Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/555

542 Byron’s death her constant companion was the noble dog which had been brought over at the same time with his master’s remains from Missolonghi. Thus accompanied, she spent hours in reading and reflection, till family affairs or pecuniary difficulties compelled her suddenly to leave Newstead. On the eve of her departure she delivered to Mrs. Wildman a packet, requesting that it might not be opened till the morning. Besides MSS., written in her solitary walks about the abbey, it contained a letter explanatory of her friendless situation, and her gratitude for the attentions which she had so long received. On reading this note, Mrs. Wildman—having discovered that she had taken the road to Nottingham—dispatched a messenger to overtake her, and entreat her return. The bearer of this kind proposal, on entering the town, reined up his horse to pass more slowly through a crowd which had formed before the principal inn. An accident had occurred, and he beheld the lifeless body of the “Little White Lady,” who, owing to her extreme deafness, had been run over, and died without suffering. The romantic issue of this tale remains to be heard. Colonel Wildman took upon himself the care of her interment at Hucknall, and she was laid in death near the body of him who had, during her life, been the idol of her imagination.

Passing by the principal front of the abbey, where we could see the extent of the restorations made by its late respected owner, we left Newstead in the direction of Hucknall. For two miles we followed the ridge of high land overlooking the forest of Sherwood, and the legendary haunts of Robin Hood, till we turned from the direct road to visit the venerable Hall, the home of Mary Chaworth, “that bright morning star of Annesley,” who often lured the young poet’s steps over those bleak and barren hills. The lover of picturesque illustration might here crowd a redundancy of subject into one picture—an avenue of stately elms—a gate-house, with its low archway leading to a court-yard which fronts the hall—the hall itself, built at various times and in various tastes, with high gables and massive chimneys. But in connection with the youth of Byron, and his love for the heiress of Annesley, the chief points of interest are the room over the gateway, supposed to be “the antique oratory” mentioned in his poem of “The Dream,” and the terrace, where he loved to loiter with her whom he declared to be “his destiny.” Not far from the Hall is the scene of their parting—

“a hill, a gentle hill,

Green and of mild declivity, the last,

As ’twere the cape of a long ridge of such.”

The morning storm had passed away as we traversed “the landscape at its base.” In the soft sunshine of a Sunday afternoon we arrived at Hucknall. The church bell had summoned to evening service groups of rustic labourers, whose ruddy health contrasted with that of the pale stocking-weavers who loitered about the unromantic street of a manufacturing village. As the bell ceased, those who had assembled passed through the churchyard with its crowded gravestones, and beneath its humble porch, we at once moved onward to the chancel, the burial-place of Byron. There was very little of that beauty peculiar to English village churches. On the south wall was a simple slab of white marble, and the silken escutcheon which bore the Byron arms hung from its frame, faded and torn. In the vault beneath lie the remains of the poet, with those of his daughter, Lady Lovelace, “sole daughter of his house and heart.” When the congregation had quitted the church, and a fee dropped into the palm of the obsequious clerk had ensured us the privilege of being alone with our meditations,—we passed from the contemplation of the poet’s career to the beauty of his works. Our memory unconsciously went back to the time when the sensitive feelings of our childhood were first moved to tears by the “Prisoner of Chillon”—how we read it in later years with scarcely less emotion by the white castle “on the blue Leman.” We remembered in school-boy days how the wet half-holiday was beguiled with the odd volume of his poems,—how we envied and admired the retentive memory of our favourite chum, who could charm the wakeful hours of the Long Chamber with the recital of “Mazeppa,” and long quotations from the “Corsair,”—how in after life we appreciated more and more the meaning and music of his sweet verse, till in our mature, and perhaps partial judgments, we considered “Childe Harold” as the master-piece of modern poetry. There at the humble shrine of the Pilgrim Poet did we gratefully aspire to be among those who could respond to this, his parting wish:—

Ye who have traced the pilgrim to the scene

Which is his last, if in your memories dwell

A thought which once was his—if in ye dwell

A single recollection—not in vain

He wore his sandal shoon and scallop shell.”

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