The chief part of his holiday was spent at the quiet Surrey home of his brother, with his mother and sister; and one is glad to know that he had that peaceful interlude before the stormy end. He had had much to try him, and he had gone through heavy battling of more than one description when out in Sicily.
It was during his time there, when acting second in command to old General Fox, brother of Mr. Charles Fox, Prime Minister of England, that the one love affair of Moore came about. The little tale is worth telling, though apart from the course of this story, for it says much as to the character of Moore.
Several times the assertion has been made that Sir John Moore was engaged to Lady Hester Stanhope, niece of Mr. Pitt. This is a mistake. Lady Hester was his friend, and he admired her greatly; but it was as a friend only, not as a lover. On the conclusive authority of General Anderson, who for twenty-one years was with him in the closest possible intercourse, there was but one whom Moore ever seriously wished to marry. That one was—not Lady Hester, but Caroline Fox, daughter of the old General in command at Sicily.
That the niece of Mr. Pitt should have been his most intimate woman-friend, and the niece of Mr. Fox his one and only love, reads curiously in the light of party politics. But Sir John was no party man. The great Minister, Pitt, had for him an unbounded esteem and affection on the one side. And Mr. Fox, on the other, at a time when a movement was astir to make Moore Commander-in-Chief in India, utterly refused to allow him to go. "It was impossible for him," he said, "in the state in which Europe then was, to send to such a distance a General in whom he had such entire confidence." Moore stood outside political warfare, grandly and simply, as representative of his Country.
He had many troubles in Sicily. The object of the British forces being there was to save the Sicilies from the grip of Napoleon. But the tortuous policy of their Sicilian Majesties, the entire lack of honesty and of public spirit, the underhand cabals and oppositions, the weakness and wickedness of the Queen, and the mischief made by one Englishman there, who acted throughout as Sir John's enemy, hindered far more from being done than was done.
Amid all this, however—amid the fighting, the difficulties, the trickeries, the entanglements of Sicilian politics and warfare, Moore fell deeply in love. But he did not marry. He did not even let the girl know that he loved her.
Caroline Fox was very young, not yet eighteen. Moore was already in his forty-sixth year. He did not think it right, at her age, even to give her the choice.
Whether this decision was in the abstract wise, some may question. It is at least conceivable that Caroline Fox herself was already in love with him. Had she been so, it would indeed have been sad that, from a noble sense of duty, he should have denied happiness to her as well as to himself. True, he had not sought her; but he was intimate in the house, and he was a man of extraordinarily attractive power. In such a case it does seem, from the woman's point of view, that she ought to have been allowed to say for herself either Yea or Nay.
That view does not detract from the admiration which his conduct must arouse. Sir John was not of a nature to love lightly, to give up his wishes easily. It was a hard fight. Harder far this conflict than all his battles with the soldiers of Napoleon.
Yet he conquered; and to the young girl herself he said not one word which might have encouraged her affections. To Anderson he explained his reasons with a frank and touching simplicity, the echo of which comes down to us now through ninety years and more.