Elizabeth Milbanke Lamb, The Formidable Lady Melbourne

By Lauren Gilbert


The Milbanke and Melbourne Families, c 1770, by George Stubbs

Her date of birth apparently unknown, Elizabeth Milbanke was baptized Oct 15, 1751 at Croft-on-Trees Yorkshire. Her father was Sir Ralph Milbanke (5th baronet), and her mother Elizabeth Hedworth. The family home was Halnaby Hall in Yorkshire. Her father and her mother’s father were both political (her grandfather was a member of parliament for County Durham). Elizabeth was intelligent and educated privately (probably at home), her studies including French, and poetry. Her brother Ralph inherited their father’s title. Her mother died in 1767, when Elizabeth was approximately 15 years old.

In 1769, at about age 17, Elizabeth met and married Sir Peniston Lamb, who was 24 years old, the marriage being celebrated on April 13 1769 in London. He was the 2nd baronet, and they promptly moved to London. It was a marriage of mutual advantage: her lineage was better and she brought 10,000 pounds to the marriage; he provided her access to the highest level of London society. He was a Whig politician, representing at one time the Borough of Malmsbury, and Elizabeth quickly found her feet as a political hostess. She also developed a good head for business, and organized her husband’s financial affairs, including overseeing the building of Melbourne House in Piccadilly, London. Sir Peniston obtained an Irish peerage as Lord Melbourne, Baron of Kilmore in 1771. In 1781, he was elevated to Viscount Melbourne.

Sir Peniston was almost immediately unfaithful, which Elizabeth accepted with tolerance, if not with grace. Elizabeth was beautiful, intelligent, and had the gift for making guests feel at ease, so became a successful hostess quickly. She also attracted confidences, which she remembered for future reference. Rather than show pique at her husband’s straying, Elizabeth focused her efforts on her activities as a reigning hostess and in making friendships that could be advantageous to her husband’s and family’s advancement. In time, these friendships included men, and involved affairs. Calm, rational, with a caustic wit, she seemed to be more comfortable with men than women. The first child, a son named Peniston born in 1770, was definitely Sir Peniston’s child. After that, who knew? It must be said that Sir Peniston accepted her affairs with the same toleration that she showed with his, including the children born of them. Elizabeth knew what Society expected and what Society would tolerate, and managed these activities with discretion.

A significant friendship ensued in 1774, when William Cavendish, the 5th Duke of Devonshire, married Georgiana Spencer. Elizabeth was quick to make friends with Georgiana, and became a mentor to her. (Since the Duchess of Devonshire had a better pedigree, more money and much higher rank, it was a way for Elizabeth to preserve her sphere of influence as a leader of society.) It may be said that Lady Melbourne kept her friends close, but kept her rivals closer by making friends with them. She was pragmatic and ruthless in her way.

Another significant friendship was that with Lord George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont. Lord Egremont was an advisor who educated her in agricultural and other business matters. He never married, and the friendship became romantic. Lord Egremont was supposedly the father of Elizabeth’s children William born 1779, Frederick born 1782, and Emily born 1787, all of whom were accepted by Sir Peniston. (The fact that he never married was attributed to Lady Melbourne’s influence in some sources.)

In 1782, Lady Melbourne became acquainted with George, the Prince of Wales. Their friendship developed into a fruitful relationship, resulting in an appointment as Gentleman of the Bedchamber at Carlton House for her husband in 1783, and another child, significantly named George, who was born in 1784 and widely believed to be the prince’s son. When that romance cooled about 1786, she resumed (assuming it had been interrupted) her relationship with Lord Egremont, as witnessed by the birth of Emily. Even so, she managed to maintain her friendship with the prince and a marital relationship with Sir Peniston. Harriet, the youngest child of the marriage, was born in 1789, and was believed to have been the only other child born by Lady Melbourne to her husband. Sadly, Harriet died of consumption (tuberculosis) on June 7, 1803, a devastating blow to Lady Melbourne. She was a devoted mother to her children, keenly interested in their development and studies. All of the children spent most of their time at the country estate of Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire, until the boys went to Eton. (Supposedly it was while visiting her son Peniston at Eton that she made the acquaintance of the Prince in 1782.)

The oldest son Peniston died January 24, 1805 of tuberculosis. Peniston had been his father’s favourite, and by all accounts was indulged by Sir Peniston, who gave him a personal allowance of 5000 pounds per year, allowed him to leave school early to travel the Continent, and engage in basically frivolous pastimes. Young Peniston was apparently very intelligent and replaced his father as MP for Newport, but was not particularly interested in politics and did very little. According to some sources, Peniston died in the arms of his mistress, whom Lady Melbourne brought to her son to comfort his last moments. The occasion of Peniston’s death is noted as the only time that Sir Peniston complained about his wife’s affairs, as young Peniston’s death meant that his heir would not be a child of his body. That heir was the second son, William, who also happened to be Lady Melbourne’s favourite. William had studied law, and entered into politics with real interest. His career and success became a primary focus for Lady Melbourne.



Peniston Lamb, 1805


Although Elizabeth maintained her friendship with Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, she thoroughly disliked Harriet Ponsonby, Countess of Bessborough, the Duchess of Devonshire’s sister, and Caroline Ponsonby, the Countess’s daughter, as well. This dislike, however, did not prevent her from accepting her son William’s engagement and marriage in 1805 to Caroline. Lady Melbourne was a devoted mother, who was laser-focused on advancing her children’s interest at every turn by any means necessary, and was able to set aside her dislike since Caroline’s superior pedigree and influential relatives gave the match all the appearance of an advantageous one. This courtship and marriage started an explosive chain of events.

I do not propose to get into a detailed discussion of the life and affairs of Lady Caroline Lamb (the subject of many blogs, biographies and novels) but it is impossible to talk about Lady Melbourne without reference to her relationship with her daughter-in-law. In a word, bad. It is hard to imagine two ladies with less in common than Elizabeth and Caroline Lamb. From their appearance (Lady Melbourne being tall, full-fleshed and commanding vs. Caroline being slender, delicate and clinging) to their interests and personalities, they were almost direct opposites. As mentioned before, Elizabeth never liked Caroline or her mother, and she deeply resented Caroline’s influence over her son William. While pursuing and after wedding Caroline, William neglected his political career to enjoy the entertainments of the Devonshire set.



Caroline Lamb, by Eliza Trotter


Caroline was undisciplined and uncontrolled, intelligent but not well-educated, willing to have violent tantrums, had no concept of discretion or reticence, and unable to brook any restraint. Lady Melbourne was controlled, as well as controlling, even tempered, discreet, well-educated with a sharp wit and not reluctant to show her contempt for Caroline and her mother. William and Caroline lived on a floor in Melbourne Hall, which can only have exacerbated things to the maximum. In time, the marriage became difficult, and stressed even further after the birth of their son George in 1807, who was later found to be disabled. Then Caroline had a flirt, possibly an affair, with Sir Godfrey Webster in 1810, which alienated Lady Melbourne further.

Then, into this volatile mixture, we drop George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron Byron and poet. Lady Melbourne was a mature woman (approximately 54 years old at the time of William’s marriage to Caroline in 1805) but she was a fascinating companion and still attractive to men. In 1811, Caroline met Lord Byron and by the middle of 1812, their affair was public knowledge. At some point, Lady Melbourne met Byron and developed a personal relationship with him herself, sharing letters from Caroline as well as engaging in her own correspondence with him. Although there was a large age difference (she was in her 60’s when he was in her 20’s), she was a fascinating correspondent, and subtly influenced Byron with her criticisms of Caroline.

Lady Melbourne’s brother’s daughter Anne Isabella Milbanke (known as Annabella) was in London, and was introduced to her aunt and society. Annabella managed to attract Byron’s by appearing cool and disapproving, at a point where his attraction to Caroline’s passions was wearing thin. William’s neglect of his political career put him out of office, which disappointed Lady Melbourne even further. Lady Melbourne and Byron communicated frequently during this time. Annabella found her interest focused on Byron; the couple ended up engaged in 1814, in spite of her doubts and his basic reluctance, thanks in no small part to Lady Melbourne’s machinations and encouragement. While Caroline was trying to hold Byron’s interest, Lady Melbourne and, to a lesser degree, Annabella were busy redirecting it. Ultimately, Caroline was completely out-classed in the Byron contest, in spite of her numerous and increasingly brazen attempts to recover his interest. The affair was over by the end of 1812; unfortunately, Caroline didn’t know it.

This was a tumultuous time for all concerned, with Caroline continuing her brazen behaviour and her pursuit of Byron, Byron’s relationships with his wife and half-sister becoming more bizarre, and Lady Melbourne still in touch with all. In 1816, William had almost reached the end of his tether, and (to the he relief, if not the pleasure, of his family) was on the brink of giving up on Caroline, Byron’s marriage to Annabella was falling apart, and everyone was exhausted. In the midst of the drama, Lord Melbourne achieved his peerage as Baron Melbourne in 1815. In April of 1816, Byron left England and William was ready to break with Caroline, to the pleasure of many, especially Lady Byron and his sister Emily. The straw that almost finished it was Caroline’s novel, GLENARVON, in which Caroline portrayed herself as the innocent victim of her husband and all of society (with recognizable portraits of friends and family). Caroline was basically cast out by society, and almost cast out by William. In spite of Lady Melbourne’s best efforts and the wishes of his family, he kept her as his wife until she died.

This long-running serial of her battle with her daughter-in-law (who was really not an equal combatant), I believe, shows all of Lady Melbourne’s least attractive traits: she was determined to dominate, overwhelmingly ambitious, certain she knew best, and willing to do whatever it took to accomplish her ends. She was cynical, hard and unconcerned with morality once she had decided what she wanted. This pattern continued throughout her life; she was less concerned with right than with expedience. She was shrewd and ambitious for her family, but somehow heartless.

Lady Melbourne died April 6, 1818 at Melbourne House in Whitehall. It was a protracted and painful death, attributed to rheumatism. All of her children except Frederick seemed to have been present. She was buried at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire. At the time of her death, none of her children had lived up to her ambitions for them. That lay all in the future: William resume his political career and became Prime Minister for Victoria; Emily married her lover Lord Palmerston (with Queen Victoria’s permission) and became the wife of a prime minister. Lord Melbourne, her husband outlived her, passing away in 1828.


Sources include:

Blyth, Henry. CARO The Fatal Passion. New York, Coward McCann & Geoghegan Inc.: 1972.

Cecil, David. The Young Melbourne. Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis and New York: 1939.

Douglass, Paul. Lady Caroline Lamb, A Biography. New York, Palgrave McMillan: 2004.

Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. New York, Random House: 1998.

Gross, Jonathan David, ed. Byron’s “Corbeau Blanc” The Life and Letters of Lady Melbourne. Texas A & M, 1998 (original published by Rice University, 1998).

History and Other Thoughts blog. “Elizabeth Lamb, Viscountess Melbourne.” Read here.
World of the Marchioness blog. “Caroline Lamb: Family Connections-Brocket Hall.” August 17, 2014. Read here.


Image Attributions: 

The Milbanke and Melbourne Families, from Wikimedia Commons here.

Peniston Lamb, from Wikimedia Commons here.

Caroline Lamb, from Wikimedia Commons here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Lauren Gilbert is the author of HEYERWOOD: A Novel, released in 2011, and is working on A RATIONAL ATTACMENT, due out later this year. A long-time resident of Florida, she lives with her husband. Visit her website here for more information.

Literary Genius in the 'Long Eighteenth' Century

By Janet Todd

Over many decades I have been a biographer and literary-historical critic of the long eighteenth century. Some of my earliest work helped to promote women writers who, at that time, were largely obscure, writers such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Smith, Mary Hays, Frances Sheridan - and indeed Mary Shelley, who was not always known even as the creator of Frankenstein, let alone of her other historical novels.

Happily, times have much changed and these writers are now so appreciated that they form the basis of many university courses devoted to the literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But far more obscure are the large number of other women who entered the scribbling marketplace during these years. They came in such a crowd that for a time they even outnumbered their male colleagues.

Some of these women wrote short moralising tales for the poor or for children, but the majority fed the taste for Gothic and sensational fiction which had been so brilliantly accelerated by Mrs Radcliffe with The Romance of the Forest (1791)and The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). They were jobbing writers supplying the cheaper circulating libraries. These had sprung up in the late eighteenth century to feed a public desire for inexpensive fiction that needed to be read only once and at speed, then passed on or discarded. The works were published by presses such as the notorious Minerva Press that were unperturbed about quality, not even worrying about repetition or the use of identical material across books with only different titles to differentiate them.

I read a lot of these novels and enjoyed the lurid woodcuts that often accompanied them. In the process I became especially fascinated by the women who wrote them. On the whole their lives are hidden from us but those whom we can hear across the centuries - from a few extant letters and some prefatory material - are keen to stress that they were not presumptuous, were not encroaching on the male business of public writing, and did not regard themselves as ‘authors’. They never expected to be valued by the literary world or reviewed in respectable journals. Often they declared they wrote for money because there was no male breadwinner to support them and their children, either through the death of a husband or by his desertion of his family.

Far from these jobbing writers is of course Jane Austen, who very much regarded herself as an ‘Author’ and a highly skilful one.

She was not in the position of these women writers for, although she was never well off, she was never close to destitution. She always had a supportive family. So, although she was very eager to earn as much money as possible from her writings, she was not dependent on this income for a living.

During my last years in academics I have been studying Austen’s life and novels - I am the general editor of the Cambridge edition of all her works and I have written and edited four volumes dealing with her fiction. It is from this close involvement that I can assert that Austen well knew her worth: she was tart in her comments on other less skilled but popular writers and very careful in the revision of her own novels. She is quite different from the Gothic and sensational authors mentioned above: for a start, they would never have been allowed to publish with the prestigious press of John Murray. In Jane Austen’s lifetime Murray brought out Emma and the second edition of Mansfield Park.

Because of her superior talents and powers, we now couple Austen with Lord Byron, Murray’s most famous author, and in college courses put the pair together because they are from the same era. Yet at the time there were profound differences in public response. Despite the enormous fame Jane Austen now has, when she was alive she was very little known and any personal praise was usually directed at her as a home-loving and pious spinster. Byron, however, was part of the new cult of the natural and creative genius, a lone individual who had a link to the divine and whose art came more from inspiration than from craft. Although we know from surviving manuscripts that it was often not the case, Romantic poets such as Byron and his contemporary and friend, Percy Bysshe Shelley, claimed sudden inspiration for their writing. By contrast, Jane Austen admitted to spending 15 or so years intermittently polishing and revising Pride and Prejudice.

The idea of the ‘genius’ as a separate and distinctive being took hold in the culture just as the communal ideas of the Enlightenment were being dashed by the bloody failure of the French Revolution. The ‘genius’ was almost invariably male. He was different from other people, and he lived by different rules: he was uninhibited by the morality that constrained the rest of ordinary humanity. But there was always a threatening shadow about him. For the man of genius had a demon within that could spur him on to great art or to his destruction. To sustain himself he required both enormous self-belief and enormous belief in himself from others.

Byron and Shelley both at times held this belief, Shelley rather more than Byron, and both men, as is well known, played havoc with the lives of the women who loved them or cared for them. My most recent biography, Death and the Maidens, described the effect of Shelley on my main subject, Mary Wollstonecraft’s eldest daughter, Fanny. It also showed his impact on her half sister Mary Shelley, whom he later married, and on his first wife Harriet. Byron and Shelley were indeed great poets, worthy of some of the adulation they received. What happens to the ‘genius’ if the adulation is there but the substance is not? What happens to the worshipper or lover when she realises the idol is hollow?

I have described a little of my past work and interests to suggest where some of my material came from when at last - in my mid 70s - I retired from full time academic and administrative work to become what I'd always wanted to be: a novelist. A Man of Genius has as a protagonist Ann, who resembles one of those many hack writers who produced the ‘horrid’ novels that so entranced Catherine Morland in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. Her writing of Gothic novels provides her with a reasonable living and above all makes her independent of family. She can avoid the usual role of the poor but ladylike young woman: as governess, teacher or companion. She turns to Gothic writing because in her lonely childhood she had already become enthralled by this kind of fiction, stories of fear, entrapment, illicit passion and desperate pursuit.

In the centre of my novel is a fatal attraction of a woman for a man admired by himself and his followers as a ‘genius’. My story does not follow the trajectory of my biographies of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Fanny, both of whose passions led to suicide or attempted suicide. At the same time my reading of these star-crossed lives did, I think, inform my creation of Ann and her demanding lover Robert.

The historical background of my novel is the period I have long loved and studied: the Regency in England. In 1815 at the battle of Waterloo the English Duke of Wellington defeated the French Emperor Napoleon and brought to a close more than two decades of European war. A few years earlier, the intermittently mad George III had been declared irreparably insane and his debauched, dissolute and very extravagant son had become Prince Regent. Five years after Waterloo George III died and ended the Regency. This period between 1815 and the accession of George IV is a time associated with glamorous style, excess, and an unprecedented flowering of Romantic poetry. It is also associated with political repression, a clamping down on home-grown political and social dissent.

My male protagonist grew up under the shadow of the French Revolution when universal radical change seemed possible and when heroic men thought they might bring it about in Britain and Ireland with inspiring words and daring acts - as initially seemed to be happening in France. But they were adults in a time when these hopes had been much dashed by the Reign of Terror and the imperialistic conquests of Napoleon. Some men and women still held to beliefs and hopes, and on them the government kept a firm eye. From time to time they were questioned and imprisoned for sedition and plotting. Byron and Shelley were both disillusioned with the political mood in an increasingly conservative England and both left for continental Europe and remained there. In this respect alone, my character Robert resembles these Romantic poets.

As in most periods when there is a flourishing press and great cartoonists, the royal family provided much entertainment. To ensure an easy succession to the British throne and despite his private marriage to a Catholic- a forbidden union in this Protestant country - the Prince had been persuaded to marry a German princess, Caroline of Brunswick in 1795. He took an instant and deep dislike to her. Over the next years he persecuted this unwanted and rather foolish lady who took to travelling with a motley entourage around Europe. Her husband sent emissaries to find enough suitable evidence of imropriety to allow him a divorce. The 'Delicate Investigation', as the late phase of the investigation was called, much concerned the Princess’s time in Venice and her relationship with the Italian Bartolomeo Pergami. The fat, squat Princess and the tall be-whiskered Pergami do not feature in my novel as characters but, as they amuse all of Europe, so they intermittently amuse my heroine!

With the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 victorious England became the most powerful country in Europe and London, its bustling and commercial centre, flourished and grew richer. By contrast, Venice was in a sorry state. By the time Ann and Robert travel there, its glamour has been tarnished and its political hopes defeated.

It had been a great maritime and commercial power with a thousand-year-old history of independence as a republic, boasting an idiosyncratic system of government and laws, and a robust sense of itself as superior politically and culturally to other states. It had both opposed popes and created them, and it had bred and nurtured amazing sculptors and architects, as well as the most celebrated painters of the Renaissance, Tintoretto, Veronese and Titian. Its richness was legendary. But, by the end of the eighteenth century, it had suffered a long decline and Napoleon had an easy time of it when he chose to conquer it and make it part of his Italian empire in 1797. It was a dismal and shameful end to a great military and cultural history.

The following year Napoleon gave Venice to his ally, Austria, but by 1805 it was back in French hands. It stayed there until the battle of Waterloo crushed French imperial power. In the distribution of spoils that followed his defeat Venice was ceded once more to Austria and made part of its kingdom of Lombardy and Venetia. Some Venetians appreciated the changes the Austrians made to their city and some collaborated with them in bringing these about, while others preferred the French as conquering master for, although even more radical in the changes they wrought on the city - they tore down churches and convents and carted off many artistic treasures to Paris - they appeared more compatible to the Venetians in temperament. Still others mourned the loss of control and plotted for an independence that Venice would never see again: in 1866 it would become part of the independent kingdom of Italy.

The dilapidated - but still glamorous - city of A Man of Genius is not far from that described by John Ruskin thirty years later in his monumental study, The Stones of Venice. He likened the city’s decay to that of a wearied and aged human being. Although Venice had always been on the aristocratic grand tour and continued to be so after 1815, very soon it attracted as well more modest middle class tourists from northern Europe, armed with an increasing array of guidebooks. The era of mass tourism was, however, still in the future.

I end with a photograph I have just taken of the southern lagoon of Venice on a cold February day. My characters first sees the place in cold and dreary weather and never quite gets over the experience! But Ann in particular also succumbs to Venice’s special magic.

Janet Todd has just retired from teaching, mainly in the US and the UK. Her last positions were as Professor of English in the University of Aberdeen and President of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Her most recent published works have been introductions to the novels of Jane Austen and biographies of women writers from Aphra Behn to Mary Wollstonecraft. A Man of Genius is her first original novel.

Thomas Moore - Ireland's Minstrel Boy

by Arthur Russell

Thomas Moore is remembered as the man who brought Irish music and Irish melodies to the world. He was a man of small stature with a sweet tenor voice who graced and entertained in many aristocratic drawing rooms of late Georgian and early Victorian England, bringing with him many tunes and lyrics learned during his Irish childhood. Early in his career as an entertainer he made a successful tours to the east coast of United States and Canada.

Thomas Moore (National Gallery of Ireland)

Thomas Moore was born in 16 Aungier Street in Dublin on May 28th 1779, eldest son of grocer and wine merchant John Moore, a native Irish speaker from Kerry, and Anastasia Codd from Wexford. By the standards of the times, the Moores were a well off family. As Catholics, they were reasonably well positioned to benefit from the relaxation of the so called Penal Laws which had for more than eighty years, excluded Catholics from many professions and civil rights. This allowed young Thomas to be given a relatively good education in Trinity College Dublin where he was befriended by Robert Emmett and Arthur O’Connor, both of whom espoused the principles inspiring the wave of liberalism washing across Europe. 

Because of his acquaintances on campus and some of his writings which had drawn attention while he was a student in Trinity; he was subjected to a sworn interrogation in 1794 from a visiting committee from the nearby Dublin Parliament concerned about the "new fangled" Republican ideas that had been unleashed in the aftermath of the American War of Independence (1776) and the more recent French Revolution (1789). These were the radical ideas that were finding fertile ground among many young minds on campus attracted to the principles of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity as expounded in the writings of Thomas Paine (The Rights of Man), as well as a host of French writers who challenged the old worn out social and economic certainties of the time. While he counted several close friends among the newly formed United Irishmen being targeted by the government inquisitors, Moore was never a member of the organisation. Along with Robert Emmett, the avid United Irishman; he befriended Edward Hudson who introduced him to Edward Bunting’s recently published “A General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music”, which inspired his own later published “Irish Melodies” – the work that essentially still defines him and his place in history. These Irish Melodies were to become what he chose to call his enduring “little ponies” that ensured his fame and his income during difficult days ahead.

Moore's interest in music and literature, buoyed up by his natural gregarious nature saw him publishing his first book at the age of 21 years. This was the Odes of Anacreon in 1799 by which time he was attending the Middle Temple in London studying law in line with his family’s wishes for his career. A year later he published “Poetical Works of Thomas Little Esq”. (we presume the Little being inspired by his low stature)

Moore the Entertainer

A legal career was never going to be Tom Moore’s path in life. While he was in London, he was befriended by Lord Moira who helped him to secure an appointment in Bermuda as registrar, a position that was neither taxing or particularly interesting to the young man. After some months on the Caribbean island where, in spite of his relatively short sojourn he became considered Bermuda’s unofficial poet laureate; he travelled to Norfolk, Virginia. From there, he visited Washington where he stayed with the British ambassador Anthony Merry and was introduced to President Thomas Jefferson. Among the places he visited in the newly emerged United States and Canada were Philadelphia, Niagara Falls, Montreal on his way to Nova Scotia where he boarded a ship home to Ireland in November 1804. While in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue in Canada he wrote his “Canadian Boat Song”. His American travels inspired a number of works among which were – Epistles, Lines written at the Cohos or Falls of the Mohawk River. He also wrote some material critical of the institution of slavery which created outrage in some American circles. 

Moore - the Irish Patriot

On arrival back in Dublin, he learned of the execution of his friend from student days in Trinity College, Robert Emmett, who had precipitated a failed insurrection in the city against British rule the year before, becoming in death a romantic martyr for the cause of Irish freedom, “Bold Robert Emmett, the darling of Erin”. Emmett’s death in pursuit of a hopeless cause inspired Moore to write “The Minstrel Boy”, which he set to music

The minstrel boy to the war is gone,

In the ranks of death you'll find him;

His father's sword he has girded on,

And his wild harp slung behind him;

"Land of Song!" said the warrior bard,

"Though all the world betrays thee,

One sword, at least, thy rights shall guard,

One faithful harp shall praise thee!"

The Minstrel fell! But the foeman's chain

Could not bring his proud soul under;

The harp he loved ne'er spoke again,

For he tore its chords asunder;

And said "No chains shall sully thee,

Thou soul of love and bravery!

Thy songs were made for the pure and free

They shall never sound in slavery!"

Emmett’s fiancée, Sarah Curran was also the subject of one of Moore’s poignant lyrics after she found herself being forced to leave Ireland for France in the aftermath of Emmett’s execution. 

She is far from the land

Where her young hero sleeps,

And lovers are round her, sighing;

But coldly she turns

From their gaze, and weeps,

For her heart in his grave is lying.

She sings the wild songs

Of her dear native plains,

Ev'ry note which she loved awakening -

Ah! little they think

Who delight in her strains,

How the heart of the Minstrel

is breaking.

He had lived for his love,

For his country he died,

They were all that to life

Had entwined him -

Nor soon shall the tears

Of his country be dried,

Nor long will his love

Stay behind him.

Oh! make her a grave

Where the sunbeams rest,

When they promise a glorious morrow;

They'll shine o'er her sleep

Like a smile from the West,

From her own loved

Island of sorrow.

Moore's Irish Melodies

The first volume of Moore’s Irish Melodies were published in 1807, and these more or less defined him thereafter as “The Irish Minstrel Boy”. The melodies along with his sweet tenor voice brought him as song writer cum performer into concert halls and fashionable drawing rooms of the day, making popular such gems as – Let Erin Remember the Days of Old, Meeting of the Waters, Oft in the Stilly Night, The Song of Fionnuala, Believe Me if All Those Endearing Young Charms, The Harp that Once Through Tara’s Halls, Oh Breathe Not His Name, The Last Rose of Summer.

In 1811, he married actress Elizabeth (Bessy) Dyke from Kilkenny, an event he hid from his parents for a time because she came with no dowry, which was not going to help him financially. Another reason for his reticence in telling them may have been that Bessy was a Protestant. After their marriage, the couple made their home in Kegworth in Leicestershire. Despite its perceived drawbacks, the marriage was happy, though Bessie was never one to enjoy or partake in Moore’s rather gregarious social lifestyle, preferring to stay at home while he entertained his following in fashionable society, to the extent that many who knew him there doubted Bessy’s existence. They had 5 children all of whom tragically predeceased them (Anne, age 5, died 1817; Anastasia Mary, age 17, died 1829; Olivia died as a baby of a few months; John Russell, aged 19, died 1842; and Thomas Lansdowne, aged 27, died 1849)

Financial problems and exile

In 1817, Moore suffered financial catastrophe. Before he left Bermuda in 1811, he had left one John Goodrich to deputise for him, who over subsequent years had embezzled the not inconsiderable sum of £6,000 for which the British Admiralty held Moore personally liable. Ever the proud Irishman, Moore refused help from friends to repay this money.  Instead he removed himself and his family to Paris until most of the debt had been repaid from his earnings as writer, songster and entertainer. By then, his earnings from his various musical and literary work was considerable, though he was not the most astute business operator when it came to dealing with his London publisher who seemed to benefit more from Moore’s work than the author himself. This experience probably caused him to write “Though an angel should write, still 'tis devils must print”.

During his years of exile, he became friends with and travelled for some time in Continental Europe with 27 year old Lord John Russell, the future British Prime Minister, who after Moore’s death, compiled his memoirs and correspondence in 8 volumes (1850-56). While in Italy, he spent a short time with Lord Byron in Venice, who made him the custodian of his memoirs. After Byron’s death, Moore was prevailed upon by Byron’s family to destroy them because of what they perceived to be their “over honest content”; though he made up for this to some extent by publishing “Letters and Journals of Lord Byron with Notices of His Life” in 1830, six years later.

Moore in his study in Sloperton (National Gallery of Ireland)

After his return to England from Paris the Moore family settled in Sloperton Cottage at Bromham, Wiltshire. Here Moore continued his writing which by then favoured the writing of novels. He published a number with moderate success, but it was his “little ponies” (his Irish Melodies) that proved to be his most enduring legacy. Sloperton continued to be his base for his many engagements as a popular performer of his songs until he suffered a stroke which brought his entertaining career to an end. Nursed by his ever loving Bessy, he died in Sloperton on February 26^th 1852 and is buried in a vault at St Nicholas churchyard Bromham, beside his daughter Anastasia, in sight of the Moore family’s rustic cottage home. Bessy joined her husband and daughter after her death 13 years years later.

The poet John Betjeman wrote the following lines in his poem “Ireland’s Own”

“In the churchyard of Bromham, the yews intertwine

O’er a smooth granite cross of a Celtic design -------

“For the tunes to the elegant measures you trod

Have chords of deep longing for Ireland and God”

“Dear bard of my boyhood, mellifluous Moore”    

Drawing of Sloperton Cottage in Bromham

Following are just some few quotes from Thomas Moore’s prodigious collection of writings

“Finding the right work is like discovering your own soul in the world”

“It is only through mystery and madness that the soul is revealed”

“What though youth gave love and roses, age still leaves us friends and wine”

 "No, there's nothing half so sweet in life as love's young dream”.

“Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot”.

“Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal”.

“It is only to the happy that tears are a luxury”.

“All that's bright must fade,

The brightest still the fleetest;

All that's sweet was made

But to be lost when sweetest”.

Bibliography

•    Gunning, John P.: Moore. Poet and Patriot (Dublin: M.H. Gill and Son, 1900).

•    Jones, Howard Mumford: The Harp that Once. Tom Moore and the Regency Period (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1937).

•    Strong, L.A.G.: The Minstrel Boy. A Portrait of Tom Moore (London: Hodder & Stoughton, & New York: A. Knopf, 1937).

•    Ní Chinnéide, Veronica: "The Sources of Moore's Melodies", in: Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 89 (1959) 2, p. 109–54.

•    Dowden, Wilfred S. (ed.): The Letters of Thomas Moore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964).

•    Dowden, Wilfred S. (ed.): The Journal of Thomas Moore, 6 vols., (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1983–91).

•    White, Harry: The Keeper's Recital. Music and Cultural History in Ireland 1770-1970 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998), ISBN 1-85918-171-6.

Kelly, Ronan: Bard of Erin. The Life of Thomas Moore (Dublin: Penguin Ireland, 2008), ISBN 978-1-844-88143-7.

Sean McMahon - The Minstrel Boy – Thomas Moore and his melodies (Mercier Press 2001).

Arthur Russell is the Author of ‘Morgallion’, a novel set in medieval Ireland during the Invasion of Ireland in 1314 by the Scottish army led by Edward deBruce, the last crowned King of Ireland. It tells the story of Cormac MacLochlainn, a young man from the Gaelic crannóg community of Moynagh and how he and his family endured and survived that turbulent period of history. ‘Morgallion’ was awarded the indieBRAG Medallion and is available in paperback and e-book form. More information available on the website.