In Unfamiliar England / A Record of a Seven Thousand Mile Tour by Motor of the Unfrequented Nooks and Corners, and the Shrines of Especial Interest, in England; With Incursions into Scotland and Ireland.

by Thos. D. Murphy

NEWSTEAD ABBEY.

Of greatest interest are the apartments which Byron himself occupied, a suite of three medium-sized rooms, which have been religiously kept through all the years just as the poet left them. The simple blue and white toilet set was his own, the bed the one he slept in, and many other articles and furnishings vividly recall the noble occupant who never returned after the sale of the abbey. Probably no one has occupied the rooms since Washington Irving slept there during the visit we have referred to and was roused in the middle of the night by a ghostly footfall in the hall—but found only Boatswain II. outside the door.

In the hall the marks of the pistol shots of the young lord and his wild companions have not been effaced from the walls and in the gallery there is a collection of many mementos of the poet. Perhaps the most interesting is a section of the tree upon which he carved his name and that of his sister, Augusta—cut down because it was decaying. The gallery is largely filled with portraits of the present family, but our interest centers in the famous portrait by Phillips, in which the refined features and dignified though slightly melancholy air has invested the poet’s face with a spirituality which it probably did not possess in so great a degree.

From the house we were ushered into the gardens and were shown every nook and corner of these by the gardener in charge. They were elaborate indeed; rich with the color and perfume of the flowers which bloom so profusely in England; and there were many rare plants and shrubs. We were interested in Boatswain’s grave, with its elaborate monument and inscription in which pathos verges on the ridiculous, yet highly consistent with the misanthropic moods so often affected by Byron. In contrast with the trim neatness of the flower beds and shrubbery is the fragment of the abbey church, through which the wind whistles as it did in the poet’s day, and which has weathered the sun and rain of more than three hundred years since the heavy hand of the eighth Henry smote it into ruins. And it carries us back four hundred years farther to another Henry, who built the abbey to expiate his crime of instigating the murder of Thomas a’Becket.

The history of Newstead told in brief by Irving need not occupy space in this hasty chronicle. It was with reluctance that we departed after our two hours’ sojourn. It often comes back in memory with all the color and glory of a perfect June day—the majestic hall, the abbey ruin, the gardens with their riot of coloring, the shining lake, the woodland and the meadows—an enchanted world which we left behind us as we hastened away over the road to Mansfield, where we had late luncheon at the Swan.

One will not leave the vicinity of Mansfield without a visit to Hardwick Hall and Bolsover Castle, famous for their connection with Elizabeth Spencer, “Bess of Hardwick.” Architecturally, both are disappointing; Hardwick, bald, harsh and square, like a modern concrete factory, and Bolsover, an incongruous pile cut up into small, ill-arranged apartments, by far the finest part of it in complete ruin. Hardwick is still a residence of the Duke of Devonshire and had just passed on the death of Spencer Cavendish to his nephew, who was refurnishing the house preparatory to making it his home. A bare, unhomelike place it seemed, with its great staring windows, its uneven concrete floors, and its high ceilings of decorated plaster, broken and discolored in many places. Its chief historical interest centers in the fact that it was one of the many prison-houses of Mary Stuart; but her imprisonment here was far from rigorous—in fact, so considerate was the Earl of Shrewsbury of his royal ward that it roused the jealousy of his amiable spouse, the energetic Bess. Concerning this incident Miss Strickland—a rather biased historian, we must fear—takes the countess to task in vigorous style, declaring that—

“His proud and cruel wife, whose temper could not be restrained by any power on earth or in heaven, soon became jealous of the lovely and fascinating prisoner, and led her husband, a noble of exemplary gravity and a grandsire, a terrible life!”

However, as in nearly every case of the kind, there appears to have been another side to it, and in any event, there were many who took the part of the jealous wife, including, as might be expected, Queen Elizabeth herself.