by Thomas Moore
“You need not be alarmed; the ‘fourteen years’ will hardly elapse without some mortality amongst us; it is a long lease of life to speculate upon. So your calculation will not be in so much peril, as the ‘argosie’ will sink before that time, and ‘the pound of flesh’ be withered previously to your being so long out of a return.
“I also wish to give you a hint or two (as you have really behaved very handsomely to Moore in the business, and are a fine fellow in your line) for your advantage. If by your own management you can extract any of my epistles from Lady —— , (* * * * * * *), they might be of use in your collection (sinking of course the names and all such circumstances as might hurt living feelings, or those of survivors); they treat of more topics than love occasionally.
“I will tell you who may happen to have some letters of mine in their possession: Lord Powerscourt, some to his late brother; Mr. Long of — (I forget his place) — but the father of Edward Long of the Guards, who was drowned in going to Lisbon early in 1809; Miss Elizabeth Pigot, of Southwell, Notts (she may be Mistress by this time, for she had a year or two more than I): they were not love-letters, so that you might have them without scruple. There are, or might be, some to the late Rev. J.C. Tattersall, in the hands of his brother (half-brother) Mr. Wheatley, who resides near Canterbury, I think. There are some of Charles Gordon, now of Dulwich; and some few to Mrs. Chaworth; but these latter are probably destroyed or inaccessible.
“I mention these people and particulars merely as chances. Most of them have probably destroyed the letters, which in fact are of little import, many of them written when very young, and several at school and college.
“Peel (the second brother of the Secretary) was a correspondent of mine, and also Porter, the son of the Bishop of Clogher; Lord Clare a very voluminous one; William Harness (a friend of Milman’s) another; Charles Drummond (son of the banker); William Bankes (the voyager), your friend: R.C. Dallas, Esq.; Hodgson; Henry Drury; Hobhouse you were already aware of.
“I have gone through this long list of
“‘The cold, the faithless, and the dead,’
because I know that, like ‘the curious in fish-sauce,’ you are a researcher of such things.
“Besides these, there are other occasional ones to literary men and so forth, complimentary, &c. &c. &c. not worth much more than the rest. There are some hundreds, too, of Italian notes of mine, scribbled with a noble contempt of the grammar and dictionary, in very English Etruscan; for I speak Italian very fluently, but write it carelessly and incorrectly to a degree.”
LETTER 459. TO MR. MOORE.
“September 29. 1821.
“I send you two rough things, prose and verse, not much in themselves, but which will show, one of them, the state of the country, and the other, of your friend’s mind, when they were written. Neither of them were sent to the person concerned, but you will see, by the style of them, that they were sincere, as I am in signing myself
“Yours ever and truly,
“B.”
Of the two enclosures, mentioned in the foregoing note, one was a letter intended to be sent to Lady Byron relative to his money invested in the funds, of which the following are extracts: —
“Ravenna, Marza 1mo, 1821.
“I have received your message, through my sister’s letter, about English security, &c. &c. It is considerate, (and true, even,) that such is to be found — but not that I shall find it. Mr. * *, for his own views and purposes, will thwart all such attempts till he has accomplished his own, viz. to make me lend my fortune to some client of his choosing.
“At this distance — after this absence, and with my utter ignorance of affairs and business — with my temper and impatience, I have neither the means nor the mind to resist. Thinking of the funds as I do, and wishing to secure a reversion to my sister and her children, I should jump at most expedients.
“What I told you is come to pass — the Neapolitan war is declared. Your funds will fall, and I shall be in consequence ruined. That’s nothing — but my blood relations will be so. You and your child are provided for. Live and prosper — I wish so much to both. Live and prosper — you have the means. I think but of my real kin and kindred, who may be the victims of this accursed bubble.
“You neither know nor dream of the consequences of this war. It is a war of men with monarchs, and will spread like a spark on the dry, rank grass of the vegetable desert. What it is with you and your English, you do not know, for ye sleep. What it is with us here, I know, for it is before, and around, and within us.
“Judge of my detestation of England and of all that it inherits, when I avoid returning to your country at a time when not only my pecuniary interests, but, it may be, even my personal security, require it. I can say no more, for all letters are opened. A short time will decide upon what is to be done here, and then you will learn it without being more troubled with me or my correspondence. Whatever happens, an individual is little, so the cause is forwarded.
“I have no more to say to you on the score of affairs, or on any other subject.”
The second enclosure in the note consisted of some verses, written by him, December 10th, 1820, on seeing the following paragraph in a newspaper:— “Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual Charity Ball given at the Town Hall at Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Sir G. Crewe, Bart, the principal steward.” These verses are full of strong and indignant feeling, — every stanza concluding pointedly with the words “Charity Ball,” — and the thought that predominates through the whole may be collected from a few of the opening lines: —
“What matter the pangs of a husband and father, If his sorrows in exile be great or be small, So the Pharisee’s glories around her she gather, And the Saint patronises her ‘Charity Ball.’
“What matters — a heart, which though faulty was feeling, Be driven to excesses which once could appal — That the Sinner should suffer is only fair dealing, As the Saint keeps her charity back for ‘the Ball,’” &c. &c.
LETTER 460. TO MR. MOORE.
“September — no — October 1. 1821.
“I have written to you lately, both in prose and verse, at great length, to Paris and London. I presume that Mrs. Moore, or whoever is your Paris deputy, will forward my packets to you in London.
“I am setting off for Pisa, if a slight incipient intermittent fever do not prevent me. I fear it is not strong enough to give Murray much chance of realising his thirteens again. I hardly should regret it, I think, provided you raised your price upon him — as what Lady Holderness (my sister’s grandmother, a Dutchwoman) used to call Augusta, her Residee Legatoo — so as to provide for us all: my bones with a splendid and larmoyante edition, and you with double what is extractable during my lifetime.
“I have a strong presentiment that (bating some out of the way accident) you will survive me. The difference of eight years, or whatever it is, between our ages, is nothing. I do not feel (nor am, indeed, anxious to feel) the principle of life in me tend to longevity. My father and mother died, the one at thirty-five or six, and the other at forty-five; and Dr. Rush, or somebody else, says that nobody lives long, without having one parent, at least, an old stager.
“I should, to be sure, like to see out my eternal mother-in-law, not so much for her heritage, but from my natural antipathy. But the indulgence of this natural desire is too much to expect from the Providence who presides over old women. I bore you with all this about lives, because it has been put in my way by a calculation of insurances which Murray has sent me. I really think you should have more, if I evaporate within a reasonable time.
“I wonder if my ‘Cain’ has got safe to England. I have written since about sixty stanzas of a poem, in octave stanzas, (in the Pulci style, which the fools in England think was invented by Whistlecraft — it is as old as the hills in Italy,) called ‘The Vision of of Judgment, by Quevedo Redivivus,’ with this motto —
“‘A Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel: I thank thee, Jew
, for teaching me that word.’
“In this it is my intent to put the said George’s Apotheosis in a Whig point of view, not forgetting the Poet Laureate for his preface and his other demerits.
“I am just got to the pass where Saint Peter, hearing that the royal defunct had opposed Catholic Emancipation, rises up, and, interrupting Satan’s oration, declares he will change places with Cerberus sooner than let him into heaven, while he has the keys thereof.
“I must go and ride, though rather feverish and chilly. It is the ague season; but the agues do me rather good than harm. The feel after the fit is as if one had got rid of one’s body for good and all.
“The gods go with you! — Address to Pisa.
“Ever yours.
“P.S. Since I came back I feel better, though I stayed out too late for this malaria season, under the thin crescent of a very young moon, and got off my horse to walk in an avenue with a Signora for an hour. I thought of you and
‘When at eve thou rovest By the star thou lovest.’
But it was not in a romantic mood, as I should have been once; and yet it was a new woman, (that is, new to me,) and, of course, expected to be made love to. But I merely made a few common-place speeches. I feel, as your poor friend Curran said, before his death, ‘a mountain of lead upon my heart,’ which I believe to be constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same remedy.”
LETTER 461. TO MR. MOORE.
“October 6. 1821.
“By this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of * * *’s impudent anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third. I should like you to take a look over it, as I think there are two or three things in it which might please ‘our puir hill folk.’
“By the last two or three posts I have written to you at length. My ague bows to me every two or three days, but we are not as yet upon intimate speaking terms. I have an intermittent generally every two years, when the climate is favourable (as it is here), but it does me no harm. What I find worse, and cannot get rid of, is the growing depression of my spirits, without sufficient cause. I ride — I am not intemperate in eating or drinking — and my general health is as usual, except a slight ague, which rather does good than not. It must be constitutional; for I know nothing more than usual to depress me to that degree.
“How do you manage? I think you told me, at Venice, that your spirits did not keep up without a little claret. I can drink, and bear a good deal of wine (as you may recollect in England); but it don’t exhilarate — it makes me savage and suspicious, and even quarrelsome. Laudanum has a similar effect; but I can take much of it without any effect at all. The thing that gives me the highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a close of salts — I mean in the afternoon, after their effect. But one can’t take them like champagne.
“Excuse this old woman’s letter; but my lemancholy don’t depend upon health, for it is just the same, well or ill, or here or there.
“Yours,” &c.
LETTER 462. TO MR. MURRAY.
“Ravenna, October 9. 1821.
“You will please to present or convey the enclosed poem to Mr. Moore. I sent him another copy to Paris, but he has probably left that city.
“Don’t forget to send me my first act of ‘Werner’ (if Hobhouse can find it amongst my papers) — send it by the post (to Pisa); and also cut out Harriet Lee’s ‘German’s Tale’ from the ‘Canterbury Tales,’ and send it in a letter also. I began that tragedy in 1815.
“By the way, you have a good deal of my prose tracts in MS.? Let me have proofs of them all again — I mean the controversial ones, including the last two or three years of time. Another question! — The Epistle of St. Paul, which I translated from the Armenian, for what reason have you kept it back, though you published that stuff which gave rise to the ‘Vampire?’ Is it because you are afraid to print any thing in opposition to the cant of the Quarterly about Manicheism? Let me have a proof of that Epistle directly. I am a better Christian than those parsons of yours, though not paid for being so.
“Send — Faber’s Treatise on the Cabiri.
“Sainte Croix’s Mystères du Paganisme (scarce, perhaps, but to be found, as Mitford refers to his work frequently).
“A common Bible, of a good legible print (bound in russia). I have one; but as it was the last gift of my sister (whom I shall probably never see again), I can only use it carefully, and less frequently, because I like to keep it in good order. Don’t forget this, for I am a great reader and admirer of those books, and had read them through and through before I was eight years old, — that is to say, the Old Testament, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a pleasure. I speak as a boy, from the recollected impression of that period at Aberdeen in 1796.
“Any novels of Scott, or poetry of the same. Ditto of Crabbe, Moore, and the Elect; but none of your curst common-place trash, — unless something starts up of actual merit, which may very well be, for ’tis time it should.”
LETTER 463. TO MR. MURRAY.
“October 20. 1821.
“If the errors are in the MS. write me down an ass: they are not, and I am content to undergo any penalty if they be. Besides, the omitted stanza (last but one or two), sent afterwards, was that in the MS. too?
“As to ‘honour,’ I will trust no man’s honour in affairs of barter. I will tell you why: a state of bargain is Hobbes’s ‘state of nature — a state of war.’ It is so with all men. If I come to a friend, and say, ‘Friend, lend me five hundred pounds,’ — he either does it, or says that he can’t or won’t; but if I come to Ditto, and say, ‘Ditto, I have an excellent house, or horse, or carriage, or MSS., or books, or pictures, or, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. honestly worth a thousand pounds, you shall have them for five hundred,’ what does Ditto say? why, he looks at them, he hums, he ha’s, — he humbugs, if he can, to get a bargain as cheaply as he can, because it is a bargain. This is in the blood and bone of mankind; and the same man who would lend another a thousand pounds without interest, would not buy a horse of him for half its value if he could help it. It is so: there’s no denying it; and therefore I will have as much as I can, and you will give as little; and there’s an end. All men are intrinsical rascals, and I am only sorry that, not being a dog, I can’t bite them.
“I am filling another book for you with little anecdotes, to my own knowledge, or well authenticated, of Sheridan, Curran, &c. and such other public men as I recollect to have been acquainted with, for I knew most of them more or less. I will do what I can to prevent your losing by my obsequies.
“Yours,” &c.
LETTER 464. TO MR. ROGERS.
“Ravenna, October 21. 1821.
“I shall be (the gods willing) in Bologna on Saturday next. This is a curious answer to your letter; but I have taken a house in Pisa for the winter, to which all my chattels, furniture, horses, carriages, and live stock are already removed, and I am preparing to follow.
“The cause of this removal is, shortly, the exile or proscription of all my friends’ relations and connections here into Tuscany, on account of our late politics; and where they go, I accompany them. I merely remained till now to settle some arrangements about my daughter, and to give time for my furniture, &c. to precede me. I have not here a seat or a bed hardly, except some jury chairs, and tables, and a mattress for the week to come.
“If you will go on with me to Pisa, I can lodge you for as long as you like; (they write that the house, the Palazzo Lanfranchi, is spacious: it is on the Arno;) and I have four carriages, and as many saddle-horses (such as they are in these parts), with all other conveniences, at your command, as also their owner. If you could do this, we may, at least, cross the Apennines together; or if you are going by another road, we shall meet at Bologna, I hope. I address this to the post-office (as you desire), and you will probably find me at the Albergo di San Marco. If you arrive first, wait till I come up, which will be (barring accidents) on Saturday or Sunday at farthest.
“I presume you are
alone in your voyages. Moore is in London incog. according to my latest advices from those climes.
“It is better than a lustre (five years and six months and some days, more or less) since we met; and, like the man from Tadcaster in the farce (‘Love laughs at Locksmiths’), whose acquaintances, including the cat and the terrier, who ‘caught a halfpenny in his mouth,’ were all ‘gone dead,’ but too many of our acquaintances have taken the same path. Lady Melbourne, Grattan, Sheridan, Curran, &c. &c. almost every body of much name of the old school. But ‘so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion,’ therefore let us make the most of our remainder.
“Let me find two lines from you at ‘the hostel or inn.’
“Yours ever, &c.
“B.”
LETTER 465. TO MR. MOORE.
“Ravenna, Oct. 28. 1821.
“‘’Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,’ and in three hours more I have to set out on my way to Pisa — sitting up all night to be sure of rising. I have just made them take off my bed-clothes — blankets inclusive — in case of temptation from the apparel of sheets to my eyelids.
“Samuel Rogers is — or is to be — at Bologna, as he writes from Venice.
“I thought our Magnifico would ‘pound you,’ if possible. He is trying to ‘pound’ me, too; but I’ll specie the rogue — or, at least, I’ll have the odd shillings out of him in keen iambics.
“Your approbation of ‘Sardanapalus’ is agreeable, for more reasons than one. Hobhouse is pleased to think as you do of it, and so do some others — but the ‘Arimaspian,’ whom, like ‘a Gryphon in the wilderness,’ I will ‘follow for his gold’ (as I exhorted you to do before), did or doth disparage it— ‘stinting me in my sizings.’ His notable opinions on the ‘Foscari’ and ‘Cain’ he hath not as yet forwarded; or, at least, I have not yet received them, nor the proofs thereof, though promised by last post.