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 facade 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 mediaeval 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]
"John Halifax" was published simultaneously with another tale of
Warwickshire life, "Amos Barton." We are newly come from the London
homes of George Eliot and her grave on the Highgate hill-side, and now,
as we traverse sweet Avonvale, we gladly remember that Shakespeare's
shire is hers as well. A jaunt of a score of miles from Stratford
brings us to the scenes amid which she was born and grew to physical and
mental maturity. Our course by "Avon's stream," bowered by willows or
bordered by meads, lies past the noble park where Shakespeare did not
steal deer and the palace of his Justice Shallow where he was not
arraigned for poaching. (We find it as impossible to keep Shakespeare
out of our MS. as did Mr. Dick of "Copperfield" to keep Charles I. out
of the memorial.) Beyond Charlecote is storied Warwick Castle, with the
old mansion of Compton Wyniates, dwelling of the royalist knight of
Scott's "Woodstock," not far away. Beyond these again we come to the
Coventry region and the frontier of the "Loamshire" whose
characteristics are imaged and whose traditions, phases of life, and
scenery are wrought with tender touch into poem and tale by George Eliot
and so made familiar to all the world. Warwickshire scenery is not
sublime; Dr. Arnold characterized it as "an endless monotony of enclosed
fields and hedgerow trees." While its landscapes lack striking features,
theirs is the quiet, unobtrusive beauty which Hawthorne loved and which
for us is full of restful charm. Across sunny vales and gentle eminences
we look away to the far-off Malvern Hills, whose shadowy outlines bound
many a "Loamshire" landscape. We see vistas of low-lying meads with
circling "lines of willows marking the watercourses;" of slumberous
expanses of green or golden fields; of villages grouped about gray
church-towers; of groves of venerable woods,--survivors of Shakespeare's
"Forest of Arden" which erst clothed the countryside. We find it,
indeed, "worth the journey hither only to see the hedgerows,"--green,
fragrant walls of hawthorn which border lane and highway, bound garden
and field. With their gleaming boughs rayed by bright blossoms and
festooned with interlacing vines, these barriers are often marvels of
beauty and strength. Between miles of such hedgerows, and beneath lines
of overshading elms, a highway running northward from the town of Godiva
and "Peeping Tom" brings us to the great Arbury property of the
Newdigates, where we find the South Farm homestead in which Robert
Evans--newly appointed agent of the estate--temporarily placed his
family, and where, in the room at the left of the central chimney-stack,
at five o'clock on the morning of St. Cecilia's day, 1819, his youngest
child, Mary Ann, was born. It is a broad-eaved, many-gabled, two-storied
structure of stuccoed stone, with trim hedges and flower-bordered
garden-beds about it, a wider environment of lawn and woodland, and
colonnades of the elms which figure in her poems and were already
venerable when she saw the light beneath their shade. On the same
estate, near the highway between Bedworth and Nuneaton, is Griff House,
"the warm nest where her affections were fledged," to which she was
removed at the age of four months, and where her first score years of
life were passed. It is a pleasant and picturesque double-storied
mansion of brick, quaint and comfortable. Massy ivy mantles its walls,
climbs to its gables, overruns its roofs, peeps in at its tiny-paned
casements; doves coo upon its ridges. About it flowers shine from their
setting in the emerald of the lawn, and great trees open their leaves to
the sunshine and winds of summer. Spacious rooms lie upon either side of
the entrance: of the one at the left, the novelist gives us a glimpse in
"The Mill on the Floss." It is a home-like apartment, with low walls and
a pleasant fireplace; it was the dining-room and sitting-room also in
the days when "the little wench" Mary Ann was the pet of the household.
Here she acted charades with her brother Isaac and astonished the family
by repeating stories from "Miller's Jest Book," a treasured volume of
hers in that early time. We learn from Maggie Tulliver--in whose
childhood is pictured the author's inner life as a child--that Defoe's
"History of the Devil" was another of Mary Ann's juvenile favorites,
and her relatives preserve the worn copy she used to read here before
this fireplace with her father, containing the pictures of the drowning
witch and the devil which little Maggie explained to Mr. Riley in "The
Mill on the Floss." Here, years afterward, Mary Ann heard, from her
"Methodist Aunt Samuel," the thrilling story of the girl executed for
child-murder, which was the germ of the great romance "Adam Bede." The
aunt, who had been a preacher in earlier life, remained at Griff for
some time, and George Eliot has told us that the character of Dinah
Morris grew out of her recollections of this relative. It may be noted
that in real life Dinah married Seth Bede, Adam being drawn in
part--like Caleb Garth--from the novelist's father. In this same room,
but a few years ago, the "Brother" of the poem, who played here at
charades with little Mary Ann, suddenly expired in his chair but a few
minutes after his return from "Shepperton Church." The windows of Mary
Ann's chamber command a reach of the coach-road of "Felix Holt" and a
farther vista of woodlands and fields; in another chamber is the
mahogany bed beneath which she was once found hidden to avoid going to
school. In the roof is the attic which was Maggie Tulliver's retreat,
where she kept her wooden doll with the nails in its head, and here is
the chimney-stack against which that vicarious sufferer was ground and
beaten. The death of her mother, Mrs. Hackit of "Barton," made Mary Ann
mistress of Griff at sixteen. At Griff's gates stood the cottage of Dame
Moore's school, where the novelist began her education, and where years
after she used to collect the children of the vicinage for religious
instruction each Sabbath. A son of Mrs. Moore lately lived not far away,
and had more to say in praise of "Mary Hann" than of her surviving
kinsfolk, who seem ashamed of their relationship to the novelist. In a
shaded part of the garden lately stood a bower with a stone table, which
George Eliot doubtless had in mind when she described the finding of
Casaubon's corpse in the arbor at Lowick. The exhausted quarries in the
shale close by, a resort of Mary Ann's girlhood, are the "Red Deeps"
where Maggie met her lover; the "brown canal" of the poem winds through
the near hollow; and beyond it, on "an apology for an elevation of
ground," is the "College" workhouse to which Amos Barton walked through
the sleet to read prayers. Not far distant is Arbury Hall, seat of the
Newdigates, for whom the tenant of Griff was and is agent. This is the
Cheverel Manor of "Gilfil," an imposing castellated structure of gray
stone, with flanking towers and great mullioned windows of multishaped
panes, famous for its elaborately decorated ceilings. That George Eliot
had often been within this mansion is shown by her familiarity with the
arrangement and ornamentation of the rooms, accurately described as
scenes of many incidents of the tale. In the grounds, too, the imagery
of the "Love Story" may be perfectly realized: here are the lawn where
little Caterina sat with Lady Cheverel, and the shimmering pool, with
its swans and water-lilies, which was searched for her corpse the
morning of her flight; at a little distance we find "Moss-lands," and
the cottage of the gardener to which the dead body of Wybrow was
carried; and, farther away, the spot under giant limes where the poor
girl, coming to meet her recreant lover "with a dagger in her dress and
murder in her heart," found him lying dead in the path, his hand
clutching the dark leaves, his eyes unheeding the "sunlight that darted
upon them between the boughs." A touching incident in the life of a
former owner of Arbury was made the plot of Otway's tragedy "The
Orphan."
[Sidenote: Shepperton Church--Milly's Grave]
A mile northward from Griff is the quaint church of Chilvers Coton,
where Mary Ann was christened at the age of a week, where a little later
her "devotional patience" was fostered by smuggled bread-and-butter, and
where as child and woman she worshipped for twenty years. It is a
massive stone edifice with Gothic windows, one of them being a memorial
of the wife of Isaac Evans, and with a square tower rising above its low
roofs; at one corner, "a flight of stone steps, with their wooden rail
running up the outer wall," still leads to the children's gallery as in
the days of Gilfil and Amos Barton, for this is the Shepperton Church of
the tales. Within we see the memorials of Rev. Gilpin Ebdell (thought to
be Gilfil) and of the original of Mrs. Farquhar; the place where Gilfil
read his sermons from manuscript "rather yellow and worn at the edges,"
and where Barton later "preached without book." About the renovated fane
is the church-yard, with its grassy mounds and mouldering tombstones,
one of which, protected by a paling and shaded by leafy boughs, is
crowned by a funeral urn and marks the spot where Milly was laid,--"the
sweet mother with her baby in her arms,"--the grave to which Barton came
back an old man with Patty supporting his infirm steps. Its inscription
is to "Emma, beloved wife of Revd. John Gwyther, B.A.," curate here in
George Eliot's girlhood: during his incumbency the community felt
aggrieved for his wife on account of the prolonged stay at the parsonage
of a strange woman who, years after, was described as Countess Czerlaski
by one who as a child had seen her here. Not far from Milly's monument
the parents of George Eliot lie in one grave, with Isaac, the "Brother"
of her poem, sleeping near. By the church-yard wall stands the pleasant
ivy-grown parsonage to which Gilfil brought his dark-eyed bride, and
where, after brief months of happiness, he lived the long years of
solitude and sorrow. We see the cosy parlor--smelling no longer of his
or Barton's pipe--where the lonely old man sat with his dog, and above,
its pretty window overlooking the garden, the chamber where he tenderly
cherished the dainty belongings of his dead wife with the unused
baby-clothes her fingers had fashioned, and where, in another tale, is
laid one of the most affecting and high-wrought scenes in all fiction,
the death of Milly Barton.
[Sidenote: Milby--Liggins]