"She reverted in her odd way to the early days of our acquaintance, and said, 'I didn't so much like you in those days. You were too-too—what shall I say?' 'Too brisk and airy perhaps,' said I. 'Yes,' she replied, taking hold of one of my grizzly locks, 'I like you better since you have got these.' I could then overhear her, after I left her, say to the person with whom I had found her speaking, 'That's as good a creature as ever lived!'"
The light and buoyant nature, which had been so sorely battered, received its final shock soon after the date to which I have brought this story. 1844 was spent in scriving over the History,—Moore repelling now the friendly advances even of his Bowood neighbours, yet with difficulty repelling them. The task was finished at last in the spring of 1845, but there remained the need of a preface, and Moore records that after various endeavours he left this, "in utter despair," to the publishers to provide. Later in the year, the annual visit from his sister Ellen made a brightness in the house, now so quiet; and after she had gone, there came letters from Tom asking for money for a trip home. It was sent, and he wrote back rejoicing at the prospect, but explaining that he should not come before spring owing to a cough which he had contracted. The words were ominous, and both his parents almost made up their minds that they were never to see him again.
The foreboding was only too well justified. But the first blow which fell was one little looked for. Ellen Moore died suddenly in her bed. A month later came from Africa "a strange and ominous-looking letter which we opened with trembling hands, and it told us that my son Tom was dead." I add one last quotation from the Diary.
"The last of our five children now are gone and I am left desolate and alone. Not a single relative have I now left in the world."
That is practically the end of Moore's life. A severe illness followed, and "when he recovered," says Lord John Russell, "he was a different man." "Nothing seemed to rest upon his mind," and, with his memory, his wit had gone also. He made an excursion to town in 1846 to superintend the production of the last volume of his history, and one year later still, to be the guest of Rogers, who was to Moore, at any rate, a most considerate, loyal, helpful, and constant friend. But what he wrote to this friend from Sloperton was true: "I am sinking here into a mere vegetable." So, peacefully at the last, after five years of mere breathing, in which neither joy nor sorrow touched him, he faded out of life; watched over to the last by the woman who had grown more necessary to him with every year.
He left her unprovided with money, yet not without provision. The Memoirs which he, himself a great lover and reader of such literature, had scrupulously kept for a period of close on thirty years, were always designed to be a posthumous resource; and he had confided them by a will made many years earlier to the care of Lord John Russell. Had he foreseen that the friend of whom he asked this office would be charged with the cares of an Administration, when it fell to be accomplished, the request would probably not have been made; but being made, it was duly honoured, and Moore, who had always liked impressive auspices for his children at the font,[1] had himself a Prime Minister for his biographer.
The work might perhaps have been better done by a man less fully occupied, but the purpose for which the Memoirs were written could not have been more fully served. The Longmans offered £3000 for the Memoirs, if Lord John would edit them, and it was found that for this sum an annuity could be bought, equal to the pension which had for the last part of Moore's life been the sole resource of the household. Bessy Moore lived and died in Sloperton, and was laid in the churchyard beside her husband and her children; and old men in the little Wiltshire hamlet remember her and her good works—the only one of her lifelong pleasures and occupations which was left to this good woman, whom it is impossible to think of as lonely. The record of her life and her husband's—for the two are inseparable—may close with as touching a little attention as was ever paid by an elderly man to his elderly wife. In 1839, when money was no way plenty with him, Moore sent five pounds to a friend, which the friend was to forward anonymously to Bessy for her poor—thus giving her the pleasure which he judged she would most value, without the distress of thinking that he must labour more to make up the little outlay.
[1] Lady Donegal, Byron, Lord Lansdowne, Lord John Russell, and Dr. Parr were among the sponsors.