Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey Part 9

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 a.s.sociations. 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--

'There was an ancient mansion, and before Its walls there was a steed caparisoned; Within an antique oratory stood The boy of whom I spake;--he was alone, And pale and pacing to and fro: anon He sate him down, and seized a pen, and traced Words which I could not guess of; then he leaned His bow'd head on his hands, and shook as 'twere With a convulsion--then arose again, And with his teeth and quivering hands did tear What he had written, but he shed no tears.

And he did calm himself, and fix his brow Into a kind of quiet; as he paused, The lady of his love re-entered there; She was serene and smiling then, and yet She knew she was by him beloved,--she knew, For quickly comes such knowledge, that his heart Was darkened with her shadow, and she saw That he was wretched, but she saw not all.

He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp He took her hand; a moment o'er his face A tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced, and then it faded as it came; He dropp'd the hand he held, and with slow steps Return'd, but not as bidding her adieu, For they did part with mutual smiles:--he pa.s.s'd From out the ma.s.sy gate of that old Hall, And mounting on his steed he went his way, And ne'er repa.s.sed that h.o.a.ry threshold more."

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 struck his spurs into his steed and dashed forward, as if by rapid motion to leave reflection behind him.

Yet, notwithstanding what he a.s.serts in the verses last quoted, he did pa.s.s the "h.o.a.ry threshold" of Annesley again. It was, however, after the lapse of several years, during which he had grown up to manhood, and had pa.s.sed through the ordeal of pleasures and tumultuous pa.s.sions, 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 pa.s.sion 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 devotions, 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 afterward 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 embarra.s.sing visit, are touchingly depicted in lines which he wrote immediately afterward, and which, though not addressed to her by name, are evidently intended for the eye and the heart of the fair lady of Annesley:

"Well! thou art happy, and I feel That I should thus be happy too; For still my heart regards thy weal Warmly, as it was wont to do.

Thy husband's blest--and 'twill impart Some pangs to view his happier lot: But let them pa.s.s--Oh! how my heart Would hate him, if he loved thee not!

"When late I saw thy favorite child I thought my jealous heart would break; But when the unconscious infant smiled, I kiss'd it for its mother's sake.

"I kiss'd it, and repress'd my sighs Its father in its face to see; But then it had its mother's eyes, And they were all to love and me.

"Mary, adieu! I must away: While thou art blest I'll not repine; But near thee I can never stay: My heart would soon again be thine.

"I deem'd that time, I deem'd that pride Had quench'd at length my boyish flame Nor knew, till seated by thy side, My heart in all, save love, the same.

"Yet I was calm: I knew the time My breast would thrill before thy look; But now to tremble were a crime-- We met, and not a nerve was shook.

"I saw thee gaze upon my face, Yet meet with no confusion there: One only feeling could'st thou trace; The sullen calmness of despair.

"Away! away! my early dream Remembrance never must awake: Oh! where is Lethe's fabled stream?

My foolish heart, be still, or break."

The revival of this early pa.s.sion, and the melancholy a.s.sociations which it spread over those scenes in the neighborhood of Newstead, which would necessarily be the places of his frequent resort while in England, are alluded to by him as a princ.i.p.al cause of his first departure for the Continent:

"When man expell'd from Eden's bowers A moment lingered near the gate, Each scene recalled the vanish'd hours, And bade him curse his future fate.

"But wandering on through distant climes, He learnt to bear his load of grief; Just gave a sigh to other times, And found in busier scenes relief.

"Thus, Mary, must it be with me, And I must view thy charms no more; For, while I linger near to thee, I sigh for all I knew before."

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 sh.o.r.e, is shown in the glowing stanzas addressed to her on the eve of embarkation--

"'Tis done--and s.h.i.+vering in the gale The bark unfurls her snowy sail; And whistling o'er the bending mast, Loud sings on high the fresh'ning blast; And I must from this land be gone.

Because I cannot love but one.

"And I will cross the whitening foam, And I will seek a foreign home; Till I forget a false fair face, I ne'er shall find a resting place; My own dark thoughts I cannot shun, But ever love, and love but one.

"To think of every early scene, Of what we are, and what we've been, Would whelm some softer hearts with woe-- But mine, alas! has stood the blow; Yet still beats on as it begun, And never truly loves but one.

"And who that dear loved one may be Is not for vulgar eyes to see, And why that early love was cross'd, Thou know'st the best, I feel the most; But few that dwell beneath the sun Have loved so long, and loved but one.

"I've tried another's fetters too, With charms, perchance, as fair to view; And I would fain have loved as well, But some unconquerable spell Forbade my bleeding breast to own A kindred care for aught but one.

"'Twould soothe to take one lingering view, And bless thee in my last adieu; Yet wish I not those eyes to weep For him who wanders o'er the deep; His home, his hope, his youth are gone, Yet still he loves, and loves but one."

The painful interview at Annesley Hall, which revived with such intenseness his early pa.s.sion, 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. Upward of two years after that 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--

"I've seen my bride another's bride,-- Have seen her seated by his side,-- Have seen the infant which she bore, Wear the sweet smile the mother wore, When she and I in youth have smiled As fond and faultless as her child:-- Have seen her eyes, in cold disdain, Ask if I felt no secret pain.

"And I have acted well my part, And made my cheek belie my heart, Returned the freezing glance she gave, Yet felt the while _that_ woman's slave;-- Have kiss'd, as if without design, The babe which ought to have been mine, And show'd, alas! in each caress, Time had not made me love the less."

"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 pa.s.sion, 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 enn.o.bling thoughts; shut up in the deep recesses of the heart, keeping it green amidst the withering blights of the world, and, by its casual gus.h.i.+ngs 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 pa.s.sion, 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 pa.s.sages 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--

----"In her home, A thousand leagues from his,--her native home, She dwelt, begirt with growing infancy, Daughters and sons of beauty, but--behold!

Upon her face there was the tint of grief, The settled shadow of an inward strife, And an unquiet drooping of the eye, _As if its lids were charged with unshed tears_."

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

"What could her grief be?--she had all she loved, And he who had so loved her was not there To trouble with bad hopes, or evil wish, Or ill repress'd affection, her pure thoughts.

What could her grief be?--she had loved him not, Nor given him cause to deem himself beloved, Nor could he be a part of that which prey'd Upon her mind--a spectre of the past."

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

"The lady of his love,--oh! she was changed As by the sickness of the soul; her mind Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes, They had not their own l.u.s.tre, but the look Which is not of the earth; she was become The queen of a fantastic realm: but her thoughts Were combinations of disjointed things; And forms impalpable and unperceived Of others' sight, familiar were to hers.

And this the world calls frenzy."

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 marriage with Miss Milbanke; Annesley Hall and all its fond a.s.sociations floated like a vision before his thoughts, even when at the altar, and on the point of p.r.o.nouncing the nuptial vows. The circ.u.mstance is related by him with a force and feeling that persuade us of its truth.

"A change came o'er the spirit of my dream.

The wanderer was returned.--I saw him stand Before an altar--with a gentle bride; Her face was fair, but was not that which made The star-light of his boyhood;--as he stood Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock That in the antique oratory shook His bosom in its solitude; and then-- As in that hour--a moment o'er his face The tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced,--and then it faded as it came, And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke The fitting vows, but beard not his own words, And all things reel'd around him: he could see Not that which was, nor that which should have been-- But the old mansion, and the accustomed hall, And the remember'd chambers, and the place, The day, the hour, the suns.h.i.+ne, and the shade, All things pertaining to that place and hour, And her who was his destiny, came back, And thrust themselves between him and the light: What business had they there at such a time?"

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 pa.s.sion, 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 ma.n.u.scripts, 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.