In the course of a morning's ride with Colonel Wildman, about the Abbey
lands, we found ourselves in one of the prettiest little wild woods
imaginable. The road to it had led us among rocky ravines overhung with
thickets, and now wound through birchen dingles and among beautiful
groves and clumps of elms and beeches. A limpid rill of sparkling
water, winding and doubling in perplexed mazes, crossed our path
repeatedly, so as to give the wood the appearance of being watered by
numerous rivulets. The solitary and romantic look of this piece of
woodland, and the frequent recurrence of its mazy stream, put him in
mind, Colonel Wildman said, of the little German fairy tale of Undine,
in which is recorded the adventures of a knight who had married a
water-nymph. As he rode with his bride through her native woods, every
stream claimed her as a relative; one was a brother, another an uncle,
another a cousin. We rode on amusing ourselves with applying this
fanciful tale to the charming scenery around us, until we came to a
lowly gray-stone farmhouse, of ancient date, situated in a solitary
glen, on the margin of the brook, and overshadowed by venerable trees.
It went by the name, as I was told, of the Weir Mill farmhouse. With
this rustic mansion was connected a little tale of real life, some
circumstances of which were related to me on the spot, and others I
collected in the course of my sojourn at the Abbey.
Not long after Colonel Wildman had purchased the estate of Newstead, he
made it a visit for the purpose of planning repairs and alterations. As
he was rambling one evening, about dusk, in company with his architect,
through this little piece of woodland, he was struck with its peculiar
characteristics, and then, for the first time, compared it to the
haunted wood of Undine. While he was making the remark, a small female
figure in white, flitted by without speaking a word, or indeed
appearing to notice them. Her step was scarcely heard as she passed,
and her form was indistinct in the twilight.
"What a figure for a fairy or sprite!" exclaimed Colonel Wildman. "How
much a poet or a romance writer would make of such an apparition, at
such a time and in such a place!"
He began to congratulate himself upon having some elfin inhabitant for
his haunted wood, when, on proceeding a few paces, he found a white
frill lying in the path, which had evidently fallen from the figure
that had just passed.
"Well," said he, "after all, this is neither sprite nor fairy, but a
being of flesh, and blood, and muslin."
Continuing on, he came to where the road passed by an old mill in front
of the Abbey. The people of the mill were at the door. He paused and
inquired whether any visitor had been at the Abbey, but was answered in
the negative.
"Has nobody passed by here?"
"No one, sir."
"That's strange! Surely I met a female in white, who must have passed
along this path."
"Oh, sir, you mean the Little White Lady--oh, yes, she passed by here
not long since."
"The Little White Lady! And pray who is the Little White Lady?"
"Why, sir, that nobody knows; she lives in the Weir Mill farmhouse,
down in the skirts of the wood. She comes to the Abbey every morning,
keeps about it all day, and goes away at night. She speaks to nobody,
and we are rather shy of her, for we don't know what to make of her."
Colonel Wildman now concluded that it was some artist or amateur
employed in making sketches of the Abbey, and thought no more about the
matter. He went to London, and was absent for some time. In the
interim, his sister, who was newly married, came with her husband to
pass the honeymoon at the Abbey. The Little White Lady still resided in
the Weir Mill farmhouse, on the border of the haunted wood, and
continued her visits daily to the Abbey. Her dress was always the same,
a white gown with a little black spencer or bodice, and a white hat
with a short veil that screened the upper part of her countenance. Her
habits were shy, lonely, and silent; she spoke to no one, and sought no
companionship, excepting with the Newfoundland dog that had belonged to
Lord Byron. His friendship she secured by caressing him and
occasionally bringing him food, and he became the companion of her
solitary walks. She avoided all strangers, and wandered about the
retired parts of the garden; sometimes sitting for hours by the tree on
which Lord Byron had carved his name, or at the foot of the monument
which he had erected among the ruins of the chapel. Sometimes she read,
sometimes she wrote with a pencil on a small slate which she carried
with her, but much of her time was passed in a kind of reverie.
The people about the place gradually became accustomed to her, and
suffered her to wander about unmolested; their distrust of her subsided
on discovering that most of her peculiar and lonely habits arose from
the misfortune of being deaf and dumb. Still she was regarded with some
degree of shyness, for it was the common opinion that she was not
exactly in her right mind.
Colonel Wildman's sister was informed of all these circumstances by the
servants of the Abbey, among whom the Little White Lady was a theme of
frequent discussion. The Abbey and its monastic environs being haunted
ground, it was natural that a mysterious visitant of the kind, and one
supposed to be under the influence of mental hallucination, should
inspire awe in a person unaccustomed to the place. As Colonel Wildman's
sister was one day walking along abroad terrace of the garden, she
suddenly beheld the Little White Lady coming toward her, and, in the
surprise and agitation of the moment, turned and ran into the house.
Day after day now elapsed, and nothing more was seen of this singular
personage. Colonel Wildman at length arrived at the Abbey, and his
sister mentioned to him her encounter and fright in the garden. It
brought to mind his own adventure with the Little White Lady in the
wood of Undine, and he was surprised to find that she still continued
her mysterious wanderings about the Abbey. The mystery was soon
explained. Immediately after his arrival he received a letter written
in the most minute and delicate female hand, and in elegant and even
eloquent language. It was from the Little White Lady. She had noticed
and been shocked by the abrupt retreat of Colonel Wildman's sister on
seeing her in the garden walk, and expressed her unhappiness at being
an object of alarm to any of his family. She explained the motives of
her frequent and long visits to the Abbey, which proved to be a
singularly enthusiastic idolatry of the genius of Lord Byron, and a
solitary and passionate delight in haunting the scenes he had once
inhabited. She hinted at the infirmities which cut her off from all
social communion with her fellow beings, and at her situation in life
as desolate and bereaved; and concluded by hoping that he would not
deprive her of her only comfort, the permission of visiting the Abbey
occasionally, and lingering about the walks and gardens.
Colonel Wildman now made further inquiries concerning her, and found
that she was a great favorite with the people of the farmhouse where
she boarded, from the gentleness, quietude, and innocence of her
manners. When at home, she passed the greater part of her time in a
small sitting-room, reading and writing. Colonel Wildman immediately
called on her at the farmhouse. She received him with some agitation
and embarrassment, but his frankness and urbanity soon put her at her
ease. She was past the bloom of youth, a pale, nervous little being,
and apparently deficient in most of her physical organs, for in
addition to being deaf and dumb, she saw but imperfectly. They carried
on a communication by means of a small slate, which she drew out of her
reticule, and on which they wrote their questions and replies. In
writing or reading she always approached her eyes close to the written
characters.
This defective organization was accompanied by a morbid sensibility
almost amounting to disease. She had not been born deaf and dumb; but
had lost her hearing in a fit of sickness, and with it the power of
distinct articulation. Her life had evidently been checkered and
unhappy; she was apparently without family or friend, a lonely,
desolate being, cut off from society by her infirmities.
"I am always among strangers," she said, "as much so in my native
country as I could be in the remotest parts of the world. By all I am
considered as a stranger and an alien; no one will acknowledge any
connection with me. I seem not to belong to the human species."
Such were the circumstances that Colonel Wildman was able to draw forth
in the course of his conversation, and they strongly interested him in
favor of this poor enthusiast. He was too devout an admirer of Lord
Byron himself, not to sympathize in this extraordinary zeal of one of
his votaries, and he entreated her to renew her visits at the Abbey,
assuring her that the edifice and its grounds should always be open to
her.
The Little White Lady now resumed her daily walks in the Monk's Garden,
and her occasional seat at the foot of the monument; she was shy and
diffident, however, and evidently fearful of intruding. If any persons
were walking in the garden she would avoid them, and seek the most
remote parts; and was seen like a sprite, only by gleams and glimpses,
as she glided among the groves and thickets. Many of her feelings and
fancies, during these lonely rambles, were embodied in verse, noted
down on her tablet, and transferred to paper in the evening on her
return to the farmhouse. Some of these verses now lie before me,
written with considerable harmony of versification, but chiefly curious
as being illustrative of that singular and enthusiastic idolatry with
which she almost worshipped the genius of Byron, or rather, the
romantic image of him formed by her imagination.
Two or three extracts may not be unacceptable. The following are from a
long rhapsody addressed to Lord Byron:
"By what dread charm thou rulest the mind
It is not given for us to know;
We glow with feelings undefined,
Nor can explain from whence they flow.
"Not that fond love which passion breathes
And youthful hearts inflame;
The soul a nobler homage gives,
And bows to thy great name.
"Oft have we own'd the muses' skill,
And proved the power of song,
But sweeter notes ne'er woke the thrill
That solely to thy verse belong.
"This--but far more, for thee we prove,
Something that bears a holier name,
Than the pure dream of early love,
Or friendship's nobler flame.
"Something divine--Oh! what it is
Thy muse alone can tell,
So sweet, but so profound the bliss
We dread to break the spell."
This singular and romantic infatuation, for such it might truly be
called, was entirely spiritual and ideal, for, as she herself declares
in another of her rhapsodies, she had never beheld Lord Byron; he was,
to her, a mere phantom of the brain.
"I ne'er have drunk thy glance--thy form
My earthly eye has never seen,
Though oft when fancy's visions warm,
It greets me in some blissful dream.
"Greets me, as greets the sainted seer
Some radiant visitant from high,
When heaven's own strains break on his ear,
And wrap his soul in ecstasy."
Her poetical wanderings and musings were not confined to the Abbey
grounds, but extended to all parts of the neighborhood connected with
the memory of Lord Byron, and among the rest to the groves and gardens
of Annesley Hall, the seat of his early passion for Miss Chaworth. One
of her poetical effusions mentions her having seen from Howet's Hill in
Annesley Park, a "sylph-like form," in a car drawn by milk-white
horses, passing by the foot of the hill, who proved to be the "favorite
child," seen by Lord Byron, in his memorable interview with Miss
Chaworth after her marriage. That favorite child was now a blooming
girl approaching to womanhood, and seems to have understood something
of the character and story of this singular visitant, and to have
treated her with gentle sympathy. The Little White Lady expresses, in
touching terms, in a note to her verses, her sense of this gentle
courtesy. "The benevolent condescension," says she, "of that amiable
and interesting young lady, to the unfortunate writer of these simple
lines will remain engraved upon a grateful memory, till the vital spark
that now animates a heart that too sensibly feels, and too seldom
experiences such kindness, is forever extinct."
In the mean time, Colonel Wildman, in occasional interviews, had
obtained further particulars of the story of the stranger, and found
that poverty was added to the other evils of her forlorn and isolated
state. Her name was Sophia Hyatt. She was the daughter of a country
bookseller, but both her parents had died several years before. At
their death, her sole dependence was upon her brother, who allowed her
a small annuity on her share of the property left by their father, and
which remained in his hands. Her brother, who was a captain of a
merchant vessel, removed with his family to America, leaving her almost
alone in the world, for she had no other relative in England but a
cousin, of whom she knew almost nothing. She received her annuity
regularly for a time, but unfortunately her brother died in the West
Indies, leaving his affairs in confusion, and his estate overhung by
several commercial claims, which threatened to swallow up the whole.
Under these disastrous circumstances, her annuity suddenly ceased; she
had in vain tried to obtain a renewal of it from the widow, or even an
account of the state of her brother's affairs. Her letters for three
years past had remained unanswered, and she would have been exposed to
the horrors of the most abject want, but for a pittance quarterly doled
out to her by her cousin in England.
Colonel Wildman entered with characteristic benevolence into the story
of her troubles. He saw that she was a helpless, unprotected being,
unable, from her infirmities and her ignorance of the world, to
prosecute her just claims. He obtained from her the address of her
relations in America, and of the commercial connection of her brother;
promised, through the medium of his own agents in Liverpool, to
institute an inquiry into the situation of her brother's affairs, and
to forward any letters she might write, so as to insure their reaching
their place of destination.
Inspired with some faint hopes, the Little White Lady continued her
wanderings about the Abbey and its neighborhood. The delicacy and
timidity of her deportment increased the interest already felt for her
by Mrs. Wildman. That lady, with her wonted kindness, sought to make
acquaintance with her, and inspire her with confidence. She invited her
into the Abbey; treated her with the most delicate attention, and,
seeing that she had a great turn for reading, offered her the loan of
any books in her possession. She borrowed a few, particularly the works
of Sir Walter Scott, but soon returned them; the writings of Lord Byron
seemed to form the only study in which she delighted, and when not
occupied in reading those, her time was passed in passionate
meditations on his genius. Her enthusiasm spread an ideal world around
her in which she moved and existed as in a dream, forgetful at times of
the real miseries which beset her in her mortal state.
One of her rhapsodies is, however, of a very melancholy cast;
anticipating her own death, which her fragile frame and growing
infirmities rendered but too probable. It is headed by the following
paragraph.
"Written beneath the tree on Crowholt Hill, where it is my wish to be
interred (if I should die in Newstead)."