At about three miles' distance from Newstead Abbey, and contiguous to
its lands, is situated Annesley Hall, the old family mansion of the
Chaworths. The families, like the estates, of the Byrons and Chaworths,
were connected in former times, until the fatal duel between their two
representatives. The feud, however, which prevailed for a time,
promised to be cancelled by the attachment of two youthful hearts.
While Lord Byron was yet a boy, he beheld Mary Ann Chaworth, a
beautiful girl, and the sole heiress of Annesley. With that
susceptibility to female charms, which he evinced almost from
childhood, he became almost immediately enamored of her. According to
one of his biographers, it would appear that at first their attachment
was mutual, yet clandestine. The father of Miss Chaworth was then
living, and may have retained somewhat of the family hostility, for we
are told that the interviews of Lord Byron and the young lady were
private, at a gate which opened from her father's grounds to those of
Newstead. However, they were so young at the time that these meetings
could not have been regarded as of any importance: they were little
more than children in years; but, as Lord Byron says of himself, his
feelings were beyond his age.
The passion thus early conceived was blown into a flame, during a six
weeks' vacation which he passed with his mother at Nottingham. The
father of Miss Chaworth was dead, and she resided with her mother at
the old Hall of Annesley. During Byron's minority, the estate of
Newstead was let to Lord Grey de Ruthen, but its youthful Lord was
always a welcome guest at the Abbey. He would pass days at a time
there, and make frequent visits thence to Annesley Hall. His visits
were encouraged by Miss Chaworth's mother; she partook of none of the
family feud, and probably looked with complacency upon an attachment
that might heal old differences and unite two neighboring estates.
The six weeks' vacation passed as a dream amongst the beautiful flowers
of Annesley. Byron was scarce fifteen years of age, Mary Chaworth was
two years older; but his heart, as I have said, was beyond his age, and
his tenderness for her was deep and passionate. These early loves, like
the first run of the uncrushed grape, are the sweetest and strongest
gushings of the heart, and however they may be superseded by other
attachments in after years, the memory will continually recur to them,
and fondly dwell upon their recollections.
His love for Miss Chaworth, to use Lord Byron's own expression, was
"the romance of the most romantic period of his life," and I think we
can trace the effect of it throughout the whole course of his writings,
coming up every now and then, like some lurking theme which runs
through a complicated piece of music, and links it all in a pervading
chain of melody.
How tenderly and mournfully does he recall, in after years, the
feelings awakened in his youthful and inexperienced bosom by this
impassioned, yet innocent attachment; feelings, he says, lost or
hardened in the intercourse of life:
"The love of better things and better days;
The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance
Of what is called the world, and the world's ways;
The moments when we gather from a glance
More joy than from all future pride or praise,
Which kindle manhood, but can ne'er entrance
The heart in an existence of its own,
Of which another's bosom is the zone."
Whether this love was really responded to by the object, is uncertain.
Byron sometimes speaks as if he had met with kindness in return, at
other times lie acknowledges that she never gave 'him reason to believe
she loved him. It is probable, however, that at first she experienced
some flutterings of the heart. She was of a susceptible age; had as yet
formed no other attachments; her lover, though boyish in years, was a
man in intellect, a poet in imagination, and had a countenance of
remarkable beauty.
With the six weeks' vacation ended this brief romance. Byron returned
to school deeply enamored, but if he had really made any impression on
Miss Chaworth's heart, it was too slight to stand the test of absence.
She was at that age when a female soon changes from the girl to a
woman, and leaves her boyish lovers far behind her. While Byron was
pursuing his school-boy studies, she was mingling with society, and met
with a gentleman of the name of Musters, remarkable, it is said, for
manly beauty. A story is told of her having first seen him from the top
of Annesley Hall, as he dashed through the park, with hound and horn,
taking the lead of the whole field in a fox chase, and that she was
struck by the spirit of his appearance, and his admirable horsemanship.
Under such favorable auspices, he wooed and won her, and when Lord
Byron next met her, he learned to his dismay that she was the affianced
bride of another.
With that pride of spirit--which always distinguished him, he
controlled his feelings and maintained a serene countenance. He even
affected to speak calmly on the subject of her approaching nuptials.
"The next time I see you," said he, "I suppose you will be Mrs.
Chaworth" (for she was to retain her family name). Her reply was, "I
hope so."
I have given these brief details preparatory to a sketch of a visit
which I made to the scene of this youthful romance. Annesley Hall I
understood was shut up, neglected, and almost in a state of desolation;
for Mr. Musters rarely visited it, residing with his family in the
neighborhood of Nottingham. I set out for the Hall on horseback, in
company with Colonel Wildman, and followed by the great Newfoundland
dog Boatswain. In the course of our ride we visited a spot memorable in
the love story I have cited. It was the scene of this parting interview
between Byron and Miss Chaworth, prior to her marriage. A long ridge of
upland advances into the valley of Newstead, like a promontory into a
lake, and was formerly crowned by a beautiful grove, a landmark to the
neighboring country. The grove and promontory are graphically described
by Lord Byron in his "Dream," and an exquisite picture given of
himself, and the lovely object of his boyish idolatry--
"I saw two beings to the hues of youth
Standing upon a hill, a gentle hill,
Green, and of mild declivity, the last
As 'twere the cape of a long ridge of such,
Save that there was no sea to lave its base,
But a most living landscape, and the ware
Of woods and cornfields, and the abodes of men.
Scattered at intervals and wreathing smoke
Arising from such rustic roofs;--the hill
Was crown'd with a peculiar diadem
Of trees, in circular array, so fixed,
Not by the sport of nature, but of man:
These two, a maiden and a youth, were there
Gazing--the one on all that was beneath
Fair as herself--but the boy gazed on her;
And both were fair, and one was beautiful:
And both were young--yet not alike in youth:
As the sweet moon in the horizon's verge,
The maid was on the verge of womanhood;
The boy had fewer summers, but his heart
Had far outgrown his years, and to his eye
There was but one beloved face on earth,
And that was shining on him."
I stood upon the spot consecrated by this memorable interview. Below me
extended the "living landscape," once contemplated by the loving pair;
the gentle valley of Newstead, diversified by woods and corn-fields,
and village spires, and gleams of water, and the distant towers and
pinnacles of the venerable Abbey. The diadem of trees, however, was
gone. The attention drawn to it by the poet, and the romantic manner in
which he had associated it with his early passion for Mary Chaworth,
had nettled the irritable feelings of her husband, who but ill brooked
the poetic celebrity conferred on his wife by the enamored verses of
another. The celebrated grove stood on his estate, and in a fit of
spleen he ordered it to be levelled with the dust. At the time of my
visit the mere roots of the trees were visible; but the hand that laid
them low is execrated by every poetical pilgrim.
Descending the bill, we soon entered a part of what once was Annesley
Park, and rode among time-worn and tempest-riven oaks and elms, with
ivy clambering about their trunks, and rooks' nests among their
branches. The park had been cut up by a post-road, crossing which, we
came to the gate-house of Annesley Hall. It was an old brick building
that might have served as an outpost or barbacan to the Hall during the
civil wars, when every gentleman's house was liable to become a
fortress. Loopholes were still visible in its walls, but the peaceful
ivy had mantled the sides, overrun the roof, and almost buried the
ancient clock in front, that still marked the waning hours of its
decay.
An arched way led through the centre of the gate-house, secured by
grated doors of open iron work, wrought into flowers and flourishes.
These being thrown open, we entered a paved court-yard, decorated with
shrubs and antique flowerpots, with a ruined stone fountain in the
centre. The whole approach resembled that of an old French chateau.
On one side of the court-yard was a range of stables, now tenantless,
but which bore traces of the fox-hunting squire; for there were stalls
boxed up, into which the hunters might be turned loose when they came
home from the chase.
At the lower end of the court, and immediately opposite the gate-house,
extended the Hall itself; a rambling, irregular pile, patched and
pieced at various times, and in various tastes, with gable ends, stone
balustrades, and enormous chimneys, that strutted out like buttresses
from the walls. The whole front of the edifice was overrun with
evergreens.
We applied for admission at the front door, which was under a heavy
porch. The portal was strongly barricaded, and our knocking was echoed
by waste and empty halls. Every thing bore an appearance of
abandonment. After a time, however, our knocking summoned a solitary
tenant from some remote corner of the pile. It was a decent-looking
little dame, who emerged from a side door at a distance, and seemed a
worthy inmate of the antiquated mansion. She had, in fact, grown old
with it. Her name, she said, was Nanny Marsden; if she lived until next
August, she would be seventy-one; a great part of her life had been
passed in the Hall, and when the family had removed to Nottingham, she
had been left in charge of it. The front of the house had been thus
warily barricaded in consequence of the late riots at Nottingham, in
the course of which the dwelling of her master had been sacked by the
mob. To guard against any attempt of the kind upon the Hall, she had
put it in this state of defence; though I rather think she and a
superannuated gardener comprised the whole garrison. "You must be
attached to the old building," said I, "after having lived so long in
it." "Ah, sir!" replied she, "I am _getting in years_, and have a
furnished cottage of my own in Annesley Wood, and begin to feel as if I
should like to go and live in my own home."
Guided by the worthy little custodian of the fortress, we entered
through the sally port by which she had issued forth, and soon found
ourselves in a spacious, but somewhat gloomy hall, where the light was
partially admitted through square stone-shafted windows, overhung with
ivy. Everything around us had the air of an old-fashioned country
squire's establishment. In the centre of the hall was a billiard-table,
find about the walls were hung portraits of race-horses, hunters, and
favorite dogs, mingled indiscriminately with family pictures.
Staircases led up from the hall to various apartments. In one of the
rooms we were shown a couple of buff jerkins, and a pair of ancient
jackboots, of the time of the cavaliers; relics which are often to be
met with in the old English family mansions. These, however, had
peculiar value, for the good little dame assured us that they had
belonged to Robin Hood. As we were in the midst of the region over
which that famous outlaw once bore ruffian sway, it was not for us to
gainsay his claim to any of these venerable relics, though we might
have demurred that the articles of dress here shown were of a date much
later than his time. Every antiquity, however, about Sherwood Forest is
apt to be linked with the memory of Robin Hood and his gang.
As we were strolling about the mansion, our four-footed attendant,
Boatswain, followed leisurely, as if taking a survey of the premises. I
turned to rebuke him for his intrusion, but the moment the old
housekeeper understood he had belonged to Lord Byron, her heart seemed
to yearn toward him. "Nay, nay," exclaimed she, "let him alone, let him
go where he pleases. He's welcome. Ah, dear me! If he lived here I
should take great care of him--he should want for nothing.--Well!"
continued she, fondling him, "who would have thought that I should see
a dog of Lord Byron in Annesley Hall!"
"I suppose, then," said I, "you recollect something of Lord Byron, when
he used to visit here?" "Ah, bless him!" cried she, "that I do! He used
to ride over here and stay three days at a time, and sleep in the blue
room. Ah! poor fellow! He was very much taken with my young mistress;
he used to walk about the garden and the terraces with her, and seemed
to love the very ground she trod on. He used to call her _his bright
morning star of Annesley_."