[In the following essay, St. Clair alleges that Moore, while writing his massive two-volume biography of Lord Byron, purposefully altered some of Byron's private correspondence with him in order to enhance his own reputation as a member of Byron's respected circle of associates.]

Thomas Moore's life of Byron is one of the great biographies of the nineteenth century. When news of the poet's death reached England in 1824, there was a flood of books. Publishers commissioned hacks to compile biographies with scissors and paste from old press cuttings. A dozen friends and acquaintances rushed out their reminiscences, some adulatory, others apologetic, a few spiteful. Moore's magisterial work, which appeared in two large volumes in 1830 and 1831, swept them all away. It was to remain the standard life until deep into the twentieth century, the main source for hundreds of popular versions which have carried Byron and Byronism round the world.

Moore's success was well deserved. He was a careful and thorough researcher. Resisting pressures to get the book out before he was ready, he took trouble to interview Byron's friends and to borrow and copy as many original documents as he could find. His narrative was straightforward and fair, and he did not shirk difficult issues. The result was a fuller and more sympathetic picture of the poet than anyone had previously imagined.

“We know of no spectacle so ridiculous”, the young Tom Macaulay wrote in reviewing the book, “as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality”. Lord Byron had been hounded out of England. Now it was plainly seen that he had been one of the most remarkable men the country had ever produced. A few years earlier, out of a misjudged sense of loyalty, Moore had taken part in the burning of Byron's manuscript of autobiographical memoirs. After his biography it was impossible to deny him forgiveness.

Moore let Byron speak for himself. He printed no less than five hundred and sixty-one of Byron's letters, and the text, although lengthy, is a series of bridge-passages between them. “Mr Moore never thrusts himself between Lord Byron and his public”, wrote Macaulay. “With the strongest temptations to egotism, he has said no more about himself than the subject absolutely required”. The title of the book is modesty itself (Letters and Journals of Lord Byron with Notices of his Life).

It was Macaulay's review which first declared that Byron's letters were the best in the language, and a century and a half later scarcely anyone disagrees. In recent years the libraries and collections of many countries have yielded letters of Lord Byron which were unknown to Moore. The twelve volume edition edited by Leslie A. Marchand published by John Murray between 1973 and 1982, prints the texts of nearly three thousand. Just as important, a great number which had previously only been known from highly edited, abbreviated, or expurgated versions are now available as Byron wrote them, transcribed directly from the original manuscripts in all their conversational spontaneity.

There is however one big exception. The originals of the hundred and fifty-eight letters which Byron wrote to Moore himself have never been found. Since Byron had provisionally asked Moore to be his biographer and wrote to him frequently from Italy, this series of letters has an importance far beyond its numbers. Efforts have been made to trace them on several occasions. After Moore's death his papers passed to Lord John Russell, but Bertrand Russell, who inherited from him, found nothing. Nor are they at Longmans, the publishers, even although the manuscript of Moore's own journal was discovered there a few years ago. Hope that they will still turn up is now hard to sustain. It seems certain that they were destroyed in the nineteenth century, perhaps by Moore himself. They are therefore only known from the abbreviated and asterisked versions printed in Moore's biography of 1830 and 1831.

One escaped. The original of Byron's letter to Moore of 4 March 1824, written from Missolonghi shortly before his death, is in the Huntington Library, California. Like the lame boy left behind by the Pied Piper it is the only witness surviving from the tragedy. How it strayed from the others is not known. Perhaps it was lent and not returned. Maybe it was given as a gift to some friend who begged a memento of the poet, or as a thank you present for help with the book.

Comparing this letter with the version printed in Moore's book reveals only one variation. Byron signed the letter ‘Ever and truly yrs’. Moore printed ‘Ever and affectionately yours’. It is a small point, but it gives weight to a suspicion that hung over Moore's book at the time of publication. Not everybody shared the view that the author had been so modest. Some of Byron's closest friends, such as John Cam Hobhouse, without being able to explain why, had an uneasy feeling that Moore had exaggerated his own place in the Byron legend and misrepresented the warmth of Byron's respect. At the time such grumbles were put down to envy or pique, and the Huntington letter has been the only independent check.

Now there is more. I have in my possession a lady's scrapbook bound in typical Regency crimson morocco and gilt. The paper is watermarked 1823 and 1824 and the book was presumably begun shortly after that, although there are entries for the 1830s and perhaps later. The owner has written her name on the first page. ‘Mrs Austen, Ensbury’. The album is largely filled with poems copied out from the printed works of the famous poets of the time, notably by Byron, Moore and Samuel Rogers. There are riddles and jokes and a few original pieces, written, it may be presumed, by Mrs Austen's friends, a Mr Marriott, the Hon Mrs O'Neil, JWL.

Such scrapbooks are common. What gives this one its special interest is the last entry. It is a transcription of one of Byron's best letters to Thomas Moore. It needs to be given in full.

La Mira—Venice

July 10th—1817

My dear Moore

Murray the Mokanna of booksellers has contrived to send me abstracts from Lalla Rookh by the post—they are taken from some Magazine and contain a short outline and quotations from the two first poems—I am very much delighted with what is before me—and very thirsty for the rest—You have caught the colours as if you had been in the Rainbow—And the tone of the East is perfectly preserved—so that “Ilderim” and its author must be somewhat in the background, and learn that it requires something more than to have been upon the haunch of Dromedary to compose a good Oriental Story—I suspect you have written a devilish fine composition and rejoice at it with all my heart—because “The Douglas and the Percy both together are competent against the world in arms”. And I hope you wont be affronted at my looking on us “birds of a feather” though on whatever subject you had written I should have been very happy in yr. success. I can better Judge of you in the one you have chosen—and am still more so, because you have triumphed in this—There is a simile of an orange tree's flowers and fruits which I should like more if I did not believe it to be a reflection on the companions of Rogers playing with children “Age at play with Infancy”. Do you remember Thurton's [for Thurlow's] poem to Sam “When Rogers” and that damned supper at Rancliffe's that ought to have been a dinner!—“Ah Master Shallow we have heard the chimes at Midnight”—Last week I had a row on the Padua Road with a fellow in a coach—who was impudent to my horse—I gave him a swinging box on the ear, which sent him to the Police—witnesses had seen the transaction. he first shouted in an unseemly way to frighten my Palfrey—I wheeled round, rode up to the window, and asked what he meant—he Grinned and said some foolery, which produced him an immediate slap in the face to his utter discomfiture. Much blasphemy ensued and some menace which I stopped by dismounting and opening the carriage door and intimating an intention of mending the road with his immediate remains if he did not hold his tongue—He held it—He went sneaking to the Police, but a Soldier who had seen the matter & thought me right, went & counter-oathed him, so that he had to retire & cheap too—I wish I had hit him harder. Monk Lewis is here—“how pleasant” he is “a very good fellow & very much yours—So is Sam—So is everybody—and amongst the rest yours

Byron

It is an excellent letter and Moore made use of it in his biography. But Mrs Austen did not copy it from Moore's book. Her version contains sentences not in Moore's notably those beginning ‘I can better judge. …’ and ‘He went sneaking. …’ with the splendidly Byronic word ‘counter-oathed’. The mention of Ilderim (a poem by Gally Knight) is new—although it had been guessed—and so is the reference to the companions of Rogers. These words of Lord Byron are all published here for the first time. There are other differences and the punctuation and capitalization are both more typical of Byron's manuscripts than of Moore's edited versions. Mrs Austen copied the letter either from the original or from a copy of the original. Although there are a few obvious transcription errors, we have a source for what actually Byron wrote which is independent of (and superior to) the Moore version. We also have an independent check on his editing methods.

Moore was drastic. Comparing Mrs Austen's version with Moore's reveals big differences. Moore has modified Byron's story about his fight with the coachman, which does not show him in a particularly favourable light. The meaning of the phrase ‘and cheap too’ which Moore did not print is not clear, but Byron may be boasting—perhaps ironically—that he did not have to pay a high price to bribe his witness. There is an in-joke about Samuel Rogers which Moore has removed. Here again it is difficult now to be sure of what Byron intended, but Rogers, who was an old bachelor, illustrated his books of poems with podgy little boys reminiscent of Italian putti, and there may be some reference to that.

As in the Huntington letter, Moore has also upgraded the warmth of Byron's greeting. ‘Amongst the rest, yours Byron’ was printed ‘Amongst the number, yours ever, B.’ Until recently ‘yours ever’ was reserved for the fondest of friends. In Byron's day even more so. To sign with an initial only was also a sign of special friendship.

But what is most surprising is that in the printed version Moore has not only elided and edited Byron's words. He has added to them. The story of the fight is introduced with an explanatory sentence not in Mrs Austen's version. ‘I came up to Venice from my casino a few miles on the Paduan road, this blessed day, to bathe’. ‘I am glad you have changed the title [of Lalla Rookh] from Persian Tales’, Byron is reported to have written about Moore's poem. ‘What think you of Manfred?’ he is alleged to have added as a postscript. Most surprising of all, if Mrs Austen's text is to be relied upon, Moore has broken into the flow of the letter to include one of Byron's poems, ‘My boat is on the shore’, which was undoubtedly addressed to Moore, but not, it would seem, sent to him with this letter. That poem was published for the first time in Moore's biography as part of the letter, thereafter ensuring that it would forever be associated with his name. And Moore has introduced a suggestive passage about being with a black-eyed Venetian girl, which is not in Mrs Austen's version and has evidently been reconstructed from references in other letters.

What then are we to make of all this? First of all, it needs to be emphasised, Moore did not claim to reproduce Byron's letters exactly as written. As he admits in the biography, he aimed to capture their spirit rather than their literal accuracy. It was fully in line with the normal practice of his times to edit out bad style and bad taste, to combine material from more than one letter, and generally to tidy up hasty writing for the dignity of print. With other letters printed in his book, which he borrowed from the owners, and of which the originals survive, it can be seen that he was scrupulous in applying these standards. (Macaulay in his review suggested that he stretched them too far and should have omitted more.) Moore may have genuinely believed his version of the La Mira letter was in the spirit of Byron's intentions. He may have believed he had adequate authority for his changes from other documents or from remembered conversations. But the evidence of Mrs Austen's scrapbook suggests much more.

Moore found himself momentarily in a unique position of power. Knowing that his book on Byron would decisively determine the historical record, he abused the biographer's position of trust to push himself a few steps further towards centre stage. He may have deliberately destroyed the original letters to cover his traces and avoid being found out.

Although nowadays Byron is one of the giants of English literature and Moore all but forgotten, Moore hoped that his long poem Lalla Rookh would raise him to his friend's level. It is an exotic verse tale about a Veiled Prophet—the ‘Mokanna’ of Byron's reference—set in India and Persia. Like Gally Knight's Ilderim, it was an attempt to match and capture some of the magic of Byron's eastern poems, and although it enjoyed popularity for a while, it is now scarcely ever read. Byron's letters to Moore imply that Moore saw him as a rival. He begged for reassurance and he fished for compliments. Like an imperial chancellery he offered Byron a free hand in Greece and Turkey if he would keep out of Persia and India.

Now, it seems, Moore's reputation as a biographer must follow his reputation as a poet. This does not mean that the other Byron letters printed in Moore's book are to be regarded as fakes. They are far too good for that, and Byron's style is inimitable. But those who have been shown to be unreliable in small matters are doubted even when they are honest. We are bound to read Moore's versions of Byron's letters with a less trusting eye, particularly when they include compliments to Thomas Moore. For example Byron's letter of 1 June 1818, as printed by Moore, includes the sentence ‘I need not say that your successes are mine’. His letter of 12 May 1817 includes a Postscript ‘Hobhouse presents his remembrances and is eager, with all the world, for your new Poem’. In his letter of 16 November 1821 is the phrase ‘I have to thank you again, as I believe I did before, for your opinion of Cain etc’. Many more could be quoted. Byron could be fulsome in paying compliments but even his most sincere utterances usually have a tinge of friendly irony, put on as protection against pomposity. Some of his reported remarks strike me as too stiff to be incontrovertibly Byronic.

Finally what of Mrs Austen? Ensbury is near Wimborne in Dorset, not far from Southampton, and it is not improbable that she was a remote member of Jane Austen's family, many of whom lived in that area. Mrs Austen's scrapbook bears other indications that she had a special interest in Thomas Moore and that she may have known him personally. If Moore did not himself show her the letter, she evidently shared a friend who had been given an opportunity to admire it and who took a copy. If it was vanity which led Moore to exaggerate his friendship with Byron, it was the same vanity which has allowed his lapse to be brought to light.