Ireland, however, was constant to her poet. In the next summer (1835) he crossed to Dublin, when the British Association was meeting there, and the demonstration when he was first seen in the theatre went beyond all customary bounds and was not to be checked without a brief speech from the box. But a more ceremonious ovation was to come. Moore decided to go to Wexford to visit the home of his grand-parents, and he was to be the guest of a Mr. Boyse who lived at Bannow. On the approach to this town from Wexford—where Moore was met by his host—the party was encountered by a cavalcade bearing green banners, and so escorted formally to a series of triumphal arches, where a decorated car awaited the poet, with Nine Muses ("some of them remarkably pretty girls") ready to place a crown on his head. It had been arranged that the Muses should follow on foot; but as the crowd pressed in, Moore made three of them get up on the car. As they proceeded slowly along, with a band playing Irish melodies, and the tune set to Byron's "Here's a health to thee, Tom Moore," the hero turned to the pretty Muse behind him and said, "This is a long journey for you." "'Oh, sir,' she exclaimed, with a sweetness and kindness of look not to be found in more artificial life, 'I wish it was more than three hundred miles.'"
Speeches followed, with dancing in the evening, and a green balloon floated over the dancers, bearing to the skies, "Welcome, Tom Moore." That evening there came an express from the Lady Superior of the Presentation Convent at Wexford, begging for a visit to her community. Thither accordingly Moore was taken next day, and, for a crowning ceremony, planted with his own hands—"Oh Cupid, prince of gods and men!"—a myrtle in the convent garden. No sooner was the plant in the earth, than the gardener proclaimed, while filling up the hole, "This will not be called myrtle any longer, but the Star of Airin!" Well may Moore ask, "Where is the English gardener chat would have been capable of such a flight?"
Demonstrations of this organised character did not recur; but the spontaneous outbursts of feeling manifested themselves, publicly and privately, in ways often a little ridiculous, but not less often really touching. When Moore next visited Ireland (in 1838) he went to the theatre evidently with the purpose of making a speech, and the opportunity was furnished with éclat: "There exists no title of honour or distinction," he told them, "to which I could attach half so much value as that of being called your poet—the poet of the people of Ireland." Certainly the title was not grudged; and the people of Ireland claimed a sort of proprietary right in their bard, as he found when he embarked at Kingstown for his return.
"The packet was full of people coming to see friends off, and amongst others was a party of ladies, who, I should think, had dined on board, and who, on my being made known to them, almost devoured me with kindness, and at length proceeded so far as to insist on, each of them, kissing me. At this time I was beginning to feel the first rudiments of coming sickness, and the effort to respond to all this enthusiasm, in such a state of stomach, was not a little awkward and trying. However, I kissed the whole party (about five, I think) in succession, two or three of them being, for my comfort, young and good-looking, and was most glad to get away from them to my berth, which through the kindness of the captain (Emerson) was in his own cabin. But I had hardly shut the door, feeling very qualmish, and most glad to have got over this osculatory operation, when there came a gentle tap at the door, and an elderly lady made her appearance, who said that having heard of all that had been going on, she could not rest easy without being also kissed as well as the rest. So, in the most respectful manner possible, I complied with the lady's request, and then betook myself with a heaving stomach to my berth."
A more modest and less embarrassing act of homage was brought to Moore's notice in London by Panizzi. Among the labourers at work on the buildings of the British Museum was a poor Irishman, who, learning that Moore was sometimes to be seen there, offered a pot of ale to any one who would point him out. Accordingly, next time Moore came, the Irishman was taken to where he could get a sight of the poet, as he sat reading. Such was his pleasure at being able to say "I have seen," that he doubled the pot of ale to his conductor. Again, in 1842 Moore was coming away from a public dinner with Washington Irving, and they found rain falling and themselves in sore need of cab or umbrella.
"As we were provided with neither," Moore writes, "our plight was becoming serious, when a common cad ran up to me and said: 'Shall I get you a cab, Mr. Moore? Sure, ain't I the man that patronises your Melodies?' He then ran off in search of a vehicle, while Irving and I stood close up, like a pair of male Caryatides under the very narrow projection of a hall door-ledge, and thought at last that we were quite forgotten by my patron. But he came faithfully back, and while putting me into the cab (without minding at all the trifle that I gave him for his trouble) he said confidentially in my ear: 'Now mind, whenever you want a cab, Misthur Moore, just call for Tim Flaherty, I'm your man.' Now this I call fame, and of somewhat a more agreeable kind than that of Dante, when the women in the street found him out by the marks of hellfire on his beard."
Green balloons, effusive elderly spinsters and the rest, all had their ridiculous side, and Moore was not slow to see it. But, taking these merely as symptoms of a very genuine affection, one may conclude that he had a fair right to feel in his country's gratitude a deep source of strength and consolation. For the rest, the pleasures of friendship and of society never failed him so long as he was able to enjoy them; and his English friends, in the time when he most needed it, did him a real service.
We have seen that he neither liked the measures of the Whig administration—which included two of his intimates, Lord Lansdowne and Lord John Russell, with many others of his friends—nor was in the least disposed to conceal his dislike of them. Lord John wrote to say that he was glad of Moore's decision not to enter Parliament, as it would pain him to find his friend going into the opposite lobby. But he was none the less inclined to serve Moore, and his first step showed an extreme anxiety to propitiate the poet's easily alarmed scruples. He approached Lord Melbourne, then Premier, with a proposal to bestow a pension on Moore's sons. Melbourne replied, with great justice, that to make a small provision for young men was only an encouragement to idleness, and that whatever was done, should be done for Moore himself. When the administration was reconstructed in July 1835, Lord John offered his friend a place in the State Paper Office, which was declined, and Lord Lansdowne then wrote, approving this refusal, but urging in the strongest terms Moore's acceptance of a pension, "which," he said, "no human being can blame the government for giving or you for accepting. The administration is one of a more popular character as respects your Irish opinions than any which has existed or is likely to exist; and your literary reputation is so established that there is not a country under the sun where literary rewards or distinctions exist in which you would not be recognised as the first and most deserving object of them."
To this Moore replied that he would trust himself entirely to Lord Lansdowne's guidance, and accordingly a letter reached him in Dublin, saying that a pension of £300 a year had been granted him—the first granted by the Administration. On his return from the festivities in Bannow, a letter from Bessy awaited him, which is copied in the Journal:—
"My dearest Tom,—Can it really be true that you have a pension of £300 a year? Mrs., Mr., two Misses and young Longman were here to-day, and tell me it is really the case, and that they have seen it in two papers. Should it turn out true, I know not how we can be thankful enough to those who gave it, or to a Higher Power. The Longmans were very kind and nice and so was I, and I invited them all five to come at some future time. At present I can think of nothing but £300 a year, and dear Russell jumps and claps his hands for joy.... If the story is true of the £300, pray give dear Ellen £20, and insist on her drinking £5 worth of wine yearly to be paid out of the £300 a year.... Is it true? I am in a fear of hope and anxiety and feel very oddly. No one to talk to but sweet Buss, who says, 'Now, Papa will not have to work so hard, and will be able to go out a little.' ... N.B.—If this good news be true, it will make a great difference in my eating. I shall then indulge in butter to potatoes. Mind you do not tell this piece of gluttony to any one."