1820 1821. See, the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp one another; And the moonbeams kiss the sea; ΤΟ Music, when soft voices die, Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, LINES TO AN INDIAN AIR. I arise from dreams of thee Has led me who knows how? The wandering airs they faint Like sweet thoughts in a dream; The nightingale's complaint, O belovéd as thou art! O, lift me from the grass! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas ! 1821. 1821. ΤΟ One word is too often profaned One hope is too like despair For prudence to smother, I can give not what men call love, The worship the heart lifts above, And the Heavens reject not: The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow? LORD BYRON. 1788-1824. MARY CHAWORTH. BYRON spent the summer vacation of 1803 at Newstead Abbey, not as its master, for he was only in his sixteenth year, but as the guest of Lord Grey de Ruthen, who was then its tenant. His ostensible motive for sojourning there, was a romantic attachment to his ancestral home, but his real motive was his attachment to Mary Chaworth, whom he had met in London, sometime before, and who now resided at Annesley, in the neighborhood of Newstead. She belonged to a family which had been at variance with his own, one of his ancestors, a grand-uncle, having slain one of its members in a duel. The feud was not forgotten by Byron, though it seems to have been by the Chaworths, (at any rate, it was not remembered to his disadvan tage,) and on his first visits to the family, he used to return to Newstead to sleep, being afraid, he said, of the family pictures at Annesley. He fancied "they had taken a grudge to him on account of the duel, and would come down from their frames at night to haunt him." Poor fellow he was soon haunted by something more substantial-the image of Mary Chaworth. His time at Annesley, says Moore, was mostly passed in riding with Miss Chaworth and her cousin sitting in idle reverie, as was his custom, pulling at a handkerchief, or in firing at a door which opens upon the terrace, and which still, I believe, bears the marks of his shots. But his chief delight was in sitting to hear Miss Chaworth play; and the pretty Welsh air, Mary Anne,' was (partly, of course, on account of the name) his especial favourite. During all this time he had the pain of knowing that the heart of her he loved was devoted to another; that, as he himself expresses it "Her sighs were not for him; to her he was Even as a brother, but no more." Neither is it, indeed, probable, had her affections been disengaged, that Lord Byron would, at this time, have been selected as the object of them. A seniority of two years gives to a girl, "on the eve of womanhood," an advance into life, with which the boy keeps no proportionate pace, Miss Chaworth looked upon Byron as a mere schoolboy. He was in his manners, too, at that period, rough and odd, and (as I have heard from more than one quarter) by no means popular among girls of his own age. If at any moment, however, he had flattered himself with the hope of being loved by her, a circumstance mentioned in his Memoranda, as one of the most painful of those humiliations to which the defect in his foot had exposed him, must have let the truth in, with dreadful certainty, upon his heart. He either was told of, or heard, Miss Chaworth saying to her maid, "Do you think I could care anything for that lame boy?" This speech, as he himself described it, was like a shot through his heart. Though late at night when he heard it, he instantly darted out of the house, and scarcely knowing whither he ran, never stopped until he found himself at Newstead. With the summer holidays ended this dream of his youth. He saw Miss Chaworth once more in the succeeding year, and took his last farewell of her (as he himself used to relate) on that hill near Annesley, which, in his poem of "THE DREAM," he describes so happily as "crowned with a peculiar diadem." No one, he declared, could have told how much he felt-for his countenance was calm, and his feelings restrained. “The next time I see you,” said he, in parting with her, "I suppose you will be Mrs. Chaworth;" (her husband was to take her family name,) and her answer was, "I hope so." In the following year, 1805, Miss Chaworth was married to his successful rival, Mr. John Musters; and a person who was present when the first intelligence of the event was communicated to him, thus describes the manner in which he received it: "I was present when he first heard of the marriage. His mother said, 'Byron, I have some news for you.' 'Well, what is it?' 'Take out your handkerchief first, for you will want it.' 'Nonsense.' 'Take out your handkerchief, I say.' He did so, to humour her. Miss Chaworth is married.' An expression, very peculiar, impossible to describe, passed over his pale face, and he hurried his handkerchief into his pocket, saying, with an affected air of coldness and nonchalance, 'Is that all?' 'Why, I expected you would have been plunged in grief!' He made no reply, and soon began to talk about something else." Of the after life of Mary Chaworth I know nothing, but I have somewhere read that she was unhappy in her marriage, as Byron hints in "THE DREAM." She was in a feeble state of health for several years previous to her death, which took place at Wiverton Hall, in February 1832, in consequence of the alarm and danger to which she had been exposed during the sack of Colwick Hall by a party of rioters from Nottingham. LADY BYRON. In September, 1814, Byron proposed to Miss Isabella Milbanke, the only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, of Seaham, in the county of Durham. He became acquainted with her about two years before, and by the advice of his friend, Lady Melbourne, offered himself as her suitor. His proposal was not accepted, but Miss Milbanke assured him of her regard and friendship, and expressed a wish that he should write to her. They corresponded with each other till the summer of 1814, when a friend of Byron's, who stood high in his affections and confidence, observing his unsettled state as a bachelor, advised him seriously to marry; and after much discussion he consented. The next point for consideration was, who was to be the object of his choice; and while his friend mentioned one lady, he himself named Miss Milbanke. To this, however, his adviser strongly objected, remarking to him, that Miss Milbanke had at present no fortune, and that his embarrassed affairs would not allow him to marry without one; that she was, moreover, a learned lady, which would not at all suit him. In consequence of these representations, he agreed that his friend should write a proposal for him to the other lady named, which was accordingly done; and an answer, containing a refusal, arrived as they were, one morning, sitting together. "You see," said Byron, "that, after all, Miss Milbanke is to be the person; I will write to her." He accordingly wrote on the moment, and, as soon as he had finished, his friend, remonstrating still strongly against his choice, took up the letter, but on reading it over, observed, "Well, really, this is a very pretty letter; it is a pity it should not go. I never read a prettier one." "Then it shall go,” said Byron, and, on so saying, sealed and sent off, on the instant, this fiat of his fate. This time Miss Milbanke accepted him. They were married at Seaham, on the 2d of January, 1815. The sensations of Byron on the occasion were anything but enviable. He described himself, in his "MEMOIR," as waking, on the morning of his marriage, with the most melancholy reflections, on seeing his wedding suit spread out before him. In the same mood he wandered about the grounds alone, till he was summoned for the ceremony, and joined, for the first time on that day, his bride and her family. He knelt down and repeated the words after the clergyman; but a mist was before his eyes, his thoughts were elsewhere; and he was awakened by the congratulations of the bystanders, to find that he was-married. The same morning the wedded pair left Seaham for Halnaby, another seat of Sir Ralph Milbanke, in the same county. When about to depart, Byron said to the bride, "Miss Milbanke, are you ready?"—a mistake, which the lady's confidential attendant pronounced to be a "bad omen." If the omen was bad, the marriage was worse-a mistake and evil to both, though why it was so is a mystery, which none of Byron's biographers have penetrated It lasted a little more than a year, and ended abruptly by the lady's abandoning her lord. She left London at the latter end of January, 1816, on a visit to her father's house in Leicestershire, and Byron was, in a short time after, to follow her. They parted in the utmost kindness, she wrote him a letter, full of playfulness and affection, on the road; and, immediately on her arrival at Kirkby Mallory, her father wrote to acquaint Byron that she would return to him no more! At the time when he had to stand this unexpected shock, his pecuniary embarrassments, which had been gathering around him during the whole of the last year (there having been no less than eight or nine executions in his house within that period), had arrived at their utmost; and at a moment when, to use his own strong expressions, he was "standing alone on his hearth, with his household gods shivered around him," he was also doomed to receive the startling intelligence, that the wife who had just parted with him in kindness, had parted with him-forever! |