Sloperton,
Monday.
My dear Talbot –
Pray frank the inclosed for me–<1> Since I saw Feilding <2> I have had a summons to town, on a business which I was told could be managed without me – namely, the Deed of Mutual Release between that worst of all Mechanic Powers and myself –<3> but Merewether <4> is of opinion that I had better come up, and so I must – perhaps on Wednesday, or, at the farthest, Thursday.
It is not worth while routing up Fanny <5> for so short a visit, so I shall fly into the arms of some less amiable house-maid.
Feilding told you of my intention not to answer till, in the first place, there were the quantity of combatants I wait for, and, even then, of the quality that I shall think worthy of an onset.<6> When I say this, I mean not so much the real merit of my opponents, as the impression I see they make on the public – for, [illegible deletion], the cleverer they are, the less it is my interest to bring them into notice, if the Public doesn’t. If they are all as dull as Murtagh O Sullivan,<7> whom I have just glimpsed at, I shall let them sleep in peace.
Yours ever
T. Moore
Notes:
1. As an MP, WHFT had franking privileges and was entitled to free postage. Members commonly gave signed covers or envelopes to friends. At the time, the recipient paid for postage (to ensure that the letter was delivered). This arrangement was withdrawn in January 1840 with the introduction of the Penny Post, which instituted uniform costs and pre-paid stamps.
2. Rear Admiral Charles Feilding (1780–1837), Royal Navy; WHFT’s step-father.
3. The "worst of all mechanic Powers" was not a malevolent spirit, but rather James Powers, music publisher of Buckingham Street, Strand, London, who had died in 1836 at the age of 70. Powers’s imprint was a harp encasing the words 'The Power of Melody'. Moore’s Journal reveals their difficulties over the 10th issue of his Irish Melodies. Moore's attorney insisted on a formal Deed of Release, which had required Moore’s “ruinously inconvenient” attendance and signature in London. Irish Melodies was a great success and Powers and Moore had cooperated for decades so their relationship was enduring if not without difficulty.
4. Henry Alworth Merewether, snr (1780–1864), author, barrister, Town Clerk of London & Sergeant-at-Law
5. Fanny, normally upper housemaid at Lacock Abbey; then in London.
6. Combatants: the critics of Moore’s 1833 work, Travels of an Irishman in Search of a Religion.
7. Mortimer O’Sullivan (1791-1859), anti-Catholic clergyman of the Church of Ireland. He criticised Moore in his 1833 work A Guide to an Irish Gentleman in his search for a Religion. It is believed that Moore evened the score by satirising him in 1835 as Mortimer O’Mulligan in The Fudge Family in England.
8. James Warren Doyle (1786–1834), Roman Catholic Bishop.
9. Rev Frederick Charles Husenbeth (1796–1872); George Stanley Faber (1778–1854), controversial English divine. The ‘Strasbourg Controversy’ aligned Dr J F M Trevern, Bishop of Strasbourg (1754-1842) and Husenbeth, his supporter and translator, against Faber. The public exchanges were numerous and heated. Strasbourg’s 1817 “Discussion Amicale” was translated by Husenbeth in the 1828 An Amiable Discussion on the Church of England. Faber’s polemical writings included The Difficulties of Romanism (1826) and Some Account of Mr Husenbeth’s attempt to assist the Bishop of Strasbourg (1829).
10. Moore used this name, in reference to his own small stature, in The Poetical Works of the Late Thomas Little.
11. Moore considered one of his most successful characters to be Sam in "Raising the Wind," played at The Private Theatre of Kilkenny, founded by Richard Power (d 1824).