The Entertainer
By PETER QUENNELL Dmini° the 1890s, London hostesses some- times issued invitation cards with the note: 'to hear Mr. Oscar Wilde tell one of his stories' scribbled on the left-hand corner. At the begin- ning of the century, another literary virtuoso, again an Irishman, had exerted an even more mag- netic spell. No evening party was really complete unless Mr. Thomas Moore could be persuaded —and he could usually be persuaded without very much ado—to sing one of his own Irish Melodies, accompanying himself on the piano- forte in a lively and picturesque, if somewhat slapdash, style. Moore greatly enjoyed perform- ing, and enjoyed the effect he made upon his audience. Often he reduced his feminine listeners to tears; and, now and then, he followed suit. 'The melancholy sound of my own voice,' he tells us, in May 1829, when he had recently lost a beloved child, 'quite overpowered me'; and, had he not immediately started up, he would have burst into a violent fit of sobbing; 'which before strangers would have been dreadful.' Today it is difficult to imagine how Moore's fluent and melodious, yet generally common- place, verses can ever have excited deep feeling. True, they were always written to be sung, and should be judged as songs, not as independent literary productions; but, despite Mr. John Betjeman, who prefers them to Byron's lyrics, and the late Sir Max Beerbohm, who once de- clared that by Moore the essential spirit of Irish literature was 'more authentically breathed than it is by Yeats,' the Irish Melodies, at least in their published form, now seem pretty trivial stuff. It was as a biographer that Moore revealed his quality. His life of Byron is indeed a master- piece; and Moore's achievement appears par- ticularly remarkable when we consider the cir- cumstances in which he undertook his task. Not only had he to satisfy Byron's publisher, cautious, calculating John Murray; but the poet's half- -Sister, the shifty, apprehensive Mrs. Leigh, and his close friends, those hard-headed men of the world, John Cam Hobhouse and Scrope Davies, none of whom approved of the project or was inclined to trust Moore, hovered glumly in the background.
Yet, notwithstanding these repressive in- fluences, and the fact that Moore knew a great deal about Byron's character that he could not have afforded to disclose, he drew an extra- ordinarily vivid and convincing portrait. In the process, however, he may perhaps have done himself some harm. He is now remembered pri- marily as Byron's intimate; though he had a mul- titude of other rewarding connections and, after the poet's death, lived on for almost thirty years.
Certainly the author of the life of Byron de- serves an individual niche. The son of a modest Irish grocer, born above his father's place of business, he had risen, by talent, hard work and a high degree of social skill, to an important position in the counsels of the Whig Party. Moore, of course, was a stylish entertainer who used his Hibernian charm to the greatest pos- sible advantage, the accomplished party-goer and fashionable diner-out who would enter a drawing- room---how unlike the shy and awkward Byron! =with a gaiety and an ease, combined with a kind of worshipping deference, that was worthy of a prime minister at the court of Love.' But he was also a serious political journalist, and a chosen spokesman of the Opposition. While London hostesses begged for his tuneful ditties, their husbands, as his Journal shows, frequently consulted him on public issues. He was offered the direction of the powerful Edinburgh Review; but was either too busy or too shrewd to accept an editorial chair. He appreciated the compara- tive liberty of a hard-worked, but well-paid, free-lance writer.
Moore's Memoirs, Journal and Correspon- dence, prepared by his old friend John Russell from the mass of xpers he had left behind
him, contain many fascinating pieces of infor- mation and a wealth of uncommonly diverting anecdotes. But, as a record of a personality, his Journal cannot compare with the self-por- traits of Creevey, Charles Greville or the in- imitable Benjamin Robert Haydon. His aim was to chronicle his daily experiences. he had no desire to expose the secrets of his heart. His correspondence, too, suffers by comparison with that of other nineteenth-century letter-writers. Although he was affectionate and candid he was never deeply introspective; and his letters* have nothing of the reckless dash, the changeful gaiety and incandescent self-destructive humour that make Byron's collected letters so ex- quisitely entertaining.
Still, Professor Wilfred S. Dowden, an Ameri- can scholar established at Rice University, Texas, has done a very useful piece of work. Much of the material he includes is entirely fresh; and, with the assistance of letters already published, these two volumes cover the whole period of Moore's adult life from 1799, when—a scapular concealed in the lining of his coat and a few guineas sewn under the waistband of his panta- loons—he first of all appeared in England. to 1847, when his health and memory collapsed and he slipped away into a slow decline. Oddly enough, some of his liveliest letters are vigorous attacks on the civilisation of the New World. Moore abominated the United States. He was a fervent liberal of the Holland House school, but neither a new-fangled republican nor an egalitarian zealot : The mail [he wrote to his mother in Dublin from Baltimore on June 13, 18041 takes twelve passengers, which generally consist of squalling children, stinking ncgroes, and republicans smok- ing cigars! How often it has occurred to me that nothing can be more emblematic of the Government of this country than its stages, filled with a motley mixture, all 'hail fellow well met,' driving through mud and filth, which bespatters them as they raise it . God com- fort their capacities! . . .
Especially interesting, from a literary point of view, are the letters that Moore addressed to Byron before they had become friends and con- fidants. Stung by a satirical reference in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, Moore had threat- ened its author with a challenge; but Byron was travelling abroad; and, when he returned to England in 1811, Moore had acquired a wife and household, and his bellicosity had much abated. Besides, he was anxious to meet the romantic young man of whom he had heard such strange tales; and during the resultant exchange of letters he adopted (writes Professor Dowden) 'the most audacious and elaborate method of becoming acquainted with a well-known figure since Bos- well met Rousseau.' This, I think, is a little far- fetched: Moore, at the time, was much more celebrated than Byron and had not the slightest need to seek his favour. A spontaneous, deep- rooted sympathy sprang up between the two poets --Byron the doomed patrician, who de- tested marriage and fretted at family ties; Moore the ebullient middle-class Irishman, who adored his parents, doted on his children, and cherished his faithful and attractive wife. That Moore should have won, and continued to hold, Byron's friendship sufficiently indicates the kind of man he was. Under the superficial charm and the social airs and graces, Byron, who always respected goodness, could distinguish not only a keen, well-balanced mind, but a sensitive, tem- perate, warm-hearted nature.
* THE 1.Errmts OF THOMAS MOORE. Edited by Wilfred S. Dowden. (0.U.P., two volumes, £9 9s.)
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