University of Virginia Library

NEWSTEAD ABBEY.

NEWSTEAD ABBEY

HISTORICAL NOTICE.

Being about to give a few sketches taken
during a three weeks' sojourn in the ancestral
mansion of the late Lord Byron, I think it proper
to premise some brief particulars concerning its
history.

Newstead Abbey is one of the finest specimens
in existence of those quaint and romantic
piles, half castle half convent, which remain as
monuments of the olden times of England. It
stands, too, in the midst of a legendary neighbourhood;
being in the heart of Sherwood Forest,
and surrounded by the haunts of Robin
Hood and his band of outlaws, so famous in ancient
ballad and nursery tale. It is true, the
forest scarcely exists but in name, and the tract
of country over which it once extended its broad
solitudes and shades, is now an open and smiling
region, cultivated with parks and farms, and enlivened
with villages.

Newstead, which probably once exerted a

monastic sway over this region, and controlled
the consciences of the rude foresters, was originally
a priory, founded in the latter part of the
twelfth century, by Henry II., at the time when
he sought, by building of shrines and convents,
and by other acts of external piety, to expiate
the murder of Thomas a Becket. The priory
was dedicated to God and the Virgin, and was
inhabited by a fraternity of canons regular of
St. Augustine. This order was originally simple
and abstemious in its mode of living, and
exemplary in its conduct; but it would seem
that it gradually lapsed into those abuses which
disgraced too many of the wealthy monastic establishments;
for there are documents among
its archives which intimate the prevalence of
gross misrule and dissolute sensuality among its
members.

At the time of the dissolution of the convents
during the reign of Henry VIII., Newstead underwent
a sudden reverse, being given, with the
neighbouring manor and rectory of Papelwick,
to Sir John Byron, Steward of Manchester and
Rochdale, and Lieutenant of Sherwood Forest.
This ancient family worthy figures in the traditions
of the Abbey, and in the ghost stories with
which it abounds, under the quaint and graphic
appellation of “Sir John Byron the Little, with
the great Beard.” He converted the saintly edifice

into a castellated dwelling, making it his
favourite residence and the seat of his forest jurisdiction.

The Byron family being subsequently ennobled
by a baronial title, and enriched by various
possessions, maintained great style and retinue
at Newstead. The proud edifice partook, however,
of the vicissitudes of the times, and Lord
Byron, in one of his poems, represents it as alternately
the scene of lordly wassailing and of civil
war.

About the middle of the last century, the Abbey
came into the possession of another noted
character, who makes no less figure in its shadowy
traditions than Sir John the Little with
the great Beard. This was the grand uncle of
the poet, familiarly known among the gossiping
chroniclers of the Abbey as “the Wicked Lord
Byron.” He is represented as a man of irritable
passions and vindictive temper, in the indulgence
of which an incident occurred which gave a turn

to his whole character and life, and in some
measure affected the fortunes of the Abbey. In
his neighbourhood lived his kinsman and friend,
Mr. Chaworth, proprietor of Annesley Hall.
Being together in London in 1765, in a chamber
of the Star and Garter tavern in Pall Mall, a
quarrel arose between them. Byron insisted
upon settling it upon the spot by single combat.
They fought without seconds, by the dim light
of a candle, and Mr. Chaworth, although the
most expert swordsman, received a mortal
wound. With his dying breath he related such
particulars of the contest as induced the coroner's
jury to return a verdict of wilful murder.
Lord Byron was sent to the tower, and subsequently
tried before the House of Peers, where
an ultimate verdict was given of manslaughter.

He retired after this to the Abbey, where he
shut himself up to brood over his disgraces; grew
gloomy, morose, and fantastical, and indulged in
fits of passion and caprice, that made him the
theme of rural wonder and scandal. No tale
was too wild or too monstrous for vulgar belief.
Like his successor the poet, he was accused of
all kinds of vagaries and wickedness. It was
said that he always went armed, as if prepared
to commit murder on the least provocation.
At one time when a gentleman of his neighbourhood
was to dine tete a tete with him, it is said a

brace of pistols were gravely laid with the
knives and forks upon the table, as part of the
regular table furniture, and implements that
might be needed in the course of the repast.
Another rumour states that being exasperated
at his coachman for disobedience to orders, he
shot him on the spot, threw his body into the
coach where lady Byron was seated, and,
mounting the box, officiated in his stead. At
another time, according to the same vulgar rumours,
he threw her ladyship into the lake in
front of the Abbey, where she would have been
drowned, but for the timely aid of the gardener.
These stories are doubtless exaggerations of
trivial incidents which may have occurred; but
it is certain that the wayward passions of this
unhappy man caused a separation from his wife,
and finally spread a solitude around him. Being
displeased at the marriage of his son, and heir,
he displayed an inveterate malignancy towards
him. Not being able to cut off his succession
to the Abbey estate, which descended to him by
entail, he endeavoured to injure it as much as
possible, so that it might come a mere wreck
into his hands. For this purpose he suffered the
Abbey to fall out of repair, and every thing to
go to waste about it, and cut down all the timber
on the estate, laying low many a tract of old
Sherwood Forest, so that the Abbey lands lay
stripped and bare of all their ancient honours.
He was baffled in his unnatural revenge by the
premature death of his son, and passed the remainder
of his days in his deserted and dilapidated
halls, a gloomy misanthrope, brooding
amidst the scenes he had laid desolate.

His wayward humours drove from him all
neighbourly society, and for a part of the time
he was almost without domestics. In his misanthropic
mood, when at variance with all human
kind, he took to feeding crickets, so that in
process of time the Abbey was overrun with
them, and its lonely halls made more lonely at
night, by their monotonous music. Tradition adds
that, at his death, the crickets seemed aware
that they had lost their patron and protector, for
they one and all packed up bag and baggage,
and left the Abbey, trooping across its courts
and corridors in all directions.

The death of the “Old Lord,” or “The Wicked
Lord Byron,” for he is known by both appellations,
occurred in 1798; and the Abbey then
passed into the possession of the poet. The
latter was but eleven years of age, and living
in humble style with his mother in Scotland.
They came soon after to England, to take possession.
Moore gives a simple but striking anecdote
of the first arrival of the poet at the
domains of his ancestors.

They had arrived at the Newstead toll bar,
and saw the woods of the Abbey stretching out
to receive them, when Mrs. Byron, affecting to
be ignorant of the place, asked the woman of
the toll house to whom that seat belonged?
She was told that the owner of it, Lord Byron,
had been some months dead. “And who is the
next heir?” asked the proud and happy mother.
“They say,” answered the old woman, “it is a
little boy who lives at Aberdeen.” “And this
is he, bless him!” exclaimed the nurse, no
longer able to contain herself, and turning to kiss
with delight the young lord who was seated on
her lap.[1]

During Lord Byron's minority, the Abbey
was let to Lord Grey de Ruthen, but the poet
visited it occasionally during the Harrow vacations,
when he resided with his mother at lodgings
in Nottingham. It was treated little better
by its present tenant, than by the old lord who
preceded him, so that, when, in the autumn of
1808, Lord Byron took up his abode there, it
was in a ruinous condition. The following lines
from his own pen, may give some idea of its
condition.

In another poem he expresses the melancholy
feeling with which he took possession of his ancestral
mansion.

Lord Byron had not fortune sufficient to put
the pile in extensive repair, or to maintain any
thing like the state of his ancestors. He restored
some of the apartments, so as to furnish his mother
with a comfortable habitation, and fitted up

a quaint study for himself, in which, among
books, and busts, and other library furniture,
were two sculls of the ancient friars, grinning
on each side of an antique cross. One of his gay
companions gives a picture of Newstead when
thus repaired, and the picture is sufficiently
desolate.

“There are two tiers of cloisters, with a variety
of cells and rooms about them, which, though
not inhabited, nor in an inhabitable state, might
easily be made so; and many of the original
rooms, among which is a fine stone hall, are still
in use. Of the Abbey church, one end only
remains; and the old kitchen with a long range
of apartments, is reduced to a heap of rubbish.
Leading from the Abbey to the modern part of
the habitation is a noble room, seventy feet in
length and twenty-three in breadth; but every
part of the house displays neglect and decay,
save those which the present lord has lately
fitted up.”[4]

Even the repairs thus made were but of transient
benefit, for the roof being left in its dilapidated
state, the rain soon penetrated into the
apartments which Lord Byron had restored and
decorated, and in a few years rendered them
almost as desolate as the rest of the Abbey.

Still he felt a pride in the ruinous old edifice;
its very dreary and dismantled state, addressed
itself to his poetical imagination, and to that love
of the melancholy and the grand which is evinced
in all his writings. “Come what may,” said
he in one of his letters, “Newstead and I stand
or fall together. I have now lived on the spot.
I have fixed my heart upon it, and no pressure,
present or future, shall induce me to barter the
last vestige of our inheritance. I have that
pride within me which will enable me to support
difficulties: could I obtain in exchange for Newstead
Abbey, the first fortune in the country,
I would reject the proposition.”

His residence at the Abbey, however, was
fitful and uncertain. He passed occasional portions
of time there, sometimes studiously and
alone, oftener idly and recklessly, and occasionally
with young and gay companions, in riot and
revelry, and the indulgence of all kinds of mad
caprice. The Abbey was by no means benefited
by these roystering inmates, who sometimes
played off monkish mummeries about the cloisters,
at other times turned the state chambers
into schools for boxing and single-stick, and shot
pistols in the great hall. The country people of
the neighbourhood were as much puzzled by
these madcap vagaries of the new incumbent,
as by the gloomier habits of the “old lord,” and

began to think that madness was inherent in the
Byron race, or that some wayward star ruled
over the Abbey.

It is needless to enter into a detail of the circumstances
which led his Lordship to sell his
ancestral estate, notwithstanding the partial predilections
and hereditary feeling which he had
so eloquently expressed. Fortunately, it fell into
the hands of a man who possessed something of
a poetical temperament, and who cherished an
enthusiastic admiration for Lord Byron. Colonel
(at that time Major) Wildman had been a
schoolmate of the poet, and sat with him on the
same form at Harrow. He had subsequently
distinguished himself in the war of the Peninsula,
and at the battle of Waterloo, and it was a great
consolation to Lord Byron, in parting with his
family estate, to know that it would be held by
one capable of restoring its faded glories, and
who would respect and preserve all the monuments
and memorials of his line.[5]

The confidence of Lord Byron in the good
feeling and good taste of Colonel Wildman has
been justified by the event. Under his judicious
eye and munificent hand the venerable and
romantic pile has risen from its ruins in all its
old monastic and baronial splendour, and additions
have been made to it in perfect conformity
of style. The groves and forests have been
replanted; the lakes and fish-ponds cleaned out,
and the gardens rescued from the “hemlock and
thistle,” and restored to their pristine and dignified
formality.

The farms on the estate have been put in

complete order, new farm houses built of stone,
in the picturesque and comfortable style of the
old English granges; the hereditary tenants
secured in their paternal homes, and treated
with the most considerate indulgence; every
thing, in a word, gives happy indications of a
liberal and beneficent landlord.

What most, however, will interest the visiters
to the Abbey in favour of its present occupant,
is the reverential care with which he has preserved
and renovated every monument and relic
of the Byron family, and every object in anywise
connected with the memory of the poet. Eighty
thousand pounds have already been expended
upon the venerable pile, yet the work is still
going on, and Newstead promises to realize the
hope faintly breathed by the poet when bidding
it a melancholy farewell—

ARRIVAL AT THE ABBEY.

I HAD been passing a merry christmas in the
good old style at a venerable family hall in Derbyshire,
and set off to finish the holydays with
the hospitable proprietor of Newstead Abbey.
A drive of seventeen miles through a pleasant
country, part of it the storied region of Sherwood
Forest, brought me to the gate of Newstead park.
The aspect of the park was by no means imposing,
the fine old trees that once adorned it having
been laid low by Lord Byron's wayward
predecessor.

Entering the gate, the postchaise rolled heavily
along a sandy road, between naked declivities,
gradually descending into one of those gentle
and sheltered valleys, in which the sleek monks
of old loved to nestle themselves. Here a sweep
of the road round an angle of a garden wall
brought us full in front of the venerable edifice,
embosomed in the valley, with a beautiful sheet
of water spreading out before it.

The irregular gray pile, of motley architecture,
answered to the description given by Lord
Byron:

One end was fortified by a castellated tower,
bespeaking the baronial and warlike days of the
edifice; the other end maintained its primitive
monastic character. A ruined chapel flanked
by a solemn grove, still reared its front entire.
It is true, the threshold of the once frequented
portal was grass grown, and the great lancet
window, once glorious with painted glass, was
now entwined and overhung with ivy; but the
old convent cross still braved both time and tempest
on the pinnacle of the chapel, and below,
the blessed effigies of the Virgin and child, sculptured
in gray stone, remained uninjured in their
niche, giving a sanctified aspect to the pile.[6]

A flight of rooks, tenants of the adjacent grove,
were hovering about the ruin, and balancing
themselves upon every airy projection, and looked
down with curious eye and cawed as the
postchaise rattled along below.

The chamberlain of the Abbey, a most decorous
personage, dressed in black, received us at
the portal. Here, too, we encountered a memento
of Lord Byron, a great black and white

Newfoundland dog, that had accompanied his
remains from Greece. He was descended from
the famous Boatswain, and inherited his generous
qualities. He was a cherished inmate of
the Abbey, and honoured and caressed by every
visiter. Conducted by the chamberlain, and
followed by the dog, who assisted in doing the
honours of the house, we passed through a long
low vaulted hall, supported by massive gothic
arches, and not a little resembling the crypt of a
cathedral, being the basement story of the Abbey.

From this we ascended a stone staircase, at
the head of which a pair of folding doors admitted
us into a broad corridor that ran round the
interior of the Abbey. The windows of the
corridor looked into a quadrangular grass grown
court, forming the hollow centre of the pile. In
the midst of it rose a lofty and fantastic fountain,
wrought of the same gray stone as the main edifice,
and which has been well described by Lord
Byron.

Around this quadrangle were low vaulted
cloisters, with gothic arches, once the secluded
walks of the monks: the corridor along which
we were passing was built above these cloisters,
and their hollow arches seemed to reverberate
every footfall. Every thing thus far had a solemn
monastic air; but, on arriving at an angle
of the corridor, the eye, glancing along a shadowy
gallery, caught a sight of two dark figures
in plate armour, with closed visors, bucklers
braced, and swords drawn, standing motionless
against the wall. They seemed two phantoms
of the chivalrous era of the Abbey.

Here the chamberlain, throwing open a folding
door, ushered us at once into a spacious and
lofty saloon, which offered a brilliant contrast to
the quaint and sombre apartments we had traversed.
It was elegantly furnished, and the
walls hung with paintings, yet something of its
original architecture had been preserved and
blended with modern embellishments. There
were the stone-shafted casements and the deep
bow window of former times. The carved and
panelled wood work of the lofty ceiling had
likewise been carefully restored, and its gothic
and grotesque devices, painted and gilded in
their ancient style.

Here, too, were emblems of the former and latter
days of the Abbey, in the effigies of the first

and last of the Byron line that held sway over its
destinies. At the upper end of the saloon, above
the door, the dark Gothic portrait of “Sir John
Byron the Little with the great Beard” looked
grimly down from his canvass, while, at the opposite
end, a white marble bust of the genius
loci, the noble poet, shone conspicuously from
its pedestal.

The whole air and style of the apartment
partook more of the palace than the monastery,
and its windows looked forth on a suitable prospect,
composed of beautiful groves, smooth verdant
lawns, and silver sheets of water. Below
the windows was a small flower garden, enclosed
by stone balustrades, on which were stately
peacocks, sunning themselves and displaying
their plumage. About the grass plots in front,
were gay cock pheasants, and plump partridges,
and nimble footed water hens, feeding almost in
perfect security.

Such was the medley of objects presented to
the eye on first visiting the Abbey, and I found
the interior fully to answer the description of
the poet—

It is not my intention to lay open the scenes
of domestic life at the Abbey, or to describe the
festivities of which I was a partaker during my
sojourn within its hospitable walls. I wish merely
to present a picture of the edifice itself, and of
those personages and circumstances about it,
connected with the memory of Byron.

I forbear, therefore, to dwell on my reception
by my excellent and amiable host and hostess,
or to make my reader acquainted with the elegant
inmates of the mansion that I met in the
saloon; and I shall pass on at once with him to
the chamber allotted me, and to which I was
most respectfully conducted by the chamberlain.

It was one of a magnificent suite of rooms,
extending between the court of the cloisters and
the Abbey garden, the windows looking into the
latter. The whole suite formed the ancient state
apartment, and had fallen into decay during the
neglected days of the Abbey, so as to be in a

ruinous condition in the time of Lord Byron. It
had since been restored to its ancient splendour,
of which my chamber may be cited as a specimen.
It was lofty and well proportioned; the
lower part of the walls was panelled with
ancient oak, the upper part hung with goblin
tapestry, representing oriental hunting scenes,
wherein the figures were of the size of life, and
of great vivacity of attitude and colour.

The furniture was antique, dignified, and cumbrous.
High backed chairs curiously carved,
and wrought in needle-work; a massive clothes-press
of dark oak, well polished, and inlaid with
landscapes of various tinted woods; a bed of
state, ample and lofty, so as only to be ascended
by a moveable flight of steps, the huge posts
supporting a high tester with a tuft of crimson
plumes at each corner, and rich curtains of
crimson damask hanging in broad and heavy
folds.

A venerable mirror of plate glass stood on
the toilet, in which belles of former centuries
may have contemplated and decorated their
charms. The floor of the chamber was of tessellated
oak, shining with wax, and partly covered
by a Turkey carpet. In the centre stood a
massy oaken table, waxed and polished as
smooth as glass, and furnished with a writing
desk of perfumed rose wood.

A sober light was admitted into the room
through gothic stone shafted casements, partly
shaded by crimson curtains, and partly overshadowed
by the trees of the garden. This
solemnly tempered light added to the effect of
the stately and antiquated interior.

Two portraits, suspended over the doors, were
in keeping with the scene. They were in ancient
Vandyke dresses; one was a cavalier,
who may have occupied this apartment in days
of yore, the other was a lady with a black velvet
mask in her hand, who may once have arrayed
herself for conquest at the very mirror I have
described.

The most curious relic of old times, however,
in this quaint but richly dight apartment, was a
great chimney-piece of panel work, carved in
high relief, with niches or compartments, each
containing a human bust, that protruded almost
entirely from the wall. Some of the figures
were in ancient gothic garb; the most striking
among them was a female, who was earnestly
regarded by a fierce Saracen from an adjoining
niche.

This panel work is among the mysteries of the
Abbey, and causes as much wide speculation as
the Egyptian hieroglyphics. Some suppose it
to illustrate an adventure in the Holy Land, and
that the lady in effigy has been rescued by some

crusader of the family from the turbaned Turk
who watches her so earnestly. What tends to
give weight to these suppositions is, that similar
pieces of panel work exist in other parts of
the Abbey, in all of which are to be seen the
Christian lady and her Saracen guardian or lover.
At the bottom of these sculptures are emblazoned
the armorial bearings of the Byrons.

I shall not detain the reader, however, with
any further description of my apartment, or of the
mysteries connected with it. As he is to pass
some days with me at the Abbey, we shall have
time to examine the old edifice at our leisure,
and to make ourselves acquainted, not merely
with its interior, but likewise with its environs.

THE ABBEY GARDEN.

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 walks 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, gravelled
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 aisles, and stately
trees to the clustering columns.

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 favourite
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 neighbouring 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 neighbourhood. 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 fawns at each end of the
grove. These statues, like every thing 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 mould. It is not a matter of
surprise, that strange figures thus behoofed and
behorned, 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 savour of insanity.

I was attracted to this grove, however, by
memorials of a more touching character. It
had been one of the favourite 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 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 further 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.

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 labour. 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 or

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,

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:

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.

PLOUGH MONDAY.

Sherwood Forest is a region that still retains
much of the quaint customs and holyday games
of the olden time. A day or two after my arrival
at the Abbey, as I was walking in the cloisters,
I heard the sound of rustic music, and now
and then a burst of merriment, proceeding from
the interior of the mansion. Presently the chamberlain
came to me and informed me that a
party of country lads were in the servants' hall,
performing Plough Monday antics, and invited
me to witness their mummery. I gladly assented,
for I am somewhat curious about these relics
of popular usages. The servants' hall was a fit
place for the exhibition of an old gothic game.
It was a chamber of great extent, which, in
monkish times had been the refectory of the
Abbey. A row of massive columns extended
lengthwise through the centre, from whence
sprung gothic arches, supporting the low vaulted
ceiling. Here was a set of rustics dressed up
in something of the style represented in the
books, concerning popular antiquities. One was
in a rough garb of frieze, with his head muffled
in bearskin, and a bell dangling behind him, that

jingled at every movement. He was the clown,
or fool of the party, probably a traditional representative
of the ancient satyr. The rest were
decorated with ribands and armed with wooden
swords. The leader of the troop recited the
old ballad of St. George and the Dragon, which
has been current among the country people for
ages; his companions accompanied the recitation
with some rude attempt at acting, while the
clown cut all kinds of antics.

To these succeeded a set of morrice dancers,
gaily dressed up with ribands and hawks' bells.
In this troop we had Robin Hood and Maid Marian,
the latter represented by a smooth faced
boy: also, Belzebub, equipped with a broom,
and accompanied by his wife Bessy, a termagant
old beldame. These rude pageants are the
lingering remains of the old customs of Plough
Monday, when bands of rustics, fantastically
dressed, and furnished with pipe and tabor, dragged
what was called the “fool plough” from
house to house, singing ballads and performing
antics, for which they were rewarded with money
and good cheer.

But it is not in “merry Sherwood Forest”
alone that these remnants of old times prevail.
They are to be met with in most of the counties
north of the Trent, which classic stream seems
to be the boundary line of primitive customs.

During my recent christmas sojourn at Barlboro'
Hall, on the skirts of Derbyshire and Yorkshire,
I had witnessed many of the rustic festivities
peculiar to that joyous season, which have rashly
been pronounced obsolete, by those who draw
their experience merely from city life. I had
seen the great Yule clog put on the fire on
Christmas Eve, and the wassail bowl sent round,
brimming with its spicy beverage. I had heard
carols beneath my window by the choristers of
the neighbouring village, who went their rounds
about the ancient Hall at midnight, according to
immemorial christmas custom. We had mummers
and mimers too, with the story of St.
George and the Dragon, and other ballads and
traditional dialogues, together with the famous
old interlude of the Hobby Horse, all represented
in the antichamber and servants' hall by rustics,
who inherited the custom and the poetry
from preceding generations.

The boar's head, crowned with rosemary, had
taken its honoured station among the christmas
cheer; the festal board had been attended by
glee singers and minstrels from the village to
entertain the company with hereditary songs
and catches during their repast; and the old
Pyrrhic game of the sword dance, handed down
since the time of the Romans, was admirably
performed in the court yard of the mansion by

a band of young men, lithe and supple in their
forms and graceful in their movements, who I
was told went the rounds of the villages and
country seats during the christmas holydays.

I specify these rural pageants and ceremonials,
which I saw during my sojourn in this neighbourhood,
because it has been deemed that some
of the anecdotes of holyday customs given in
my preceding writings, related to usages which
have entirely passed away. Critics who reside
in cities have little idea of the primitive manners
and observances, which still prevail in remote
and rural neighbourhoods.

In fact, in crossing the Trent one seems to
step back into old times: and in the villages of
Sherwood Forest we are in a black letter region.
The moss green cottages, the lowly mansions
of gray stone, the gothic crosses at each
end of the villages, and the tall May pole in the
centre, transport us in imagination to foregone
centuries: every thing has a quaint and antiquated
air.

The tenantry on the Abbey estate partake of
this primitive character. Some of the families
have rented farms there for nearly three hundred
years; and, notwithstanding that their mansions
fell to decay, and every thing about them
partook of the general waste and misrule of the
Byron dynasty, yet nothing could uproot them

from their native soil. I am happy to say, that
Colonel Wildman has taken these staunch loyal
families under his peculiar care. He has favoured
them in their rents, repaired, or rather rebuilt
their farm houses, and has enabled families that
had almost sunk into the class of mere rustic labourers,
once more to hold up their heads among
the yeomanry of the land.

I visited one of these renovated establishments
that had but lately been a mere ruin, and now
was a substantial grange. It was inhabited by
a young couple. The good woman showed
every part of the establishment with decent
pride, exulting in its comfort and respectability.
Her husband, I understood, had risen in consequence
with the improvement of his mansion,
and now began to be known among his rustic
neighbours by the appellation of “the young
Squire.”

OLD SERVANTS.

In an old, time-worn, and mysterious looking
mansion like Newtead Abbey, and one so haunted
by monkish, and feudal, and poetical associations,
it is a prize to meet with some ancient
crone, who has passed a long life about the
place, so as to have become a living chronicle
of its fortunes and vicissitudes. Such a one is
Nanny Smith, a worthy dame, near seventy
years of age, who for a long time served as
housekeeper to the Byrons. The Abbey and
its domains comprise her world, beyond which
she knows nothing, but within which she has
ever conducted herself with native shrewdness
and old fashioned honesty. When Lord Byron
sold the Abbey her vocation was at an end, yet
still she lingered about the place, having for it
the local attachment of a cat. Abandoning her
comfortable housekeeper's apartment, she took
shelter in one of the “rock houses,” which are
nothing more than a little neighbourhood of
cabins, excavated in the perpendicular walls of
a stone quarry, at no great distance from the
Abbey. Three cells, cut in the living rock,
formed her dwelling; these she fitted up humbly

but comfortably; her son William laboured in
the neighbourhood, and aided to support her,
and Nanny Smith maintained a cheerful aspect
and an independent spirit. One of her gossips
suggested to her that William should marry and
bring home a young wife to help her and take
care of her. “Nay! nay,” replied Nanny, tartly,
“I want no young mistress in my house.” So
much for the love of rule—poor Nanny's house
was a hole in a rock!

Colonel Wildman, on taking possession of the
Abbey, found Nanny Smith thus humbly nestled.
With that active benevolence which characterizes
him, he immediately set William up in a
small farm on the estate, where Nanny Smith
has a comfortable mansion in her old days. Her
pride is roused by her son's advancement. She
remarks with exultation that people treat William
with much more respect now that he is a
farmer, than they did when he was a labourer.
A farmer of the neighbourhood has even endeavoured
to make a match between him and his
sister, but Nanny Smith has grown fastidious,
and interfered. The girl, she said, was too old
for her son, besides, she did not see that he was
in any need of a wife.

“No,” said William, “I ha' no great mind to
marry the wench; but if the Colonel and his lady
wish it, I am willing. They have been so kind

to me that I should think it my duty to please
them.” The Colonel and his lady, however, have
not thought proper to put honest William's gratitude
to so severe a test.

Another worthy whom Colonel Wildman found
vegetating upon the place, and who had lived
there for at least sixty years, was old Joe Murray.
He had come there when a mere boy in
the train of the “old lord,” about the middle of
the last century, and had continued with him
until his death. Having been a cabin boy when
very young, Joe always fancied himself a bit of
a sailor, and had charge of all the pleasure boats
on the lake, though he afterwards rose to the
dignity of butler. In the latter days of the
old Lord Byron, when he shut himself up from
all the world, Joe Murray was the only servant
retained by him, excepting his housekeeper
Betty Hardstaff, who was reputed to have an
undue sway over him, and was derisively called
Lady Betty among the country folk.

When the Abbey came into the possession of
the late Lord Byron, Joe Murray accompanied
it as a fixture. He was reinstated as butler in
the Abbey, and high admiral on the lake, and
his sturdy honest mastiff qualities won so upon
Lord Byron as even to rival his Newfoundland
dog in his affections. Often when dining, he
would pour out a bumper of choice Madeira,

and hand it to Joe as he stood behind his chair.
In fact, when he built the monumental tomb
which stands in the Abbey garden, he intended
it for himself, Joe Murray, and the dog. The
two latter were to lie on each side of him.
Boatswain died not long afterwards, and was
regularly interred, and the well known epitaph
inscribed on one side of the monument. Lord
Byron departed for Greece; during his absence,
a gentleman to whom Joe Murray was showing
the tomb, observed, “Well, old boy, you will
take your place here some twenty years hence.”

“I don't know that, sir,” growled Joe, in
reply, “if I was sure his Lordship would come
here, I should like it well enough, but I should
not like to lie alone with the dog.”

Joe Murray was always extremely neat in
his dress, and attentive to his person, and made
a most respectable appearance. A portrait of
him still hangs in the Abbey, representing him
a hale fresh looking fellow, in a flaxen wig, a
blue coat and buff waistcoat, with a pipe in his
hand. He discharged all the duties of his station
with great fidelity, unquestionable honesty, and
much outward decorum, but, if we may believe
his contemporary, Nanny Smith, who, as housekeeper,
shared the sway of the household with
him, he was very lax in his minor morals, and
used to sing loose and profane songs as he presided

at the table in the servants' hall, or sat
taking his ale and smoking his pipe by the
evening fire. Joe had evidently derived his
convivial notions from the race of English country
squires who flourished in the days of his
juvenility. Nanny Smith was scandalized at his
ribald songs, but being above harm herself,
endured them in silence. At length, on his
singing them before a young girl of sixteen, she
could contain herself no longer, but read him
a lecture that made his ears ring, and then
flounced off to bed. The lecture seems, by her
account, to have staggered honest Joe, for he
told her the next morning that he had had
a terrible dream in the night. An Evangelist
stood at the foot of his bed with a great Dutch
bible, which he held with the printed part towards
him, and after a while pushed it in his
face. Nanny Smith undertook to interpret the
vision, and read from it such a homily, and
deduced such awful warnings, that Joe became
quite serious, left off singing, and took to reading
good books for a month; but after that, continued
Nanny, he relapsed and became as bad as
ever, and continued to sing loose and profane
songs to his dying day.

When Colonel Wildman became proprietor of
the Abbey he found Joe Murray flourishing in a
green old age, though upwards of fourscore, and

continued him in his station as butler. The old
man was rejoiced at the extensive repairs that
were immediately commenced, and anticipated
with pride the day when the Abbey should rise
out of its ruins with renovated splendour, its
gates be thronged with trains and equipages,
and its halls once more echo to the sound of
joyous hospitality.

What chiefly, however, concerned Joe's pride
and ambition, was a plan of the Colonel's to
have the ancient refectory of the convent, a great
vaulted room, supported by gothic columns, converted
into a servants' hall. Here Joe looked
forward to rule the roast at the head of the servants'
table, and to make the gothic arches ring
with those hunting and hard drinking ditties
which were the horror of the discreet Nanny
Smith. Time, however, was fast wearing away
with him, and his great fear was that the hall
would not be completed in his day. In his
eagerness to hasten the repairs, he used to get
up early in the morning, and ring up the workmen.
Notwithstanding his great age, also, he
would turn out half dressed in cold weather to
cut sticks for the fire. Colonel Wildman kindly
remonstrated with him for thus risking his health,
as others would do the work for him.

“Lord, sir,” exclaimed the hale old fellow,
“it's my air bath, I'm all the better for it.”

Unluckily as he was thus employed one morning,
a splinter flew up and wounded one of his
eyes. An inflammation took place; he lost the
sight of that eye, and subsequently of the other.
Poor Joe gradually pined away, and grew melancholy.
Colonel Wildman kindly tried to
cheer him up—“Come, come, old boy,” cried he,
“be of good heart, you will yet take your place
in the servants' hall.”

“Nay, nay, sir,” replied he, “I did hope once
that I should live to see it—I looked forward to
it with pride, I confess, but it is all over with me
now—I shall soon go home!”

He died shortly afterwards, at the advanced
age of eighty-six, seventy of which had been
passed as an honest and faithful servant at the
Abbey. Colonel Wildman had him decently
interred in the church of Hucknall Torkard, near
the vault of Lord Byron.

SUPERSTITIONS OF THE ABBEY.

The anecdotes I had heard of the quondam
housekeeper of Lord Byron, rendered me desirous
of paying her a visit. I rode in company
with Colonel Wildman, therefore, to the cottage
of her son William, where she resides, and found
her seated by her fireside, with a favourite cat
perched upon her shoulder and purring in her
ear. Nanny Smith is a large good looking woman,
a specimen of the old fashioned country
housewife, combining antiquated notions and
prejudices, and very limited information, with
natural good sense. She loves to gossip about
the Abbey and Lord Byron, and was soon drawn
into a course of anecdotes, though mostly of an
humble kind, such as suited the meridian of the
housekeeper's room and servants' hall. She
seemed to entertain a kind recollection of Lord
Byron, though she had evidently been much perplexed
by some of his vagaries; and especially
by the means he adopted to counteract his tendency
to corpulency. He used various modes
to sweat himself down; sometimes he would lie
for a long time in a warm bath, sometimes he

would walk up the hills in the park, wrapped up
and loaded with great coats; “a sad toil for the
poor youth,” added Nanny, “he being so lame.”

His meals were scanty and irregular, consisting
of dishes which Nanny seemed to hold in
great contempt, such as pilaw, maccaroni, and
light puddings.

She contradicted the report of the licentious
life which he was reported to lead at the Abbey,
and of the paramours said to have been brought
with him from London. “A great part of his
time used to be passed lying on a sopha reading.
Sometimes he had young gentlemen of his acquaintance
with him, and they played some mad
pranks; but nothing but what young gentlemen
may do, and no harm done.”

“Once, it is true,” she added, “he had with
him a beautiful boy as a page, which the house
maids said was a girl. For my part, I know
nothing about it. Poor soul, he was so lame he
could not go out much with the men; all the
comfort he had was to be a little with the lasses.
The housemaids, however, were very jealous;
one of them, in particular, took the matter in
great dudgeon. Her name was Lucy; she was
a great favourite with Lord Byron, and had been
much noticed by him, and began to have high
notions. She had her fortune told by a man
who squinted, to whom she gave two and sixpence.

He told her to hold up her head and
look high, for she would come to great things.
Upon this,” added Nanny, “the poor thing dreamt
of nothing less than becoming a lady, and mistress
of the Abbey; and promised me, if such
luck should happen to her, she would be a good
friend to me. Ah well-a-day! Lucy never had
the fine fortune she dreamt of; but she had better
than I thought for; she is now married, and
keeps a public house at Warwick.”

Finding that we listened to her with great attention,
Nanny Smith went on with her gossiping.
“One time,” said she, “Lord Byron took
a notion that there was a deal of money buried
about the Abbey by the monks in old times,
and nothing would serve him but he must have
the flagging taken up in the cloisters; and they
digged and digged, but found nothing but stone
coffins full of bones. Then he must needs have
one of the coffins put in one end of the great
hall, so that the servants were afraid to go there
of nights. Several of the sculls were cleaned
and put in frames in his room. I used to have
to go into the room at night to shut the windows,
and if I glanced an eye at them, they all seemed
to grin; which I believe sculls always do. I
can't say but I was glad to get out of the room.

“There was at one time (and for that matter
there is still) a good deal said about ghosts haunting

about the Abbey. The keeper's wife said
she saw two standing in a dark part of the cloisters
just opposite the chapel, and one in the garden,
by the lord's well. Then there was a young
lady, a cousin of Lord Byron, who was staying
in the Abbey and slept in the room next the
clock; and she told me that one night when she
was lying in bed, she saw a lady in white come
out of the wall on one side of the room, and go
into the wall on the opposite side.

“Lord Byron one day said to me, `Nanny,
what nonsense they tell about ghosts, as if there
ever were any such things. I have never seen
any thing of the kind about the Abbey, and I
warrant you have not.' This was all done, do
you see, to draw me out; but I said nothing, but
shook my head. However, they say his lordship
did once see something. It was in the great
hall—something all black and hairy: he said it
was the devil.

“For my part,” continued Nanny Smith, “I
never saw any thing of the kind—but I heard
something once. I was one evening scrubbing
the floor of the little dining room at the end of
the long gallery; it was after dark; I expected
every moment to be called to tea, but wished to
finish what I was about. All at once I heard
heavy footsteps in the great hall. They sounded
like the tramp of a horse. I took the light and

went to see what it was. I heard the steps
come from the lower end of the hall to the fireplace
in the centre, where they stopped: but I
could see nothing. I returned to my work, and
in a little time heard the same noise again. I
went again with the light; the footsteps stopped
by the fireplace as before; still I could see nothing.
I returned to my work, when I heard
the steps for a third time. I then went into the
hall without a light, but they stopped just the
same, by the fireplace half way up the hall. I
thought this rather odd, but returned to my work.
When it was finished, I took the light and went
through the hall, as that was my way to the
kitchen. I heard no more footsteps, and thought
no more of the matter, when, on coming to the
lower end of the hall, I found the door locked,
and then on one side of the door, I saw the
stone coffin with the scull and bones that had
been digged up in the cloisters.”

Here Nanny paused: I asked her if she believed
that the mysterious footsteps had any connexion
with the skeleton in the coffin; but she
shook her head, and would not commit herself.
We took our leave of the good old dame shortly
after, and the story she had related gave subject
for conversation on our ride homeward. It was
evident she had spoken the truth as to what she
had heard, but had been deceived by some peculiar

effect of sound. Noises are propagated
about a huge irregular edifice of the kind in a
very deceptive manner; footsteps are prolonged
and reverberated by the vaulted cloisters and
echoing halls; the creaking and slamming of
distant gates, the rushing of the blast through
the groves and among the ruined arches of the
chapel, have all a strangely delusive effect at
night.

Colonel Wildman gave an instance of the kind
from his own experience. Not long after he
had taken up his residence at the Abbey, he
heard one moonlight night a noise as if a carriage
was passing at a distance. He opened the
window and leaned out. It then seemed as if
the great iron roller was dragged along the gravel
walks and terrace, but there was nothing to
be seen. When he saw the gardener on the
following morning, he questioned him about
working so late at night. The gardener declared
that no one had been at work, and the roller was
chained up. He was sent to examine it, and
came back with a countenance full of surprise.
The roller had been moved in the night, but he
declared no mortal hand could have moved it.
“Well,” replied the Colonel good humouredly,
“I am glad to find I have a brownie to work
for me.”

Lord Byron did much to foster and give currency

to the superstitious tales connected with
the Abbey, by believing, or pretending to believe
in them. Many have supposed that his mind
was really tinged with superstition, and that this
innate infirmity was increased by passing much
of his time in a lonely way, about the empty
halls and cloisters of the Abbey, then in a ruinous
melancholy state, and brooding over the
sculls and effigies of its former inmates. I should
rather think that he found poetical enjoyment in
these supernatural themes, and that his imagination
delighted to people this gloomy and romantic
pile with all kinds of shadowy inhabitants.
Certain it is, the aspect of the mansion under
the varying influence of twilight and moonlight,
and cloud and sunshine operating upon its halls,
and galleries, and monkish cloisters, is enough
to breed all kinds of fancies in the minds of its
inmates, especially if poetically or stuperstitiously
inclined.

I have already mentioned some of the fabled
visitants of the Abbey. The goblin friar, however,
is the one to whom Lord Byron has given
the greatest importance. It walked the cloisters
by night, and sometimes glimpses of it were
seen in other parts of the Abbey. Its appearance
was said to portend some impending evil
to the master of the mansion. Lord Byron pretended
to have seen it about a month before he

contracted his ill-starred marriage with Miss Milbanke.

He has embodied this tradition in the following
ballad, in which he represents the friar as
one of the ancient inmates of the Abbey, maintaining
by night a kind of spectral possession of
it, in right of the fraternity. Other traditions,
however, represent him as one of the friars
doomed to wander about the place in atonement
for his crimes. But to the ballad—

Such is the story of the goblin friar, which,
partly through old tradition, and partly through
the influence of Lord Byron's rhymes, has become
completely established in the Abbey, and

threatens to hold possession as long as the old
edifice shall endure. Various visiters have
either fancied, or pretended to have seen him,
and a cousin of Lord Byron, Miss Sally Parkins,
is even said to have made a sketch of him from
memory. As to the servants at the Abbey, they
have become possessed with all kinds of superstitious
fancies. The long corridors and gothic
halls, with their ancient portraits and dark figures
in armour, are all haunted regions to them; they
even fear to sleep alone, and will scarce venture
at night on any distant errand about the Abbey
unless they go in couples.

Even the magnificent chamber in which I
was lodged was subject to the supernatural influences
which reigned over the Abbey, and
was said to be haunted by “Sir John Byron the
Little with the great Beard.” The ancient black
looking portrait of this family worthy, which
hangs over the door of the great saloon, was
said to descend occasionally at midnight from
the frame, and walk the rounds of the state
apartments. Nay, his visitations were not confined
to the night, for a young lady, on a visit to
the Abbey some years since, declared that, on
passing in broad day by the door of the identical
chamber I have described, which stood partly
open, she saw Sir John Byron the Little seated
by the fireplace, reading out of a great

black letter book. From this circumstance
some have been led to suppose that the story of
Sir John Byron may be in some measure connected
with the mysterious sculptures of the
chimney piece already mentioned; but this has
no countenance from the most authentic antiquarians
of the Abbey.

For my own part, the moment I learned the
wonderful stories and strange suppositions connected
with my apartment, it became an imaginary
realm to me. As I lay in bed at night and
gazed at the mysterious panel work, where gothic
knight, and Christian dame, and Paynim lover
gazed upon me in effigy, I used to weave a thousand
fancies concerning them. The great figures
in the tapestry, also, were almost animated by
the workings of my imagination, and the Vandyke
portraits of the cavalier and lady that
looked down with pale aspects from the wall,
had almost a spectral effect, from their immoveable
gaze and silent companionship—

In this way I used to conjure up fictions of the
brain, and clothe the objects around me with

ideal interest and import, until, as the Abbey
clock tolled midnight, I almost looked to see Sir
John Byron the Little with the long Beard stalk
into the room with his book under his arm, and
take his seat beside the mysterious chimney
piece.

ANNESLEY HALL.

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 enamoured
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 from thence make frequent visits to Annesley
Hall. His visits were encouraged by Miss
Chaworth's mother; she partook none of the
family feud, and probably looked with complacency
upon an attachment that might heal old
differences and unite two neighbouring estates.

The six weeks' vacation passed as a dream
amongst the beautiful bowers 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 that 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:

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 he 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 at 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
enamoured, 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 the 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 favourable
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 neighbourhood
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 neighbouring 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 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
towns 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 enamoured 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 hill, 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
flower pots, 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 barricadoed, 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 barricadoed 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. Every thing around us had the air of an
old fashioned country squire's establishment. In
the centre of the hall was a billiard table, and
about the walls were hung portraits of race
horses, hunters, and favourite 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 jerkens, and a pair of ancient
jack boots, 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 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 towards 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.”

I felt the beautiful poetic phrase thrill through
me.

“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
favourite 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:

There was a little Welsh air, called 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 plots 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:

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 visiters, 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—

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 stuck 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, 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 devotion, 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 afterwards 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 afterwards,
and which, though not addressed to her by
name, are evidently intended for the eye and
the heart of the fair lady of Annesley—

The revival of this early passion, and the
melancholy associations which it spread over
those scenes in the neighbourhood 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—

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 embarcation—

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. Upwards of two years
after the 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—

“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 gushes 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—

For an instant the buried tenderness of early
youth and the fluttering hopes which accompanied
it, seem 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.

The cause of her grief was a matter of rural
comment in the neighbourhood 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.

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 marraige 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.

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.

THE LAKE.

Such is Lord Byron's description of one of a
series of beautiful sheets of water, formed in old
times by the monks by damming up the course
of a small river. Here he used daily to enjoy
his favourite recreations of swimming and sailing.
The “wicked old Lord,” in his scheme of
rural devastation, had cut down all the woods
that once fringed the lake; Lord Byron, on
coming of age, endeavoured to restore them, and
a beautiful young wood, planted by him, now
sweeps up from the water's edge, and clothes
the hill side opposite to the Abbey. To this
woody nook Colonel Wildman has given the appropriate
title of “the Poet's Corner.”

The lake has inherited its share of the traditions
and fables connected with every thing in

and about the Abbey. It was a petty Mediterranean
sea on which the “wicked old Lord”
used to gratify his nautical tastes and humours.
He had his mimic castles and fortresses along
its shores, and his mimic fleets upon its waters,
and used to get up mimic seafights. The remains
of his petty fortifications still awaken the
curious inquiries of visiters. In one of his vagaries,
he caused a large vessel to be brought on
wheels from the sea coast and launched in the
lake. The country people were surprised to see
a ship thus sailing over dry land. They called
to mind a saying of Mother Shipton, the famous
prophet of the vulgar, that whenever a ship
freighted with ling should cross Sherwood Forest,
Newstead would pass out of the Byron
family. The country people, who detested the
old Lord, were anxious to verify the prophecy.
Ling, in the dialect of Nottingham, is the name
for heather; with this plant they heaped the
fated bark as it passed, so that it arrived full
freighted at Newstead.

The most important stories about the lake,
however, relate to the treasures that are supposed
to lie buried in its bosom. These may have
taken their origin in a fact which actually occurred.
There was one time fished up from the
deep part of the lake a great eagle of molten
brass, with expanded wings, standing on a pedestal

or perch of the same metal. It had doubtless
served as a stand or reading desk, in the
Abbey chapel, to hold a folio bible or missal.

The sacred relic was sent to a brasier to be
cleaned. As he was at work upon it, he discovered
that the pedestal was hollow and composed
of several pieces. Unscrewing these, he
drew forth a number of parchment deeds and
grants appertaining to the Abbey, and bearing
the seals of Edward III. and Henry VIII., which
had thus been concealed, and ultimately sunk in
the lake by the friars, to substantiate their right
and title to these domains at some future day.

One of the parchment scrolls thus discovered,
throws rather an awkward light upon the kind
of life led by the friars of Newstead. It is an
indulgence granted to them for a certain number
of months, in which plenary pardon is assured
in advance for all kinds of crimes, among which,
several of the most gross and sensual are specifically
mentioned.

After inspecting these testimonials of monkish
life, in the regions of Sherwood Forest, we
cease to wonder at the virtuous indignation of
Robin Hood and his outlaw crew, at the sleek
sensualists of the cloister:

Old Ballad of Robin Hood.

The brazen eagle has been transferred to the
parochial and collegiate church of Southall, about
twenty miles from Newstead, where it may still
be seen in the centre of the chancel, supporting,
as of yore, a ponderous bible. As to the documents
it contained, they are carefully treasured
up by Colonel Wildman among his other deeds
and papers, in an iron chest secured by a patent
lock of nine bolts, almost equal to a magic spell.

The fishing up of this brazen relic, as I have
already hinted, has given rise to tales of treasure
lying at the bottom of the lake, thrown in there
by the monks when they abandoned the Abbey.
The favourite story is, that there is a great iron
chest there filled with gold and jewels, and chalices
and crucifixes. Nay, that it has been seen,
when the water of the lake was unusually low.
There were large iron rings at each end, but all
attempts to move it were ineffectual; either the
gold it contained was too ponderous, or, what is
more probable, it was secured by one of those
magic spells usually laid upon hidden treasure.
It remains, therefore, at the bottom of the lake
to this day; and it is to be hoped, may one day
or other be discovered by the present worthy
proprietor.

ROBIN HOOD AND SHERWOOD FOREST.

While at Newstead Abbey I took great delight
in riding and rambling about the neighbourhood,
studying out the traces of merry
Sherwood Forest, and visiting the haunts of
Robin Hood. The relics of the old forest are
few and scattered, but as to the bold outlaw that
once held a kind of freebooting sway over it,
there is scarce a hill or dale, a cliff or cavern,
a well or fountain, in this part of the country,
that is not connected with his memory. The
very names of some of the tenants on the Newstead
estate, such as Beardall and Hardstaff,
sound as if they may have been borne in old times
by some of the stalwart fellows of the outlaw
gang.

One of the earliest books that captivated my
fancy when a child, was a collection of Robin
Hood ballads, “adorned with cuts,” which I
bought of an old Scotch pedler, at the cost of
all my holyday money. How I devoured its
pages, and gazed upon its uncouth wood cuts!
For a time my mind was filled with picturings

of “merry Sherwood,” and the exploits and
revelling of the bold foresters; and Robin Hood,
Little John, Friar Tuck, and their doughty compeers,
were my heroes of romance.

These early feelings were in some degree
revived when I found myself in the very heart
of the far-famed forest, and, as I said before, I
took a kind of schoolboy delight in hunting up
all traces of old Sherwood and its sylvan chivalry.
One of the first of my antiquarian rambles
was on horseback, in company with Colonel
Wildman and his lady, who undertook to guide
me to some of the mouldering monuments of the
forest. One of these stands in front of the very
gate of Newstead Park, and is known throughout
the country by the name of “the Pilgrim
Oak.” It is a venerable tree, of great size, over-shadowing
a wide area of the road. Under its
shade the rustics of the neighbourhood have
been accustomed to assemble on certain holydays,
and celebrate their rural festivals. This
custom had been handed down from father to
son for several generations, until the oak had
acquired a kind of sacred character.

The “old Lord Byron,” however, in whose
eyes nothing was sacred, when he laid his desolating
hand on the groves and forests of Newstead,
doomed likewise this traditional tree to
the axe. Fortunately the good people of Nottingham

heard of the danger of their favourite
oak, and hastened to ransom it from destruction.
They afterwards made a present of it to the
poet, when he came to the estate, and the
Pilgrim Oak is likely to continue a rural gathering
place for many coming generations.

From this magnificent and time-honoured tree
we continued on our sylvan research, in quest
of another oak, of more ancient date and less
flourishing condition. A ride of two or three
miles, the latter part across open wastes, once
clothed with forest, now bare and cheerless,
brought us to the tree in question. It was the
Oak of Ravenshead, one of the last survivers of
old Sherwood, and which had evidently once
held a high head in the forest; it was now a
mere wreck, crazed by time, and blasted by
lightning, and standing alone on a naked waste,
like a ruined column in a desert.

At no great distance from the Ravenshead
Oak is a small cave which goes by the name of
Robin Hood's stable. It is in the breast of a
hill, scooped out of brown freestone, with rude
attempts at columns and arches. Within are
two niches, which served, it is said, as stalls for
the bold outlaw's horses. To this retreat he
retired when hotly pursued by the law, for the
place was a secret even from his band. The
cave is overshadowed by an oak and alder, and
is hardly discoverable, even at the present day;
but when the country was overrun with forest
it must have been completely concealed.

There was an agreeable wildness and loneliness
in a great part of our ride. Our devious
road wound down, at one time, among rocky
dells, by wandering streams, and lonely pools,
haunted by shy water fowl. We passed through
a skirt of woodland, of more modern planting,
but considered a legitimate offspring of the
ancient forest, and commonly called Jock of
Sherwood. In riding through these quiet, solitary
scenes, the partridge and pheasant would
now and then burst upon the wing, and the hare
scud away before us.

Another of these rambling rides in quest of
popular antiquities, was to a chain of rocky

cliffs, called the Kirkby Crags, which skirt the
Robin Hood hills. Here, leaving my horse at
the foot of the crags, I scaled their rugged
sides, and seated myself in a niche of the rocks,
called Robin Hood's chair. It commands a
wide prospect over the valley of Newstead, and
here the bold outlaw is said to have taken his
seat, and kept a look out upon the roads below,
watching for merchants, and bishops, and other
wealthy travellers, upon whom to pounce down,
like an eagle from his eyrie.

Descending from the cliffs and remounting
my horse, a ride of a mile or two further along
a narrow “robber path,” as it was called, which
wound up into the hills between perpendicular
rocks, led to an artificial cavern cut in the face
of a cliff, with a door and window wrought
through the living stone. This bears the name
of Friar Tuck's cell, or hermitage, where, according
to tradition, that jovial anchorite used
to make good cheer and boisterous revel with
his freebooting comrades.

Such were some of the vestiges of old Sherwood
and its renowned “yeomandrie,” which I
visited in the neighbourhood of Newstead. The
worthy clergyman who officiated as chaplain at
the Abbey, seeing my zeal in the cause, informed
me of a considerable tract of the ancient forest,
still in existence about ten miles distant. There

were many fine old oaks in it, he said, that had
stood for centuries, but were now shattered and
“stag headed,” that is to say, their upper branches
were bare, and blasted, and straggling out like
the antlers of a deer. Their trunks, too, were
hollow, and full of crows and jackdaws, who
made them their nestling places. He occasionally
rode over to the forest in the long summer evenings,
and pleased himself with loitering in the
twilight about the green alleys and under the
venerable trees.

The description given by the chaplain made
me anxious to visit this remnant of old Sherwood,
and he kindly offered to be my guide and
companion. We accordingly sallied forth one
morning on horseback on this sylvan expedition.
Our ride took us through a part of the country
where King John had once held a hunting seat;
the ruins of which are still to be seen. At that
time the whole neighbourhood was an open
royal forest, or Frank chase, as it was termed; for
King John was an enemy to parks and warrens,
and other enclosures, by which game was fenced
in for the private benefit and recreation of the
nobles and the clergy.

Here, on the brow of a gentle hill, commanding
an extensive prospect of what had once been
forest, stood another of those monumental trees,
which, to my mind, gave a peculiar interest to

this neighbourhood. It was the Parliament Oak,
so called in memory of an assemblage of the
kind held by King John beneath its shade. The
lapse of upwards of six centuries had reduced
this once mighty tree to a mere crumbling fragment,
yet, like a gigantic torso in ancient statuary,
the grandeur of the mutilated trunk gave
evidence of what it had been in the days of its
glory. In contemplating its mouldering remains,
the fancy busied itself in calling up the scene
that must have been presented beneath its shade,
when this sunny hill swarmed with the pageantry
of a warlike and hunting court. When silken
pavilions and warrior tents decked its crest,
and royal standards, and baronial banners, and
knightly pennons rolled out to the breeze. When
prelates and courtiers, and steel-clad chivalry
thronged round the person of the monarch, while
at a distance loitered the foresters in green, and
all the rural and hunting train that waited upon
his sylvan sports.

Such was the phantasmagoria that presented
itself for a moment to my imagination, peopling

the silent place before me with empty shadows
of the past. The reverie however was transient;
king, courtier, and steel-clad warrior, and forester
in green, with horn, and hawk, and hound, all
faded again into oblivion, and I awoke to all that
remained of this once stirring scene of human
pomp and power—a mouldering, oak and a tradition.

A ride of a few miles further brought us at length
among the venerable and classic shades of Sherwood.
Here I was delighted to find myself in
a genuine wild wood, of primitive and natural
growth, so rarely to be met with in this thickly
peopled and highly cultivated country. It reminded
me of the aboriginal forests of my native
land. I rode through natural alleys and green
wood groves, carpeted with grass and shaded by
lofty and beautiful birches. What most interested
me, however, was to behold around the mighty
trunks of veteran oaks, old monumental trees,
the patriarchs of Sherwood Forest. They were
shattered, hollow, and moss-grown, it is true, and
their “leafy honours” were nearly departed; but
like mouldering towers they were noble and picturesque
in their decay, and gave evidence, even
in their ruins, of their ancient grandeur.

As I gazed about me upon these vestiges of

once “Merrie Sherwood,” the picturings of my
boyish fancy began to rise in my mind, and
Robin Hood and his men to stand before me.

The horn of Robin Hood again seemed to
sound through the forest. I saw his sylvan chivalry,
half huntsmen, half freebooters, trooping
across the distant glades, or feasting and revelling
beneath the trees; I was going on to embody
in this way all the ballad scenes that had
delighted me when a boy, when the distant
sound of a wood cutter's axe roused me from
my day dream.

The boding apprehensions which it awakened
were too soon verified. I had not ridden much
further, when I came to an open space where the
work of destruction was going on. Around me
lay the prostrate trunks of venerable oaks, once
the towering and magnificent lords of the forest,
and a number of wood cutters were hacking and
hewing at another gigantic tree, just tottering to
its fall.

Alas! for old Sherwood Forest: it had fallen
into the possession of a noble agriculturist.
a modern utilitarian, who had no feeling for poetry
or forest scenery. In a little while and this
glorious woodland will be laid low; its green
glades turned into sheep walks; its legendary
bowers supplanted by turnip fields; and “Merrie
Sherwood” will exist but in ballad and tradition.

“O for the poetical superstitions,” thought I,
“of the olden time! that shed a sanctity over
every grove; that gave to each tree its tutelar
genius or nymph, and threatened disaster to all
who should molest the hamadryads in their leafy
abodes. Alas! for the sordid propensities of
modern days, when every thing is coined into
gold, and this once holyday planet of ours is
turned into a mere `working day world.”'

My cobweb fancies put to flight, and my feelings
out of tune, I left the forest in a far different
mood from that in which I had entered it,
and rode silently along until, on reaching the
summit of a gentle eminence, the chime of evening
bells came on the breeze across a heath from
a distant village.

I paused to listen.

“They are merely the evening bells of Mansfield,”
said my companion.

“Of Mansfield!” Here was another of the
legendary names of this storied neighbourhood,

that called up early and pleasant associations.
The famous old ballad of the King and the Miller
of Mansfield came at once to mind, and the
chime of the bells put me again in good humour.

A little further on, and we were again on the
traces of Robin Hood. Here was Fountain dale
where he had his encounter with that stalworth
shaveling Friar Tuck, who was a kind of saint
militant, alternately wearing the casque and the
cowl:

The moat is still shown which is said to have
surrounded the strong hold of this jovial and
fighting friar; and the place where he and Robin
Hood had their sturdy trial of strength and
prowess, in the memorable conflict which lasted

and ended in the treaty of fellowship. As to
the hardy feats, both of sword and trencher, performed
by this “curtal fryar,” behold are they
not recorded at length in the ancient ballads, and
in the magic pages of Ivanhoe?

The evening was fast coming on, and the twilight
thickening, as we rode through these haunts

famous in outlaw story. A melancholy seemed
to gather over the landscape as we proceeded,
for our course lay by shadowy woods, and
across naked heaths, and along lonely roads,
marked by some of those sinister names by
which the country people in England are apt
to make dreary places still more dreary. The
horrors of “Thieves' Wood,” and the “Murderers'
Stone,” and “the Hag Nook,” had all to
be encountered in the gathering gloom of evening,
and threatened to beset our path with more
than mortal peril. Happily, however, we passed
these ominous places unharmed, and arrived in
safety at the portal of Newstead Abbey, highly
satisfied with our greenwood foray.

THE ROOK CELL.

In the course of my sojourn at the Abbey, I
changed my quarters from the magnificent old
state apartment haunted by Sir John Byron the
Little, to another in a remote corner of the ancient
edifice, immediately adjoining the ruined
chapel. It possessed still more interest in my
eyes, from having been the sleeping apartment
of Lord Byron during his residence at the Abbey.
The furniture remained the same. Here was the
bed in which he slept, and which he had brought
with him from college; its gilded posts surmounted
by coronets, giving evidence of his aristocratical
feelings. Here was likewise his college
sofa; and about the walls were the portraits of
his favourite butler, old Joe Murray, of his fancy
acquaintance, Jackson the pugilist, together with
pictures of Harrow School and the college at
Cambridge, at which he was educated.

The bedchamber goes by the name of the
Rook Cell, from its vicinity to the Rookery which,
since time immemorial, has maintained possession
of a solemn grove adjacent to the chapel.
This venerable community afforded me much

food for speculation during my residence in this
apartment. In the morning I used to hear them
gradually waking and seeming to call each other
up. After a time, the whole fraternity would be
in a flutter; some balancing and swinging on the
tree tops, others perched on the pinnacles of the
Abbey church, or wheeling and hovering about
in the air, and the ruined walls would reverberate
with their incessant cawings. In this way
they would linger about the rookery and its vicinity
for the early part of the morning, when,
having apparently mustered all their forces, called
over the roll, and determined upon their line
of march, they one and all would sail off in a
long straggling flight to maraud the distant fields.
They would forage the country for miles, and
remain absent all day, excepting now and then
a scout would come home, as if to see that all
was well. Towards night the whole host might
be seen, like a dark cloud in the distance, winging
their way homeward. They came, as it
were, with whoop and halloo, wheeling high in
the air above the Abbey, making various evolutions
before they alighted, and then keeping up
an incessant cawing in the tree tops, until they
gradually fell asleep.

It is remarked at the Abbey, that the rooks,
though they daily sally forth on forays throughout
the week, yet keep about the venerable edifice

on Sundays, as if they had inherited a
reverence for the day, from their ancient confreres,
the monks. Indeed, a believer in the
metemsychosis might easily imagine these gothic
looking birds to be the embodied souls of the
ancient friars still hovering about their sanctified
abode.

I dislike to disturb any point of popular and
poetic faith, and was loath, therefore, to question
the authenticity of this mysterious reverence for
the Sabbath, on the part of the Newstead rooks;
but certainly in the course of my sojourn in the
rook cell, I detected them in a flagrant outbreak
and foray on a bright Sunday morning.

Beside the occasional clamour of the rookery,
this remote apartment was often greeted with
sounds of a different kind, from the neighbouring
ruins. The great lancet window in front of
the chapel, adjoins the very wall of the chamber;
and the mysterious sounds from it at night, have
been well described by Lord Byron:

Never was a traveller in quest of the romantic
in greater luck. I had, in sooth, got lodged
in another haunted apartment of the Abbey; for
in this chamber Lord Byron declared he had
more than once been harassed at midnight by
a mysterious visiter. A black shapeless form
would sit cowering upon his bed, and after gazing
at him for a time with glaring eyes, would roll
off and disappear. The same uncouth apparition
is said to have disturbed the slumbers of a
newly married couple that once passed their
honey-moon in this apartment.

I would observe, that the access to the Rook
Cell is by a spiral stone staircase leading up into
it, as into a turret, from the long shadowy corridor
over the cloisters, one of the midnight
walks of the goblin friar. Indeed, to the fancies
engendered in his brain in this remote and
lonely apartment, incorporated with the floating

superstitions of the Abbey, we are no doubt indebted
for the spectral scene in Don Juan.

As I have already observed, it is difficult to
determine whether Lord Byron was really subject
to the superstitious fancies which have been
imputed to him, or whether he merely amused
himself by giving currency to them among his
domestics and dependants. He certainly never
scrupled to express a belief in supernatural visitations,
both verbally and in his correspondence.
If such were his foible, the Rook Cell was an
admirable place to engender these delusions.

As I have lain awake at night, I have heard all
kinds of mysterious and sighing sounds from the
neighbouring ruin. Distant footsteps, too, and
the closing of doors in remote parts of the Abbey,
would send hollow reverberations and
echoes along the corridor and up the spiral staircase.
Once, in fact, I was roused by a strange
sound at the very door of my chamber. I threw
it open, and a form “black and shapeless with
glaring eyes” stood before me. It proved, however,
neither ghost nor goblin, but my friend
Boatswain, the great Newfoundland dog, who
had conceived a companionable liking for me,
and occasionally sought me in my apartment.
To the hauntings of even such a visitant as honest
Boatswain may we attribute some of the
marvellous stories about the Goblin Friar.

THE LITTLE WHITE LADY.

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 farm
house, 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 farm house. 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,” exclaimed Colonel Wildman,
“for a fairy or sprite! 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 visiter 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 farm house, 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 honey-moon at the abbey. The Little
White Lady still resided in the Weir Mill farm
house, 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 a
broad terrace of the garden, she suddenly beheld
the Little White Lady coming towards 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 rencounter 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 its walks and
gardens.

Colonel Wildman now made further inquiries
concerning her, and found that she was a great
favourite with the people of the farm house
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 farm house. 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 chequered and unhappy;
she was apparently without family or friend, a
lonely desolate being, cut off from society by
her infirmities.

“I am always amongst strangers,” said she,
“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 connexion 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 favour 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 to 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 farm house. 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:

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.

Her poetical wanderings and musings were
not confined to the Abbey grounds, but extended
to all parts of the neighbourhood 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 “favourite child,”
seen by Lord Byron, in his memorable interview
with Miss Chaworth after her marriage. That favourite
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 for ever extinct.”

In the meantime, 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 dependance
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 characterestic
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 connexion 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 neighbourhood. 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 that 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).”

I subjoin a few of the stanzas: they are addressed
to Lord Byron:

In the midst of her reveries and rhapsodies,
tidings reached Newstead of the untimely death
of Lord Byron. How they were received by
this humble but passionate devotee I could not
ascertain; her life was too obscure and lonely to
furnish much personal anecdote, but among her
poetical effusions are several written in a broken
and irregular manner, and evidently under great
agitation.

The following sonnet is the most coherent and
most descriptive of her peculiar state of mind.

Taking all the circumstances here adduced
into consideration, it is evident that this strong
excitement and exclusive occupation of the mind
upon one subject, operating upon a system in a
high state of morbid irritability, was in danger
of producing that species of mental derangement
called monomania. The poor little being was
aware, herself, of the dangers of her case, and
alluded to it in the following passage of a letter
to Colonel Wildman, which presents one of the
most lamentable pictures of anticipated evil ever
conjured up by the human mind.

“I have long,” writes she, “too sensibly felt
the decay of my mental faculties, which I consider
as the certain indication of that dreaded
calamity which I anticipate with such terror.
A strange idea has long haunted my mind, that
Swift's dreadful fate will be mine. It is not ordinary
insanity I so much apprehend, but something
worse—absolute idiotism!

“O sir! think what I must suffer from such
an idea, without an earthly friend to look up to
for protection in such a wretched state—exposed
to the indecent insults which such spectacles always
excite. But I dare not dwell upon the
thought; it would facilitate the event I so much
dread, and contemplate with horror. Yet I cannot
help thinking from people's behaviour to me
at times, and from after reflections upon my

conduct, that symptoms of the disease are already
apparent.”

Five months passed away, but the letters
written by her, and forwarded by Colonel Wildman
to America relative to her brother's affairs,
remained unanswered; the inquiries instituted
by the Colonel had as yet proved equally fruitless.
A deeper gloom and despondency now
seemed to gather upon her mind. She began
to talk of leaving Newstead, and repairing to
London, in the vague hope of obtaining relief or
redress by instituting some legal process to ascertain
and enforce the will of her deceased
brother. Weeks elapsed, however, before she
could summon up sufficient resolution to tear
herself away from the scene of poetical fascination.
The following simple stanzas, selected
from a number written about the time, express
in humble rhymes the melancholy that preyed
upon her spirits:

At length she fixed upon a day for her departure.
On the day previous, she paid a farewell
visit to the Abbey; wandering over every part
of the grounds and garden; pausing and lingering
at every place particularly associated with
the recollection of Lord Byron; and passing a
long time seated at the foot of the monument,
which she used to call “her altar.” Seeking
Mrs. Wildman, she placed in her hands a sealed
packet, with an earnest request that she would
not open it until after her departure from the
neighbourhood. This done, she took an affecting
leave of her, and with many bitter tears bade
farewell to the Abbey.

On retiring to her room that evening, Mrs.
Wildman could not refrain from inspecting the
legacy of this singular being. On opening the
packet, she found a number of fugitive poems,
written in a most delicate and minute hand, and
evidently the fruits of her reveries and meditations
during her lonely rambles: from these the
foregoing extracts have been made. These were

accompanied by a voluminous letter, written
with the pathos and eloquence of genuine feeling,
and depicting her peculiar situation and singular
state of mind in dark but painful colours.

“The last time,” says she, “that I had the
pleasure of seeing you in the garden, you asked
me why I leave Newstead; when I told you my
circumstances obliged me, the expression of concern
which I fancied I observed in your look
and manner would have encouraged me to have
been explicit at the time, but from my inability
of expressing myself verbally.”

She then goes on to detail precisely her pecuniary
circumstances, by which it appears that
her whole dependance for subsistence was on an
allowance of thirteen pounds a year from her
cousin, who bestowed it through a feeling of
pride, lest his relative should come upon the parish.
During two years this pittance had been
augmented from other sources, to twenty three
pounds, but the last year it had shrunk within
its original bounds, and was yielded so grudgingly,
that she could not feel sure of its continuance
from one quarter to another. More than
once it had been withheld on slight pretences,
and she was in constant dread lest it should be
entirely withdrawn.

“It is with extreme reluctance,” observes she,
“that I have so far exposed my unfortunate situation;

but I thought you expected to know something
more of it, and I feared that Colonel Wildman,
deceived by appearances, might think that
I am in no immediate want, and that the delay
of a few weeks, or months, respecting the inquiry,
can be of no material consequence. It is
absolutely necessary to the success of the business
that Colonel Wildman should know the exact
state of my circumstances without reserve,
that he may be enabled to make a correct representation
of them to any gentlemen whom he
intends to interest, who, I presume, if they are
not of America themselves, have some connexions
there, through whom my friends may be
convinced of the reality of my distress, if they
pretend to doubt it, as I suppose they do: but
to be more explicit is impossible; it would be too
humiliating to particularize the circumstances of
the embarrassment in which I am unhappily involved—my
utter destitution. To disclose all
might, too, be liable to an inference which I hope I
am not so void of delicacy, of natural pride, as to
endure the thought of. Pardon me, madam, for
thus giving trouble where I have no right to do
—compelled to throw myself upon Colonel Wildman's
humanity, to entreat his earnest exertions
in my behalf, for it is now my only resource.
Yet do not too much despise me for thus submitting
to imperious necessity—it is not love of life,
believe me it is not, nor anxiety for its preservation.
I cannot say, “There are things that make
the world dear to me,”—for in the world there
is not an object to make me wish to linger here
another hour, could I find that rest and peace in
the grave which I have never found on earth,
and I fear will be denied me there.”

Another part of her letter developes more completely
the dark despondency hinted at in the
conclusion of the foregoing extract—and presents
a lamentable instance of a mind diseased,
which sought in vain, amidst sorrow and calamity,
the sweet consolations of religious faith.

“That my existence has hitherto been prolonged,”
says she, “often beyond what I have
thought to have been its destined period, is astonishing
to myself. Often when my situation
has been as desperate, as hopeless, or more so,
if possible, than it is at present, some unexpected
interposition of Providence has rescued me
from a fate that has appeared inevitable. I do
not particularly allude to recent circumstances
or latter years, for from my earlier years I have
been the child of Providence—then why should
I distrust its care now? I do not distrust it—
neither do I trust it. I feel perfectly unanxious,
unconcerned, and indifferent to the future; but
this is not trust in Providence—not that trust
which alone claims its protection. I know this

is a blameable indifference—it is more—for it
reaches to the interminable future. It turns almost
with disgust from the bright prospects
which religion offers for the consolation and support
of the wretched, and to which I was early
taught, by an almost adored mother, to look for
ward with hope and joy; but to me they can
afford no consolation. Not that I doubt the
sacred truths that religion inculcates. I cannot
doubt—though I confess I have sometimes
tried to do so, because I no longer wish
for that immortality of which it assures us.
My only wish now is for rest and peace—endless
rest. `For rest—but not to feel 'tis rest,'
but I cannot delude myself with the hope that
such rest will be my lot. I feel an internal evidence,
stronger than any arguments that reason
or religion can enforce, that I have that within
me which is imperishable; that drew not its
origin from the `clod of the valley.' With this
conviction, but without a hope to brighten the
prospect of that dread future:

“Such an unhappy frame of mind, I am sure,
madam, must excite your commiseration. It is
perhaps owing, in part at least, to the solitude
in which I have lived, I may say, even in the

midst of society; when I have mixed in it; as my
infirmities entirely exclude me from that sweet
intercourse of kindred spirits—that sweet solace
of refined conversation; the little intercourse I
have at any time with those around me cannot
be termed conversation—they are not kindred
spirits—and even where circumstances have associated
me (but rarely indeed) with superior
and cultivated minds, who have not disdained
to admit me to their society, they could not by
all their generous efforts, even in early youth,
lure from my dark soul the thoughts that loved
to lie buried there, nor inspire me with the courage
to attempt their disclosure; and yet of all
the pleasures of polished life which fancy has
often pictured to me in such vivid colours, there
is not one that I have so ardently coveted as
that sweet reciprocation of ideas, the supreme
bliss of enlightened minds in the hour of social
converse. But this I knew was not decreed for
me—
but since the loss of my hearing, I have always
been incapable of verbal conversation. I need
not, however, inform you, madam, of this. At
the first interview with which you favoured me,
you quickly discovered my peculiar unhappiness
in this respect: you perceived from my manner,
that any attempt to draw me into conversation
would be in vain—had it been otherwise perhaps
you would not have disdained now and then, to
have soothed the lonely wanderer with yours.
I have sometimes fancied, when I have seen you
in the walk, that you seemed to wish to encourage
me to throw myself in your way. Pardon
me if my imagination, too apt to beguile me with
such dear illusions, has deceived me into too
presumptuous an idea here. You must have observed
that I generally endeavoured to avoid
both you and Colonel Wildman. It was to spare
your geneorus hearts the pain of witnessing distress
you could not alleviate. Thus cut off, as it
were, from all human society, I have been compelled
to live in a world of my own, and certainly
with the beings with which my world is
peopled, I am at no loss to converse. But though
I love solitude and am never in want of subjects
to amuse my fancy, yet solitude too much indulged
in must necessarily have an unhappy effect
upon the mind, which, when left to seek for resources
solely within itself, will unavoidably, in
hours of gloom and despondency, brood over corroding
thoughts that prey upon the spirits, and
sometimes terminate in confirmed misanthropy—
especially with those who, from constitution, or
early misfortunes, are inclined to melancholy,
and to view human nature in its dark shades.
And have I not cause for gloomy reflections?
The utter loneliness of my lot would alone have
rendered existence a curse to one whose heart
nature has formed glowing with all the warmth
of social affection, yet without an object on which
to place it—without one natural connexion, one
earthly friend to appeal to, to shield me from the
contempt, indignities, and insults, to which my
deserted situation continually exposed me.”

I am giving long extracts from this letter, yet I
cannot refrain from subjoining another, which
depicts her feelings with respect to Newstead.

“Permit me, madam, again to request your
and Colonel Wildman's acceptance of those acknowledgements
which I cannot too often repeat,
for your unexampled goodness to a rude stranger.
I know I ought not to have taken advantage of
your extreme good nature so frequently as I
have. I should have absented myself from
your garden during the stay of the company at
the Abbey, but, as I knew I must be gone long
before they would leave it, I could not deny myself
the indulgence, as you so freely gave me
your permission to continue my walks; but now
they are at an end. I have taken my last farewell
of every dear and interesting spot, which I
now never hope to see again, unless my disembodied
spirit may be permitted to revisit
them.—Yet O! if Providence should enable me
again to support myself with any degree of respectability,

and you should grant me some little
humble shed, with what joy shall I return and
renew my delightful rambles. But dear as
Newstead is to me, I will never again come under
the same unhappy circumstances as I have this
last time—never without the means of at least
securing myself from contempt. How dear, how
very dear Newstead is to me, how unconquerable
the infatuation that possesses me, I am now
going to give a too convincing proof. In offering
to your acceptance the worthless trifles that
will accompany this, I hope you will believe that
I have no view to your amusement. I dare not
hope that the consideration of their being the
products of your own garden and most of them
written there, in my little tablet, while sitting at
the foot of my Altar—I could not, I cannot resist
the earnest desire of leaving this memorial
of the many happy hours I have there enjoyed.
Oh! do not reject them, madam; suffer them
to remain with you, and if you should deign to
honour them with a perusal, when you read them
repress, if you can, the smile that I know will
too naturally arise, when you recollect the appearance
of the wretched being who has dared
to devote her whole soul to the contemplation of
such more than human excellence. Yet ridiculous
as such devotion may appear to some, I
must take leave to say, that if the sentiments
which I have entertained for that exalted being
could be duly appreciated, I trust they would
be found to be of such a nature as is no dishonour
even for him to have inspired.” * * *

“I am now coming to take a last, last view
of scenes too deeply impressed upon my memory
ever to be effaced even by madness itself.
O madam! may you never know, nor be able to
conceive the agony I endure in tearing myself
from all that the world contains of dear and sacred
to me: the only spot on earth where I can
ever hope for peace or comfort—May every
blessing the world has to bestow attend you, or
rather, may you long, long live in the enjoyment
of the delights of your own paradise, in secret
seclusion from a world that has no real blessings
to bestow. Now I go—but O might I dare to
hope that when you are enjoying these blissful
scenes, a thought of the unhappy wanderer might
sometimes cross your mind, how soothing would
such an idea be, if I dared to indulge it—could
you see my heart at this moment, how needless
would it be to assure you of the respectful gratitude,
the affectionate esteem, this heart must ever
bear you both.”

The effect of this letter upon the sensitive
heart of Mrs. Wildman may be more readily
conceived than expressed. Her first impulse
was to give a home to this poor homeless being,

and to fix her in the midst of those scenes which
formed her earthly paradise. She communicated
her wishes to Colonel Wildman, and they met
with an immediate response in his generous
bosom. It was settled on the spot, that an
apartment should be fitted up for the Little
White Lady in one of the new farm houses, and
every arrangement made for her comfortable
and permanent maintenance on the estate.
With a woman's prompt benevolence, Mrs. Wildman,
before she laid her head upon her pillow,
wrote the following letter to the destitute stranger:

Early the next morning a servant was despatched
with the letter to the Weir Mill farm,
but returned with the information that the Little
White Lady had set off, before his arrival, in
company with the farmer's wife, in a cart for
Nottingham, to take her place in the coach for
London. Mrs. Wildman ordered him to mount
horse instantly, follow with all speed, and deliver
the letter into her hand before the departure of
the coach.

The bearer of good tidings spared neither

whip nor spur, and arrived at Nottingham on a
gallop. On entering the town a crowd obstructed
him in the principal street. He checked
his horse to make his way through it quietly.
As the crowd opened to the right and left, he
beheld a human body lying on the pavement.—
It was the corpse of the Little White Lady!

It seems that on arriving in town and dismounting
from the cart, the farmer's wife had
parted with her to go on an errand, and the
White Lady continued on toward the coach-office.
In crossing a street a cart came along
driven at a rapid rate. The driver called out to
her, but she was too deaf to hear his voice or
the rattling of his cart. In an instant she was
knocked down by the horse, the wheels passed
over her body, and she died without a groan.