Part 5

[Sidenote: Mary's Grave]

On the bank of the silvery Trent, three miles from Nottingham, is Colwick Hall, where Mary's married life was spent. This was an ancient seat of the Byrons, said to have been lost by them at the card-table. Mary's home was an imposing mansion, with lofty cupola, balustraded roofs, and stately pediments upheld by Ionic columns. From the front windows we look across a wide expanse of sun-kissed meadow beyond the river, while at the back rocky cliffs rise steeply and are tufted by overhanging woods. The Hall was attacked and pillaged in 1831 by a Luddite mob, from whom poor Mary escaped half naked into the shrubbery and lay concealed in the cold wet night. The exposure and terror of this event impaired her reason, and caused her death the next year at Wiverton, another seat of the Chaworths, where her descendants reside. Close by the mansion at Colwick, now a summer resort, was the old gray church, with battlemented tower, where Mary was married, and where she lies in death with her husband and his kindred, near the burial-vault of the ancestors of the lame boy who linked her name to deathless verse. At the side of the altar a beautiful monumental tablet, bearing a graceful female figure and a laudatory inscription, is placed in memory of the "star of Annesley," whose brightness went out in distraction and gloom.

To Byron's early passion and its failure we owe some of the sweetest and tenderest of his songs; and it has been believed that the memory of that defeat adapted his thoughts to their highest flights and gave added pathos and beauty to his noblest work. Thus all the world were gainers by his disappointment, and evidence is lacking that either the lady or the lover was a loser.

THE HOME OF CHILDE HAROLD

_Newstead--Byron's Apartments--Relics and Reminders--Ghosts--Ruins--The Young Oak--Dog's Tomb--Devil's Wood--Irving--Livingstone--Stanley-- Joaquin Miller._

[Sidenote: The Abbey]

However alluring other haunts of Byron may be found, the "hall of his fathers" must remain paramount in the interest and affection of his admirers. The stanzas he addressed to that venerable pile, the graphic description in "Don Juan," the plaintive allusions in "Childe Harold," its own romantic history as a mediæval fortress and shrine, and its association with the bard who inherited its lands and dwelt beneath its battlements, render Newstead Abbey a Mecca to which the steps of pilgrims tend. It came to the Byrons by royal gift, and in the middle of the last century was inherited by the poet's predecessor the Wicked Byron, who killed his neighbor of Annesley and so desolated the Abbey that the only spot sheltered from the storms was a corner of the scullery where he breathed out his wretched life. The poet occupied the place at intervals for twenty years, and then sold it to Colonel Wildman, who had been his form-fellow at Harrow, and to whom we are mainly indebted for the restoration of the edifice and the preservation of every memento of the poet and his race. At the death of Wildman the Abbey became the property of Colonel W. F. Webb, a sharer in Livingstone's explorations, who gathers here a brilliant circle of authors, artists, travellers, and wits whose gayety dispels the hoary and ghostly associations of the place.

[Sidenote: Chapel Ruin]

[Sidenote: Byron's Apartments]

From the boundary of the estate a broad avenue, lined with noble trees, leads to an inner park of eight hundred acres, among whose sylvan beauties our way lies, through verdant glades and under leafy boughs whose shadows the sunshine prints upon the path, until we see, from the verge of the wood, the noble pile rising amid an environment of lawn and lake, grove and garden. It is a vast stone structure, composed of motley parts joined "by no quite lawful marriage of the arts" into an harmonious and impressive whole. The western façade is the one usually pictured, because it contains the Byron apartments and best displays the characteristic features of the edifice, having a castellated tower at one extremity, while to the other is joined the ruined chapel front which, as an example of its style, is rivalled in architectural value only by St. Mary's at York. This Newstead fragment, retaining its perfect proportions, its noble windows, its gray statue of the Virgin and "God-born Child" in the high niche of the gable,--the whole draped and garlanded with ivy which conceals the scars of Cromwell's cannon-balls,--is a vision of unique beauty. From the Gothic door-way of the mansion we are admitted to a gallery with a low-vaulted roof of stone upheld by massive columns. This was the crypt of the abbot's dormitory; it adjoins the cloisters, and, like them, was used by the Wicked Byron as a stable for cattle. It is now adorned with the spoils of African deserts, trophies of the mighty huntsman who now inhabits the Abbey. One of these, the skin of a noble lion, is said to have belonged to a beast which had mutilated Livingstone and was standing above his body when a ball from Webb's rifle laid him low and saved the great explorer. From the crypt, stone stairs lead to the corridors above the cloisters: in Byron's time entrance was between a bear and a wolf chained on these stairs and menacing the guest from either side. Out of the corridor adjoining the chapel ruin a spiral stairway ascends to a plain and sombre suite of rooms, once the abbot's lodgings, but cherished now because they were the private apartments of Byron. His chamber is neither large nor elegant, its walls are plainly papered, and its single oriel window is shaded by a faded curtain. The room remains as Byron last occupied it: his carpet is upon the floor; the carved bedstead, with its gilt posts and lordly coronets, is the one brought by him from college; its curtains and coverings are those he used; above the mantel is the mirror which often reflected his handsome features. We sit in his embroidered arm-chair by the window, overlooking lawn and lake and the wood he planted, and write out upon his plain table the memoranda from which this article is prepared. The tourist is told that the chamber has never been used since Byron left it; but Irving occupied it for some time, as his letters to his brother declare, and a few years ago our Joaquin Miller lay here in Byron's bed, and saw, in the moonbeams sharply reflected from the mirror into his face, an explanation of the ghostly apparitions which Byron beheld in this glass. In the adjoining room are a portrait of the poet's "corporeal pastor," Jackson, in arena costume, and a painting of Byron's valet, Joe Murray, a bright-looking fellow of pleasing face and faultless attire. This room was sometime occupied by Byron's pretty page, whom the housekeeper believed to be a girl in masquerade: this page was introduced elsewhere as the poet's younger brother Gordon, and an attempt has been made to identify her with the mysterious "Thyrza" of his poems, and with "Astarte" also. The third room of the suite, Byron's dressing-room and study, was one of the haunts of the goblin friar who was heard stalking amid the dim cloisters or in the apartments above. Byron's room here is the Gothic chamber of the Norman abbey where "Don Juan" slept and dreamed of Aurora Raby, and the corridor is the "gallery of sombre hue" where he pursued the sable phantom and captured a very material duchess. Directly beneath is a panelled apartment of moderate dimensions which was Byron's dining-room and the scene of many a revel when the monk's skull, brimming with wine, was sent round by the poet's guests. His sideboard is still here, his heavy table remains in the middle of the room, and the famous skull, mounted as a drinking-cup and inscribed with the familiar anacreontic, is carefully preserved. The library is a stately and spacious apartment: here, among many mementos of the poet, Ada Byron first heard a poem of her father's; here Byron's Italian friend la Guiccioli made notes for her "Recollections," and here Livingstone penned portions of the books which record his explorations. In the grand hall we see the elevated chimney-piece beneath which Byron and his guests heaped so great a fire, on the first night of his occupancy of the Abbey, that its destruction was threatened. This superb apartment, the old dormitory of the monks, was used by the poet as a shooting-gallery, and was one of the haunts of his "Black Friar." The drawing-room of the mansion is palatial in dimensions and furnishing. Its panels and grotesque carvings have been restored, and this ancient room, once the refectory of the monks and later the hay-loft of the Wicked Byron, is now a marvel of elegance. Here is the familiar portrait of Byron at twenty-three, an earlier watercolor picturing him in college gown, and a later bust in marble. Here by her desire the body of Ada Byron lay in state, and from here it was borne to rest beside her father at near-by Hucknall, more than realizing the closing stanzas of the third canto of "Childe Harold."

[Sidenote: Relics]

In these stately rooms and in the adjoining corridors are numerous priceless relics of the immortal bard; among them, the cap, belt, and cimeter he wore in Greece; his foils, spurs, stirrups, and boxing-gloves; a painting of his famous dog Boatswain; the bronze candlesticks from his writing-table and the table upon which were written "Bards and Reviewers," poems of "Hours of Idleness," "Hebrew Melodies," and portions of his masterpiece, "Childe Harold." Preserved here, with Byron's will, unpublished letters, and scraps of verse, are papers which indicate that the poet's _chef-d'oeuvre_ was originally designed for private circulation and was entitled "Childe Byron." An interesting relic is a section of the noted "twin-tree" bearing the names "Byron--Augusta" carved by the poet at his last visit to the Abbey. Our own Barnum once visited the place and offered Wildman five hundred pounds for this double tree (then standing in the grove), intending to remove it for exhibition; the colonel indignantly replied that five thousand would not purchase it, and that "the man capable of such a project deserved to be gibbeted." Here, too, are the portrait of the first lord of Newstead, "John Byron-the-Little-with-the-Great-Beard;" the huge iron knocker in use on the door of the Abbey seven centuries ago; a collection of mediæval armor and weapons; some personal belongings of Livingstone, and many specimens of fauna and flora gathered by him and Webb in the dark continent. One vaulted apartment of exquisite proportions, erst the sanctuary of the abbot, and later Byron's dog-kennel, is now the chapel of the household. Newstead has been the abode of royalty, and holds rooms in which, from the time of Edward III., kings have often lodged. We see the chamber occupied by Ada Byron during her visit; another, adorned with quaint carvings and once haunted by Byron-of-the-Great-Beard, was used by Irving. The noble chambers contain richly carved furniture, costly tapestries, and beds of such altitude that steps are provided for scaling them. The hangings of one bed belonged to Prince Rupert, and its counterpane was embroidered by Mary Queen of Scots.

[Sidenote: Court and Gardens]

In the centre of the edifice is the quadrangular court, surrounded by a series of low-vaulted arcades, once the stables of the Wicked Byron and long ago the "cloisters dim and damp" of the monks whose dust moulders now beneath the pavement. One crypt-like cell which holds the boilers for heating the mansion was Byron's swimming-bath. In the middle of the court the ancient stone fountain, with its grotesque sculptures of saints and monsters, graven by the patient toil of the monks, still sends out sprays of coolness.

We spend delightful hours loitering in the ancient gardens of the friars and about their ruined chapel. Through its mighty window, "yawning all desolate," pours a flood of western light upon the turf that covers the holy ground where congregations knelt in worship; while, amid the dust of the priests and near the site of the altar where they "raised their pious voices but to pray," Byron's dog lies in a tomb far handsomer than that which holds his noble master. It was in excavating Boatswain's grave that Byron found the skull afterward used as a drinking-cup. The dog's monument consists of a wide pedestal, surmounted by a panelled altar-stone which upholds a funeral urn and bears Byron's familiar eulogistic inscription and the misanthropic stanzas ending with the lines,--

"To mark a friend's remains these stones arise; I never knew but one, and here he lies."

Other panels were designed to bear the epitaph of Byron, who directed in his will (1811) that he should be buried in this spot with his valet and dog; it is said to have been discovered that the poet had made careful preparation for his entombment here, the stone trestles and slab to support his coffin being in place upon the pavement, but the sale of Newstead led to his interment elsewhere, and faithful Murray--who declined to lie here "alone with the dog"--sleeps near his master.

[Sidenote: Grounds--Recollections]

The gardens of the Abbey lie about its ancient walls: here are the fish-pools of the monks; the noble terrace; the "Young Oak" of Byron's poem, planted by his hands and now grown into a large and graceful tree; other trees rooted by Livingstone and Stanley while guests here. At one side is a grove of beeches and yews, in whose gloomy recesses the Wicked Byron erected leaden statues of Pan and Pandora, of which the rustics were so afraid that they would not go near them after nightfall, and which are still respectfully spoken of in the servants' hall as "Mr. and Mrs. Devil." Before the mansion lies the lucid lake described in "Don Juan:" the forest that shades its shore and sweeps over the farther hill-side was planted by Byron to repair the spoliation of his uncle, and is called the "Poet's Wood." Upon some of the farms of the domain live descendants of Nancy Smith, whom Irving's readers will remember, her son having married despite his mother's protest and reared a family. One aged servitor claims to remember Irving's visit, and opines "the old colonel [Wildman] thought him a very fine man--for an American." He recounts some peccadilloes of Joe Murray, traditional among the servants, which show that worthy to have been less precise in morals than in dress. The ancient Byron estates were among the haunts of one whose exploits inspired a book of ballads, and we here see Robin Hood's cave and other reminders of the bold outlaw and his "merrie men in Lyncolne greene."

Such, briefly, is the condition of Byron's ancestral home as it appears nearly eighty years after he saw it for the last time. Besides the charms which won his affection and made him relinquish the Abbey with such poignant regret, it holds for us an added spell in that it has been the habitation of a transcendent genius. Where Wildman's fortune failed his wishes the present owner has supplemented his work, until the vast pile now gleams with more than its ancient splendor; and, as we take a last view through a glade whose beauty fitly frames the picture of the restored mansion, we trust that somehow and somewhere Byron knows that his hope for his beloved Newstead is accomplished:

"Haply thy sun emerging yet may shine, Thee to irradiate with meridian ray; Hours splendid as the past may still be thine, And bless thy future as thy former day."

WARWICKSHIRE: THE LOAMSHIRE OF GEORGE ELIOT

_Miss Mulock--Butler--Somervile--Dyer--Rugby--Homes of George Eliot-- Scenes of Tales--Cheverel--Shepperton--Milly's Grave--Paddiford-- Milby--Coventry, etc.--Characters--Incidents._

Some one has said that to write about Warwickshire is to write about Shakespeare. True, the transcending fame of the bard of Avon gives the places associated with his life and genius pre-eminence, but the literary rambler will find in this heart of England other shrines worthy of homage. Inevitably our pilgrimage includes the Stratford scenes,--from the birthplace and the Hathaway cottage to the fane where all the world bows at Shakespeare's tomb,--but, resolutely repressing the inclination to describe again these oft-described resorts, we fare to less familiar shrines: to the birthplace of the author of "Hudibras" and the haunts and tomb of Somervile, poet of "The Chase" and "Rural Sports;" to the Rhynhill of Braddon's tale and the Kenilworth of Scott's matchless romance; to Bilton, where Addison sometime dwelt, and the Calthorpe home of Dyer, bard of "Grongar Hill" and "The Fleece," where we find his garden and a tree he planted which shades now his battlemented old church; to Rugby, where we see the dormitory of "Tom Brown" Hughes, the class-rooms he shared with Clough, Matthew Arnold, and Dean Stanley, the grave of the beloved Dr. Arnold in the "Rugby Chapel" of his son's poem.

At Avonmouth we find the Norton Bury of "John Halifax," and the old inn where Dinah Mulock lived while writing this her popular tale. The inn garden holds the yew hedge of the novel, "fifteen feet high and as many thick," and the sward over which crept the lame Phineas: sitting there, we see the view the boy admired,--the old Abbey tower, the mill of Abel Fletcher, the river where the famished rioters fought for the grains the grim old man had flung into the water, the green level of the Ham dotted with cattle, the white sails of the encircling Severn, the farther sweep of country extending to the distant hills,--and hear the sweet-toned Abbey chimes and the lazy whir of the mill which sounded so pleasantly in Phineas's ears.

[Sidenote: Other Shrines--Loamshire]

[Sidenote: Birthplace and Home of George Eliot]

[Sidenote: Scenes of her Tales]