"You appear to like the memory of Lord Byron," said I.
"Ah, sir! why should not I! He was always main good to me when he came
here. Well, well, they say it is a pity he and my young lady did not
make a match. Her mother would have liked it. He was always a welcome
guest, and some think it would have been well for him to have had her;
but it was not to be! He went away to school, and then Mr. Musters saw
her, and so things took their course."
The simple soul now showed us into the favorite sitting-room of Miss
Chaworth, with a small flower-garden under the windows, in which she
had delighted. In this room Byron used to sit and listen to her as she
played and sang, gazing upon her with the passionate, and almost
painful devotion of a love-sick stripling. He himself gives us a
glowing picture of his mute idolatry:
"He bad no breath, no being, but in hers;
She was his voice; he did not speak to her,
But trembled on her words; she was his sight.
For his eye followed hers, and saw with hers,
Which colored all his objects; he had ceased
To live within himself; she was his life,
The ocean to the river of his thoughts,
Which terminated all; upon a tone,
A touch of hers, his blood would ebb and flow,
And his cheek change tempestuously--his heart
Unknowing of its cause of agony."
There was a little Welsh air, call "Mary Ann," which, from bearing her
own name, he associated with herself, and often persuaded her to sing
it over and over for him.
The chamber, like all the other parts of the house, had a look of
sadness and neglect; the flower-pots beneath the window, which once
bloomed beneath the hand of Mary Chaworth, were overrun with weeds; and
the piano, which had once vibrated to her touch, and thrilled the heart
of her stripling lover, was now unstrung and out of tune.
We continued our stroll about the waste apartments, of all shapes and
sizes, and without much elegance of decoration. Some of them were hung
with family portraits, among which was pointed out that of the Mr.
Chaworth who was killed by the "wicked Lord Byron."
These dismal looking portraits had a powerful effect upon the
imagination of the stripling poet, on his first visit to the hall. As
they gazed down from the wall, he thought they scowled upon him, as if
they had taken a grudge against him on account of the duel of his
ancestor. He even gave this as a reason, though probably in jest, for
not sleeping at the Hall, declaring that he feared they would come down
from their frames at night to haunt him.
A feeling of the kind he has embodied in one of his stanzas of "Don
Juan:"
"The forms of the grim knights and pictured saints
Look living in the moon; and as you turn
Backward and forward to the echoes faint
Of your own footsteps--voices from the urn
Appear to wake, and shadows wild and quaint
Start from the frames which fence their aspects stern,
As if to ask you how you dare to keep
A vigil there, where all but death should sleep."
Nor was the youthful poet singular in these fancies; the Hall, like
most old English mansions that have ancient family portraits hanging
about their dusky galleries and waste apartments, had its ghost story
connected with these pale memorials of the dead. Our simple-hearted
conductor stopped before the portrait of a lady, who had been a beauty
in her time, and inhabited the hall in the heyday of her charms.
Something mysterious or melancholy was connected with her story; she
died young, but continued for a long time to haunt the ancient mansion,
to the great dismay of the servants, and the occasional disquiet of the
visitors, and it was with much difficulty her troubled spirit was
conjured down and put to rest.
From the rear of the hall we walked out into the garden, about which
Byron used to stroll and loiter in company with Miss Chaworth. It was
laid out in the old French style. There was a long terraced walk, with
heavy stone balustrades and sculptured urns, overrun with ivy and
evergreens. A neglected shrubbery bordered one side of the terrace,
with a lofty grove inhabited by a venerable community of rooks. Great
flights of steps led down from the terrace to a flower garden laid out
in formal plots. The rear of the Hall, which overlooked the garden, had
the weather stains of centuries, and its stone-shafted casements and an
ancient sun-dial against its walls carried back the mind to days of
yore.
The retired and quiet garden, once a little sequestered world of love
and romance, was now all matted and wild, yet was beautiful, even in
its decay. Its air of neglect and desolation was in unison with the
fortune of the two beings who had once walked here in the freshness of
youth, and life, and beauty. The garden, like their young hearts, had
gone to waste and ruin.
Returning to the Hall we now visited a chamber built over the porch, or
grand entrance. It was in a ruinous condition, the ceiling having
fallen in and the floor given way. This, however, is a chamber rendered
interesting by poetical associations. It is supposed to be the oratory
alluded to by Lord Byron in his "Dream," wherein he pictures his
departure from Annesley, after learning that Mary Chaworth was engaged
to be married--
'There was an ancient mansion, and before
Its walls there was a steed caparisoned;
Within an antique oratory stood
The boy of whom I spake;--he was alone,
And pale and pacing to and fro: anon
He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced
Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned
His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as 'twere
With a convulsion--then arose again,
And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear
What he had written, but he shed no tears.
And he did calm himself, and fix his brow
Into a kind of quiet; as he paused,
The lady of his love re-entered there;
She was serene and smiling then, and yet
She knew she was by him beloved,--she knew,
For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart
Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw
That he was wretched, but she saw not all.
He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded as it came;
He dropp'd the hand he held, and with slow steps
Return'd, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles:--he pass'd
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way,
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more."
In one of his journals, Lord Byron describes his feelings after thus
leaving the oratory. Arriving on the summit of a hill, which commanded
the last view of Annesley, he checked his horse, and gazed back with
mingled pain and fondness upon the groves which embowered the Hall, and
thought upon the lovely being that dwelt there, until his feelings were
quite dissolved in tenderness. The conviction at length recurred that
she never could be his, when, rousing himself from his reverie, he
struck his spurs into his steed and dashed forward, as if by rapid
motion to leave reflection behind him.
Yet, notwithstanding what he asserts in the verses last quoted, he did
pass the "hoary threshold" of Annesley again. It was, however, after
the lapse of several years, during which he had grown up to manhood,
and had passed through the ordeal of pleasures and tumultuous passions,
and had felt the influence of other charms. Miss Chaworth, too, had
become a wife and a mother, and he dined at Annesley Hall at the
invitation of her husband. He thus met the object of his early idolatry
in the very scene of his tender devotions, which, as he says, her
smiles had once made a heaven to him. The scene was but little changed.
He was in the very chamber where he had so often listened entranced to
the witchery of her voice; there were the same instruments and music;
there lay her flower garden beneath the window, and the walks through
which he had wandered with her in the intoxication of youthful love.
Can we wonder that amidst the tender recollections which every object
around him was calculated to awaken, the fond passion of his boyhood
should rush back in full current to his heart? He was himself surprised
at this sudden revulsion of his feelings, but he had acquired
self-possession and could command them. His firmness, however, was doomed
to undergo a further trial. While seated by the object of his secret
devotions, with all these recollections throbbing in his bosom, her
infant daughter was brought into the room. At sight of the child he
started; it dispelled the last lingerings of his dream, and he
afterward confessed, that to repress his emotion at the moment, was the
severest part of his task.
The conflict of feelings that raged within his bosom, throughout this
fond and tender, yet painful and embarrassing visit, are touchingly
depicted in lines which he wrote immediately afterward, and which,
though not addressed to her by name, are evidently intended for the eye
and the heart of the fair lady of Annesley:
"Well! thou art happy, and I feel
That I should thus be happy too;
For still my heart regards thy weal
Warmly, as it was wont to do.
Thy husband's blest--and 'twill impart
Some pangs to view his happier lot:
But let them pass--Oh! how my heart
Would hate him, if he loved thee not!
"When late I saw thy favorite child
I thought my jealous heart would break;
But when the unconscious infant smiled,
I kiss'd it for its mother's sake.
"I kiss'd it, and repress'd my sighs
Its father in its face to see;
But then it had its mother's eyes,
And they were all to love and me.
"Mary, adieu! I must away:
While thou art blest I'll not repine;
But near thee I can never stay:
My heart would soon again be thine.
"I deem'd that time, I deem'd that pride
Had quench'd at length my boyish flame
Nor knew, till seated by thy side,
My heart in all, save love, the same.
"Yet I was calm: I knew the time
My breast would thrill before thy look;
But now to tremble were a crime--
We met, and not a nerve was shook.
"I saw thee gaze upon my face,
Yet meet with no confusion there:
One only feeling could'st thou trace;
The sullen calmness of despair.
"Away! away! my early dream
Remembrance never must awake:
Oh! where is Lethe's fabled stream?
My foolish heart, be still, or break."
The revival of this early passion, and the melancholy associations
which it spread over those scenes in the neighborhood of Newstead,
which would necessarily be the places of his frequent resort while in
England, are alluded to by him as a principal cause of his first
departure for the Continent:
"When man expell'd from Eden's bowers
A moment lingered near the gate,
Each scene recalled the vanish'd hours,
And bade him curse his future fate.
"But wandering on through distant climes,
He learnt to bear his load of grief;
Just gave a sigh to other times,
And found in busier scenes relief.
"Thus, Mary, must it be with me,
And I must view thy charms no more;
For, while I linger near to thee,
I sigh for all I knew before."
It was in the subsequent June that he set off on his pilgrimage by sea
and land, which was to become the theme of his immortal poem. That the
image of Mary Chaworth, as he saw and loved her in the days of his
boyhood, followed him to the very shore, is shown in the glowing
stanzas addressed to her on the eve of embarkation--
"'Tis done--and shivering in the gale
The bark unfurls her snowy sail;
And whistling o'er the bending mast,
Loud sings on high the fresh'ning blast;
And I must from this land be gone.
Because I cannot love but one.
"And I will cross the whitening foam,
And I will seek a foreign home;
Till I forget a false fair face,
I ne'er shall find a resting place;
My own dark thoughts I cannot shun,
But ever love, and love but one.
"To think of every early scene,
Of what we are, and what we've been,
Would whelm some softer hearts with woe--
But mine, alas! has stood the blow;
Yet still beats on as it begun,
And never truly loves but one.
"And who that dear loved one may be
Is not for vulgar eyes to see,
And why that early love was cross'd,
Thou know'st the best, I feel the most;
But few that dwell beneath the sun
Have loved so long, and loved but one.
"I've tried another's fetters too,
With charms, perchance, as fair to view;
And I would fain have loved as well,
But some unconquerable spell
Forbade my bleeding breast to own
A kindred care for aught but one.
"'Twould soothe to take one lingering view,
And bless thee in my last adieu;
Yet wish I not those eyes to weep
For him who wanders o'er the deep;
His home, his hope, his youth are gone,
Yet still he loves, and loves but one."
The painful interview at Annesley Hall, which revived with such
intenseness his early passion, remained stamped upon his memory with
singular force, and seems to have survived all his "wandering through
distant climes," to which he trusted as an oblivious antidote. Upward
of two years after that event, when, having made his famous pilgrimage,
he was once more an inmate of Newstead Abbey, his vicinity to Annesley
Hall brought the whole scene vividly before him, and he thus recalls it
in a poetic epistle to a friend--
"I've seen my bride another's bride,--
Have seen her seated by his side,--
Have seen the infant which she bore,
Wear the sweet smile the mother wore,
When she and I in youth have smiled
As fond and faultless as her child:--
Have seen her eyes, in cold disdain,
Ask if I felt no secret pain.
"And I have acted well my part,
And made my cheek belie my heart,
Returned the freezing glance she gave,
Yet felt the while _that_ woman's slave;--
Have kiss'd, as if without design,
The babe which ought to have been mine,
And show'd, alas! in each caress,
Time had not made me love the less."
"It was about the time," says Moore in his life of Lord Byron, "when he
was thus bitterly feeling and expressing the blight which his heart had
suffered from a _real_ object of affection, that his poems on an
imaginary one, 'Thyrza,' were written." He was at the same time
grieving over the loss of several of his earliest and dearest friends
the companions of his joyous school-boy hours. To recur to the
beautiful language of Moore, who writes with the kindred and kindling
sympathies of a true poet: "All these recollections of the young and
the dead mingled themselves in his mind with the image of her, who,
though living, was for him, as much lost as they, and diffused that
general feeling of sadness and fondness through his soul, which found a
vent in these poems.... It was the blending of the two affections in
his memory and imagination, that gave birth to an ideal object
combining the best features of both, and drew from him those saddest
and tenderest of love poems, in which we find all the depth and
intensity of real feeling, touched over with such a light as no reality
ever wore."
An early, innocent, and unfortunate passion, however fruitful of pain
it may be to the man, is a lasting advantage to the poet. It is a well
of sweet and bitter fancies; of refined and gentle sentiments; of
elevated and ennobling thoughts; shut up in the deep recesses of the
heart, keeping it green amidst the withering blights of the world, and,
by its casual gushings and overflowings, recalling at times all the
freshness, and innocence, and enthusiasm of youthful days. Lord Byron
was conscious of this effect, and purposely cherished and brooded over
the remembrance of his early passion, and of all the scenes of Annesley
Hall connected with it. It was this remembrance that attuned his mind
to some of its most elevated and virtuous strains, and shed an
inexpressible grace and pathos over his best productions.
Being thus put upon the traces of this little love-story, I cannot
refrain from threading them out, as they appear from time to time in
various passages of Lord Byron's works. During his subsequent rambles
in the East, when time and distance had softened away his "early
romance" almost into the remembrance of a pleasing and tender dream, he
received accounts of the object of it, which represented her, still in
her paternal Hall, among her native bowers of Annesley, surrounded by a
blooming and beautiful family, yet a prey to secret and withering
melancholy--
----"In her home,
A thousand leagues from his,--her native home,
She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy,
Daughters and sons of beauty, but--behold!
Upon her face there was the tint of grief,
The settled shadow of an inward strife,
And an unquiet drooping of the eye,
_As if its lids were charged with unshed tears_."
For an instant the buried tenderness of early youth and the fluttering
hopes which accompanied it, seemed to have revived in his bosom, and
the idea to have flashed upon his mind that his image might be
connected with her secret woes--but he rejected the thought almost as
soon as formed.
"What could her grief be?--she had all she loved,
And he who had so loved her was not there
To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish,
Or ill repress'd affection, her pure thoughts.
What could her grief be?--she had loved him not,
Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved,
Nor could he be a part of that which prey'd
Upon her mind--a spectre of the past."
The cause of her grief was a matter of rural comment in the
neighborhood of Newstead and Annesley. It was disconnected from all
idea of Lord Byron, but attributed to the harsh and capricious conduct
of one to whose kindness and affection she had a sacred claim. The
domestic sorrows which had long preyed in secret on her heart, at
length affected her intellect, and the "bright morning star of
Annesley" was eclipsed for ever.
"The lady of his love,--oh! she was changed
As by the sickness of the soul; her mind
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes,
They had not their own lustre, but the look
Which is not of the earth; she was become
The queen of a fantastic realm: but her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight, familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy."
Notwithstanding lapse of time, change of place, and a succession of
splendid and spirit-stirring scenes in various countries, the quiet and
gentle scene of his boyish love seems to have held a magic sway over
the recollections of Lord Byron, and the image of Mary Chaworth to have
unexpectedly obtruded itself upon his mind like some supernatural
visitation. Such was the fact on the occasion of his marriage with Miss
Milbanke; Annesley Hall and all its fond associations floated like a
vision before his thoughts, even when at the altar, and on the point of
pronouncing the nuptial vows. The circumstance is related by him with a
force and feeling that persuade us of its truth.
"A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.
The wanderer was returned.--I saw him stand
Before an altar--with a gentle bride;
Her face was fair, but was not that which made
The star-light of his boyhood;--as he stood
Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came
The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock
That in the antique oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then--
As in that hour--a moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced,--and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but beard not his own words,
And all things reel'd around him: he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been--
But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall,
And the remember'd chambers, and the place,
The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade,
All things pertaining to that place and hour,
And her who was his destiny, came back,
And thrust themselves between him and the light:
What business had they there at such a time?"
The history of Lord Byron's union is too well known to need narration.
The errors, and humiliations, and heart-burnings that followed upon it,
gave additional effect to the remembrance of his early passion, and
tormented him with the idea, that had he been successful in his suit to
the lovely heiress of Annesley, they might both have shared a happier
destiny. In one of his manuscripts, written long after his marriage,
having accidentally mentioned Miss Chaworth as "my M. A. C." "Alas!"
exclaims he, with a sudden burst of feeling, "why do I say _my_?
Our union would have healed feuds in which blood had been shed by our
fathers; it would have joined lands broad and rich; it would have
joined at least _one_ heart, and two persons not ill-matched in
years-and--and--and--what has been the result?"
But enough of Annesley Hall and the poetical themes connected with it.
I felt as if I could linger for hours about its ruined oratory, and
silent hall, and neglected garden, and spin reveries and dream dreams,
until all became an ideal world around me. The day, however, was fast
declining, and the shadows of evening throwing deeper shades of
melancholy about the place. Taking our leave of the worthy old
housekeeper, therefore, with a small compensation and many thanks for
her civilities, we mounted our horses and pursued our way back to
Newstead Abbey.