Sir, – Whatever about the location of Thomas Moore’s statue, gone for now from the traffic island on Westmoreland Street, it is not one of Dublin’s favourites. The sculptor Christopher Moore, no relation, who was based in London, was awarded the commission following a public competition in which John Hogan, Ireland’s greatest neo-classical sculptor, was a defeated entrant.
Two fine plaster models that Hogan submitted for the competition are now stored in the National Gallery of Ireland.
Christopher Moore’s statue evoked a storm of criticism in 1857 and was unlucky as well as unloved. In spite of the efforts of the fundraising committee, there was not enough money to cast it in bronze, so zinc was used instead. When the nine-foot sculpture of the national poet with his voluminous cloak was being lifted on to the pedestal, the rope snapped and he was decapitated.
When the statue was repaired, the sun melted the solder and it drooped forward into the position that James Joyce described as its "servile head" in A Portrait of the Artist.
In 1944, when members of the Thomas Moore Society laid a wreath on the statue, Patrick Kavanagh, who was one of the spectators, wrote: “The cowardice of Ireland is in his statue/No poet’s honoured when they wreathe this stone/An old shopkeeper who has dealt in the marrowbone of his neighbours looks at you/Dim-eyed, degenerate, he is admiring his god.”
The last word goes to the Dublin wit who suggested that the inscription beneath the statue should be, in the words of one of Moore's Irish Melodies, "Blame not the Bard". – Yours, etc,
Dr ITA BEAUSANG,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.