagine. There is, however, this to be said: both were authors, the Doctor had lauded everything that they had produced, and was quite ready to do the same by everything they might publish hereafter. Henry certainly got out the value of the Doctor’s share of his pudding, in praise. Young Lieven was quite obsédé, overpowered and crushed; and to create a diversion, as we were sitting over the dessert, he proposed calling in and up a poor Italian who was playing the guitar and singing, not unmelodiously, in the street. Our host consented, and Lieven’s motion was carried nem. con. But at first the experiment seemed likely to be unsuccessful, for Boring began firing off his Italian, in round shot and grape, at the poor minstrel.

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
72THOMAS MOORE [CHAP. VII
his breast, and said with mock solemnity, “My dear fellow! I pity you from my heart!” In this season, or very late in the preceding autumn, Moore kindly introduced me to
Luttrell, then one of the greatest of our London wits, author of “Advice to Julia,” and of more bons mots and good things than could be counted on a summer’s day.

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 SPIRIT73
“Tommy dearly loves a lord!” Now, at Genoa, just before his departure for Greece, Lord Byron used these very words to my friend T. H.; and when in Greece, at Missolonghi, he repeated them more than once to his physician and my friend, the late
Dr. Milligen. I have heard others taunt poor Moore and his memory with the same foible; but if Moore loved a lord, it was, I think, indispensable that the said lord should be a man of wit or ability, or be in possession of some endearing and more solid quality than that of a mere title. The lords whom Moore frequented, and the ladies at whose parties he joked, played the piano, and sang—no doubt rather too frequently—were one and all highly accomplished persons. If talent, vivacity, esprit, and a social humour happen to be united with rank, I cannot see that they ought to be shunned or not courted on that account. I am fain to confess that I admire them rather the more for their union with rank and station, and I believe that nearly every man in England, if he would only be frank and truthful, would make the same confession. I never saw, on the part of the melodist, any toadying, subserviency, truckling, or meanness; he knew the world, and had too much taste and tact for that. He would not have been in the society he frequented if he had insulted its good sense and correct taste by sycophancy and flattery; he maintained his position in it because he had a manly, independent spirit, and the proper self-respect of a scholar and gentleman.

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
74THOMAS MOORE [CHAP. VII
it. Poor Tommy Moore! His harp grew mute at last, and out went all the dazzling lights in his fancy’s hall! Not very long before his death, my friend
Creswick, the distinguished landscape-painter, paid him a visit at his Wiltshire cottage, which rejoiced in the not very poetical name of Sloperton.

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.

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