"My best wishes and respects to Mrs. Moore; she is beautiful. I may
say so even to you, for I was never more struck with a countenance."
That is Byron, writing to Tom Moore in 1812, when he had been married
little more than a year--and Byron's opinion of woman's beauty
is worth having. In the eight volumes of Tom's memoirs, worthily
collected by his friend Lord John Russell, and in all the crowded
stage of it, I see no figure shining in so sweet and clear a morning
light as that of his little home-keeping wife, with her "wild, poetic
face," her fancy which rings always truer than Tom's own, and her
mother-love, which sorrow has to sound so deeply before she can leave
the scene. Her appearances are fitful; she keeps to the hearth when
the grandees hold the floor. You see nothing of her at Holland House,
which Tom may use as his inn, or at Bowood, if she can help herself,
which in the country is his house of call. She is the Jenny Wren of
this little cock-robin; she wears drab, too often mourning; but you
find that she counts for very much with Tom. He loves to know her at
his back, loves to remind himself of it. He is always happy to be home
again in her faithful arms. Through all the sparkle and flash, under
all the talk, through all the tinklings of pianos and guitars which
declare Tom's whereabouts, if you listen you can hear the quiet burden
of her heart-beats. I don't know what he would have done without her,
nor what we should have to say to his literary remains if she were
not in them to make them smell of lavender. Few men of letters, and no
wits, can have left more behind, with less in them.
There is a great deal less of Bessy in the memoirs than, say, of Lady
Donegal, or of Rogers, or of Lord Lansdowne, but somehow or another
she makes herself felt; and though her appearances in them are of
Tom's contrivance, a personality is more surely expressed than in most
of his more elaborate portraits. One gets to know her as indeed the
"excellent and beautiful person" of Lord John's measured approval, not
so much by what she says or does as by her reactions on Tom himself.
A study of her has to be made out of a number of pencil-scratches--one
here, one there--put down by the diarist with unpremeditated art; for
it is certain that, though Moore intended his diaries to speak for him
after his death, what he had to say of his wife was the last thing
in them he would have relied upon to do it. I am sure that is so;
nevertheless, with the exception of Tom himself, who, of course, holds
the centre of the stage, she is more surely and sensibly there than
any of his thousand characters, from the Prince Regent to the poet
Bowles; more surely and fragrantly there. We are the better for her
presence; and so is her Tom's memory, infinitely the better.
It was a secret marriage and, except in the minds of a few good
judges, an improvident.
"I breakfast with Lady Donegal on Monday," he writes to his
mother in May, 1811, "and dine to meet her at Rogers' on
Tuesday; and there is to be a person at both parties whom you
little dream of."
This person was Bessy, to whom he had been married some two months
on the day of writing, and of whom, when his family was notified, he
found that it had nothing good to say. He complains of disappointment,
of a "degree of coldness" in his father's comments; and neither is
perhaps very wonderful. For Miss Bessy not only had nothing a year,
but in the reckoning of the day, and in comparison with the young
friend of Lord Moira and Lady Donegal, she herself was nothing.
She was indeed a professional actress--Miss E. Dyke in the
play-bills--whom Tom had first met in 1808 when the Kilkenny Theatre
began a meteor-course. He had lent himself as an amateur to the
enterprise, was David in _The Rivals_, Spado (with song) in _A Castle
of Andalusia_. In 1809, for three weeks on end, he had been Peeping
Tom of Coventry to the Lady Godiva of Miss E. Dyke. The rest is easy
guessing, and so it is that Tom's parents were dismayed, and that
there was a "degree of coldness." Lady Godiva, indeed!
But Bessy was not long in showing herself as good as gold, or
approving herself to some of Tom's best friends. Lady Donegal and her
sharp-tongued sister, Mary Godfrey, both took to her. "Give our
love, honest, downright love to Bessy," they write. Rogers called her
Psyche, had the pair to stay with him, stayed with them in his turn,
and gave Bessy handsome sums for the charities in which she abounded
all her life. Rogers knew simplicity when he saw it, and had no
vitriol on hand when she was in the way. I don't think Tom ever took
her to Ireland with him, or that, consequently, she ever met his
parents in the flesh; but no doubt that they accepted her, and
esteemed her.
Bit by bit she reveals herself in Tom's random diaries. As in the
printing of a photograph the lights and darks come sparsely out, and
unawares the delicate outline, so by a word here, a phrase elsewhere,
we realise the presence of a sweet-natured, sound-minded girl, and
more than that, of a girl with character. After a spell of Brompton
lodgings Tom took her to Kegworth in Leicestershire, where he was to
have the neighbourhood and countenance of his patron of the moment,
Moira, the Regent's jackal, a solemn, empty-headed lord. Donington
Hall and Bessy appear together in a letter to Mary Godfrey.
"... I took Bessy yesterday to Lord Moira's, and she was not
half so much struck with its grandeur as I expected. She said,
in coming out, 'I like Mr. Rogers's house ten times better.'"
Tom feels it necessary to explain such remarkable taste. "She loves
everything by association, and she was very happy in Rogers's
house." I don't know whether Tom's simplicity or Bessy's is the more
remarkable in all this. Tom's, I think.
"Lady Loudoun and Lord Moira called upon us on their way to town and
brought pine apples, etc." One sees them at it; and the very next
letter he writes is dated "Donington Park." Tom fairly lets himself go
over it.
"... I think it would have pleased you to see _my wife_ in one
of Lord Moira's carriages, with his servant riding after her,
and Lady Loudoun's crimson travelling-cloak round her to keep
her comfortable. It is a glorious triumph of good conduct on
both sides, and makes my heart happier and prouder than all
the best worldly connections could possibly have done. The
dear girl and I sometimes look at each other with astonishment
in our splendid room here, and she says she is quite sure it
must be all a dream."
Marble halls, in fact; but let us see how it acted upon Bessy. Shortly
after: "... I am just returned from a most delightful little tour with
Rogers, poor Bessy being too ill and too fatigued with the ceremonies
of the week to accompany us." That was to be the way of it for the
rest of their lives together. She would never go to the great houses
if she could by any means avoid it, but bore him no grudge for going
without her, and was always open-armed for his return.
Mayfield Cottage, Ashbourne, was their next harbourage; and here is a
Wheatley picture of them on their way to a dinner-party.
"We dined out to-day at the Ackroyds', neighbours of ours ...
we found, in the middle of our walk, that we were near half an
hour too early, so we set to practising country-dances in the
middle of a retired green lane till the time was expired."
Then he takes her to the Ashbourne ball, and for once leaves himself
out of the letter.
"... You cannot imagine what a sensation Bessy excited at the
Ball the other night. She was prettily dressed, and certainly
looked very beautiful.... She was very much frightened, but
she got through it very well. She wore a turban that night to
please me, and she looks better in it than anything else; for
it strikes everybody almost that sees her, how like the form
and expression of her face are to Catalani's, and a turban is
the thing for that kind of character."
Catalani, in Caverford's portrait, has the rapt eye of the Cumæan
sibyl. One of Moore's fine friends, an admirer of Bessy's, speaks to
him of her "wild, poetic face," and the Duchess of Sussex thought her
like "Lady Heathcote in the days of her beauty." That is putting her
very high, for, according to Cosway, Lady Heathcote was a lovely young
woman indeed; but the "wild, poetic face" gets us as near as need be.
In 1815 troubles began from which the poor girl was never to be free
again. She lost one of her three little girls, Olivia Byron, for whom
the poet had been sponsor. "... It was with difficulty I could get
her away from her little dead baby," Moore tells his mother, "and then
only under a promise that she should see it again last night...." In
1817, while Moore was in Paris, pursuing his pleasures, another child,
Barbara, had a fall, and he came home in August to find her "very ill
indeed." On September 10th she is still ill, but if she should get a
little better, "I mean to go for a day or two to Lord Lansdowne's
to look at a house.... He has been searching his neighbourhood for a
habitation for me, in a way very flattering indeed from such a man."
But he did not go. September 20th, "It's all over, my dearest Mother!"
"Poor Bessy," we read, "neither eats nor sleeps enough hardly to
sustain life": nevertheless in the first week of October he is at
Bowood. "I arrived here the day before yesterday, and found Rogers,
Lord and Lady Kerry, etc." He saw Sloperton Cottage and stayed out
his week. Bessy then had to see the cottage, and went--but not from
Bowood. "Bessy, who went off the night before last to look at the
cottage near Lord Lansdowne's, is returned this morning, after
travelling both nights. Power went with her." In a month's time they
were in possession, and Tom vastly set up by the near neighbourhood of
his exalted friend. Not so, however, his Jenny Wren.
"... We are getting on here as quietly and comfortably as
possible, and the only thing I regret is the want of some near
and plain neighbours for Bessy to make an intimacy with, and
enjoy a little tea-drinking now and then, as she used to do
in Derbyshire. She contrives, however, to employ herself
very well without them; and her favourite task of cutting out
things for the poor people is here even in greater requisition
than we bargained for, as there never was such wretchedness in
any place where we have been; and the better class of people
(with but one or two exceptions) seem to consider their
contributions to the poor-rates as abundantly sufficient,
without making any further exertion towards the relief of the
poor wretches. It is a pity Bessy has not more means, for she
takes the true method of charity--that of going herself into
the cottages, and seeing what they are most in want of.
"Lady Lansdowne has been very kind indeed, and has a good deal
won me over (as you know, kindness _will_ do now and then).
After many exertions to get Bessy to go and dine there, I have
at last succeeded this week, in consequence of our being on
a visit to Bowles's, and her having the shelter of the poet's
old lady to protect her through the enterprise. She did not,
however, at all like it, and I shall not often put her to the
torture of it. In addition to her democratic pride--which I
cannot blame her for--which makes her prefer the company
of her equals to that of her superiors, she finds herself a
perfect stranger in the midst of people who are all intimate;
and this is a sort of dignified desolation which poor Bessy
is not at all ambitious of. Vanity gets over all these
difficulties; but pride is not so practicable."
Vanity indeed did, though Tom had a pride of his own too. But he was
soothed and not offended by pomp, whereas she was bored as well as
irritated. It is obvious that her wits were valid enough. She could be
happy with Rogers or the Bowleses, who could allow for simplicity, and
delight in it--a talent denied to the good Lansdownes. As for Bowles,
Tom is shrewd enough to remark upon "the mixture of talent and
simplicity in him."
"His parsonage-house at Brenthill is beautifully situated;
but he has a good deal frittered away its beauty in grottos,
hermitages and Shenstonian inscriptions. When company is
coming he cries, 'Here, John, run with the crucifix and missal
to the hermitage, and set the fountain going.' His sheep-bells
are tuned in thirds and fifths."
Such was Bowles, Bessy's best friend in Wilts.
Bowood to Tom was centre of his scheme of things; he was always there
on some pretext or other; or he would dine and sleep at Bowles's or at
Lacock Abbey, or spend days in Bath, or a week in London. It is true
that half his talent and more than half his fame were social: these
things were the bread as well as the butter of life to him. But here
is Bessy meantime:
"... Came home and found my dearest Bessy very tired after her
walk from church. She has been receiving the Sacrament,
and never did a purer heart.... In the note she wrote me to
Bowles's the day before, she said, 'I am sorry I am not to see
you before I go to church.'"
Tom had sensibility, not a doubt of it; but it seems to me that she
had something better.
Here again, on the 16th October, "My dear Bessy planting some roots
Miss Hughes has brought her, looking for a place to put a root of pink
hepatica in, where (as she said) 'I might best see them in my walk.'"
Yes, he had sensibility; but she had imagination. A little Tom was
born a week after that. She took it badly, as she did most of her
labours, and was in bed a month. On the 18th November she went out for
the first time after the event--"the day delightful." She "went round
to all her flower-beds to examine their state, for she has every
little leaf in the garden by heart." Tom himself had been much moved
by the birth of his first boy. He was called up at 11.30, sent for
the midwife, was upset, walked about half the night, thanked God--"the
maid, by the way, very near catching me on my knees." She might have
caught Bessy on them every day, and no thought taken of so simple a
thing. But Tom had sensibility.
But a man who, eight years after marriage, can make his wife an April
fool, and record it, is no bad husband, and it would be a trespass on
his good fame to suggest it. He loved her dearly and could never have
been unkind to her. Far from that, happy domestic pictures abound in
his diaries. Here is one of a time when she had joined him in London,
on her way to stay with her sister in Edinburgh. They went together to
Hornsey, to see Barbara's grave. "At eight o'clock she and I sauntered
up and down the Burlington Arcade, then went and bought some prawns
and supped most snugly together." He takes the state-rooms costing £7
apiece, for "his own pretty girl." Meantime he is preparing to shelter
in France from civil process served upon him for the defalcations of
his deputy in Bermuda.
I need not follow the scenes through as they come. The essence of
Bessy Moore is expressed in what I have written of the first flush of
her married life. There was much more to come. Moore outlived all his
children, and she, poor soul, outlived her rattling, melodious Tom,
having known more sorrow than falls, luckily, to the lot of most
mothers. The death of her last girl, Anastasia, is beautifully told by
Tom; but a worse stroke than even that was the wild career of little
Tom, the son, his illness, disgrace, and death in the French Foreign
Legion. That indeed went near to breaking Bessy's heart. "Why do
people sigh for children? They know not what sorrow will come with
them." That is her own, and only recorded, outcry.
In _The Loves of the Angels_, an erotic and perfervid poem, which
fails, nevertheless, from want of concentration of the thought,
Zeraph, the third angel, is Tom himself, and the daughter of man,
Nama, with whom he consorts, is Bessy.
Humility, that low, sweet root,
From which all heavenly virtues shoot,
Was in the hearts of both--but most
In Nama's heart, by whom alone
Those charms for which a heaven was lost
Seemed all unvalued and unknown...