Gibbon died, Byron had for some years a suite of rooms. Here he was
convenient to Almack's aristocratic ballrooms and St. James Theatre, and
was in the then, as it is now, centre of fashionable club-life. His
residence here began when he came to London to publish "Bards and
Reviewers," was resumed upon his return from the Levantine tour, and
continued during the publication of the early cantos of "Childe Harold"
and other poems written on that tour. In these rooms "Corsair," "The
Giaour," and "Bride of Abydos" were written, the latter in a single
night and with one quill. The last year of Byron's residence here was
the period of his highest popularity, when he was the especial pet of
London society queens, one of whom--who later wrote a book to defame
him--was recognized in bifurcated masculine garb in these chambers. On
the same street is the home of White's Club, the Bays' of "Pendennis,"
of which the present Lord Byron is a member, and on the site of the
Carlton Club, Pall Mall, stood the Star and Garter tavern, where, in
room No. 7 at the right on the first floor, the poet's predecessor
killed his neighbor Chaworth, grand-uncle of Byron's "star of Annesley."
Adjoining the Academy of Arts in Piccadilly is that "college of
bachelors," the Albany apartment house where Dickens lodged
"Fascination" Fledgeby and laid the scene of his flagellation by Lammle
and the dressing of his wounds with pepper by Jenny Wren. Here the
handsome suite A 2 was the abode of Byron for the year or so preceding
his hapless marriage, and here "Lara" and "Hebrew Melodies" were
written. The poet had passed the zenith of the social horizon, and the
"Byron-madness" was waning, when he came to the Albany; still, the
visits of fair admirers were vouchsafed him in these rooms. It was here
that the girl whose story Guiccioli adduces as evidence of Byron's
virtuous self-denial came to him for counsel. If the partiality of his
mistress has unduly praised his conduct at this time, it is a
thousandfold outweighed by the bitterness of another narrative--happily
discredited, if not disproven--which indicates this same period as being
that of the beginning of a _liaison_ with his sister. To these rooms
Moore was a daily visitant, and Canning then lodged on the second floor
adjoining the suite E 1, where Macaulay wrote the "History of England"
and many essays. Byron's last abode in London was a stately house in
Piccadilly, opposite Green Park and not far from the then London sojourn
of Scott. Byron's dwelling, now No. 139, belonged to the Duchess of
Devon, and was known as 13 Piccadilly Terrace. To this elegant home he
brought his bride after the "treacle-moon," and here passed the
remainder of their brief period of cohabitation. Here "The Siege of
Corinth," "Parisina," and many minor poems were penned, the MS. of some
being in the handwriting of his wife. Here Augusta Leigh was a guest
warmly welcomed by Lady Byron, despite her alleged knowledge of the
"shocking misconduct" of Byron and his sister in this house. Here Ada,
"sole daughter of his house and heart," was born, and from here, a few
weeks later, his wife went forth, never to see him again. Some letters
came from her to this home,--playful notes to Byron inviting him to
follow her, affectionate epistles to the sister, then a final letter
announcing her determination never to return. In the ten months during
which Byron occupied this house it was nine times in possession of
bailiffs on account of his debts. It has since been refaced and
repaired, but the original rooms remain. Hamilton Place now leads from
it to Hamilton Gardens, where stands a beautiful statue of Byron. To the
mansion of Sir Edward Knatchbull, No. 25 Great George Street, a site now
occupied by the Institute of Engineers, the corpse of Byron was brought
upon its arrival from Greece; and here in the great parlors, but a few
steps from the spot where the remains of Sheridan had lain eight years
before, Byron's body lay in state while his friends vainly sought
sepulture for it in Westminster.
[Sidenote: Murray's]
At No. 50 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly, not far from the Albany, is the
establishment of John Murray, whose predecessor, John Murray II.,
published "Childe Harold" and all Byron's subsequent poems to the
earlier cantos of "Don Juan." At this house the poet was a frequent and
familiar lounger. Here, in a cosy drawing-room which is handsomely
furnished and embellished, Murray used to hold a literary court, and
here Byron first shook hands with the "great Wizard of the North" and
met Moore, Canning, Southey, Gifford, and other _litterateurs_. Scott
afterward wrote, "Byron and I met for an hour or two daily in Murray's
drawing-room, and found much to say to each other." During his
residence in London, Byron was customarily one of the coterie of
authors--facetiously called the "four o'clock club"--which daily
assembled in this room. The _seances_ were frequented at one time or
another by most of the stars of English letters, embracing, besides
those above named, Campbell, Hallam, Crabbe, Lockhart, Disraeli, Irving,
George Ticknor, etc. We find the room little changed since their time.
Original portraits of that brilliant company look down from the walls
of the room they haunted in life, and the visitor thrills with the
thought that in some subtile sense their presence pervades it still. In
this room Ada Byron, kept in ignorance of her father until womanhood,
first saw his handwriting, and in yonder fireplace beneath his portrait,
four days after intelligence of his death had reached London, the
manuscript of his much-discussed "Memoirs" was burned at the desire of
Lady Byron and in the presence of Moore and Byron's executor, Hobhouse,
who had witnessed his hapless marriage. Until the death of Byron his
relations with Murray were most cordial, and the present John Murray
IV., grandson of Byron's publisher, possesses numerous letters of the
poet, some of which were used in Moore's "Life." Perhaps most
interesting of Byron's many rhyming epistles is the one commencing,--
"My dear Mr. Murray,
You're in a blanked hurry
To set up this ultimate canto,"
which announces the final completion of "Childe Harold." Among many
mementos of Byron cherished in this famous room are the original MSS. of
"Bards and Reviewers" and of most of his later poems. With them are
other priceless MSS. of Scott, Swift, Gray, Southey, Livingstone,
Irving, Motley, etc. The Murray III. who used to show us these treasures
with reverent pride, and who could boast that he had known Byron, Scott,
and Goethe, died not long ago. When we ask for the Bible popularly
believed to have been given to Murray by Byron with a line so altered as
to read "now Barabbas was a _publisher_," we are told this joke was
Campbell's and was upon another publisher than Murray. Byron's
signet-ring has passed to the possession of Pierre Barlow, Esq., of New
York. _Litterateurs_ still come to "Murray's den," though not so often
as in the time when clubs were less popular: among those who may
sometimes be met here are Argyll, Knight, Layard, Dufferin, Temple,
Francis Darwin, etc. Murrays' was the home of the Review--"whose mission
in life is to hang, draw, and _Quarterly_," as one victim avers--to
which came Charlotte Bronte's burly Irish uncle with his shillalah in
search of the harsh reviewer of "Jane Eyre," and haunted the place until
he was turned away.
[Sidenote: Kensal Green--Harrow]
A most delightful outing is the jaunt from Byron's London haunts, past
Kensal Green, where we find the precious graves in which sleep
Thackeray, Motley, Cunningham, Jameson, Hood, Hunt, Sydney Smith, and
Mrs. Hawthorne,--the latter beneath ivy from her Wayside home and
periwinkle from her husband's tomb on the piny hill-top at Concord,--to
Harrow, the "Ida" of Byron's verse. Here is the ancient school of which
Sheridan, Peel, Perceval, Trollope, and others famous in letters or
politics were inmates; where Byron was for years "a troublesome and
mischievous pupil" and made the acquaintance of Clare, Dorset, and
others to whom some of his poems are addressed, and of Wildman who
rescued his Newstead from ruin: the present Byron and the son of Ada
Byron were also Harrow boys. Here may be seen some of the poet's worn
and scribbled books; his name graven by him upon a panel of the oldest
building; the Peachie tombstone--protected now by iron bars--which was
his evening resort, where some of his stanzas were composed, and whence
he beheld a landscape of enchanting beauty. Near this beloved spot,
where Byron once desired to be entombed, sleeps a sinless child of sin,
his daughter Allegra, born of Mrs. Shelley's sister. At Harrow, Byron
repaid help upon his exercises by fighting for his assistant; his
successes here were mainly pugilistic, but his battles were often those
of younger and weaker boys, and the spot where he fought the tyrants of
the school is pointed out with interest and pride.
In Notts, _en route_ to Newstead, we lodge in an old mansion alleged to
have been the abode of the poet in his school-vacations; we have the
high authority of the landlord for the conviction that we occupy the
room and the very bed oft used by Byron; but the credulity even of a
pilgrim has a limit, and the agility of the fleas that now inhabit the
bed forbids belief that they too are relics of the poet. Better
authenticated are the Byron relics of a local society, among which are
the boot-trees certified by his bootmaker to be those upon which the
poet's boots were fitted. They are of interest as demonstrating that the
asymmetry of his feet was much less than has been believed; one foot was
shorter than its fellow, and the ankle was weak, but not deformed.
[Sidenote: Tomb of Childe Harold]
From Nottingham a winsome way along a smiling vale, with billowy hills
swelling upon either hand, conducts us to the village of Hucknall. By
its market-place an ancient church-tower rises from a grave-strewn
enclosure; we enter the fane through a porch of ponderous timbers, and,
traversing the dim aisle, approach the chancel and find there the tomb
of Childe Harold. A slab of blue marble, sent by the King of Greece and
bearing the word Byron, is set in the pavement to mark the spot where,
after the throes of his passion-tossed life, Byron lies among his
kindred in "the dreamless sleep that lulls the dead." One who, as a lad,
entered the vault at the burial of Ada Byron, indicates for us its size
upon the pavement and the position of the coffins; Byron, in a coffin
covered with velvet and resting upon benches of stone, lies between his
mother and the "sole daughter of his house and heart;" at his feet a
receptacle contains his heart and brain. His valet and the Little White
Lady of Irving's narrative sleep in the yard near by. A marble tablet on
the church wall describes Byron as the "Author of Childe Harold's
Pilgrimage;" this was erected by his sister, and near it we saw a
chaplet of faded laurel placed years ago by our "Bard of the Sierras."
Byron's tomb has never been a popular shrine, but such Americans as
Irving, Hawthorne, Halleck, Ludlow, Joaquin Miller, and William Winter
have been reverent pilgrims. Once Byron's "Italian enchantress," la
Guiccioli, was found weeping here and kissing the pavement which covers
the lover of her youth.
[Sidenote: Annesley Hall]
Above Hucknall the ancestral domain of the Byrons lies upon the right,
while upon the other hand extend the broad lands which were the heritage
of Mary Ann Chaworth, Byron's "star of Annesley." From the boundary of
the estates, where the poet sometimes met his youthful love, a stroll
across a landscape parquetted with grain-field gold and meadow emerald
brings us to the ancient seat of the time-honored race of which the
maiden of Byron's "Dream"--the "Mary" of many poems--was the "last
solitary scion left." It is now the property of her great-grandson. Most
of her married life was passed elsewhere, and Annesley fell into the
neglected condition which Irving describes. Mary's husband, the maligned
Musters, instead of hating the place and seeking to destroy its
identity, preferred it to his other property, and spent many years after
his wife's death in restoring and beautifying it, taking pains to
preserve the grounds and the main portion of the mansion in the
condition in which his wife had known them in her maidenhood. This
became the beloved home of his later years, and here he died. This
mansion of the "Dream" stands upon an elevation overlooking many acres
of picturesque park. It is a great, rambling pile of motley
architecture, obviously erected by different generations of Chaworths to
suit their varying needs and tastes, but the walls are overgrown with
clambering vines, which conceal the touch of time and impart to the
structure an aspect of harmonious beauty. The principal facade which
presents along the court is imposing and stately, but on every side are
pointed gables, stone balustrades, and picturesque walls. The interior
arrangement of the body of the house remains precisely as Mary knew it,
even the decorations of some of the rooms having been preserved by the
considerate love of her husband and descendants; and here, despite the
averment of a Byron-biographer that "every relic of her ancient family
was sold and scattered to the winds," the Chaworth plate, portraits, and
other belongings are religiously cherished. We were first invited to the
place to see these while they were yet displayed by the maid in whose
arms Mary died. Upon the walls of the great lower hall are many family
pictures, among them that of the Chaworth whom Byron's great-uncle had
slain. It was this portrait that Byron feared would come out of its
frame to haunt him if he remained here over-night. From the hall low
stairs lead to the apartments. At the right is Mary's sitting-room,
where Byron spent many hours beside her, listening entranced while she
played to him upon the piano which stood in the farther corner. It is a
pleasant apartment, its windows looking out upon the garden-beds Mary
tended, which we see now ablaze with the flowers known to have been her
favorites. In this room, which "her smiles had made a heaven to him,"
Byron, years afterward, saw Mary for the last time and kissed for its
mother's sake "the child that ought to have been his." On this occasion
she made the inquiry which prompted the lines, "To Mrs. Musters, on
being asked my reason for quitting England in the spring." This last
painful interview is recalled in the poems "Well, Thou art Happy" and
"I've seen my Bride Another's Bride." Above the hall is the large
drawing-room, where we see several portraits of Mary, which represent
her as a most beautiful woman, with a pathetically sweet and winning
face,--by no means the "wicked-looking cat" which Byron's jealous wife
described. Here, too, are pictures of her husband which fully justify
his popular sobriquet, "handsome Jack Musters." Physically they were an
admirably matched pair. Out of the drawing-room is the "antique oratory"
of the poem, a small apartment above the entrance-porch, pictured as the
scene of Byron's parting with Mary after her announcement of her
betrothal. Byron was cordially welcomed at Annesley; the family were his
relatives, and all of them, save that young lady herself, would gladly
have had him marry the heiress. Among the guest-chambers is one, called
of yore the blue room, which during one summer--after his fear of the
family portraits had been subdued by the greater fear of meeting
"bogles" on his homeward way--Byron often occupied. Here he incensed
Nanny the housekeeper by allowing his dog to sleep upon the bed and
soil her neat counterpanes. Another servant, "old Joe," tired of sitting
up at night to wait upon him, finally frightened him away by means of
some hideous nocturnal noises, which he assured the young poet proceeded
from "spooks out of the kirk-yard,"--Byron's superstition doubtless
suggesting the ruse.
[Sidenote: Annesley Park--Diadem Hill]
[Sidenote: Byron-Chaworth-Musters]
Giant trees overtop the chimneys and bower the walls of the venerable
mansion. The garden which Irving found matted and wild was long ago
restored by Musters to its former beauty of turf, foliage, and flower. A
grand terrace,--one of the finest in England,--with brick walls and
carved balustrades of stone mantled and draped with ivy, lies at the
right, with broad steps leading down to the garden where Byron delighted
to linger with Mary during the swift hours of one too brief summer.
Beneath the terrace is a door, carefully protected by Musters and his
descendants, which Byron daily used as a target and in which we see the
marks of bullets from his pistol. The grounds are extensive and
beautifully diversified by copses of great trees and grassy glades where
deer feed amid myriad witcheries of leaf and bloom. Half a mile from the
Hall is a shrine that will attract the sentimental prowler, Byron's
diadem hill. Projecting from the extremity of a long line of eminences,
it is a landmark to the countryside and overlooks the living landscape
which the poet depicted in lines throbbing with life and beauty. From
its acclivity we see much of his ancestral Newstead, the adjoining fair
acres of Annesley which he would have added to his own, the tower and
chimneys of the Hall rising among clustering oaks: beyond these darkly
wooded hills decline to the valley, along which we look--past parks,
villages, and the church where Byron sleeps--to the spires of the city.
As we contemplate the vista from the spot where stood the two bright
"beings in the hues of youth," we have about us a ring of dark firs, the
"diadem of trees in circular array" pictured in the "Dream," apparently
unchanged since the day the maiden and the youth here met for the last
time before her marriage. The Byron-writers have united in denouncing
Musters for denuding this hill-top in a splenetic endeavor to prevent
its identification as the scene of the interview described in the poem.
In truth, we owe the preservation of the features which identify this
romantic spot to the very hand which the author of "Crayon Miscellany"
avers is "execrated by every poetic pilgrim." When natural causes were
rapidly destroying the grove, Musters caused its removal and replaced
it by saplings grown from cones of the old trees, each fir of the
present beautiful diadem being sedulously rooted upon the site of its
lineal ancestor. Musters had much greater reason to regard this spot
with romantic tenderness than had the poet; here he enjoyed many stolen
interviews with his sweetheart, for he was forbidden to see her in her
home, and she, perverse and persistent in her passion for him, came here
daily with the hope of meeting him and watched for his approach along
the valley. Upon the very occasion the poem describes, she waited here,
"Looking afar if yet her lover's steed kept pace with her expectancy,"
and merely tolerated the company of the "gaby" boy Byron until Musters
might arrive. The latter had no reason for the irritable jealousy toward
Byron which has been attributed to him, and there is no evidence that he
evinced or entertained such a feeling. He freely invited the poet to his
house, rode and swam with him, preserved the few Byron mementos at
Annesley, and protected the tombs of Byron's ancestors at Colwick. So
much of untruth has been published anent the Byron-Chaworth-Musters
matter, and especially concerning the attitude of the lady toward Byron
and the conditions of her subsequent life, that it is pleasant, even at
this late day, to be able to record upon undoubted evidence that her
loving admiration for her husband ceased only with her life.
[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 mediaeval 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.
[Illustration: NEWSTEAD ABBEY]
[Sidenote: Chapel Ruin]
[Sidenote: Byron's Apartments]