_LALLA ROOKH_
There was scarcely a period in Moore's life when prospects looked
brighter for him than just after his settlement at Mayfield Cottage. He
had clearly decided on living in seclusion till he should have finished
the important work on which he had been engaged already, off and on,
during a full year. In the summer of 1812, enough of _Lalla Rookh_
existed to be shown to Rogers, when he and Moore took a tour together
through the Peak country; and Rogers's criticism left the poet rather
out of conceit with his work. Next year found him again dispirited, for
the _Giaour_ had appeared, and Moore writes:--
"Never was anything more unlucky for me than Byron's invasion of
this region, which, when I entered it, was yet untrodden, and whose
chief charm consisted in the gloss and novelty of its features; but
it will now be overrun with clumsy adventurers, and, when I make my
appearance, instead of being a leader, as I looked to be, I must
dwindle into a humble follower--a Byronian. This is disheartening,
and I sometimes doubt whether I shall publish it at all; though at
the same time, if I may trust my own judgment, I never wrote so
well before."
Things went from bad to worse. On August 28, 1813, Byron wrote to him,
"Stick to the East;--the oracle, Staël, told me it was the only
poetical policy." But the letter went on to announce Byron's project of
a story grafted on to the amours of a Peri and a mortal. Now, Moore had
already in his long-delayed work made the daughter of a Peri the heroine
of one of his tales, and spent much pains in "detailing the love
adventures of her aerial parent in an episode." He wrote at once, asking
only for fair warning, and Byron immediately disclaimed all commerce
with Peris; but, having done so, set to work upon the _Bride of Abydos_.
It is easy to judge of Moore's feelings when he read the new poem and
found that Byron had again, by pure accident, anticipated his friend.
One of the stories intended for insertion in _Lalla Rookh_ had been
carried some way, but it contained, says Moore, such singular
coincidences with the _Bride_, "not only in locality and costume, but in
plot and characters," that there was nothing for it but to give up.
The whole thing was pure and simple bad luck, and Byron's very sincere
correspondence is mainly directed to chiding his friend for the "strange
diffidence of your own powers which I cannot account for." But the blow
was heavy.
There is no doubt as to Moore's priority of idea. On September 11th,
1811, we find him writing to Miss Godfrey, after the failure of his
operetta, _M.P._: "I shall now take to my poem and do something, I hope,
that will place me above the vulgar herd both of worldlings and critics;
but you shall hear from me again when I get among the maids of Cashmere,
the sparkling springs of Rochabad, and the fragrant banquets of the
Peris." And Rogers, in the same month, refers to the projected epic:
"Are you now in a pavilion on the banks of the Tigris?" But Moore, for
all his apparent facility, was a slow and fastidious writer, and it
seems that, even in 1813, not a great deal was accomplished.
He was, however, resolute that nothing should divert him from his task,
and the proposal made by Murray through Byron, to establish him as
"editor of a review like the _Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_," was set
aside; as was also the suggestion from Power for an opera, which would
bring in money both from theatre and bookshops. His determination was
the more remarkable, because already his account with Power was
forestalled. So long as he could earn money, Moore refused persistently
to be indebted to any man (except Rogers, and that only in two
instances) for a loan; but with equal regularity he anticipated by long
periods all his earnings from publishers. His house-moving had involved
him in unlooked-for expenses, and, to meet these, he had exhausted the
supply from a first success in one of the two branches of literature
which he was to make peculiarly his own.
In March 1813 was published for Carpenter (through an understrapper in
the Row) _Intercepted Letters; or the Twopenny Postbag_. The preface
explained that the letters in question came from a bag dropped by a
Twopenny Postman, which had been picked up by an agent of the Society
for the Suppression of Vice, but abandoned, when it became clear that
the discoveries of profligacy which it indicated lay too high up to be
handled. The letters--eight in all--were attributed to correspondents
whose names were transparently disguised by initials, and who for the
most part belonged to the Prince Regent's circle. A supplementary group
of epigrams and occasional verses, reprinted from the _Morning
Chronicle_, eked out the thin volume. Thin as it was, it sold for a high
price, and it sold prodigiously; a year later Moore wrote a preface for
the fourteenth edition, which Carpenter now openly adopted. Moore,
however, did not write in his own name. The nominal author of the
preface, as of the book, was "Thomas Brown the younger." But the
authorship was never for a moment in doubt, as many of the squibs
reprinted had been correctly assigned on their first appearance in the
_Chronicle_; and Moore showed his certitude that the disguise would be
only formal by inserting, in the dedication to Woolriche, an assurance
that "doggerel is not my _only_ occupation." The preface to the later
edition contains some biographical matter of interest. It begins by
denying the rumour of collaboration or joint-authorship; and then passes
to what was a virtual avowal of identity.
"To the charge of being an Irishman, poor Mr. Brown pleads guilty;
and I believe it must also be acknowledged that he comes of a Roman
Catholic family.... But from all this it does not necessarily
follow that Mr. Brown is a Papist; and indeed I have the strongest
reasons for suspecting that they who say so are somewhat
mistaken.... All I profess to know of his orthodoxy is that he has
a Protestant wife and two or three little Protestant children, and
that he has been seen at church every Sunday, for a whole year
together, listening to the sermons of his truly reverend and
amiable friend, Dr. ----"[1]
Moore by no means conceived of tolerance only as a virtue to be
practised by Protestants for the benefit of Catholics. Long before his
marriage--indeed, when his Bessy was in very short frocks--he had
written, as an exhortation to Protestants:--
"From the heretic girl of my soul shall I fly
To find somewhere else a more orthodox kiss?"
And later, from the Catholic side of the question, he practised his own
doctrine conscientiously, when it came to falling in love, for Bessy
Moore was a Protestant. In spite of the phrase "it does not necessarily
follow that Mr. Brown is a Papist," there is no reason to suppose that
Moore ever meditated a change of religion. Later in life, his sister
Katherine did so, and he advised her to follow his example and remain
quietly a Catholic. But he said openly to her, and records it in his
diary: "My having married a Protestant wife gave me an opportunity of
choosing a religion at least for my children, and if my marriage had no
other advantage, I should think _this_ quite sufficient to be grateful
for."
But while in these respects he showed himself a Catholic of the least
rigid order, he was, naturally, all the keener in his hostility to
Protestant bigotry. And, having discarded the sonorous denunciation of
Corruption and Intolerance in heavy Popian couplets, he now, as Mr.
Thomas Brown the younger, attacked Addington, Eldon, Castlereagh and the
rest, in a spirited light gallop of verse. The occasion of the opening
epistle was afforded by a present of ponies which Lady Barbara Ashley
had given to the Princess Charlotte of Wales. Lady Barbara being a
Catholic, keen noses smelt Popery in the gift; and the letter attributed
to "the Pr----ss Ch----e of W---s," recounts a supposed Cabinet Council,
at which the crisis is discussed. A few lines may serve as an example
of this clever _jeu d'esprit_.
"'If the Pr-nc-ss _will_ keep them,' says Lord
C-stl-r--gh,
'To make them quite harmless, the only true way
Is (as certain Chief Justices do with their wives)
To flog them within half an inch of their lives;
If they've any bad Irish Mood lurking about,
This (he knew by experience) would soon draw it out.'
Or--if this be thought cruel--his Lordship proposes
'The new _Veto_ snaffle to hind down their noses--
A pretty contrivance, made out of old chains,
Which appears to indulge, while it doubly restrains;
Which, however high-mettled, their gamesomeness checks,'
Adds his Lordship, humanely, 'or else breaks their necks!'"
The bulk of the satire was, however, social rather than political, and
largely aimed at the Prince Regent--from whom Moore and all his friends
were now completely estranged. In the second Letter, some capital lines
describe--
"That awful hour or two
Of grave tonsorial preparation,
Which, to a fond, admiring nation,
Sends forth, announced by trump and drum,
The best-wigg'd P----e in Christendom!"
Even better work was to be found in the reprints than in the Letters.
The "Anacreontic to a Plumassier" is a very delicate piece of verse,
fluffy and feathery. Almost as good was the version, or perversion, of
Horace II. 11, "freely translated by the Pr--ce R-g--t":--
"Brisk let us revel, while revel we may;
For the gay bloom of fifty soon passes away,
And then people get fat
And infirm and all that,
And a wig (I confess it) so clumsily sits
That it frightens the little loves out of their wits."
Taking them as a whole, it would be hard to find better examples of
light-hearted satire. Moore had little of the _soeva indignatio_; his
touch was on the ridiculous rather than the disgusting; and even the
Prince of Wales could take fun out of the chaff directed against his fat
pretensions to comeliness. Probably no one was much the worse, or the
better, for Moore's satire, and it abounds so in topical allusion, of
the most ephemeral kind, that to-day the interest has evaporated. But
the reader can easily understand its immediate popularity, and it is
distressing to think that Carpenter should have reaped the lion's share
of the profit. From this onward Moore very wisely sought another
publisher.
His residence at Ashbourne lasted till March 1817, and the years spent
there were the most fertile of his existence. The period was terminated
by a move to the neighbourhood of London to supervise the publication of
_Lalla Rookh_, and virtually the whole of this poem may be said to have
been composed in Mayfield Cottage. In the same period, Moore produced
the sixth number of the _Irish Melodies_ and the first number of his
_Sacred Songs_, which rank next in importance to the _Melodies_ among
his poetical works. If he had never written a line after 1817, his
reputation as a poet would stand no less high than it does at present.
The volume of the _Melodies_ which Power issued in 1815 contains several
poems which throw an interesting light on the poet's state of feeling
towards politics, and especially towards his own country. One of the
most successful songs in the number (as indeed it deserved to be) was
the lyric in which the reproach of Catholic Ireland to the Prince who
had gone back on his early protestations is put as the complaint of a
forsaken woman:--
"When first I met thee, warm and young,
There shone such truth about thee,
And on thy lip such promise hung,
I did not dare to doubt thee.
I saw thee change, yet still relied,
Still clung with hope the fonder,
And thought, though false to all beside,
From me thou couldst not wander.
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
attitude 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 Emancipation."
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 associate
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 entitles 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 tithe-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 passages 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 circumstances 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 association 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, gratitude 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 Passages 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 passage:--
"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 classics 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 damned 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 associated 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 Middlesex, 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 assume 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 circumstances, 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 anticipating sequestration in a
debtor's prison. The advice of business men in London reassured him
somewhat, and the _Fudges_ came out at the right moment with great
éclat, 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 god-parents were, as usual, a
strange and interesting assortment--Miss Godfrey, 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; hobnobbing 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 Dyke 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 noble 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."
Nothing could be more honourable to both men than such an offer, and
Moore long afterwards referred to it in his Memoir with deep feeling. It
was only one of a shoal of similar tributes. Leigh Hunt, then editor of
the _Examiner_, wrote to Perry of the _Chronicle_ to urge the opening of
a public subscription. Rogers pressed £500 of his own on Moore, as a
beginning towards some such fund: Lord Lansdowne offered security for
the whole; Lord John Russell proposed to set aside all future profits
from his _Life of Lord Russell_, just published, and forwarded inquiries
from his brother Lord Tavistock as to whether anything was doing to save
Moore from imprisonment. "I am very poor," Lord Tavistock wrote, "but I
have always had such a strong admiration for Moore's independence of
mind that I would willingly sacrifice something to be of use to him."
Moore recorded all this with legitimate pride, in his diary, but
continued steadfast in his determination to rely on no one but his
publishers; and the Longmans expressed the fullest readiness to advance
in the way of business any reasonable sum, to which he might, by
compromise, reduce the claims on him.
Nothing could more strongly indicate the general respect in which Moore
was held than this practical testimony. It is necessary to emphasise
that Moore impressed those in contact with him by no quality so much as
by his high-mindedness. Old Dr. Parr expressed the feeling of many, when
he left by his will a ring to Thomas Moore, "who stands high in my
estimation for original genius, for his exquisite sensibility, for his
independent spirit and incorruptible integrity." Men who saw how Moore
lived felt no doubt the greatness of the temptations to which he was
exposed. Private liberality was pressed upon him repeatedly; and if his
pride revolted from that, he had more than a common chance of public
rewards. Those anxious to serve the poet were by no means only of one
political colour; no man had more aptitude to conciliate, or stronger
motives for doing so. Early in his married life, at a time when his
professed patron, Lord Moira, took office under a government opposed to
the Catholic cause, which he, like Moore, had always supported, the poet
might easily have waived something of his scruples; and Miss Godfrey
insisted upon the reasons for his doing so, in language which would
probably have been endorsed by most of his Whig friends.
"As to your political opinions, it was very fine to indulge in them
and act up to them while there was a distant perspective in so
doing of fame or emolument, and at the same time a feeling that the
triumph of such opinions, and the success of the party you belonged
to, might be conducive to the prosperity of your country. But now,
when those opinions have less and less influence, and that party
less and less consideration--when your family is increasing and
your wants, of course, increasing with it--don't you think prudence
should have its turn? Would not your love for your wife and anxiety
for the welfare of your children reconcile you to some little
sacrifice of political opinions?"
The same line of argument was used to Moore at many junctures in his
life and he always had the same answer. "More mean things," he told
Rogers, "have been done in this world under the shelter of wife and
children than under any pretext that worldly-mindedness can resort to."
The fact that the argument was so often used indicates that he lived
always in the range of temptation; and many would blame him because he
never had the inclination to sever himself from the connections which
made it almost impossible for him to live frugally. Yet, apart from the
argument that he helped the popularity of his music by singing his songs
as no one else could sing them, it is clear that for much of his
work--for all the satirical side of it--close touch with society was
essential. Hardly less essential was it for the work of which his
_Sheridan_ was only the first instalment--his contribution to the
literature of memoirs. On the other hand, it is clear that as the
satirist, the observer, the historian, and the politician strengthened
in him, they crowded out the poet. Life near Bowood meant life in
contact with the leading politicians and thinkers of the day: Sloperton
was very different from the seclusion of Mayfield. The question
naturally arises, whether Moore, by encouraging his interest in
contemporary events, and, generally speaking, in the prose side of life,
stifled a higher gift, or whether he simply obeyed a sound and healthy
impulse. The answer cannot be given without some detailed consideration
of the work by which he took rank in his own generation--his equivalent
for Scott's lays and Byron's romances.
Like them, Moore relied upon the charm of an exciting narrative, laid in
unfamiliar scenes, and furnished with highly-coloured descriptive
passages. But, whereas Scott wrote of the Border where he had been bred,
and Byron of the East where he had travelled in days when the traveller
was obliged to become a real part of every scene in which he moved,
Moore laid his stories in a country known to him only through books, and
he derived them from a literature remote and alien from all European
sympathies. The natural consequence is that, whereas Scott's and Byron's
descriptions savour of actual experience, Moore's reek of the lamp; and,
with astonishing lack of judgment, he spoilt whatever illusion might
exist, by the constant interposition of footnotes to explain the
fragments of Eastern custom, tradition, or natural history, which he had
laboriously wrought in. Nothing could more strongly stamp the artificial
character of the whole. The truth, which Moore unhappily did not
realise, is that poetry should be made, not out of things new but of
things old; out of the familiar, not the unfamiliar. His research for
novelty of subject was fatal to him; the attractions which he sought to
give his work are those which poetry in the true sense must dispense
with. Scott handled material wrought over a hundred times in Border
ballads. Byron indeed made poetry from the novel, the strange, the
obviously picturesque. But what keeps Byron's poetry alive is the
element of personal emotion which Byron contributed to the subject. In
so far as anything survives of _Lalla Rookh_, the same is true of Moore.
The introductory pages prefixed to _Lalla Rookh_ in the 1841 edition of
Moore's poems bear out this view. Moore relates his difficulties--his
many attempts, begun and thrown aside. In one of these rejected stories,
and only one, he writes, "had I yet ventured to involve that most
homefelt of all my inspirations which has lent to the story of 'The Fire
Worshippers' its main attraction and interest"--that half-veiled
reference to Irish history and Irish aspirations, of which mention has
already been made. Moore shrewdly observes that the absence of this sort
of feeling in the other preliminary sketches--
"was the reason doubtless, though hardly known at the time to
myself, that, finding my subjects so slow in touching my
sympathies, I began to despair of their ever touching the hearts of
others.... But at last--fortunately, as it proved--the thought
occurred to me of founding a story on the fierce struggle so long
maintained between the Ghebers, or ancient Fire Worshippers of
Persia, and their haughty Moslem masters. From that moment a new
and deep interest in my whole task took possession of me. The cause
of tolerance was again my inspiring theme; and the spirit that had
spoken in the melodies of Ireland soon found itself at home in the
East."
It found itself about as much at home, I should say, as is the ordinary
European in oriental costume at a masked ball. To wear Eastern clothes
like an Eastern is possible, for one who has assimilated the Eastern way
of life; otherwise, incongruities reveal themselves with every gesture.
Byron, happier than Moore in his choice, wrote of an East that touches
the West, of the clash between Frank and Moslem.
Worse still, Moore was an amatory poet, he had made successes by writing
about love; and accordingly, he determined to rely in his poems--as
Scott, wiser than he, had not done--on the love interest. He
misunderstood his own temperament. Love poetry of the serious order
demands passion, and Moore is the poet of dalliance, not of passion. The
passion--if it can be called a passion--of pity, the passion of
political enthusiasm, he had; but the violence of exclusive desire,
whether lasting or temporary, which Byron so often rendered, was a chord
outside of Moore's range.
The poets of Moore's own day, who knew and liked Moore, never cared for
_Lalla_; and Leigh Hunt, an excellent critic, spoke the truth about it.
Condemning the poem gently as "too florid in its general style," though
allowing to it exquisite passages, he goes on:--
"You are so truly, by birth, a poetical animal, out of the pale of
book-associations and a free inhabitant of the most Elysian parts
of nature, that the more you resolved to speak and to feel out of
the sincerity of your own impulses, without thinking it necessary
to search for ideas, the more to your advantage I am persuaded it
would be. You are a born poet and have only to claim your
inheritance--not to be heaping up a multitude of anxious proofs
which, though mistaken by some for ostentation, are in reality
evidences of a diffidence of pretension which you ought not to
feel."
No man could give better advice. Moore had written narrative poetry, one
may safely say, because the fashion of the day was for narrative. He had
caught at Rogers's suggestion of poetry on an Eastern theme, which was
to give him a new field. As he worked on, he felt his theme alien, and
tried to make himself at home in it by taking into the subject what
really belonged to another atmosphere; and further, he decided that "he
must try to make up for his deficiencies in _dash_ and vigour by
versatility and polish." Not in this way is poetry written; the poet who
tries to accommodate himself to the taste of the public is destroying
his art.
Moore had earned his fame by writings, amatory, political, and
satirical, which it came natural to him to produce, because he was "a
poetical animal"; _Lalla Rookh_ was, in great measure, work done against
the grain, and relying for its success on the secondary qualities of
elaborate finish, profusion of ornament, and variety of interest. These
qualities, however, were present in no common degree, and the poem's
success is not to be wondered at. The dose of novelty in style was just
sufficient to attract, without offending by its revolt against "the
Popish sing-song." It was indeed so perfectly in the fashion of its
time, as to be inevitably demoded after a lapse of years. The florid
loops and curves of the Regency period in decorative art have their
equivalent in Moore's profuse and lengthily elaborated metaphors.
Certain features of the work must be unreservedly condemned. The prose
narrative in which the four poems are set is deplorable--sprightly
beyond endurance; and in the _Veiled Prophet_ Moore tears one passion
after another to tatters in bursts of sheer rhetoric. Yet even here good
lines are plenty, though they are all in metaphors, or some other
excrescence; for instance--
"Hundreds of banners to the sunbeam spread
Waved, like the wings of the white birds that fan
The flying throne of star-taught Soliman."
In _Paradise and the Peri_ we have a production more within the poet's
range. A prettier example of an _Arabian Nights Tale_, done into
springing, easy verse, it would be difficult to find. The idea, neat and
graceful, could have been treated within the compass of a song, which
should tell how the exiled Peri was promised admittance if she brought
"the gift that is most dear to Heaven"; how she tried first the patriot
hero's life-blood--(shed in vain); then the last sigh of the maiden who
chose to share the death of her true love; and, last of all, how she won
home with the tear of repentance from a Byronic sinner. All through the
poem there is the suggestion of singing, and, as Scott said, "Moore
beats us all at a song."
From "The Fire Worshippers" I have quoted already the best passages,
those which express most fully the germinal idea. One may add an
energetic denunciation, which had its full application, for instance, to
Leonard McNally, Emmet's advocate, who defended most of the Irish
political prisoners during a long period of time, and regularly sold the
secrets of his defence to the Government.
"Oh, for a tongue to curse the slave,
Whose treason, like a deadly blight,
Comes o'er the councils of the brave,
And blasts them in their hour of might!
May life's unblessed cup for him
Be drugg'd with treacheries to the brim,--
With hopes, that but allure to fly,
With joys, that vanish while he sips,
Like Dead-Sea fruits, that tempt the eye,
But turn to ashes on the lips!
His country's curse, his children's shame,
Outcast of virtue, peace, and fame,
May he, at last, with lips of flame,
On the parch'd desert thirsting die,--
While lakes, that shone in mockery nigh,
Are fading off, untouch'd, untasted,
Like the once glorious hopes he blasted!
And, when from earth his spirit flies,
Just Prophet, let the damn'd-one dwell
Full in the sight of Paradise,
Beholding heaven, and feeling hell!"
Last of all, and most lavishly decorated, is the story of the Feast of
Roses at Cashmere. The opening passage is a good example of Moore's
high-wrought effort after Eastern local colour:--
"Who has not heard of the Vale of Cashmere,
With its roses the brightest that earth ever gave,
Its temples, and grottos, and fountains as clear
As the love-lighted eyes that hang over their wave?
"Oh I to see it at sunset,--when warm o'er the Lake
Its splendour at parting a summer eve throws,
Like a bride, full of blushes, when ling'ring to take
A last look of her mirror at night ere she goes!--
When the shrines through the foliage are gleaming half-shown,
And each hallows the hour by some rites of its own.
Here the music of prayer from a minaret swells,
Here the Magian his urn full of perfume is swinging,
And here, at the altar, a zone of sweet bells
Round the waist of some fair Indian dancer is ringing.
Or to see it by moonlight,--when mellowly shines
The light o'er its palaces, gardens, and shrines;
When the waterfalls gleam like a quick fall of stars,
And the nightingale's hymn from the Isle of Chenars
Is broken by laughs and light echoes of feet
From the cool, shining walks where the young people meet.--
Or at morn, when the magic of daylight awakes
A new wonder each minute, as slowly it breaks,
Hills, cupolas, fountains, call'd forth every one
Out of darkness, as they were just horn of the sun,
When the Spirit of Fragrance is up with the day,
From his harem of night-flowers stealing away;
And the wind, full of wantonness, wooes like a lover
The young aspen-trees till they tremble all over.
When the East is as warm as the light of first hopes,
And Day, with his banner of radiance unfurl'd,
Shines in through the mountainous portal that opes,
Sublime, from that Valley of bliss to the world!"
But one finds a more real example of Moore's poetry in this quatrain:--
"There's a beauty, for ever unchangingly bright,
Like the long, sunny lapse of a summer day's light,
Shining on, shining on, by no shadow made tender,
Till Love falls asleep in its sameness of splendour."
If one compares passages like these with, for instance, Cowper's
anapaests, even in so beautiful a poem as "The poplars are felled,
farewell to the shade," it will be seen that Moore helped on the
extraordinary advance in poetical technique which marks the years from
1795 to the rise of Tennyson. Moore's sense of style is always
faulty--witness the very next couplet:--
"This was not the beauty--_oh, nothing like this!_
That to young Nourmahal gave such magic of bliss."
But he had a fine ear for metre, and in this poem he displayed all his
resources, changing the rhythm half-a-dozen times, with interpolating
bursts of song.
When, in addition, we remember that the most indolent reader could never
for an instant mistake his meaning--that the volume of thought was
always light as compared with the faculty of expression--that every
harshness was carefully smoothed away, and condensation always
sacrificed to limpidity--it is not hard to understand the poem's
popularity. Yet, when all has been said, the last word is that _Lalla
Rookh_ is a work of very secondary merit, and retains its place in
literature mainly as an example of an extinct taste. Twenty years after
it was written, Moore knew this, and told Longman that, "in a race to
future times (if any thing of mine could pretend to such a run), those
little ponies, the _Melodies_, will beat the mare _Lalla_ hollow." And
indeed, if it were not for the _Melodies_, nobody would now give an eye
to their stable companion.
[1] Parkinson.
[2] Alluding to Rogers's poem "Italy."