Chapter II: Part 2

"To go to Gad's Hill," said Dickens, in a note of invitation, "you leave Charing Cross at nine o'clock by North Kent Railway for Higham." Guided by these directions and equipped with a letter from Dickens's son, we find ourselves gliding eastward among the chimneys of London and, a little later, emerging into the fields of Kent,--Jingle's region of "apples, cherries, hops, and women." The Thames is on our left; we pass many river-towns,--Dartford where Wat Tyler lived, Gravesend where Pocahontas died,--but most of our way is through the open country, where we have glimpses of fields, parks, and leafy lanes, with here and there picturesque camps of gypsies or of peripatetic rascals "goin' a-hoppin'." From wretched Higham a walk of half an hour among orchards and between hedges of wild-rose and honeysuckle brings us to the hill which Shakespeare and Dickens have made classic ground, and soon we see, above the tree-tops, the glittering vane which surmounted the home of the world's greatest novelist. The name Gad's (vagabond's) Hill is a survival of the time when the depredations of highwaymen upon "pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings and traders riding to London with fat purses" gave to this spot the ill repute it had in Shakespeare's day: it was here he located Falstaff's great exploit. The tuft of evergreens which crowns the hill about Dickens's retreat is the remnant of thick woods once closely bordering the highway, in which the "men in buckram" lay concealed, and the robbery of the franklin was committed in front of the spot where the Dickens house stands. By this road passed Chaucer, who had property near by, gathering from the pilgrims his "Canterbury Tales." In all time to come the great master of romance who came here to live and die will be worthily associated with Shakespeare and Chaucer in the renown of Gad's Hill. In becoming possessor of this place, Dickens realized a dream of his boyhood and an ambition of his life. In one of his travellers' sketches he introduces a "queer small boy" (himself) gazing at Gad's Hill House and predicting his future ownership, which the author finds annoying "because it happens to be _my_ house and I believe what he said was true." When at last the place was for sale, Dickens did not wait to examine it; he never was inside the house until he went to direct its repair. Eighteen hundred pounds was the price; a thousand more were expended for enlargement of the grounds and alterations of the house, which, despite his declaration that he had "stuck bits upon it in all manner of ways," did not greatly change it from what it was when it became the goal of his childish aspirations. At first it was his summer residence merely,--his wife came with him the first summer,--but three years later he sold Tavistock House, and Gad's Hill was thenceforth his home. From the bustle and din of the city he returned to the haunts of his boyhood to find restful quiet and time for leisurely work among these "blessed woods and fields" which had ever held his heart. For nine years after the death of Dickens Gad's Hill was occupied by his oldest son; its ownership has since twice or thrice changed.

[Sidenote: Gad's Hill--House and Grounds]

[Sidenote: Dickens's Chalet]

Its elevated site and commanding view render it one of the most conspicuous, as it is one of the most lovely, spots in Kent. The mansion is an unpretentious, old-fashioned, two-storied structure of fourteen rooms. Its brick walls are surmounted by Mansard roofs above which rises a bell-turret; a pillared portico, where Dickens sat with his family on summer evenings, shades the front entrance; wide bay-windows project upon either side; flowers and vines clamber upon the walls, and a delightfully home-like air pervades the place. It seems withal a modest seat for one who left half a million dollars at his death. At the right of the entrance-hall we see Dickens's library and study, a cosy room shown in the picture of "The Empty Chair:" here are shelves which held his books; the panels he decorated with counterfeit book-backs; the nook where perched the mounted remains of his raven, the "Grip" of "Barnaby Rudge." By this bay-window, whence he could look across the lawn to the cedars beyond the highway, stood his chair and the desk where he wrote many of the works by which the world will know him alway. Behind the study was his billiard-room, and upon the opposite side of the hall the parlor, with the dining-room adjoining it at the back, both bedecked with the many mirrors which delighted the master. Opening out of these rooms is a conservatory, paid for out of "the golden shower from America" and completed but a few days before Dickens's death, holding yet the ferns he tended. The dining-room was the scene of much of that emphatic hospitality which it pleased the novelist to dispense, his exuberant spirits making him the leader in all the jollity and conviviality of the board. Here he compounded for bibulous guests his famous "cider-cup of Gad's Hill," and at the same table he was stricken with death; on a couch beneath yonder window, the one nearest the hall, he died on the anniversary of the railway accident which so frightfully imperilled his life. From this window we look out upon a lawn decked with shrubbery and see across undulating cornfields his beloved Cobham. From the parquetted hall, stairs lead to the modest chambers,--that of Dickens being above the drawing-room. He lined the stairway with prints of Hogarth's works, and declared he never came down the stairs without pausing to wonder at the sagacity and skill which had produced the masterful pictures of human life. The house is invested with roses, and parterres of the red geraniums which the master loved are ranged upon every side. It was some fresh manifestation of his passion for these flowers that elicited from his daughter the averment, "Papa, I think when you are an angel your wings will be made of looking-glasses and your crown of scarlet geraniums." Beneath a rose-tree not far from the window where Dickens died, a bed blooming with blue lobelia holds the tiny grave of "Dick" and the tender memorial of the novelist to that "Best of Birds." The row of gleaming limes which shadow the porch was planted by Dickens's own hands. The pedestal of the sundial upon the lawn is a massive balustrade of the old stone bridge at near-by Rochester, which little David Copperfield crossed "foot-sore and weary" on his way to his aunt, and from which Pickwick contemplated the castle-ruin, the cathedral, the peaceful Medway. At the left of the mansion are the carriage-house and the school-room of Dickens's sons. In another portion of the grounds are his tennis-court and the bowling-green which he prepared, where he became a skilful and tireless player. The broad meadow beyond the lawn was a later purchase, and the many limes which beautify it were rooted by Dickens. Here numerous cricket matches were played, and he would watch the players or keep the score "the whole day long." It was in this meadow that he rehearsed his readings, and his talking, laughing, weeping, and gesticulating here "all to himself" excited among his neighbors suspicion of his insanity. From the front lawn a tunnel constructed by Dickens passes beneath the highway to "The Wilderness," a thickly wooded shrubbery, where magnificent cedars uprear their venerable forms and many sombre firs, survivors of the forest which erst covered the countryside, cluster upon the hill-top. Here Dickens's favorite dog, the "Linda" of his letters, lies buried. Amid the leafy seclusion of this retreat, and upon the very spot where Falstaff was routed by Hal and Poins ("the eleven men in buckram"), Dickens erected the chalet sent to him in pieces by Fechter, the upper room of which--up among the quivering boughs, where "birds and butterflies fly in and out, and green branches shoot in at the windows"--Dickens lined with mirrors and used as his study in summer. Of the work produced at Gad's Hill--"Two Cities," "Uncommercial Traveller," "Mutual Friend," "Edwin Drood," and many tales and sketches of "All the Year Round"--much was written in this leaf-environed nook; here the master wrought through the golden hours of his last day of conscious life, here he wrote his last paragraph and at the close of that June day let fall his pen, never to take it up again. From the place of the chalet we behold the view which delighted the heart of Dickens,--his desk was so placed that his eyes would rest upon this view whenever he raised them from his work,--the fields of waving corn, the green expanse of meadows, the sail-dotted river.

Many friends came to Dickens in this pleasant Kentish home,--Forster, Maclise, Reade, Macready, Leech, Collins, Yates, Hans Christian Andersen, Mr. and Mrs. Fields, Longfellow and his daughters, Fechter and his wife: some of them were guests here for many days together. The master was the most genial of hosts, apparently the happiest of men, with the hearty laugh which Montaigne says never comes from a bad heart. After the morning task in library or chalet he gave the rest of the day to exercise and recreation, often at games with his guests in the grounds, but taking daily in rain or shine the long walks which made his lithe figure and rapid gait familiar to all the cottagers and field-laborers of the countryside. It is pleasant to hear the loving testimony of these simple folk--many of them descendants of the "men of Kent" who followed the standard of Wat Tyler from Blackheath to London--concerning Dickens's uniform kindness, his helpful generosity, his scrupulous regard of the rights of inferiors, the traits which won their hearts. One rustic neighbor declares, "Dickens was a main good man, sir: it was a sorry day for the neighborhood when he was taken away." Near the gate of Gad's Hill House is a wayside inn, the "Sir John Falstaff," which for more than two centuries has stood for remembrance of that worthy's exploit at this place. Its weather-worn sign bears portraits of Falstaff and Prince Hal and a picture of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" putting Falstaff into the basket. The name of a son of the recent keeper of this hostelry, Edward Trood, doubtless suggested the title of the "Mystery" which must, alas! remain a mystery evermore.

[Sidenote: Scenes of Great Expectations]

[Sidenote: The Marshes]

From the inn a lane leads to a sightly summit surmounted by a monument which Dickens called "Andersen's Monument," because it was the resort of that illustrious author while a guest at Gad's Hill. Its far-reaching prospect is indeed alluring: on every hand vast, wave-like expanses of forest and orchard, moor and mead, sweep away to the horizon, while northward, beyond great cornfields and market-gardens, we see twenty miles of the Thames--"stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's life"--bordered here by a wilderness of low-lying marsh. A walk beloved of Dickens brings us to one of his favorite haunts,--a dreary church-yard on the margin of this marsh. It lies in the dismal, ague-haunted "hundred of Loo," a peninsula between the Thames and the Medway having a broad hem of desolate fens along the river-banks--a weird, little known region, whose ancient reputation was unsavory. A wooden finger on a post directs us to Cooling,--Dickens makes Pip say that this direction was never accepted, no one ever came,--a forlorn hamlet which straggles about the ruins of Cooling Castle. This was an ancient seat of the Cobhams; through a Cobham heiress it passed to Oldcastle, leader of the Lollards, who shut himself up here and was dragged hence to martyrdom. It is noteworthy that this Oldcastle has been thought to be the original of Falstaff, the hero of Gad's Hill. Of the stronghold little remains save the machicolated gate-way, flanked with ponderous round towers bearing quaint inscriptions. The water of the moat is green and stagnant, suggesting frogs and rheumatism, and the space it encloses is occupied by the cottage of a farmer. The forge and cottage of Joe Gargery are not found in the wretched village,--indeed, we should be sorry to find that splendid fellow and the good Betty so poorly housed,--but beyond the narrow street and at the verge of the marshes we come to a low, quaint, square-towered old church, which rises from a wind-swept, nettle-grown church-yard, the scene of the opening chapter of "Great Expectations." Yonder mound, whose gravestone is inscribed to George Comfort, "Also Sarah, Wife of the Above," stands for the tomb of Pip's parents; and sunken in the grass at our feet is the row of little gravestones whose curious shape led Pip to believe that his little brothers (whose graves they marked) "had been born on their backs, with their hands in their trousers pockets, and had never taken them out in this stage of existence." Over this low wall which divides God's-acre from the marshes the convict climbed, and we, standing upon it, look across the scene of his chase and capture, which Pip witnessed from Joe's back. On this sombre autumn afternoon of our visit the landscape is startlingly like that the terrified boy beheld: we see the same far-stretching waste of marshes, the intersecting dikes, the low, leaden line of the river beyond, dark mists hanging heavy over all, while the chill wind blows in our faces from its "savage lair" in the sea. Upon yonder flat tombstone in the far corner of the church-yard Dickens sat and lunched with Fields when he last walked to this place. Hidden now in the mists, but not far distant, and reached by a foot-path from the road to Chalk, is a dirty and dilapidated Thames-side inn, whose creaking sign-board reads, "Ship and Lobster:" this is The Ship of "Great Expectations," where Pip and his party slept the night preceding their attempt to put Magwich on the steamer, and the open river below the little causeway is the scene of their mischance and the transport's recapture.

[Sidenote: Cobham]

[Sidenote: Cloisterham]

The walk which Dickens most enjoyed--the one which was his last before he died--was to and around Cobham, the seat of his friend Darnley. We follow the way once so familiar to his feet, through the noble park which the Pickwick Club found "so thoroughly delightful," on a June afternoon, by the stately old hall where lately stood Dickens's chalet, and farther, through majestic forest and open glade, to the place whence Pickwick--overcome by cold punch--was wheeled to the pound. Skirting the park on our return, we come to Cobham village and the neat Leather Bottle Inn to which the lovelorn Tupman retired to conceal his woe after his discomfiture at Manor Farm, and where Dickens himself, rambling in the neighborhood with Forster, lodged in 1841. Here is the little church-yard where Pickwick walked with Tupman and persuaded him to return to the world, and hard by the cottage of Bill Stumps, before which Pickwick made the immortal discovery which was "the pride of his friends and the envy of every antiquarian in this or any other country." Another favorite walk of Dickens conducts us, past a quaint, rambling mansion of dingy brick which served as the model for Satis House of "Great Expectations," to Rochester, the Cloisterham of "Edwin Drood." Here we find the Bull Inn,--"good house, nice beds,"--where the Pickwick Club lodged, in rooms 13 and 19, and the ballroom, where Tupman and Jingle (the latter in Winkle's coat) danced with the widow and enraged little Slammer; the Watt's Charity of "The Uncommercial Traveller;" the picturesque castle-ruin which Dickens frequented and has so charmingly described. Here, too, is the gray old cathedral he loved, which appears in many of his tales, from Jingle's piquant account of it in "Pickwick" to that touching description of this ancient fane in the last lines of the master, written within sound of its bells and but a few hours before his death.

[Sidenote: Land of Dickens]

This region of sunny Kent, the scene of his earliest and latest years, may fitly be called The Land of Dickens, so intimately is it associated with his life and work. Here at near-by Chatham (whence he used to come to gaze longingly at Gad's Hill House), in a whitewashed cottage on Ordnance Place, he lived as a child; at yonder village of Chalk he spent his honeymoon, its expenses being defrayed by the sale of the first numbers of "Pickwick;" here were the habitual resorts of his holiday leisure; here was his latest home; here he died, and here he desired to be buried. This district was no less the life-haunt and home of his imagination and genius. The scenes of his most effective romances are laid here; into the fabric of many a tale and sketch his fancy has woven the familiar features of town and hamlet, field and forest, marsh and river, of the region he knew and loved so well; here his first tale opens, here his last tale ends.

SOME HAUNTS OF BYRON

_Birthplace--London Homes--Murray's Book-Store--Kensal Green--Harrow--
Byron's Tomb--His Diadem Hill--Abode of his Star of Annesley--
Portraits--Mementos._

[Sidenote: London Homes]

Of the places in and about great London which were associated with the brief life of Byron, the rage for improvement which holds nothing sacred has spared a few, and the quest for Byron-haunts is still fairly rewarded. Holles Street, where he was born, has not long been resigned to trade: we have known it as a somnolent little street whose grateful quiet--reached by a step from the tumult of De Quincey's "stony-hearted step-mother"--made it seem like a placid pool beside a riotous torrent. It is scarce a furlong in length, and from the shade of Cavendish Square at its extremity we could look, between bordering rows of modest dwellings, to the square where Ralph Nickleby lived and Mary Wortley Montagu died. At our right, a little way down the street, stood a small, plain, two-storied house of dingy brick, where the poet's mother lodged in the upper front room at the time of his birth. This dwelling was No. 16, later 24, and has now given place to a shop. An unpretentious tenement near Sloane Square was Byron's home during his pupilage with Dr. Glennie.

In the house No. 8 St. James Street, nearly opposite the place where Gibbon died, Byron had for some years a suite of rooms. Here he was convenient to Almack's aristocratic ballrooms and St. James Theatre, and was in the then, as it is now, centre of fashionable club-life. His residence here began when he came to London to publish "Bards and Reviewers," was resumed upon his return from the Levantine tour, and continued during the publication of the early cantos of "Childe Harold" and other poems written on that tour. In these rooms "Corsair," "The Giaour," and "Bride of Abydos" were written, the latter in a single night and with one quill. The last year of Byron's residence here was the period of his highest popularity, when he was the especial pet of London society queens, one of whom--who later wrote a book to defame him--was recognized in bifurcated masculine garb in these chambers. On the same street is the home of White's Club, the Bays' of "Pendennis," of which the present Lord Byron is a member, and on the site of the Carlton Club, Pall Mall, stood the Star and Garter tavern, where, in room No. 7 at the right on the first floor, the poet's predecessor killed his neighbor Chaworth, grand-uncle of Byron's "star of Annesley." Adjoining the Academy of Arts in Piccadilly is that "college of bachelors," the Albany apartment house where Dickens lodged "Fascination" Fledgeby and laid the scene of his flagellation by Lammle and the dressing of his wounds with pepper by Jenny Wren. Here the handsome suite A 2 was the abode of Byron for the year or so preceding his hapless marriage, and here "Lara" and "Hebrew Melodies" were written. The poet had passed the zenith of the social horizon, and the "Byron-madness" was waning, when he came to the Albany; still, the visits of fair admirers were vouchsafed him in these rooms. It was here that the girl whose story Guiccioli adduces as evidence of Byron's virtuous self-denial came to him for counsel. If the partiality of his mistress has unduly praised his conduct at this time, it is a thousandfold outweighed by the bitterness of another narrative--happily discredited, if not disproven--which indicates this same period as being that of the beginning of a _liaison_ with his sister. To these rooms Moore was a daily visitant, and Canning then lodged on the second floor adjoining the suite E 1, where Macaulay wrote the "History of England" and many essays. Byron's last abode in London was a stately house in Piccadilly, opposite Green Park and not far from the then London sojourn of Scott. Byron's dwelling, now No. 139, belonged to the Duchess of Devon, and was known as 13 Piccadilly Terrace. To this elegant home he brought his bride after the "treacle-moon," and here passed the remainder of their brief period of cohabitation. Here "The Siege of Corinth," "Parisina," and many minor poems were penned, the MS. of some being in the handwriting of his wife. Here Augusta Leigh was a guest warmly welcomed by Lady Byron, despite her alleged knowledge of the "shocking misconduct" of Byron and his sister in this house. Here Ada, "sole daughter of his house and heart," was born, and from here, a few weeks later, his wife went forth, never to see him again. Some letters came from her to this home,--playful notes to Byron inviting him to follow her, affectionate epistles to the sister, then a final letter announcing her determination never to return. In the ten months during which Byron occupied this house it was nine times in possession of bailiffs on account of his debts. It has since been refaced and repaired, but the original rooms remain. Hamilton Place now leads from it to Hamilton Gardens, where stands a beautiful statue of Byron. To the mansion of Sir Edward Knatchbull, No. 25 Great George Street, a site now occupied by the Institute of Engineers, the corpse of Byron was brought upon its arrival from Greece; and here in the great parlors, but a few steps from the spot where the remains of Sheridan had lain eight years before, Byron's body lay in state while his friends vainly sought sepulture for it in Westminster.

[Sidenote: Murray's]

At No. 50 Albemarle Street, Piccadilly, not far from the Albany, is the establishment of John Murray, whose predecessor, John Murray II., published "Childe Harold" and all Byron's subsequent poems to the earlier cantos of "Don Juan." At this house the poet was a frequent and familiar lounger. Here, in a cosy drawing-room which is handsomely furnished and embellished, Murray used to hold a literary court, and here Byron first shook hands with the "great Wizard of the North" and met Moore, Canning, Southey, Gifford, and other _litterateurs_. Scott afterward wrote, "Byron and I met for an hour or two daily in Murray's drawing-room, and found much to say to each other." During his residence in London, Byron was customarily one of the coterie of authors--facetiously called the "four o'clock club"--which daily assembled in this room. The _seances_ were frequented at one time or another by most of the stars of English letters, embracing, besides those above named, Campbell, Hallam, Crabbe, Lockhart, Disraeli, Irving, George Ticknor, etc. We find the room little changed since their time. Original portraits of that brilliant company look down from the walls of the room they haunted in life, and the visitor thrills with the thought that in some subtile sense their presence pervades it still. In this room Ada Byron, kept in ignorance of her father until womanhood, first saw his handwriting, and in yonder fireplace beneath his portrait, four days after intelligence of his death had reached London, the manuscript of his much-discussed "Memoirs" was burned at the desire of Lady Byron and in the presence of Moore and Byron's executor, Hobhouse, who had witnessed his hapless marriage. Until the death of Byron his relations with Murray were most cordial, and the present John Murray IV., grandson of Byron's publisher, possesses numerous letters of the poet, some of which were used in Moore's "Life." Perhaps most interesting of Byron's many rhyming epistles is the one commencing,--

"My dear Mr. Murray,
You're in a blanked hurry
To set up this ultimate canto,"

which announces the final completion of "Childe Harold." Among many mementos of Byron cherished in this famous room are the original MSS. of "Bards and Reviewers" and of most of his later poems. With them are other priceless MSS. of Scott, Swift, Gray, Southey, Livingstone, Irving, Motley, etc. The Murray III. who used to show us these treasures with reverent pride, and who could boast that he had known Byron, Scott, and Goethe, died not long ago. When we ask for the Bible popularly believed to have been given to Murray by Byron with a line so altered as to read "now Barabbas was a _publisher_," we are told this joke was Campbell's and was upon another publisher than Murray. Byron's signet-ring has passed to the possession of Pierre Barlow, Esq., of New York. _Litterateurs_ still come to "Murray's den," though not so often as in the time when clubs were less popular: among those who may sometimes be met here are Argyll, Knight, Layard, Dufferin, Temple, Francis Darwin, etc. Murrays' was the home of the Review--"whose mission in life is to hang, draw, and _Quarterly_," as one victim avers--to which came Charlotte Bronte's burly Irish uncle with his shillalah in search of the harsh reviewer of "Jane Eyre," and haunted the place until he was turned away.

[Sidenote: Kensal Green--Harrow]

A most delightful outing is the jaunt from Byron's London haunts, past Kensal Green, where we find the precious graves in which sleep Thackeray, Motley, Cunningham, Jameson, Hood, Hunt, Sydney Smith, and Mrs. Hawthorne,--the latter beneath ivy from her Wayside home and periwinkle from her husband's tomb on the piny hill-top at Concord,--to Harrow, the "Ida" of Byron's verse. Here is the ancient school of which Sheridan, Peel, Perceval, Trollope, and others famous in letters or politics were inmates; where Byron was for years "a troublesome and mischievous pupil" and made the acquaintance of Clare, Dorset, and others to whom some of his poems are addressed, and of Wildman who rescued his Newstead from ruin: the present Byron and the son of Ada Byron were also Harrow boys. Here may be seen some of the poet's worn and scribbled books; his name graven by him upon a panel of the oldest building; the Peachie tombstone--protected now by iron bars--which was his evening resort, where some of his stanzas were composed, and whence he beheld a landscape of enchanting beauty. Near this beloved spot, where Byron once desired to be entombed, sleeps a sinless child of sin, his daughter Allegra, born of Mrs. Shelley's sister. At Harrow, Byron repaid help upon his exercises by fighting for his assistant; his successes here were mainly pugilistic, but his battles were often those of younger and weaker boys, and the spot where he fought the tyrants of the school is pointed out with interest and pride.

In Notts, _en route_ to Newstead, we lodge in an old mansion alleged to have been the abode of the poet in his school-vacations; we have the high authority of the landlord for the conviction that we occupy the room and the very bed oft used by Byron; but the credulity even of a pilgrim has a limit, and the agility of the fleas that now inhabit the bed forbids belief that they too are relics of the poet. Better authenticated are the Byron relics of a local society, among which are the boot-trees certified by his bootmaker to be those upon which the poet's boots were fitted. They are of interest as demonstrating that the asymmetry of his feet was much less than has been believed; one foot was shorter than its fellow, and the ankle was weak, but not deformed.

[Sidenote: Tomb of Childe Harold]

From Nottingham a winsome way along a smiling vale, with billowy hills swelling upon either hand, conducts us to the village of Hucknall. By its market-place an ancient church-tower rises from a grave-strewn enclosure; we enter the fane through a porch of ponderous timbers, and, traversing the dim aisle, approach the chancel and find there the tomb of Childe Harold. A slab of blue marble, sent by the King of Greece and bearing the word Byron, is set in the pavement to mark the spot where, after the throes of his passion-tossed life, Byron lies among his kindred in "the dreamless sleep that lulls the dead." One who, as a lad, entered the vault at the burial of Ada Byron, indicates for us its size upon the pavement and the position of the coffins; Byron, in a coffin covered with velvet and resting upon benches of stone, lies between his mother and the "sole daughter of his house and heart;" at his feet a receptacle contains his heart and brain. His valet and the Little White Lady of Irving's narrative sleep in the yard near by. A marble tablet on the church wall describes Byron as the "Author of Childe Harold's Pilgrimage;" this was erected by his sister, and near it we saw a chaplet of faded laurel placed years ago by our "Bard of the Sierras." Byron's tomb has never been a popular shrine, but such Americans as Irving, Hawthorne, Halleck, Ludlow, Joaquin Miller, and William Winter have been reverent pilgrims. Once Byron's "Italian enchantress," la Guiccioli, was found weeping here and kissing the pavement which covers the lover of her youth.

[Sidenote: Annesley Hall]

Above Hucknall the ancestral domain of the Byrons lies upon the right, while upon the other hand extend the broad lands which were the heritage of Mary Ann Chaworth, Byron's "star of Annesley." From the boundary of the estates, where the poet sometimes met his youthful love, a stroll across a landscape parquetted with grain-field gold and meadow emerald brings us to the ancient seat of the time-honored race of which the maiden of Byron's "Dream"--the "Mary" of many poems--was the "last solitary scion left." It is now the property of her great-grandson. Most of her married life was passed elsewhere, and Annesley fell into the neglected condition which Irving describes. Mary's husband, the maligned Musters, instead of hating the place and seeking to destroy its identity, preferred it to his other property, and spent many years after his wife's death in restoring and beautifying it, taking pains to preserve the grounds and the main portion of the mansion in the condition in which his wife had known them in her maidenhood. This became the beloved home of his later years, and here he died. This mansion of the "Dream" stands upon an elevation overlooking many acres of picturesque park. It is a great, rambling pile of motley architecture, obviously erected by different generations of Chaworths to suit their varying needs and tastes, but the walls are overgrown with clambering vines, which conceal the touch of time and impart to the structure an aspect of harmonious beauty. The principal facade which presents along the court is imposing and stately, but on every side are pointed gables, stone balustrades, and picturesque walls. The interior arrangement of the body of the house remains precisely as Mary knew it, even the decorations of some of the rooms having been preserved by the considerate love of her husband and descendants; and here, despite the averment of a Byron-biographer that "every relic of her ancient family was sold and scattered to the winds," the Chaworth plate, portraits, and other belongings are religiously cherished. We were first invited to the place to see these while they were yet displayed by the maid in whose arms Mary died. Upon the walls of the great lower hall are many family pictures, among them that of the Chaworth whom Byron's great-uncle had slain. It was this portrait that Byron feared would come out of its frame to haunt him if he remained here over-night. From the hall low stairs lead to the apartments. At the right is Mary's sitting-room, where Byron spent many hours beside her, listening entranced while she played to him upon the piano which stood in the farther corner. It is a pleasant apartment, its windows looking out upon the garden-beds Mary tended, which we see now ablaze with the flowers known to have been her favorites. In this room, which "her smiles had made a heaven to him," Byron, years afterward, saw Mary for the last time and kissed for its mother's sake "the child that ought to have been his." On this occasion she made the inquiry which prompted the lines, "To Mrs. Musters, on being asked my reason for quitting England in the spring." This last painful interview is recalled in the poems "Well, Thou art Happy" and "I've seen my Bride Another's Bride." Above the hall is the large drawing-room, where we see several portraits of Mary, which represent her as a most beautiful woman, with a pathetically sweet and winning face,--by no means the "wicked-looking cat" which Byron's jealous wife described. Here, too, are pictures of her husband which fully justify his popular sobriquet, "handsome Jack Musters." Physically they were an admirably matched pair. Out of the drawing-room is the "antique oratory" of the poem, a small apartment above the entrance-porch, pictured as the scene of Byron's parting with Mary after her announcement of her betrothal. Byron was cordially welcomed at Annesley; the family were his relatives, and all of them, save that young lady herself, would gladly have had him marry the heiress. Among the guest-chambers is one, called of yore the blue room, which during one summer--after his fear of the family portraits had been subdued by the greater fear of meeting "bogles" on his homeward way--Byron often occupied. Here he incensed Nanny the housekeeper by allowing his dog to sleep upon the bed and soil her neat counterpanes. Another servant, "old Joe," tired of sitting up at night to wait upon him, finally frightened him away by means of some hideous nocturnal noises, which he assured the young poet proceeded from "spooks out of the kirk-yard,"--Byron's superstition doubtless suggesting the ruse.

[Sidenote: Annesley Park--Diadem Hill]

[Sidenote: Byron-Chaworth-Musters]

Giant trees overtop the chimneys and bower the walls of the venerable mansion. The garden which Irving found matted and wild was long ago restored by Musters to its former beauty of turf, foliage, and flower. A grand terrace,--one of the finest in England,--with brick walls and carved balustrades of stone mantled and draped with ivy, lies at the right, with broad steps leading down to the garden where Byron delighted to linger with Mary during the swift hours of one too brief summer. Beneath the terrace is a door, carefully protected by Musters and his descendants, which Byron daily used as a target and in which we see the marks of bullets from his pistol. The grounds are extensive and beautifully diversified by copses of great trees and grassy glades where deer feed amid myriad witcheries of leaf and bloom. Half a mile from the Hall is a shrine that will attract the sentimental prowler, Byron's diadem hill. Projecting from the extremity of a long line of eminences, it is a landmark to the countryside and overlooks the living landscape which the poet depicted in lines throbbing with life and beauty. From its acclivity we see much of his ancestral Newstead, the adjoining fair acres of Annesley which he would have added to his own, the tower and chimneys of the Hall rising among clustering oaks: beyond these darkly wooded hills decline to the valley, along which we look--past parks, villages, and the church where Byron sleeps--to the spires of the city. As we contemplate the vista from the spot where stood the two bright "beings in the hues of youth," we have about us a ring of dark firs, the "diadem of trees in circular array" pictured in the "Dream," apparently unchanged since the day the maiden and the youth here met for the last time before her marriage. The Byron-writers have united in denouncing Musters for denuding this hill-top in a splenetic endeavor to prevent its identification as the scene of the interview described in the poem. In truth, we owe the preservation of the features which identify this romantic spot to the very hand which the author of "Crayon Miscellany" avers is "execrated by every poetic pilgrim." When natural causes were rapidly destroying the grove, Musters caused its removal and replaced it by saplings grown from cones of the old trees, each fir of the present beautiful diadem being sedulously rooted upon the site of its lineal ancestor. Musters had much greater reason to regard this spot with romantic tenderness than had the poet; here he enjoyed many stolen interviews with his sweetheart, for he was forbidden to see her in her home, and she, perverse and persistent in her passion for him, came here daily with the hope of meeting him and watched for his approach along the valley. Upon the very occasion the poem describes, she waited here, "Looking afar if yet her lover's steed kept pace with her expectancy," and merely tolerated the company of the "gaby" boy Byron until Musters might arrive. The latter had no reason for the irritable jealousy toward Byron which has been attributed to him, and there is no evidence that he evinced or entertained such a feeling. He freely invited the poet to his house, rode and swam with him, preserved the few Byron mementos at Annesley, and protected the tombs of Byron's ancestors at Colwick. So much of untruth has been published anent the Byron-Chaworth-Musters matter, and especially concerning the attitude of the lady toward Byron and the conditions of her subsequent life, that it is pleasant, even at this late day, to be able to record upon undoubted evidence that her loving admiration for her husband ceased only with her life.

[Sidenote: Mary's Grave]

On the bank of the silvery Trent, three miles from Nottingham, is Colwick Hall, where Mary's married life was spent. This was an ancient seat of the Byrons, said to have been lost by them at the card-table. Mary's home was an imposing mansion, with lofty cupola, balustraded roofs, and stately pediments upheld by Ionic columns. From the front windows we look across a wide expanse of sun-kissed meadow beyond the river, while at the back rocky cliffs rise steeply and are tufted by overhanging woods. The Hall was attacked and pillaged in 1831 by a Luddite mob, from whom poor Mary escaped half naked into the shrubbery and lay concealed in the cold wet night. The exposure and terror of this event impaired her reason, and caused her death the next year at Wiverton, another seat of the Chaworths, where her descendants reside. Close by the mansion at Colwick, now a summer resort, was the old gray church, with battlemented tower, where Mary was married, and where she lies in death with her husband and his kindred, near the burial-vault of the ancestors of the lame boy who linked her name to deathless verse. At the side of the altar a beautiful monumental tablet, bearing a graceful female figure and a laudatory inscription, is placed in memory of the "star of Annesley," whose brightness went out in distraction and gloom.

To Byron's early passion and its failure we owe some of the sweetest and tenderest of his songs; and it has been believed that the memory of that defeat adapted his thoughts to their highest flights and gave added pathos and beauty to his noblest work. Thus all the world were gainers by his disappointment, and evidence is lacking that either the lady or the lover was a loser.

THE HOME OF CHILDE HAROLD

_Newstead--Byron's Apartments--Relics and Reminders--Ghosts--Ruins--The
Young Oak--Dog's Tomb--Devil's Wood--Irving--Livingstone--Stanley--
Joaquin Miller._

[Sidenote: The Abbey]

However alluring other haunts of Byron may be found, the "hall of his fathers" must remain paramount in the interest and affection of his admirers. The stanzas he addressed to that venerable pile, the graphic description in "Don Juan," the plaintive allusions in "Childe Harold," its own romantic history as a mediaeval fortress and shrine, and its association with the bard who inherited its lands and dwelt beneath its battlements, render Newstead Abbey a Mecca to which the steps of pilgrims tend. It came to the Byrons by royal gift, and in the middle of the last century was inherited by the poet's predecessor the Wicked Byron, who killed his neighbor of Annesley and so desolated the Abbey that the only spot sheltered from the storms was a corner of the scullery where he breathed out his wretched life. The poet occupied the place at intervals for twenty years, and then sold it to Colonel Wildman, who had been his form-fellow at Harrow, and to whom we are mainly indebted for the restoration of the edifice and the preservation of every memento of the poet and his race. At the death of Wildman the Abbey became the property of Colonel W. F. Webb, a sharer in Livingstone's explorations, who gathers here a brilliant circle of authors, artists, travellers, and wits whose gayety dispels the hoary and ghostly associations of the place.

[Sidenote: Chapel Ruin]

[Sidenote: Byron's Apartments]

From the boundary of the estate a broad avenue, lined with noble trees, leads to an inner park of eight hundred acres, among whose sylvan beauties our way lies, through verdant glades and under leafy boughs whose shadows the sunshine prints upon the path, until we see, from the verge of the wood, the noble pile rising amid an environment of lawn and lake, grove and garden. It is a vast stone structure, composed of motley parts joined "by no quite lawful marriage of the arts" into an harmonious and impressive whole. The western facade is the one usually pictured, because it contains the Byron apartments and best displays the characteristic features of the edifice, having a castellated tower at one extremity, while to the other is joined the ruined chapel front which, as an example of its style, is rivalled in architectural value only by St. Mary's at York. This Newstead fragment, retaining its perfect proportions, its noble windows, its gray statue of the Virgin and "God-born Child" in the high niche of the gable,--the whole draped and garlanded with ivy which conceals the scars of Cromwell's cannon-balls,--is a vision of unique beauty. From the Gothic door-way of the mansion we are admitted to a gallery with a low-vaulted roof of stone upheld by massive columns. This was the crypt of the abbot's dormitory; it adjoins the cloisters, and, like them, was used by the Wicked Byron as a stable for cattle. It is now adorned with the spoils of African deserts, trophies of the mighty huntsman who now inhabits the Abbey. One of these, the skin of a noble lion, is said to have belonged to a beast which had mutilated Livingstone and was standing above his body when a ball from Webb's rifle laid him low and saved the great explorer. From the crypt, stone stairs lead to the corridors above the cloisters: in Byron's time entrance was between a bear and a wolf chained on these stairs and menacing the guest from either side. Out of the corridor adjoining the chapel ruin a spiral stairway ascends to a plain and sombre suite of rooms, once the abbot's lodgings, but cherished now because they were the private apartments of Byron. His chamber is neither large nor elegant, its walls are plainly papered, and its single oriel window is shaded by a faded curtain. The room remains as Byron last occupied it: his carpet is upon the floor; the carved bedstead, with its gilt posts and lordly coronets, is the one brought by him from college; its curtains and coverings are those he used; above the mantel is the mirror which often reflected his handsome features. We sit in his embroidered arm-chair by the window, overlooking lawn and lake and the wood he planted, and write out upon his plain table the memoranda from which this article is prepared. The tourist is told that the chamber has never been used since Byron left it; but Irving occupied it for some time, as his letters to his brother declare, and a few years ago our Joaquin Miller lay here in Byron's bed, and saw, in the moonbeams sharply reflected from the mirror into his face, an explanation of the ghostly apparitions which Byron beheld in this glass. In the adjoining room are a portrait of the poet's "corporeal pastor," Jackson, in arena costume, and a painting of Byron's valet, Joe Murray, a bright-looking fellow of pleasing face and faultless attire. This room was sometime occupied by Byron's pretty page, whom the housekeeper believed to be a girl in masquerade: this page was introduced elsewhere as the poet's younger brother Gordon, and an attempt has been made to identify her with the mysterious "Thyrza" of his poems, and with "Astarte" also. The third room of the suite, Byron's dressing-room and study, was one of the haunts of the goblin friar who was heard stalking amid the dim cloisters or in the apartments above. Byron's room here is the Gothic chamber of the Norman abbey where "Don Juan" slept and dreamed of Aurora Raby, and the corridor is the "gallery of sombre hue" where he pursued the sable phantom and captured a very material duchess. Directly beneath is a panelled apartment of moderate dimensions which was Byron's dining-room and the scene of many a revel when the monk's skull, brimming with wine, was sent round by the poet's guests. His sideboard is still here, his heavy table remains in the middle of the room, and the famous skull, mounted as a drinking-cup and inscribed with the familiar anacreontic, is carefully preserved. The library is a stately and spacious apartment: here, among many mementos of the poet, Ada Byron first heard a poem of her father's; here Byron's Italian friend la Guiccioli made notes for her "Recollections," and here Livingstone penned portions of the books which record his explorations. In the grand hall we see the elevated chimney-piece beneath which Byron and his guests heaped so great a fire, on the first night of his occupancy of the Abbey, that its destruction was threatened. This superb apartment, the old dormitory of the monks, was used by the poet as a shooting-gallery, and was one of the haunts of his "Black Friar." The drawing-room of the mansion is palatial in dimensions and furnishing. Its panels and grotesque carvings have been restored, and this ancient room, once the refectory of the monks and later the hay-loft of the Wicked Byron, is now a marvel of elegance. Here is the familiar portrait of Byron at twenty-three, an earlier watercolor picturing him in college gown, and a later bust in marble. Here by her desire the body of Ada Byron lay in state, and from here it was borne to rest beside her father at near-by Hucknall, more than realizing the closing stanzas of the third canto of "Childe Harold."

[Sidenote: Relics]

In these stately rooms and in the adjoining corridors are numerous priceless relics of the immortal bard; among them, the cap, belt, and cimeter he wore in Greece; his foils, spurs, stirrups, and boxing-gloves; a painting of his famous dog Boatswain; the bronze candlesticks from his writing-table and the table upon which were written "Bards and Reviewers," poems of "Hours of Idleness," "Hebrew Melodies," and portions of his masterpiece, "Childe Harold." Preserved here, with Byron's will, unpublished letters, and scraps of verse, are papers which indicate that the poet's _chef-d'oeuvre_ was originally designed for private circulation and was entitled "Childe Byron." An interesting relic is a section of the noted "twin-tree" bearing the names "Byron--Augusta" carved by the poet at his last visit to the Abbey. Our own Barnum once visited the place and offered Wildman five hundred pounds for this double tree (then standing in the grove), intending to remove it for exhibition; the colonel indignantly replied that five thousand would not purchase it, and that "the man capable of such a project deserved to be gibbeted." Here, too, are the portrait of the first lord of Newstead, "John Byron-the-Little-with-the-Great-Beard;" the huge iron knocker in use on the door of the Abbey seven centuries ago; a collection of mediaeval armor and weapons; some personal belongings of Livingstone, and many specimens of fauna and flora gathered by him and Webb in the dark continent. One vaulted apartment of exquisite proportions, erst the sanctuary of the abbot, and later Byron's dog-kennel, is now the chapel of the household. Newstead has been the abode of royalty, and holds rooms in which, from the time of Edward III., kings have often lodged. We see the chamber occupied by Ada Byron during her visit; another, adorned with quaint carvings and once haunted by Byron-of-the-Great-Beard, was used by Irving. The noble chambers contain richly carved furniture, costly tapestries, and beds of such altitude that steps are provided for scaling them. The hangings of one bed belonged to Prince Rupert, and its counterpane was embroidered by Mary Queen of Scots.

[Sidenote: Court and Gardens]

In the centre of the edifice is the quadrangular court, surrounded by a series of low-vaulted arcades, once the stables of the Wicked Byron and long ago the "cloisters dim and damp" of the monks whose dust moulders now beneath the pavement. One crypt-like cell which holds the boilers for heating the mansion was Byron's swimming-bath. In the middle of the court the ancient stone fountain, with its grotesque sculptures of saints and monsters, graven by the patient toil of the monks, still sends out sprays of coolness.

We spend delightful hours loitering in the ancient gardens of the friars and about their ruined chapel. Through its mighty window, "yawning all desolate," pours a flood of western light upon the turf that covers the holy ground where congregations knelt in worship; while, amid the dust of the priests and near the site of the altar where they "raised their pious voices but to pray," Byron's dog lies in a tomb far handsomer than that which holds his noble master. It was in excavating Boatswain's grave that Byron found the skull afterward used as a drinking-cup. The dog's monument consists of a wide pedestal, surmounted by a panelled altar-stone which upholds a funeral urn and bears Byron's familiar eulogistic inscription and the misanthropic stanzas ending with the lines,--

"To mark a friend's remains these stones arise;
I never knew but one, and here he lies."

Other panels were designed to bear the epitaph of Byron, who directed in his will (1811) that he should be buried in this spot with his valet and dog; it is said to have been discovered that the poet had made careful preparation for his entombment here, the stone trestles and slab to support his coffin being in place upon the pavement, but the sale of Newstead led to his interment elsewhere, and faithful Murray--who declined to lie here "alone with the dog"--sleeps near his master.

[Sidenote: Grounds--Recollections]

The gardens of the Abbey lie about its ancient walls: here are the fish-pools of the monks; the noble terrace; the "Young Oak" of Byron's poem, planted by his hands and now grown into a large and graceful tree; other trees rooted by Livingstone and Stanley while guests here. At one side is a grove of beeches and yews, in whose gloomy recesses the Wicked Byron erected leaden statues of Pan and Pandora, of which the rustics were so afraid that they would not go near them after nightfall, and which are still respectfully spoken of in the servants' hall as "Mr. and Mrs. Devil." Before the mansion lies the lucid lake described in "Don Juan:" the forest that shades its shore and sweeps over the farther hill-side was planted by Byron to repair the spoliation of his uncle, and is called the "Poet's Wood." Upon some of the farms of the domain live descendants of Nancy Smith, whom Irving's readers will remember, her son having married despite his mother's protest and reared a family. One aged servitor claims to remember Irving's visit, and opines "the old colonel [Wildman] thought him a very fine man--for an American." He recounts some peccadilloes of Joe Murray, traditional among the servants, which show that worthy to have been less precise in morals than in dress. The ancient Byron estates were among the haunts of one whose exploits inspired a book of ballads, and we here see Robin Hood's cave and other reminders of the bold outlaw and his "merrie men in Lyncolne greene."