THE HAUNTS OF MOORE
Devizes, Wiltshire, August 20, 1888.--The scarlet discs of the poppies
and the red and white blooms of the clover, together with wild-flowers
of many hues, bespangle now the emerald sod of England, while the air
is rich with fragrance of lime-trees and of new-mown hay. The busy and
sagacious rooks, fat and bold, wing their way in great clusters, bent
on forage and mischief. There is almost a frosty chill in the autumnal
air, and the brimming rivers, dark and deep and smoothly flowing
through the opulent, cultivated, and park-like region of Wiltshire,
look cold and bright. In many fields the hay is cut and stacked. In
others the men, and often the women, armed with rakes, are tossing it
to dry in the reluctant, intermittent, bleak sunshine of this rigorous
August. Overhead the sky is now as blue as the deep sea and now grim
and ominous with great drifting masses of slate-coloured cloud. There
are moments of beautiful sunshine by day, and in some hours of the
night the moon shines forth in all her pensive and melancholy glory. It
is a time of exquisite loveliness, and it has seemed a fitting time for
a visit to the last English home and the last resting-place of the poet
of loveliness and love, the great Irish poet Thomas Moore.
[Illustration: _Thomas Moore._]
When Moore first went up to London, a young author seeking to launch
his earliest writings upon the stream of contemporary literature, he
crossed from Dublin to Bristol and then travelled to the capital by
way of Bath and Devizes; and as he crossed several times he must soon
have gained familiarity with this part of the country. He did not,
however, settle in Wiltshire until some years afterward. His first
lodging in London was a front room, up two pair of stairs, at No. 44
George street, Portman square. He subsequently lived at No. 46 Wigmore
street, Cavendish square, and at No. 27 Bury street, St. James's. This
was in 1805. In 1810 he resided for a time at No. 22 Molesworth street,
Dublin, but he soon returned to England. One of his homes, shortly
after his marriage with Elizabeth Dyke ["Bessie," the sister of the
great actress Mary Duff, 1794-1857] was in Brompton. In the spring of
1812 he settled at Kegworth, but a year later he is found at Mayfield
Cottage, near Ashbourne, Derbyshire. "I am now as you wished," he wrote
to Mr. Power, the music-publisher, July 1, 1813, "within twenty-four
hours' drive of town." In 1817 he occupied a cottage near the foot of
Muswell Hill, at Hornsey, Middlesex, but after he lost his daughter
Barbara, who died there, the place became distressful to him and he
left it. In the latter part of September that year, the time of their
affliction, Moore and his Bessie were the guests of Lady Donegal, at
No. 56 Davies street, Berkeley square, London. Then [November 19, 1817]
they removed to Sloperton Cottage, at Bromham, near Devizes, and their
permanent residence was established in that place. Lord Landsdowne, one
of the poet's earliest and best friends, was the owner of that estate,
and doubtless he was the impulse of Moore's resort to it. The present
Lord Landsdowne still owns Bowood Park, about four miles away.
[Illustration: _The Bear--Devizes._]
Devizes impresses a stranger with a singular and pleasant sense of
suspended animation,--as of beauty fallen asleep,--the sense of
something about to happen, which never occurs. More peaceful it could
not be, unless it were dead,--and that is its most alluring charm.
Two of its many streets are remarkably wide and spacious, while the
others are narrow and often crooked. Most of its habitations are
low houses, built of brick, and only a few of them, such as the old
Town Hall and the Corn Exchange, are pretentious as architecture.
The principal street runs nearly northwest and southeast. There is
a north gate at one end of it, and a south gate at the other, but
no remnant of the ancient town gates is left. The Kennet and Avon
Canal, built in 1794-1805, skirts the northern side of the town, and
thereafter descends the western slope, passing through twenty-seven
magnificent locks, within a distance of about two miles,--one of
the longest consecutive ranges of locks in England. The stateliest
building in Devizes is its noble Castle, which, reared upon a massive
hill, at once dominates the surrounding landscape and dignifies it.
That splendid edifice, built about 1830, stands upon the site of
the ancient Castle of Devizes, which was built by Roger, Bishop of
Salisbury, in the reign of Henry the First, and it resembles that
famous original,--long esteemed one of the most complete and admirable
works of its kind in Europe. The old Castle was included in the dowry
settled upon successive queens of England. Queen Margaret possessed
it in the reign of Henry the Sixth, and Queen Katharine in that of
Henry the Eighth. It figured in the Civil Wars, and it was deemed the
strongest citadel in England. The poet-soldier, Edmund Waller, when
in the service of the Parliament, bombarded it, in 1643, and finally
it was destroyed by order of the Roundheads. Toward the close of the
eighteenth century its ruins were, it is said, surmounted with a couple
of snuff-mills. No part of the ancient fortress now survives, except
the moat; but in its pleasant grounds fragmentary remnants may still be
seen of its foundations and of the dungeons of a remote age. During the
rebuilding of the Castle many relics were unearthed,--such as human
bones and implements of war,--the significant tokens of dark days and
fatal doings long since past and gone. In the centre of the town is a
commodious public square, known as the Market-place,--a wide domain of
repose, as I saw it, uninvaded by either vehicle or human being, but
on each Thursday the scene of the weekly market for cattle and corn,
and of the loquacious industry of the cheap-jack and the quack. On one
side of it is the old Bear Hotel, an exceptionally comfortable house,
memorable as the birthplace of Sir Thomas Lawrence, the famous artist
[1769-1830]. In the centre are two works of art,--one a fountain,
the other a cross. The latter, a fine fabric of Gothic architecture,
is embellished with thirteen pinnacles, which rise above an arched
canopy, the covering of a statue. One face of the cross bears this
legend: "This Market Cross was erected by Henry Viscount Sidmouth,
as a memorial of his grateful attachment to the Borough of Devizes,
of which he has been Recorder thirty years, and of which he was six
times unanimously chosen a representative in Parliament. Anno Domini
1814." Upon the other face appears a record more significant,--being
indicative equally of credulity and a frugal mind, and being freighted
with tragic import unmatched since the Bible narrative of Ananias and
Sapphira. It reads thus:
"The Mayor and Corporation of Devizes avail themselves of the
stability of this building to transmit to future times the record of
an awful event which occurred in this market-place in the year 1753,
hoping that such a record may serve as a salutary warning against the
danger of impiously invoking the Divine vengeance, or of calling on
the holy name of God to conceal the devices of falsehood and fraud.
"On Thursday, the 25th January 1753, Ruth Pierce, of Potterne, in this
county, agreed, with three other women, to buy a sack of wheat in the
market, each paying her due proportion toward the same.
"One of these women, in collecting the several quotas of money,
discovered a deficiency, and demanded of Ruth Pierce the sum which was
wanted to make good the amount.
"Ruth Pierce protested that she had paid her share, and said, 'She
wished she might drop down dead if she had not.'
"She rashly repeated this awful wish, when, to the consternation of
the surrounding multitude, she instantly fell down and expired, having
the money concealed in her hand."
That is not the only grim incident in the history of the Market-place
of Devizes; for in 1533 a poor tailor, named John Bent, of the
neighbouring village of Urchfont was burnt at the stake, in that
square, for his avowed disbelief of the doctrine of transubstantiation.
An important and deeply interesting institution of Devizes is the
Wilts County Museum, in Long street, devoted to the natural history
and the archæology of Wiltshire. The library contains a priceless
collection of Wiltshire books, and the museum is rich in geological
specimens,--richer even than the excellent museum of Salisbury; for,
in addition to other treasures, it includes the famous Stourhead
collection, made by Sir Richard Colt Hoare,--being relics from the
ancient British and Saxon barrows on the Wiltshire downs. The Stourhead
collection is described by Sir Richard, in his book on "Antient Wilts."
Its cinerary and culinary urns are fine and numerous. The Wilts County
Museum is fortunate in its curator, B. Howard Cunnington, Esq., of
Rowde--an indefatigable student, devoted to Wiltshire, and a thorough
antiquarian.
[Illustration: _St. John's Church--Devizes._]
An interesting church in Devizes is that of St. John, the Norman tower
of which is a relic of the days of Henry the Second, a vast, grim
structure with a circular turret on one corner of it. Eastward of this
church is a long and lovely avenue of trees, and around it lies a
large burial-place, remarkable for the excellence of the sod and for
the number visible of those heavy, gray, oblong masses of tombstone
which appear to have obtained great public favour about the time of
Cromwell. In the centre of the churchyard stands a monolith, inscribed
with these words:
"Remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy.--This monument, as a solemn
monitor to Young People to remember their Creator in the days of their
youth, was erected by subscription.--In memory of the sudden and awful
end of Robert Merrit and his wife, Eliz. Tiley, her sister, Martha
Carter, and Josiah Denham, who were drowned, in the flower of their
youth, in a pond, near this town, called Drews, on Sunday evening, the
30th of June, 1751, and are together underneath entombed."
In one corner of the churchyard I came upon a cross, bearing a simple
legend far more solemn, touching, and admonitory: "In Memoriam--Robert
Samuel Thornley. Died August 5, 1871. Aged 48 years. For fourteen years
surgeon to the poor of Devizes. There shall be no more pain." And
over still another sleeper was written, upon a flat stone, low in the
ground--
"Loving, beloved, in all relations true,
Exposed to follies, but subdued by few:
Reader, reflect, and copy if you can
The simple virtues of this honest man."
[Illustration: _Hungerford Chapel--Devizes._]
Nobody is in haste in Devizes, and the pilgrim who seeks for
peace could not do better than to tarry here. The city bell which
officially strikes the hours is subdued and pensive, and although
reinforced with chimes, it seems ever to speak under its breath. The
church-bell, however, rings long and vigorously and with much melodious
clangour,--as though the local sinners were more than commonly hard of
hearing. Near to the church of St. John, are some quaint almshouses,
but not much seems to be known of their history. One of them was
founded as a hospital for lepers, before A.D. 1207, and it is thought
that one of them was built of stone which remained after the erection
of the church. Those almshouses are now governed by the Mayor and
Corporation of Devizes, but perhaps formerly they were under the direct
control of the Crown. [See Tanner's _Nolitia_.] There are seven
endowments, one dating back to 1641, and the houses are to this day
occupied by widows, recommended by the churchwardens of St. Mary's
and St. John's. An old inhabitant of Devizes, named Bancroft, left a
sum of money to insure for himself a singular memorial service,--that
the bells of St. John's church should be solemnly tolled on the day
of his birth, and rung merrily on that of his death; and that service
is duly performed every year. Devizes is a fit place for the survival
of ancient customs, and these serve very pleasantly to mark its
peculiar and interesting character. The Town Crier, who is a member
of the Corporation, walks abroad arrayed in a helmet and a uniform of
brilliant scarlet,--glories that are worn by no other Crier in the
kingdom, excepting that of York.
As I was gazing at the old church, surrounded with many ponderous
tombstones and gray and cheerless in the gloaming, an old man
approached me and civilly began a conversation about the antiquity
of the building and the eloquence of its rector. When I told him
that I had walked to Bromham to attend the service there, and to see
the cottage and grave of Moore, he presently furnished to me that
little touch of personal testimony which is always so interesting and
significant in such circumstances. "I remember Tom Moore," he said;
"I saw him when he was alive. I worked for him once in his house, and
I did some work once on his tomb. He was a little man. He spoke to us
very pleasantly. I don't think he was a preacher. He never preached
that I heard tell of. He was a poet, I believe. He was very much liked
here. I never heard a word against him. I am seventy-nine years old
the thirteenth of December, and that'll soon be here. I've had three
wives in my time, and my third is still living. It's a fine old church,
and there's figures in it of bishops, and kings, and queens."
Most observers have remarked the odd way, garrulous, and sometimes
unconsciously humorous, in which senile persons prattle their
incongruous and sporadic recollections. But--"How pregnant sometimes
his replies are!" Another resident of Devizes, with whom I conversed,
likewise remembered the poet, and spoke of him with affectionate
respect. "My sister, when she was a child," he said, "was often
at Moore's house, and he was fond of her. Yes, his name is widely
remembered and honoured here. But I think that many of the people
hereabout, the farmers, admired him chiefly because they thought that
he wrote Moore's Almanac. They used to say to him: 'Mister Moore,
please tell us what the weather's going to be.'"
From Devizes to the village of Bromham, a distance of about four miles,
the walk is delightful. Much of the path is between green hedges and is
embowered by elms. The exit from the town is by Northgate and along the
Chippenham road--which, like all the roads in this neighbourhood, is
smooth, hard, and white. A little way out of Devizes, going northwest,
this road makes a deep cut in the chalk-stone and so winds downhill
into the level plain. At intervals you come upon sweetly pretty
specimens of the English thatch-roof cottage. Hay-fields, pastures, and
market-gardens extend on every hand. Eastward, far off, are visible the
hills of Westbury, upon which, here and there, the copses are lovely,
and upon one of which, cut in the turf, is the figure of a colossal
white horse, said to have been put there by the Saxons, to commemorate
a victory by King Alfred.[12] Soon the road winds over a hill and you
pass through the little red village of Rowde, with its gray church
tower. The walk may be shortened by a cut across the fields, and this
indeed is found the prettiest part of the journey,--for now the path
lies through gardens, and through the centre or along the margin of
the wheat, which waves in the strong wind and sparkles in the bright
sunshine and is everywhere tenderly touched with the scarlet of
the poppy and with hues of other wild-flowers, making you think of
Shakespeare's
"Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow weeds,
With hemlock, harlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn."
There is one field through which I passed, just as the spire of Bromham
church came into view, in which a surface more than three hundred yards
square was blazing with wild-flowers, white and gold and crimson and
purple and blue, upon a plain of vivid green, so that to look upon
it was almost to be dazzled, while the air that floated over it was
scented as if with honeysuckle. You may see the delicate spire and the
low gray tower of Moore's church some time before you come to it,
and in some respects the prospect is not unlike that of Shakespeare's
church at Stratford. A sweeter spot for a poet's sepulchre it would be
hard to find. No spot could be more harmonious than this one is with
the gentle, romantic spirit of Moore's poetry, and with the purity,
refinement, and serenity of his life. Bromham village consists of a
few red brick buildings, scattered along a few irregular little lanes,
on a ridge overlooking a valley. Amid those humble homes stands the
gray church, like a shepherd keeping his flock. A part of it is very
old, and all of it, richly weather-stained and delicately browned with
fading moss, is beautiful. Upon the tower and along the south side
the fantastic gargoyles are much decayed. The building is a cross.
The chancel window faces eastward, and the window at the end of the
nave looks toward the west,--the latter being a memorial to Moore. At
the southeast corner of the building is the lady chapel, belonging to
the Bayntun family, in which are suspended various fragments of old
armour, and in the centre of which, recumbent on a great dark tomb, is
a grim-visaged knight, clad from top to toe in his mail, beautifully
sculptured in marble that looks like yellow ivory. Vandal visitors
have disgracefully marred this superb work, by cutting and scratching
their names upon it. Other tombs are adjacent, with inscriptions
that implicate the names of Sir Edward Bayntun, 1679, and Lady Anne
Wilmot, elder daughter and co-heiress of John, Earl of Rochester, who
successively was the wife of Henry Bayntun and Francis Greville, and
who died in 1703. The window at the end of the nave is a simple but
striking composition, in stained glass, richer and nobler than is
commonly seen in a country church. It consists of twenty-one lights,
of which five are lancet shafts, side by side, these being surmounted
with smaller lancets, forming a cluster at the top of the arch. In
the centre is the figure of Jesus and around Him are the Apostles.
The colouring is soft, true, and beautiful. Across the base of the
window appear the words, in the glass: "This window is placed in this
church by the combined subscriptions of two hundred persons who honour
the memory of the poet of all circles and the idol of his own, Thomas
Moore." It was beneath this window, in a little pew in the corner
of the church, that the present writer joined in the service, and
meditated, throughout a long sermon, on the lovely life and character
and the gentle, noble, and abiding influence of the poet whose hallowed
grave and beloved memory make this place a perpetual shrine.
Moore was buried in the churchyard. An iron fence encloses his tomb,
which is at the base of the church tower, in an angle formed by the
tower and the chancel, on the north side of the building. Not more than
twenty tombs are visible on this side of the church, and these appear
upon a level lawn, as green and sparkling as an emerald and as soft as
velvet. On three sides the churchyard is enclosed by a low wall, and on
the fourth by a dense hedge of glistening holly. Great trees are all
around the church, but not too near. A massive yew stands darkly at one
corner. Chestnuts and elms blend their branches in fraternal embrace.
Close by the poet's grave a vast beech uprears its dome of fruited
boughs and rustling foliage. The sky was blue, except for a few
straggling masses of fleecy, slate-coloured cloud. Not a human creature
was anywhere to be seen while I stood in this sacred spot, and no sound
disturbed the Sabbath stillness, save the faint whisper of the wind
in the lofty tree-tops and the low twitter of birds in their hidden
nests. I thought of his long life, unblemished by personal fault or
public error; of his sweet devotion to parents and wife and children;
of his pure patriotism, which scorned equally the blatant fustian of
the demagogue and the frenzy of the revolutionist; of his unsurpassed
fidelity in friendship; of his simplicity and purity in a corrupt
time and amid many temptations; of his meekness in affliction; of the
devout spirit that prompted his earnest exhortation to his wife, "Lean
upon God, Bessie"; of the many beautiful songs that he added to our
literature,--every one of which is the melodious and final expression
of one or another of the elemental feelings of human nature; and of the
obligation of endless gratitude that the world owes to his fine, high,
and beneficent genius. And thus it seemed good to be in this place and
to lay with reverent hands the white roses of honour and affection upon
his tomb.
On the long, low, flat stone that covers the poet's dust are inscribed
the following words: "Anastatia Mary Moore. Born March 16, 1813. Died
March 8, 1829. Also her brother, John Russell Moore, who died November
23, 1842, aged 19 years. Also their father, Thomas Moore, tenderly
beloved by all who knew the goodness of his heart. The Poet and Patriot
of his Country, Ireland. Born May 28, 1779. Sank to rest February 26,
1852. Aged 72. God is Love. Also his wife, Bessie Moore, who died 4th
September 1865. And to the memory of their dear son, Thomas Lansdowne
Parr Moore. Born 24th October 1818. Died in Africa, January 1846."
Moore's daughter, Barbara, is buried at Hornsey, near London, in the
same churchyard where rests the poet Samuel Rogers. On the stone that
marks that spot is written, "Anne Jane Barbara Moore. Born January the
4th, 1812. Died September the 18th, 1817."
Northwest from Bromham church[13] and about one mile away stands
Sloperton Cottage,[14] the last home of the poet and the house in which
he died. A deep valley intervenes between the church and the cottage,
but, as each is built upon a ridge, you may readily see the one from
the other. There is a road across the valley, but the more pleasant
walk is along a pathway through the meadows and over several stiles,
ending almost in front of the storied house. It is an ideal home for a
poet. The building is made of brick, but it is so completely enwrapped
in ivy that scarcely a particle of its surface can be seen. It is a
low building, with three gables on its main front and with a wing; it
stands in the middle of a garden enclosed by walls and by hedges of
ivy; and it is embowered by great trees, yet not so closely embowered
as to be shorn of the prospect from its windows. Flowers and flowering
vines were blooming around it. The hard, white road, flowing past its
gateway, looked like a thread of silver between the green hedgerows
which here for many miles are rooted in high, grassy banks, and at
intervals are diversified with large trees. Sloperton Cottage is almost
alone, but there are a few neighbours, and there is the little rustic
village of Westbrook, about half a mile westward. Westward was the
poet's favourite prospect. He loved the sunset, and from a terrace
in his garden he habitually watched the pageant of the dying day.
Here, for thirty-five years, was his peaceful and happy home. Here
he meditated many of those gems of lyrical poetry that will live in
the hearts of men as long as anything lives that ever was written by
mortal hand. And here he "sank to rest," worn out at last by incessant
labour and by many sorrows,--the bitter fruit of domestic bereavement
and of disappointment. The sun was sinking as I turned away from this
hallowed haunt of genius and virtue, and, through green pastures and
flower-spangled fields of waving grain, set forth upon my homeward
walk. Soon there was a lovely peal of chimes from Bromham church tower,
answered far off by the bells of Rowde, and while I descended into the
darkening valley, Moore's tender words came singing through my thought:
"And so 'twill be when I am gone--
That tuneful peal will still ring on,
While other bards shall walk these dells
And sing your praise, sweet evening bells!"