Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Morris, Charles
MORRIS, CHARLES (1745–1838), songwriter, one of the four sons of Captain Thomas Morris, author of the popular song 'Kitty Crowder,' and a descendant of a good Welsh family, was born in 1745. Both his father and grandfather had served in the 17th foot, and the latter, after having received a severe wound in the French war under Marlborough, had settled on a small landed property at Bell Bridge, near Carlisle. His father dying in his infancy, Charles was educated by his mother, entered the 17th foot in 1764, and after serving in America returned to England, and exchanged into the royal Irish dragoons. He shone greatly in convivial society, and found life out of London intolerable. Consequently, when, through a friend, Captain Topham, adjutant of the 2nd life-guards, an opportunity presented itself of exchanging into that regiment, he was not slow to take advantage of it. He became the boon-companion of the wits and beaux of the town, and from 14 Feb. 1785 punch-maker and bard of the Beefsteak Society, which, founded in 1735, was limited to twenty-four members, and was then in the zenith of its fame. He sang many of his wittiest songs for the first time after the club dinners over the stage at Covent Garden Theatre. Politically he became an associate of Fox's party, but had subsequently to complain of the neglect of his whig friends, for whom he wrote such popular ballads as 'Billy's too young to drive us' and 'Billy Pitt and the Farmer.' His lament took the form of 'an ode to his political vest,' entitled 'The old Whig Poet to his old Buff Waistcoat.' His political songs were numerous, but he is better remembered for his celebration of the sweet shady side of Pall Mall' in 'The Town and the Country, or the Contrast,' and his 'A Reason fair to fill my Glass,' which is reproduced in Locker Lampson's 'Lyra Elegantiarum.' For his song 'Ad Poculum' he received a gold medal from the Harmonic Society, and the well-known lyric, 'The Triumph of Venus, or The Tear that bedews sensibility's shrine,' is correctly attributed to him. On 4 April 1785 Windham records that he dined with the whigs at the London Tavern, and first heard to advantage Captain Morris (Diary, p. 47). Morris was not long in becoming intimate with the Prince of Wales, after the latter's admission among 'the steaks' in 1785. At Carlton House he was subsequently a frequent guest, and earned the title of 'The Sun of the Table.' His social triumphs left him impecunious, but the prince was not ungrateful, and settled upon him an annuity of 200l. a year. In Morris's declining years Kemble induced the Duke of Norfolk (the eleventh duke, 'Jockey of Norfolk,' who was supposed by not a few, though erroneously, to be Morris's brother), for many years president of the Beefsteak Club, to give him the villa of Brockham, near Dorking. At Brockham he died, at the ripe age of ninety-three, on 11 July 1838, and was buried in Betchworth churchyard (Murray, Handbook to Surrey, p. 53). He retained his vivacity and humour to the last, justifying the remark which Curran once addressed to him: ' Die when you will, Charles, you will die in your youth.'
Morris was a born song-writer, who dashed off at random careless but fluent and effective verse of the genre that Tom Moore subsequently made his own. His 'Friends all gone!' in the key of Thackeray's 'Ballad of Bouille-baisse,' shows that he was not deficient in pathos, and, as the years rolled on, of a tendency to piety. His effect as a humorist was heightened by the solemnity of his demeanour. It is related how, when the original of Thackeray's Captain Costigan died, and was buried under the windows of Offley's, Morris gravely read a mock funeral service from the windows above, and then poured a bowl of punch over the grave.
Morris married the widow of Sir William Stanhope, but he told Lord Stowell shortly before his death that he had been in love all his life with a Miss Molly Dacre, who became Lady Clarke.
After his death his songs, a number of which had appeared in 1786 as 'A Collection of Songs by the inimitable Captain Morris,' were published in two volumes, under the title of 'Lyra Urbanica, or the Social Effusions of Captain Morris, of the late (sic) Life Guards' (London, 8vo, 1840 ; 2nd edit. 1844). Prefixed is a portrait engraved by Greatbatch from a picture in the possession of the family. An oil portrait by J. Lonsdale was, at the Beefsteak sale in 1867, purchased by Earl Dalhousie, and the bard's chair, with the initials ' C. M.,' was at the same time purchased by Charles Hallett.
Charles's elder brother, Captain Thomas Morris (fl. 1806), was also a song- writer of repute in his day. Born at Carlisle, where he was baptised on 22 April 1732, he entered Winchester College as a scholar in 1741, and proceeded B.A. from Jesus College, Oxford, in 1753 (Kirby, Winchester Scholars, p. 244). He soon afterwards joined the 17th foot. After serving with distinction at the siege of the Havannah and under General Bradstreet in America, he returned to England in 1767, and two years later married a Miss Chubb, daughter of a merchant at Bridgwater, by whom he had six children. Morris was one of the original subscribers to the literary fund, at whose annual meetings (1794-7) he recited his own verses. He is stated in 1806 to have been living in retirement at Hampstead, where he amused himself by suggesting emendations to the works of Pope, and 'regularly read both the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" every year' (Public Characters of 1806, p. 342). His published volumes were: 1. 'The Bee, a Collection of Songs,' London, 1790, 8vo. 2. 'Miscellanies in Prose and Verse,' 1791, 8vo. 3. 'A Life of the Rev. D. Williams,' 1792, 8vo. 4. 'Quashy, or the Coal-black Maid. A tale relative to the Slave-trade,' 1796, 8vo (cf. Reuss, Register of Living Authors, 1804, pt. ii. p. 114).
Both Charles and Thomas must of course be distinguished from another Captain Morris, a convivial member of the Owls' Club at the beginning of this century, whose odd personality is vividly described by the Rev. J. Richardson in his 'Recollections of the last Half-Century' (i. 268-89).
[Gent. Mag. 1838, ii. 453; Notes and Queries, 2nd ser. ii. 412, 4th ser. i. 244, 6th ser. ii. 369; Public Characters of 1806, pp. 322–51; Walter Arnold's Life and Death of the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, passim; Timbs's Clubs and Club Life in London, pp. 127–35, and Anecdote Lives of the Later Wits and Humorists, pp. 69–75; Blackwood's Magazine, January 1841, pp. 47–55; Irish Quarterly Review, March 1853 pp. 140–4 and September pp. 649–53; Fitzgerald's Lives of the Sheridans, i. 234; Monthly Review, No. 158; T. Moore's Memoirs, i. 8, ii. 175, vi. 93–4; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. 1617–18; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Allibone's Dict. of English Lit.; Williams's Claims of Lit. (1802), pp. 169, 171, 181, 192.]