Annesley Hall and Newstead Abbey

THE picturesque region of Matlock, with its cliffs and streams, its deep woods and romantic walks, is full of attraction. There we not only see the outward graces of Nature, but catch glimpses of her subtler elements. Springs, dripping from hidden sources, transform the fruit, or the bird’s-nest with its fragile eggs, into stone with a Medusa touch ; while in deep caverns are found beautiful spars, exquisitely tinted, as if prepared by the genii of the rock for the palace of their king.

Varied and wonderful are the workings of earth, air, fire, and water in the Derbyshire valley, where a sensitive nature recognizes more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in the philosophy of many a passing traveller. To this region of beauty and mystery Byron often came in his youth. These cliffs and streams and woods were familiar to the young poet, and his retentive memory must have received here many of Nature’s deep and marvellous lessons. Perhaps among these scenes there came to him those

In Byron’s day, Matlock was a fashionable watering-place ; and the drawingroom of the “ Old Bath,” with cut-glass chandeliers, old engravings, and cushioned window-seats, looks much the same as when it witnessed many a gay assembly. In this room the wayward and sensitive youth, secretly writhing with mortification at being prevented by lameness from leading Mary Chaworth to the dance, watched her more fortunate partners with moody envy. The young Lady of Annesley little imagined that the lame boy, with his handsome face and troublesome temper, would link her name to deathless song.

On a fair, sunny morning, towards the close of October, we left Matlock for Annesley Hall and Newstead Abbey. The day was in harmony with the poetical associations of our excursion: a gentle mist hung like a veil over hills and groves, giving a dreamy aspect to Nature, and rendering the places we intended to visit creations of fancy rather than actual facts. Very unromantic personages, however, answered our inquiries for Annesley, which reassured us of its reality. Byron’s “ Dream ” had rendered the scenery familiar to our memory.

Our approach led us beside those gentle slopes, and we seemed to see the maiden and the youth standing on the mild declivity, with its crowning circlet of trees.

That lover, soon after, became the husband of Mary Chaworth. It is not for us to speculate wherefore Destiny entangled the threads in that web of existence which originally seemed to have woven the fates of Byron and Mary Chaworth together. We are ignorant of spiritual laws, and know little of the origin whence come those strange attractions, mind to mind, heart to heart, which make or mar the life-experiences of us all.

Had events been ordered otherwise, Byron might have been a better and happier man, but the world would never have received the gift of “ Childe Harold.” Alas, that the soul must be ploughed and harrowed, and the precious seed trodden in, before it can give forth its fairest flowers or its immortal fruit!

When we had last heard of Annesley Hall, it was ruinous aud desolate, and we knew not in what condition it might now be found. Passing through an avenue of ancient oaks, the road winds down to an old picturesque gate-house, and, leaving the carriage, we walked Onward. Looking through the arch of entrance, we saw as in a picture, nay, as in the poet’s dream, “the venerable mansion,” sitting quietly in autumn sunshine on its old terrace. To gray walls and peaks clung a climbing plant, its leaves red with touch of frost, contrasting deliciously with green ivy, and putting a bit of color into darker hues of stone-work. As we passed beyond the gate, we saw that the mansion had been restored and repaired by careful hands guided by tasteful eyes and loving hearts. Above the hall-door was a bay-window, which instinct told us belonged to the “ antique oratory,” but we walked onward to the terrace, with its stone balustrade, inclosing a bright flowergarden. On the other side of the house stretches the lawn and park, with deer feeding quietly in the distance. No human form appeared; all was silent and peaceful. We walked thoughtfully on the old terrace, recalling the images of the poet and the Lady of Annesley; but looking up at the ancient sun-dial on one of the gables, we perceived that its shadow fell deeper and deeper with the declining day, telling us, as it had told many before, how time waited not, and reminding us that we also were travellers. Passing again round the mansion, and casting a wistful look within, we saw a woman sitting at a low window, sorting fruit. We approached, and asked if strangers were permitted to see the Hall. She replied gently, that it was not “ a show-house.” We pleaded our cause successfully, however, when we told her how the thought of Mary Chaworth had led us here from a distant land. If the owners of Annesley knew that once an exception was made to a general rule, we trust they also believed that the visitors were not actuated by an idle curiosity.

Our request being granted, our guide laid aside her plums, and with a kind hand admitted us into the entrance-hall. It was low and venerable, with familyportraits on the walls, among them that of the Mr. Chaworth whom the “ wick ed Lord Byron ” of other days shot in a duel. From the hall we entered the modern part of the house, harmoniously blended with the older portion of the building. In the drawing-room, two noble portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds arrested our attention. The lady (as Miss Burney tells us in her journal) was a beauty and a belle of Sir Joshua’s time, and the painter has done justice to his subject, who is drawn at full length, feeding an eagle, — a spirited, splendid woman, who looks down from the canvas with bright, triumphant eyes. In the next apartment we were shown a portrait which touched deeper chords in our heart. It was a likeness of Mary Chaworth in miniature, representing a mature and beautiful woman.

The truth of this description startled us, and revealed instantly how deeply impressed upon the mind of her youthful lover must have been that face which was the starlight of his boyhood. Years had passed since they parted, and chasms of time and gulfs yet deeper and wider than time ever knows had separated Byron from Annesley and England, and yet, when he wrote those lines, her face rose before him so clearly, wearing on its loveliness the impress of care and sorrow which he knew must be there, that no words but his can truly describe the expression of her features. Turning to our conductress, we asked if she had ever seen the Lady of Annesley. “ Yes, I knew and loved her well, for I was her maid many years”; and, with a faltering tone, she added, “she died in my arms.” Genius has immortalized Mary Chaworth; yet the tender and heartfelt tribute of one who had been the humble, but daily witness of the beauty of her life, was worth a thousand homilies.

We were conducted through the library, which bad been in other days the drawing-room, out of which opens a small apartment, known to the readers of the “ Dream ” as the “ antique oratory.” Leading from the old entrance-hall is the favorite sitting-room of Mary Chaworth in her happy childhood and youth ; and here, in his boyish days, Byron often sat beside her while she played for him his favorite airs on the piano-forte. Beneath the window is a little garden, where she cultivated the flowers she loved best, and which are still cherished for her memory. Our guide gathered a few of these, and gave them to our young companion : they now lie before us, carefully preserved, with some of their gay tints yet unfaded, — memorials, not only of Mary Chaworth, who lived and loved and suffered through all the varied experience of woman’s life, but also of her to whom the blossoms were given, the fair, young girl, “who lived long enough on earth to learn its better lessons, but passed from it upwards and onwards without a knowledge of sin except the shadow it casts on the world.”

Taking leave of our kind guide, to whom we were indebted for a visit of deep interest, we paused a moment on the terrace ere we “ passed the massy gate of that old hall,” to receive once more into our memory

A holy stillness pervaded the venerable house and its surrounding scenery, a peace which breathed of a purer sphere, where what is best on earth finds its correspondence.

We wondered not, that, when the deep waters of the poet’s soul, too often ruffled by passion, polluted by vice, or made turbid by selfishness, were calm and pure enough to mirror heaven, they ever reflected the bright and morning star of Annesley.

The transition from Annesley Hall to Newstead Abbey is inevitable in thought and rapid in fact, — the road, over which the young poet so often passed, between the two estates, being only three miles in length. We had lingered so long at Annesley that the day was nearly spent before we reached the Abbey. How did the venerable pile, with its mysterious memories, fateful histories, and poetical associations, flash out into light, and darken into shadow as the October sun sank behind the distant hills !

The Abbey church is now only a ruin, but the airy span of its rich Gothic window remains, as evidence of its original beauty. Through the now vacant space, once the wide door of entrance, we saw the floor of green grass, and in the centre the monument to Byron’s favorite dog, Bowswain. All was silent about the ruin, except the cawing of a thousand rooks, who were settling themselves for the night with a vast amount of noise and bustle on the high branches of the old trees which sweep down on one side of the Abbey.

The residence which adjoins the church, once a monastery, was inherited by Lord Byron, with the title: to part with it was a dire necessity. Colonel Wildman, the school-fellow of Byron at Harrow, purchased the estate from the unhappy poet in the most liberal and generous manner, and blessed it into a home. On entering the house, we were shown through long Corridors and vaulted passages, in which the monastic character of the building was preserved. When Byron came to Newstead from college, the Abbey was in a most dilapidated condition, and he had only means enough to make a few rooms habitable for himself and his mother. A gloomy and desolate abode it must have been. The furniture of Byron’s bedroom remains as it stood when removed from Cambridge. On the walls are prints of his school at Harrow, and Trinity College, with various relies and boyish treasures. The window commands a view of the sheet of water which stretches before the Abbey, with its wooded banks, — a scene which he loves and remembers even when “ Lake Leman wooes him with her crystal face,” for he writes to his sister, —

Adjoining Byron’s room is a suite of apartments, ruinous and roofless in his day, but which Colonel Wildman has restored, and furnished most appropriately with old tapestry and antique tables and chairs. These rooms wear a ghostly aspect, and we were not surprised to learn that one, at least, had the reputation of being haunted. The great drawingroom, once the dormitory of the monks, is now a splendid apartment richly decorated ; above the chimney is a fine portrait of Lord Byron, and in an ancient cabinet was shown the cup made from a skull found in one of the stone coffins near the Abbey church. It is mounted in silver, and the well-known lines, written by Byron, are engraved on the rim. “ Having it made ” was, as he said himself, “ one of his foolish freaks, of which he was ashamed.” The cup, however, bears little resemblance to a skull. Colonel Wildman preserved the furniture of Byron’s dining-room, and other apartments, (very simple it is,) without alteration, in the hope that he might return from Greece and revisit the halls of his fathers. Had Fate so willed, he would have found how kindly and faithfully his early friend had associated him with Newstead, and preserved every memorial of past history connected with the place. Yet thoughts of bitterness would even then have mingled with these familiar scenes, for it was not the heir of the Byrons who had restored Newstead Abbey to beauty and order.

Quitting the Abbey, and passing into the gardens, we followed the gardener through the deepening gloom to the wood, where, in former days, an ancestor of the Byrons set up leaden statues of satyrs, which the country-people called “ the old lord’s devils ”; and very much like demons they looked. The tree was pointed out upon which Byron cut the names of “ Augusta” and “ Byron,” with the date, during a last walk the brother and sister took together at Newstead. It is a double tree, springing from one root, which he chose as emblematical of themselves. The dim light barely enabled us to discern letters deeply carved, but growing less visible with the expanding bark. One of the trees has withered under that spell which seems to have blasted all connected with the name, and is cut off just above the inscription. The oak planted by Byron in his youth in a different part of the grounds was also shown to us. It is yet strong and vigorous. We picked up a yellow leaf, which the wind bore to our feet, as a fitting memorial of the place and the hour.

Passing again through the old Abbey church, the chill of the evening met us, cold and damp, — fit atmosphere for the place. The rooks were all asleep in their high nests; silence, darkness, and mist were fast casting their mantle over old Newstead; and the only cheerful sign came from the distant window of the Colonel’s library, whence shot out a generous gleam of household fire, — emblem of that warm heart which had shed light upon the once desolate abode of its early friend.

Since our visit to Newstead, (seven years ago,) the Abbey has passed into other hands, and even a royal owner is now reported to possess the poet’s ancestral home. We shall ever deem ourselves fortunate that our destiny led us to make this pilgrimage during the lifetime of Colonel Wildman and while the place was under his enlightened and generous ownership.

A few miles from Newstead Abbey is Hucknall, a poor, desolate-looking village, at the end of whose street stands an old church, beneath which is the burial-place of the Byrons. The building is ancient and gray, but dreary rather than venerable. Standing in its comfortless interior, we remembered that Byron once asked to be buried under the green, grassy floor of the roofless church at Newstead Abbey, with his faithful dog at his feet. The poet, whose rapid glance seized every glory and beauty of Nature, whose memory, wax to receive, and marble to retain, transferred the vision through the medium of his rare command of language, should have had a grave over which winds sweep, birds sing, and stars watch. Not so. A white marble tablet let into the wall above the family-vault was erected to Byron’s memory by his sister. Perhaps the simplicity of the monument was suggested by these lines, written at the early age of nineteen years : —

The inscription upon the tablet, after his name and title, designates him as the Author of “ Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” who died while aiding the cause of Liberty in Greece: thus striking the noblest notes in a powerful, eccentric, blotted score, as the fundamental chord of Byron’s requiem.