The picturesque region of Matlock, with its cliffs and streams, its deep
woods and romantic walks, is full of attraction. There we not only see
the outward graces of Nature, but catch glimpses of her subtler
elements. Springs, dripping from hidden sources, transform the fruit, or
the bird's-nest with its fragile eggs, into stone with a Medusa touch;
while in deep caverns are found beautiful spars, exquisitely tinted, as
if prepared by the genii of the rock for the palace of their king.
Varied and wonderful are the workings of earth, air, fire, and water in
the Derbyshire valley, where a sensitive nature recognizes more things
in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of many a
passing traveller. To this region of beauty and mystery Byron often came
in his youth. These cliffs and streams and woods were familiar to the
young poet, and his retentive memory must have received here many of
Nature's deep and marvellous lessons. Perhaps among these scenes there
came to him those
"noble aspirations in his youth
To make his mind the mind of other men,
The enlightener of nations, and to rise
He know not whither, it might be to fall,
But fall, even as the mountain-cataract,
Which, having leapt from its more dazzling height,
Lies low, but mighty still."
In Byron's day, Matlock was a fashionable watering-place; and the
drawing-room of the "Old Bath," with cut-glass chandeliers, old
engravings, and cushioned window-seats, looks much the same as when it
witnessed many a gay assembly. In this room the wayward and sensitive
youth, secretly writhing with mortification at being prevented by
lameness from leading Mary Chaworth to the dance, watched, her more
fortunate partners with moody envy. The young Lady of Annesley little
imagined that the lame boy, with his handsome face and troublesome
temper, would link her name to deathless song.
On a fair, sunny morning, towards the close of October, we left Matlock
for Annesley Hall and Newstead Abbey. The day was in harmony with the
poetical associations of our excursion: a gentle mist hung like a veil
over hills and groves, giving a dreamy aspect to Nature, and rendering
the places we intended to visit creations of fancy rather than actual
facts. Very unromantic personages, however, answered our inquiries for
Annesley, which reassured us of its reality. Byron's "Dream" had
rendered the scenery familiar to our memory.
"The hill
Green and of mild declivity, the last,
As 't were the cape, of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape."
Our approach led us beside those gentle slopes, and we seemed to see the
maiden and the youth standing on the mild declivity, with its crowning
circlet of trees.
"And both were young, but not alike in youth:
As the sweet moon on the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the eve of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers.
"... She was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts.
Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother, but no more; 'twas much,
For brotherless she was, save in the name
Her infant friendship had bestowed on him,
Herself the solitary scion left
Of a time-honored race.
"Even now she loved another,
And on the summit of that hill she stood
Looking afar, if yet her lover's steed
Kept pace with her expectancy and flew."
That lover, soon after, became the husband of Mary Chaworth. It is not
for us to speculate wherefore Destiny entangled the threads in that web
of existence which originally seemed to have woven the fates of Byron
and Mary Chaworth together. We are ignorant of spiritual laws, and know
little of the origin whence come those strange attractions, mind to
mind, heart to heart, which make or mar the life-experiences of us all.
Had events been ordered otherwise, Byron might have been a better and
happier man, but the world would never have received the gift of "Childe
Harold." Alas, that the soul must be ploughed and harrowed, and the
precious seed trodden in, before it can give forth its fairest-flowers
or its immortal fruit!
When we had last heard of Annesley Hall, it was ruinous and desolate,
and we knew not in what condition it might now be found. Passing through
an avenue of ancient oaks, the road winds down to an old picturesque
gate-house, and, leaving the carriage, we walked onward. Looking through
the arch of entrance, we saw as in a picture, nay, as in the poet's
dream, "the venerable mansion," sitting quietly in autumn sunshine on
its old terrace. To gray walls and peaks clung a climbing plant, its
leaves red with touch of frost, contrasting deliciously with green ivy,
and putting a bit of color into darker hues of stone-work. As we passed
beyond the gate, we saw that the mansion had been, restored and repaired
by careful hands guided by tasteful eyes and loving hearts. Above the
hall-door was a bay-window, which instinct told us belonged to the
"antique oratory," but we walked onward to the terrace, with its stone
balustrade, inclosing a bright flower-garden. On the other side of the
house stretches the lawn and park, with deer feeding quietly in the
distance. No human form appeared; all was silent and peaceful. We walked
thoughtfully on the old terrace, recalling the images of the poet and
the Lady of Annesley; but looking up at the ancient sun-dial on one of
the gables, we perceived that its shadow fell deeper and deeper with the
declining day, telling us, as it had told many before, how time waited
not, and reminding us that we, also were travellers. Passing again round
the mansion, and casting a wistful look within, we saw a woman sitting
at a low window, sorting fruit. We approached, and asked if strangers
were permitted to see the Hall. She replied gently, that it was not "a
show-house." We pleaded our cause successfully, however, when we told
her how the thought of Mary Chaworth had led us here from a distant
land. If the owners of Annesley knew that once an exception was made to
a general rule, we trust they also believed that the visitors were not
actuated by an idle curiosity.
Our request being granted, our guide laid aside her plums, and with a
kind hand admitted us into the entrance-hall. It was low and venerable,
with family-portraits on the walls, among them that of the Mr. Chaworth
whom the "wicked Lord Byron" of other days shot in a duel. From the hall
we entered the modern part of the house, harmoniously blended with the
older portion of the building. In the drawing-room, two noble portraits
by Sir Joshua Reynolds arrested our attention. The lady (as Miss Burney
tells us in her journal) was a beauty and a belle of Sir Joshua's time,
and the painter has done justice to his subject, who is drawn at full
length, feeding an eagle,--a spirited, splendid woman, who looks down
from the canvas with bright, triumphant eyes. In the next apartment we
were shown a portrait which touched deeper chords in our heart. It was a
likeness of Mary Chaworth in miniature, representing a mature and
beautiful woman.
"Upon her face there was a tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
As if its lids were charged with unshed tears."
The truth of this description startled us, and revealed instantly how
deeply impressed upon the mind of her youthful lover must have been that
face which was the starlight of his boyhood. Tears had passed since they
parted, and chasms of time and gulfs yet deeper and wider than time ever
knows had separated Byron from Annesley and England, and yet, when he
wrote those lines, her face rose before him so clearly, wearing on its
loveliness the impress of care and sorrow which he knew must be there,
that no words but his can truly describe the expression of her features.
Turning to our conductress, we asked if she had ever seen the Lady of
Annesley. "Yes, I knew and loved her well, for I was her maid many
years"; and, with a faltering tone, she added, "she died in my arms."
Genius has immortalized Mary Chaworth; yet the tender and heartfelt
tribute of one who had been the humble, but daily witness of the beauty
of her life, was worth a thousand homilies.
We were conducted through the library, which had been in other days the
drawing-room, out of which opens a small apartment, known to the readers
of the "Dream" as the "antique oratory." Leading from the old
entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy
childhood and youth; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat
beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the
piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated
the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her
memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young
companion: they now lie before us, carefully preserved, with some of
their gay tints yet unfaded,--memorials, not only of Mary Chaworth, who
lived and loved and suffered through all the varied experience of
woman's life, but also of her to whom the blossoms were given, the fair,
young girl, "who lived long enough on earth to learn its better lessons,
but passed from it upwards and onwards without a knowledge of sin except
the shadow it casts on the world."
Taking leave of our kind guide, to whom we were indebted for a visit of
deep interest, we paused a moment on the terrace ere we "passed the
massy gate of that old hall," to receive once more into our memory
"the old mansion and the accustomed hall
And the remembered chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade."
A holy stillness pervaded the venerable house and its surrounding
scenery, a peace which breathed of a purer sphere, where what is best on
earth finds its correspondence.
We wondered not, that, when the deep waters of the poet's soul, too
often ruffled by passion, polluted by vice, or made turbid by
selfishness, were calm and pure enough to mirror heaven, they ever
reflected the bright and morning star of Annesley.
The transition from Annesley Hall to Newstead Abbey is inevitable in
thought and rapid in fact,--the road, over which the young poet so often
passed, between the two estates, being only three miles in length. We
had lingered so long at Annesley that the day was nearly spent before we
reached the Abbey. How did the venerable pile, with its mysterious
memories, fateful histories, and poetical associations, flash out into
light and darken into shadow as the October sun sank behind the distant
hills!
The Abbey church is now only a ruin, but the airy span of its rich
Gothic window remains, as evidence of its original beauty. Through the
now vacant space, once the wide door of entrance, we saw the floor of
green grass, and in the centre the monument to Byron's favorite dog,
Bowswain. All was silent about the ruin, except the cawing of a thousand
rooks, who were settling themselves for the night with a vast amount of
noise and bustle on the high branches of the old trees which sweep down
on one side of the Abbey.
The residence which adjoins the church, once a monastery, was inherited
by Lord Byron, with the title: to part with it was a dire necessity.
Colonel Wildman, the school-fellow of Byron at Harrow, purchased the
estate from the unhappy poet in the most liberal and generous manner,
and blessed it into a home. On entering the house, we were shown through
long corridors and vaulted passages, in which the monastic character of
the building was preserved. When Byron came to Newstead from college,
the Abbey was in a most dilapidated condition, and he had only means
enough to make a few rooms habitable for himself and his mother. A
gloomy and desolate abode it must have been. The furniture of Byron's
bedroom remains as it stood when removed from Cambridge. On the walls
are prints of his school at Harrow, and Trinity College, with various
relics and boyish treasures. The window commands a view of the sheet of
water which stretches before the Abbey, with its wooded banks,--a scene
which he loves and remembers even when "Lake Leman wooes him with her
crystal face," for he writes to his sister,--
"It doth remind me of our own dear lake
By the old hall, which shall be mine no more."
Adjoining Byron's room is a suite of apartments, ruinous and roofless in
his day, but which Colonel Wildman has restored, and furnished most
appropriately with old tapestry and antique tables and chairs. These
rooms wear a ghostly aspect, and we were not surprised to learn that
one, at least, had the reputation of being haunted. The great
drawing-room, once the dormitory of the monks, is now a splendid
apartment richly decorated; above the chimney is a fine portrait of
Lord Byron, and in an ancient cabinet was shown the cup made from a
skull found in one of the stone coffins near the Abbey church. It is
mounted in silver, and the well-known lines, written by Byron, are
engraved on the rim. "Having it made" was, as he said himself, "one of
his foolish freaks, of which he was ashamed." The cup, however, bears
little resemblance to a skull. Colonel Wildman preserved the furniture
of Byron's dining-room, and other apartments, (very simple it is,)
without alteration, in the hope that he might return from Greece and
revisit the halls of his fathers. Had Fate so willed, he would have
found how kindly and faithfully his early friend had associated him with
Newstead, and preserved every memorial of past history connected with
the place. Yet thoughts of bitterness would even then have mingled with
these familiar scenes, for it was not the heir of the Byrons who had
restored Newstead Abbey to beauty and order.
Quitting the Abbey, and passing into the gardens, we followed the
gardener through the deepening gloom to the wood, where, in former days,
an ancestor of the Byrons set up leaden statues of satyrs, which the
country-people called "the old lord's devils"; and very much like demons
they looked. The tree was pointed out upon which Byron cut the names of
"Augusta" and "Byron," with the date, during a last walk the brother and
sister took together at Newstead. It is a double tree, springing from
one root, which he chose as emblematical of themselves. The dim light
barely enabled us to discern letters deeply carved, but growing less
visible with the expanding bark. One of the trees has withered under
that spell which seems to have blasted all connected with the name, and
is cut off just above the inscription. The oak planted by Byron in his
youth in a different part of the grounds was also shown to us. It is yet
strong and vigorous. We picked up a yellow leaf, which the wind bore to
our feet, as a fitting memorial of the place and the hour.
Passing again through the old Abbey church, the chill of the evening met
us, cold and damp,--fit atmosphere for the place. The rooks were all
asleep in their high nests; silence, darkness, and mist were fast
casting their mantle over old Newstead; and the only cheerful sign came
from the distant window of the Colonel's library, whence shot out a
generous gleam of household fire,--emblem of that warm heart which had
shed light upon the once desolate abode of its early friend.
Since our visit to Newstead, (seven years ago,) the Abbey has passed
into other hands, and even a royal owner is now reported to possess the
poet's ancestral home. We shall ever deem ourselves fortunate that our
destiny led us to make this pilgrimage during the lifetime of Colonel
Wildman and while the place was under his enlightened and generous
ownership.
A few miles from Newstead Abbey is Hucknall, a poor, desolate-looking
village, at the end of whose street stands an old church, beneath which
is the burial-place of the Byrons. The building is ancient and gray, but
dreary rather than venerable. Standing in its comfortless interior, we
remembered that Byron once asked to be buried under the green, grassy
floor of the roofless church at Newstead Abbey, with his faithful dog at
his feet. The poet, whose rapid glance seized every glory and beauty of
Nature, whose memory, wax to receive, and marble to retain, transferred
the vision through the medium of his rare command of language, should
have had a grave over which winds sweep, birds sing, and stars watch.
Not so. A white marble tablet let into the wall above the family-vault
was erected to Byron's memory by his sister. Perhaps the simplicity of
the monument was suggested by these lines, written at the early age of
nineteen years:--
"When to his airy hall my father's voice
Shall call my spirit, happy in the choice,
When poised upon the gale my form shall ride,
Or dark in mist descend the mountain-side,
Oh, may my shade behold no sculptured urns
To mark the spot where dust to dust returns,
No lengthened scroll, no praise-encumbered stone!
My epitaph shall be my name alone.
If that with honor fail to crown my clay,
Oh, may no other fame my deeds repay!
That, only that, shall single out the spot
By that remembered, or by that forgot."
The inscription upon the tablet, after his name and title, designates
him as the Author of "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," who died while aiding
the cause of Liberty in Greece: thus striking the noblest notes in a
powerful, eccentric, blotted score, as the fundamental chord of Byron's
requiem.
* * * * *