311—to Thomas Moore
July 13, 1813.
Your letter set me at ease; for I really thought (as I hear of your susceptibility) that I had said—I know not what—but something I should have been very sorry for, had it, or I, offended you;—though I don't see how a man with a beautiful wife—
his own
children,—quiet—fame—competency and friends, (I will vouch for a thousand, which is more than I will for a unit in my own behalf,) can be offended with any thing.
Do
you
know, Moore, I am amazingly inclined—remember I say but
inclined
—to be seriously enamoured with Lady A[delaide] F[orbes]
— but this——has ruined all my prospects. However, you know her; is she
clever
, or sensible, or good-tempered? either
would
do—I scratch out the
will
. I don't ask as to her beauty—that I see; but my circumstances are mending, and were not my other prospects blackening, I would take a wife, and that should be the woman, had I a chance. I do not yet know her much, but better than I did.
I want to get away, but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a ship of war.
They
had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the word—"nay, an they'll mouth, I'll rant as well as they."
Now, what are you doing?—writing, we all hope, for our own sakes. Remember you must edit my posthumous works, with a Life of the Author, for which I will send you Confessions, dated "Lazaretto," Smyrna, Malta, or Palermo—one can die any where.
There
is to be a thing on Tuesday ycleped a national fête
. The Regent and —— are to be there, and every body else, who has shillings enough for what was once a guinea. Vauxhall is the scene—there are six tickets issued for the modest women, and it is supposed there will be three to spare. The passports for the lax are beyond my arithmetic.
P. S.—The Staël last night attacked me most furiously—said that I had "no right to make love—that I had used——barbarously—that I had no feeling, and was totally
in
sensible to
la belle passion
, and
had
been all my life." I am very glad to hear it, but did not know it before. Let me hear from you anon.
Footnote 1:
"Lady A. F—— was also very handsome. It is melancholy to talk of women in the past tense. What a pity, that of all flowers, none fade so soon as beauty! Poor Lady A. F— has not got married. Do you know, I once had some thoughts of her as a wife; not that I was in love, as people call it, but I had argued myself into a belief that I ought to marry, and, meeting her very often in society, the notion came into my head, not heart, that she would suit me. Moore, too, told me so much of her good qualities—all which was, I believe, quite true—that I felt tempted to propose to her, but did not, whether tant mieux or tant pis, God knows, supposing my proposal accepted."
(Lady Blessington's
Conversations
, pp. 108, 109).
Lady Adelaide Forbes, whom Byron in Rome compared to the "Belvedere Apollo," was the daughter of George, sixth Earl of Granard, and his wife, Lady Selina Rawdon, daughter of the first Earl of Moira. Born in 1789, she died at Dresden, in 1858, unmarried. Lord Moira was Moore's patron, and, through this connection and political sympathies, Moore was acquainted with Lord Granard and his family.
Footnote 2:
Byron possibly quoted the actual words from
Hamlet
(act v. sc. 1), referring to Moore's attack on the Regent in
The Two-penny Post-bag
:
"Nay, an thou'lt mouth,
I'll rant as well as thou."
But the letter is destroyed.
Footnote 3:
The
Morning Chronicle
for July 12 contains the announcement that "the Prince Regent has projected a
Grand National Fête
in honour of the battle of Vittoria. It is to be held at Vauxhall Gardens." The
fête
was held on Tuesday, July 20, beginning with a banquet, at which such toasts were drunk as "The Marquis of Wellington," "Sir Thomas Graham and the other officers engaged," "The Spanish Armies and the brave Guerillas." The
báton
of Marshal Jourdan was "disposed among the plate, so as to be obvious to all." The proceedings ended with illuminations and dancing.
