I have been reading an interesting account of a visit paid by Thomas Moore, in the year 1835, to the house, No 12 Aungier street, where he was born. The poet, who had been staying with some friends in Dublin, took advantage of the opportunity to inspect his old home. It was still a grocer's shop, as it had been when Moore's father was the proprietor, and as, indeed, it is to this day. The owner was at first suspicious of the stranger, but, on learning that he was Thomas Moore, he immediately invited him into the room behind the shop, and vowed that he was proud to have him under the old roof. Moore went through the building from garret to basement, and states in his diary that "if a man had been got up specially to conduct me through such a scene, it could not have been done with more tact, sympathy and intelligent feeling than it was by this plain, honest grocer." When they returned to the drawing-room the grocer's wife had a decanter of port and glasses on the table, and the poet drank the health of herself and her husband. That evening, while he was the guest of honour at a dinner in the Viceregal Lodge, Moore found his mind full of recollections of the old shop and of the gay singing parties in the back drawing-room, which were the chief delight of his youth.
The Irish Times, January 12th, 1931.