The morning after my arrival, I rose at an early hour. The daylight was
peering brightly between the window curtains, and drawing them apart, I
gazed through the Gothic casement upon a scene that accorded in
character with the interior of the ancient mansion. It was the old
Abbey garden, but altered to suit the tastes of different times and
occupants. In one direction were shady walls and alleys, broad terraces
and lofty groves; in another, beneath a gray monastic-looking angle of
the edifice, overrun with ivy and surmounted by a cross, lay a small
French garden, with formal flower-pots, gravel walks, and stately stone
balustrades.
The beauty of the morning, and the quiet of the hour, tempted me to an
early stroll; for it is pleasant to enjoy such old-time places alone,
when one may indulge poetical reveries, and spin cobweb fancies,
without interruption. Dressing myself, therefore, with all speed, I
descended a small flight of steps from the state apartment into the
long corridor over the cloisters, along which I passed to a door at the
farther end. Here I emerged into the open air, and, descending another
flight of stone steps, found myself in the centre of what had once been
the Abbey chapel.
Nothing of the sacred edifice remained, however, but the Gothic front,
with its deep portal and grand lancet window, already described. The
nave, the side walls, the choir, the sacristy, all had disappeared. The
open sky was over my head, a smooth shaven grass-plot beneath my feet.
Gravel walks and shrubberies had succeeded to the shadowy isles, and
stately trees to the clustering columns.
"Where now the grass exhales a murky dew,
The humid pall of life-extinguished clay,
In sainted fame the sacred fathers grew,
Nor raised their pious voices but to pray.
Where now the bats their wavering wings extend,
Soon as the gloaming spreads her warning shade,
The choir did oft their mingling vespers blend,
Or matin orisons to Mary paid."
Instead of the matin orisons of the monks, however, the ruined walls of
the chapel now resounded to the cawing of innumerable rooks that were
fluttering and hovering about the dark grove which they inhabited, and
preparing for their morning flight.
My ramble led me along quiet alleys, bordered by shrubbery, where the
solitary water-hen would now and then scud across my path, and take
refuge among the bushes. From hence I entered upon a broad terraced
walk, once a favorite resort of the friars, which extended the whole
length of the old Abbey garden, passing along the ancient stone wall
which bounded it. In the centre of the garden lay one of the monkish
fish-pools, an oblong sheet of water, deep set like a mirror, in green
sloping banks of turf. In its glassy bosom was reflected the dark mass
of a neighboring grove, one of the most important features of the
garden. This grove goes by the sinister name of "the Devil's Wood," and
enjoys but an equivocal character in the neighborhood. It was planted
by "The Wicked Lord Byron," during the early part of his residence at
the Abbey, before his fatal duel with Mr. Chaworth. Having something of
a foreign and classical taste, he set up leaden statues of satyrs or
fauns at each end of the grove. The statues, like everything else about
the old Lord, fell under the suspicion and obloquy that overshadowed
him in the latter part of his life. The country people, who knew
nothing of heathen mythology and its sylvan deities, looked with horror
at idols invested with the diabolical attributes of horns and cloven
feet. They probably supposed them some object of secret worship of the
gloomy and secluded misanthrope and reputed murderer, and gave them the
name of "The old Lord's Devils."
I penetrated the recesses of the mystic grove. There stood the ancient
and much slandered statues, overshadowed by tall larches, and stained
by dank green mold. It is not a matter of surprise that strange
figures, thus behoofed and be-horned, and set up in a gloomy grove,
should perplex the minds of the simple and superstitious yeomanry.
There are many of the tastes and caprices of the rich, that in the eyes
of the uneducated must savor of insanity.
I was attracted to this grove, however, by memorials of a more touching
character. It had been one of the favorite haunts of the late Lord
Byron. In his farewell visit to the Abbey, after he had parted with the
possession of it, he passed some time in this grove, in company with
his sister; and as a last memento, engraved their names on the bark of
a tree.
The feelings that agitated his bosom during this farewell visit, when
he beheld round him objects dear to his pride, and dear to his juvenile
recollections, but of which the narrowness of his fortune would not
permit him to retain possession, may be gathered from a passage in a
poetical epistle, written to his sister in after years:
I did remind you of our own dear lake
By the old hall, _which may be mine no more;_
Leman's is fair; but think not I forsake
The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore:
Sad havoc Time must with my memory make
Ere _that_ or _thou_ can fade these eyes before;
Though, like all things which I have loved, they are
Resign'd for ever, or divided far.
I feel almost at times as I have felt
In happy childhood; trees, and flowers, and brooks.
Which do remember me of where I dwelt
Ere my young mind was sacrificed to books,
Come as of yore upon me, and can melt
My heart with recognition, of their looks;
And even at moments I would think I see
Some living things I love--but none like thee."
I searched the grove for some time, before I found the tree on which
Lord Byron had left his frail memorial. It was an elm of peculiar form,
having two trunks, which sprang from the same root, and, after growing
side by side, mingled their branches together. He had selected it,
doubtless, as emblematical of his sister and himself. The names of
BYRON and AUGUSTA were still visible. They had been deeply cut in the
bark, but the natural growth of the tree was gradually rendering them
illegible, and a few years hence, strangers will seek in vain for this
record of fraternal affection.
Leaving the grove, I continued my ramble along a spacious terrace,
overlooking what had once been the kitchen garden of the Abbey. Below
me lay the monks' stew, or fish pond, a dark pool, overhung by gloomy
cypresses, with a solitary water-hen swimming about in it.
A little farther on, and the terrace looked down upon the stately scene
on the south side of the Abbey; the flower garden, with its stone
balustrades and stately peacocks, the lawn, with its pheasants and
partridges, and the soft valley of Newstead beyond.
At a distance, on the border of the lawn, stood another memento of Lord
Byron; an oak planted by him in his boyhood, on his first visit to the
Abbey. With a superstitious feeling inherent in him, he linked his own
destiny with that of the tree. "As it fares," said he, "so will fare my
fortunes." Several years elapsed, many of them passed in idleness and
dissipation. He returned to the Abbey a youth scarce grown to manhood,
but, as he thought, with vices and follies beyond his years. He found
his emblem oak almost choked by weeds and brambles, and took the lesson
to himself.
"Young oak, when I planted thee deep in the ground,
I hoped that thy days would be longer than mine,
That thy dark waving branches would flourish around,
And ivy thy trunk with its mantle entwine.
"Such, such was my hope--when in infancy's years
On the laud of my fathers I reared thee with pride;
They are past, and I water thy stem with my tears--
Thy decay not the weeds that surround thee can hide."
I leaned over the stone balustrade of the terrace, and gazed upon the
valley of Newstead, with its silver sheets of water gleaming in the
morning sun. It was a sabbath morning, which always seems to have a
hallowed influence over the landscape, probably from the quiet of the
day, and the cessation of all kinds of week-day labor. As I mused upon
the mild and beautiful scene, and the wayward destinies of the man,
whose stormy temperament forced him from this tranquil paradise to
battle with the passions and perils of the world, the sweet chime of
bells from a village a few miles distant came stealing up the valley.
Every sight and sound this morning seemed calculated to summon up
touching recollections of poor Byron. The chime was from the village
spire of Hucknall Torkard, beneath which his remains lie buried!
----I have since visited his tomb. It is in an old gray country church,
venerable with the lapse of centuries. He lies buried beneath the
pavement, at one end of the principal aisle. A light falls on the spot
through the stained glass of a Gothic window, and a tablet on the
adjacent wall announces the family vault of the Byrons. It had been the
wayward intention of the poet to be entombed, with his faithful dog, in
the monument erected by him in the garden of Newstead Abbey. His
executors showed better judgment and feeling, in consigning his ashes
to the family sepulchre, to mingle with those of his mother and his
kindred. Here,
"After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well.
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further!"
How nearly did his dying hour realize the wish made by him, but a few
years previously, in one of his fitful moods of melancholy and
misanthropy:
"When time, or soon or late, shall bring
The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead,
Oblivion! may thy languid wing
Wave gently o'er my dying bed!
"No band of friends or heirs be there,
To weep or wish the coining blow:
No maiden with dishevelled hair,
To feel, or fein decorous woe.
"But silent let me sink to earth.
With no officious mourners near:
I would not mar one hour of mirth,
Nor startle friendship with a tear."
He died among strangers, in a foreign land, without a kindred hand to
close his eyes; yet he did not die unwept. With all his faults and
errors, and passions and caprices, he had the gift of attaching his
humble dependents warmly to him. One of them, a poor Greek, accompanied
his remains to England, and followed them to the grave. I am told that,
during the ceremony, he stood holding on by a pew in an agony of grief,
and when all was over, seemed as if he would have gone down into the
tomb with the body of his master.--A nature that could inspire such
attachments, must have been generous and beneficent.