Being about to give a few sketches taken during a three weeks' sojourn
in the ancestral mansion of the late Lord Byron, I think it proper to
premise some brief particulars concerning its history.
Newstead Abbey is one of the finest specimens in existence of those
quaint and romantic piles, half castle, half convent, which remain as
monuments of the olden times of England. It stands, too, in the midst
of a legendary neighborhood; being in the heart of Sherwood Forest, and
surrounded by the haunts of Robin Hood and his band of outlaws, so
famous in ancient ballad and nursery tale. It is true, the forest
scarcely exists but in name, and the tract of country over which it
once extended its broad solitudes and shades, is now an open and
smiling region, cultivated with parks and farms, and enlivened with
villages.
Newstead, which probably once exerted a monastic sway over this region,
and controlled the consciences of the rude foresters, was originally a
priory, founded in the latter part of the twelfth century, by Henry
II., at the time when he sought, by building of shrines and convents,
and by other acts of external piety, to expiate the murder of Thomas a
Becket. The priory was dedicated to God and the Virgin, and was
inhabited by a fraternity of canons regular of St. Augustine. This
order was originally simple and abstemious in its mode of living, and
exemplary in its conduct; but it would seem that it gradually lapsed
into those abuses which disgraced too many of the wealthy monastic
establishments; for there are documents among its archives which
intimate the prevalence of gross misrule and dissolute sensuality among
its members. At the time of the dissolution of the convents during the
reign of Henry VIII., Newstead underwent a sudden reverse, being given,
with the neighboring manor and rectory of Papelwick, to Sir John Byron,
Steward of Manchester and Rochdale, and Lieutenant of Sherwood Forest.
This ancient family worthy figures in the traditions of the Abbey, and
in the ghost stories with which it abounds, under the quaint and
graphic appellation of "Sir John Byron the Little, with the great
Beard." He converted the saintly edifice into a castellated dwelling,
making it his favorite residence and the seat of his forest
jurisdiction.
The Byron family being subsequently ennobled by a baronial title, and
enriched by various possessions, maintained great style and retinue at
Newstead. The proud edifice partook, however, of the vicissitudes of
the times, and Lord Byron, in one of his poems, represents it as
alternately the scene of lordly wassailing and of civil war:
"Hark, how the hall resounding to the strain,
Shakes with the martial music's novel din!
The heralds of a warrior's haughty reign,
High crested banners wave thy walls within.
"Of changing sentinels the distant hum,
The mirth of feasts, the clang of burnish'd arms,
The braying trumpet, and the hoarser drum,
Unite in concert with increased alarms."
About the middle of the last century, the Abbey came into the
possession of another noted character, who makes no less figure in its
shadowy traditions than Sir John the Little with the great Beard. This
was the grand-uncle of the poet, familiarly known among the gossiping
chroniclers of the Abbey as "the Wicked Lord Byron." He is represented
as a man of irritable passions and vindictive temper, in the indulgence
of which an incident occurred which gave a turn to his whole character
and life, and in some measure affected the fortunes of the Abbey. In
his neighborhood lived his kinsman and friend, Mr. Chaworth, proprietor
of Annesley Hall. Being together in London in 1765, in a chamber of the
Star and Garter tavern in Pall Mall, a quarrel rose between them. Byron
insisted upon settling it upon the spot by single combat. They fought
without seconds, by the dim light of a candle, and Mr. Chaworth,
although the most expert swordsman, received a mortal wound. With his
dying breath he related such particulars the contest as induced the
coroner's jury to return a verdict of wilful murder. Lord Byron was
sent to the Tower, and subsequently tried before the House of Peers,
where an ultimate verdict was given of manslaughter.
He retired after this to the Abbey, where he shut himself up to brood
over his disgraces; grew gloomy, morose, and fantastical, and indulged
in fits of passion and caprice, that made him the theme of rural wonder
and scandal. No tale was too wild or too monstrous for vulgar belief.
Like his successor the poet, he was accused of all kinds of vagaries
and wickedness. It was said that he always went armed, as if prepared
to commit murder on the least provocation. At one time, when a
gentleman of his neighborhood was to dine _tete a tete_ with him,
it is said a brace of pistols were gravely laid with the knives and
forks upon the table, as part of the regular table furniture, and
implements that might be needed in the course of the repast. Another
rumor states that being exasperated at his coachman for disobedience to
orders, he shot him on the spot, threw his body into the coach where
Lady Byron was seated, and, mounting the box, officiated in his stead.
At another time, according to the same vulgar rumors, he threw her
ladyship into the lake in front of the Abbey, where she would have been
drowned, but for the timely aid of the gardener. These stories are
doubtless exaggerations of trivial incidents which may have occurred;
but it is certain that the wayward passions of this unhappy man caused
a separation from his wife, and finally spread a solitude around him.
Being displeased at the marriage of his son and heir, he displayed an
inveterate malignity toward him. Not being able to cut off his
succession to the Abbey estate, which descended to him by entail, he
endeavored to injure it as much as possible, so that it might come a
mere wreck into his hands. For this purpose he suffered the Abbey to
fall out of repair, and everything to go to waste about it, and cut
down all the timber on the estate, laying low many a tract of old
Sherwood Forest, so that the Abbey lands lay stripped and bare of all
their ancient honors. He was baffled in his unnatural revenge by the
premature death of his son, and passed the remainder of his days in his
deserted and dilapidated halls, a gloomy misanthrope, brooding amidst
the scenes he had laid desolate.
His wayward humors drove from him all neighborly society, and for a
part of the time he was almost without domestics. In his misanthropic
mood, when at variance with all human kind, he took to feeding
crickets, so that in process of time the Abbey was overrun with them,
and its lonely halls made more lonely at night by their monotonous
music. Tradition adds that, at his death, the crickets seemed aware
that they had lost their patron and protector, for they one and all
packed up bag and baggage, and left the Abbey, trooping across its
courts and corridors in all directions.
The death of the "Old Lord," or "The Wicked Lord Byron," for he is
known by both appellations, occurred in 1798; and the Abbey then passed
into the possession of the poet. The latter was but eleven years of
age, and living in humble style with his mother in Scotland. They came
soon after to England, to take possession. Moore gives a simple but
striking anecdote of the first arrival of the poet at the domains of
his ancestors.
They had arrived at the Newstead toll-bar, and saw the woods of the
Abbey stretching out to receive them, when Mrs. Byron, affecting to be
ignorant of the place, asked the woman of the toll-house to whom that
seat belonged? She was told that the owner of it, Lord Byron, had been
some months dead. "And who is the next heir?" asked the proud and happy
mother. "They say," answered the old woman, "it is a little boy who
lives at Aberdeen." "And this is he, bless him!" exclaimed the nurse,
no longer able to contain herself, and turning to kiss with delight the
young lord who was seated on her lap. [Footnote: Moore's Life of Lord
Byron.]
During Lord Byron's minority, the Abbey was let to Lord Grey de Ruthen,
but the poet visited it occasionally during the Harrow vacations, when
he resided with his mother at lodgings in Nottingham. It was treated
little better by its present tenant, than by the old lord who preceded
him; so that when, in the autumn of 1808, Lord Byron took up his abode
there, it was in a ruinous condition. The following lines from his own
pen may give some idea of its condition:
"Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle,
Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay;
In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle
Have choked up the rose which once bloomed in the way.
"Of the mail-covered barons who, proudly, to battle
Led thy vassals from Europe to Palestine's plain,
The escutcheon and shield, which with every wind rattle,
Are the only sad vestiges now that remain."
[Footnote: Lines on leaving Newstead Abbey.]
In another poem he expresses the melancholy feeling with which he took
possession of his ancestral mansion:
"Newstead! what saddening scene of change is thine,
Thy yawning arch betokens sure decay:
The last and youngest of a noble line,
Now holds thy mouldering turrets in his sway.
"Deserted now, he scans thy gray-worn towers,
Thy vaults, where dead of feudal ages sleep,
Thy cloisters, pervious to the wintry showers,
These--these he views, and views them but to weep.
"Yet he prefers thee to the gilded domes,
Or gewgaw grottoes of the vainly great;
Yet lingers mid thy damp and mossy tombs,
Nor breathes a murmur 'gainst the will of fate."
[Footnote: Elegy on Newstead Abbey.]
Lord Byron had not fortune sufficient to put the pile in extensive
repair, nor to maintain anything like the state of his ancestors. He
restored some of the apartments, so as to furnish his mother with a
comfortable habitation, and fitted up a quaint study for himself, in
which, among books and busts, and other library furniture, were two
skulls of the ancient friars, grinning on each side of an antique
cross. One of his gay companions gives a picture of Newstead when thus
repaired, and the picture is sufficiently desolate.
"There are two tiers of cloisters, with a variety of cells and rooms
about them, which, though not inhabited, nor in an inhabitable state,
might easily be made so; and many of the original rooms, among which is
a fine stone hall, are still in use. Of the Abbey church, one end only
remains; and the old kitchen, with a long range of apartments, is
reduced to a heap of rubbish. Leading from the Abbey to the modern part
of the habitation is a noble room, seventy feet in length, and
twenty-three in breadth; but every part of the house displays neglect
and decay, save those which the present lord has lately fitted up."
[Footnote: Letter of the late Charles Skinner Mathews, Esq.]
Even the repairs thus made were but of transient benefit, for the roof
being left in its dilapidated state, the rain soon penetrated into the
apartments which Lord Byron had restored and decorated, and in a few
years rendered them almost as desolate as the rest of the Abbey.
Still he felt a pride in the ruinous old edifice; its very dreary and
dismantled state, addressed itself to his poetical imagination, and to
that love of the melancholy and the grand which is evinced in all his
writings. "Come what may," said he in one of his letters, "Newstead and
I stand or fall together. I have now lived on the spot. I have fixed my
heart upon it, and no pressure, present or future, shall induce me to
barter the last vestige of our inheritance. I have that pride within me
which will enable me to support difficulties: could I obtain in
exchange for Newstead Abbey, the first fortune in the country, I would
reject the proposition."
His residence at the Abbey, however, was fitful and uncertain. He
passed occasional portions of time there, sometimes studiously and
alone, oftener idly and recklessly, and occasionally with young and gay
companions, in riot and revelry, and the indulgence of all kinds of mad
caprice. The Abbey was by no means benefited by these roystering
inmates, who sometimes played off monkish mummeries about the
cloisters, at other times turned the state chambers into schools for
boxing and single-stick, and shot pistols in the great hall. The
country people of the neighborhood were as much puzzled by these madcap
vagaries of the new incumbent, as by the gloomier habits of the "old
lord," and began to think that madness was inherent in the Byron race,
or that some wayward star ruled over the Abbey.
It is needless to enter into a detail of the circumstances which led
his Lordship to sell his ancestral estate, notwithstanding the partial
predilections and hereditary feeling which he had so eloquently
expressed. Fortunately, it fell into the hands of a man who possessed
something of a poetical temperament, and who cherished an enthusiastic
admiration for Lord Byron. Colonel (at that time Major) Wildman had
been a schoolmate of the poet, and sat with him on the same form at
Harrow. He had subsequently distinguished himself in the war of the
Peninsula, and at the battle of Waterloo, and it was a great
consolation to Lord Byron, in parting with his family estate, to know
that it would be held by one capable of restoring its faded glories,
and who would respect and preserve all the monuments and memorials of
his line. [Footnote: The following letter, written in the course of the
transfer of the estate, has never been published:--
Venice, November 18, 1818.
My Dear Wildman,
Mr. Hanson is on the eve of his return, so that I have only time to
return a few inadequate thanks for your very kind letter. I should
regret to trouble you with any requests of mine, in regard to the
preservation of any signs of my family, which may still exist at
Newstead, and leave everything of that kind to your own feelings,
present or future, upon the subject. The portrait which you flatter me
by desiring, would not be worth to you your trouble and expense of such
an expedition, but you may rely upon having the very first that may be
painted, and which may seem worth your acceptance.
I trust that Newstead will, being yours, remain so, and that it may see
you as happy, as I am very sure that you will make your dependents.
With regard to myself, you may be sure that whether in the fourth, or
fifth, or sixth form at Harrow, or in the fluctuations of after life, I
shall always remember with regard my old schoolfellow--fellow monitor,
and friend, and recognize with respect the gallant soldier, who, with
all the advantages of fortune and allurements of youth to a life of
pleasure, devoted himself to duties of a nobler order, and will receive
his reward in the esteem and admiration of his country.
Ever yours most truly and affectionately,
BYRON.]
The confidence of Lord Byron in the good feeling and good taste of
Colonel Wildman has been justified by the event. Under his judicious
eye and munificent hand the venerable and romantic pile has risen from
its ruins in all its old monastic and baronial splendor, and additions
have been made to it in perfect conformity of style. The groves and
forests have been replanted; the lakes and fish-ponds cleaned out, and
the gardens rescued from the "hemlock and thistle," and restored to
their pristine and dignified formality.
The farms on the estate have been put in complete order, new farm-houses
built of stone, in the picturesque and comfortable style of the
old English granges; the hereditary tenants secured in their paternal
homes, and treated with the most considerate indulgence; everything, in
a word, gives happy indications of a liberal and beneficent landlord.
What most, however, will interest the visitors to the Abbey in favor of
its present occupant, is the reverential care with which he has
preserved and renovated every monument and relic of the Byron family,
and every object in anywise connected with the memory of the poet.
Eighty thousand pounds have already been expended upon the venerable
pile, yet the work is still going on, and Newstead promises to realize
the hope faintly breathed by the poet when bidding it a melancholy
farewell--
"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."