Lalla Rookh.
Mr. Moore had his little country vacations—among them, that notable stay up in the lovely county of Derbyshire, near to Ashbourne and Dovedale, and the old fishing grounds of Walton and of Cotton—where he wrote the larger part of his first considerable poem, Lalla Rookh—which had amazing success, and brought to its author the sum of £3,000. But I do not think that what inspiration is in it came to him from the hollows or the heights of Derbyshire; I should rather trace its pretty Oriental confusion of sound and scenes to the jingle of London chandeliers. Yet the web, the gossamer, the veils and the flying feet do not seem to touch ground anywhere in England, but shift and change and grow out of his Eastern readings and dreams.
Moore married at thirty-two—after he was known for the Irish melodies, but before the publication of Lalla Rookh; and in his Letters and Diary (if you read them—though they make an enormous mass to read, and frighten most people away by their bulk), you will come upon very frequent, and very tender mention of “Dear Bessie”—the wife. It is true, there were rumors that he wofully neglected her, but hardly well founded. Doubtless there was many a day and many a week when she was guarding the cottage and the children at Sloperton; and he bowing and pirouetting his way amongst the trailing robes of their ladyships who loved music and literature in London; but how should he refuse the invitations of his Lordship this or that? Or how should she—who has no robes that will stand alone—bring her pretty home gowns into that blazon of the salons? Always, too (if his letters may be trusted), he is eager to make his escape between whiles—wearied of this tintamarre—and to rush away to his cottage at Sloperton[52] for a little slippered ease, and a romp with the children. Poor children—they all drop away, one by one—two only reaching maturity—then dying. The pathetic stories of the sickening, the danger and the hush, come poignantly into his Diary, and it does seem that the winning clatter of the world gets a hold upon his wrenched heart over-quickly again. But what right have you or I to judge in such matters?
There are chirrupy little men—and women, too,—on whom grief does not seem to take a hard grip; all the better for them! Moore, I think, was such a one, and was braced up always and everywhere by his own healthy pulses, and, perhaps, by a sense of his own sufficiency. His vanities are not only elastic, but—by his own bland and child-like admissions—they seem sometimes almost monumental. He writes in his Diary, “Shiel (that’s an Irish friend) says I am the first poet of the day, and join the beauty of the Bird-of-Paradise’s plumes to the strength of the eagle’s wing.” Fancy a man copying that sort of thing into his own Diary, and regaling himself with it!
Yet he is full of good feeling—does not cherish resentments—lets who will pat him on the shoulder (though he prefers a lord’s pat). Then he forgives injuries or slights grandly; was once so out with Jeffrey that a duel nearly came of it; but afterward was his hail-fellow and good friend for years. Sometimes he shows a magnanimous strain—far more than his artificialities of make-up would seem to promise. Thus, being at issue with the publisher, John Murray (a long-dated difference), he determines on good advisement to be away with it; and so goes smack into the den of the great publisher and gives him his hand: such action balances a great deal of namby-pambyism.
But what surprises more than all about Moore, is the very great reputation that he had in his day. We, in these latter times, have come to reckon him (rather rashly, perhaps) only an arch gossipper of letters—a butterfly of those metropolitan gardens—easy, affable, witty, full of smiles, full of good feeling, full of pretty little rhythmical utterances—singing songs as easy as a sky-lark (and leaving the sky thereafter as empty); planting nothing that lifts great growth, or tells larger tale than lies in his own lively tintinnabulation of words.
Yet Byron said of him: “There is nothing Moore may not do, if he sets about it.” Sydney Smith called him “A gentleman of small stature, but full of genius, and a steady friend of all that is honorable.” Leigh Hunt says: “I never received a visit from him, but I felt as if I had been talking with Prior or Sir Charles Sedley.” It is certain that he must have been a most charming companion. Walter Scott says: “It would be a delightful addition to life if Thomas Moore had a cottage within two miles of me.” Indeed, he was always quick to scent anything that might amuse, and to store it up. His diaries overflow with these bright specks and bits of talk, which may kindle a laugh, but do not nestle in the memory.
But considered as a poet whose longish work ought to live and charm the coming generations, his reputation certainly does not hold to the old illuminated heights. Poems of half a century ago, which Lalla Rookh easily outshone, have now put the pretty orientalisms into shade. Nor can we understand how so many did, and do, put such twain of verse-makers as Byron and Moore into one leash, as if they were fellows in power. In the comparison the author of the Loves of the Angels seems to me only a little important-looking, kindly pug—nicely combed, with ribbons about the neck—in an embroidered blanket, with jingling bells at its corners; and Byron—beside him—a lithe, supple leopard, with a tread that threatens and a dangerous glitter in the eye. Milk diet might sate that other; but this one, if occasion served, would lap blood.
In the pages that follow we shall, among others, more or less notable, encounter again that lithe leopard in some of his wanton leaps—into verse, into marriage, into exile, and into the pit of death at Missolonghi.