But the characteristic feature of Newstead Abbey, so familiar that description seems unnecessary, and, yet, never quite accurately described, is the west front of the Priory Church, which is in line with the west front of the Abbey. “Half apart,” the southern portion of this front, which abuts on the windows of the Prior’s Parlour, and the room above, where Byron slept, flanks and conceals the west end of the north cloisters and library; but, with this exception, it is a screen, and nothing more. In the centre is the “mighty window” (stanza LXII line 1), shorn of glass and tracery; above are six lancet windows (which Byron seems to have regarded as niches), and, above again, in a “higher niche” (stanza LXI line 1), is the crowned Virgin with the Babe in her arms, which escaped, as by a miracle, the “fiery darts”—the shot and cannonballs of the Cromwellian troopers. On either side of the central window are “two blank windows containing tracery [‘geometrical decorated’] … carved [in relief] on the solid ashlar;” on either side of the window, and at the northern and southern extremities of the front, are buttresses with canopied niches, in each of which a saint or apostle must once have stood. Over the west door there is the mutilated figure of (?) the Saviour, but of twelve saints or twelve niches there is no trace. The “grand arch” is an ivy-clad screen, and nothing more. Behind and beyond, in place of vanished nave, of aisle and transept, is the smooth green turf; and at the east end, on the site of the high altar, stands the urn-crowned masonry of Boatswain’s tomb.
Newstead Abbey was sold by Lord Byron to his old schoolfellow, Colonel Thomas Wildman, in November, 1817. The house and property were resold in 1861, by his widow, to William Frederick Webb, Esq., a traveller in many lands, the friend and host of David Livingstone. At his death the estate was inherited by his daughter, Miss Geraldine Webb, who was married to General Sir Herbert Charles Chermside, G.C.M.G., etc., Governor of Queensland, in 1899.
For Newstead Abbey, see Beauties of England and Wales, 1813, XII Part I 401–405 (often reprinted without acknowledgment); Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey, by Washington Irving, 1835; Journal of the Archaeological Association (papers by T. J. Pettigrew, F.R.S., and Arthur Ashpitel, F.S.A.), 1854, vol. IX pp. 14–39; and A Souvenir of Newstead Abbey (illustrated by a series of admirable photographs), by Richard Allen, Nottingham, 1874, etc., etc. —Editor ↩
The woodlands were sacrificed to the needs or fancies of Byron’s great-uncle, the “wicked Lord.” One splendid oak, known as the “Pilgrim’s Oak,” which stood and stands near the north lodge of the park, near the “Hut,” was bought in by the neighbouring gentry, and made over to the estate. Perhaps by the Druid oak Byron meant to celebrate this “last of the clan,” which, in his day, before the woods were replanted, must have stood out in solitary grandeur. —Editor ↩
Compare “Epistle to Augusta,” stanza X line 1, Poetical Works, 1901, IV 68. —Editor ↩
The little wood which Byron planted at the southeast corner of the upper or “Stable” Lake, known as “Poet’s Corner,” still slopes to the water’s brink. Nor have the wildfowl diminished. The lower of the three lakes is specially reserved as a breeding-place. —Editor ↩
Its shriller echo—.
—[MS.]
Which sympathized with Time’s and Tempest’s march,
—[MS.]
In gazing on that high and haughty Arch.
See lines “On Leaving Newstead Abbey,” stanza 5, Poetical Works, 1898, I 3, note 1. —Editor ↩
But in the stillness of the moon—.
—[MS.]
Vide ante, The Deformed Transformed, Part I line 532, Poetical Works, 1901, V 497. —Editor ↩
This is not a frolic invention: it is useless to specify the spot, or in what county, but I have heard it both alone and in company with those who will never hear it more. It can, of course, be accounted for by some natural or accidental cause, but it was a strange sound, and unlike any other I have ever heard (and I have heard many above and below the surface of the earth produced in ruins, etc., etc., or caverns).—[MS.]
[“The unearthly sound” may still be heard at rare intervals, but it is difficult to believe that the “huge arch” can act as an Aeolian harp. Perhaps the smaller lancet windows may vocalize the wind.] ↩
Prouder of such a toy than of their breed.
—[MS. erased]
Salvator Rosa. The wicked necessity of rhyming obliges me to adapt the name to the verse.—[MS.]
[Compare—
“Whate’er Lorraine light touch’d with softening hue,
Thomson’s Castle of Indolence, Canto I stanza XXXVIII lines 8, 9]
Or savage Rosa dash’d, or learned Poussin drew.”
If I err not, “your Dane” is one of Iago’s catalogue of nations “exquisite in their drinking.”
[“Your Dane, your German, and your swag-bellied Hollander—drink hoa! are nothing to your English.” “Is your Englishman so exquisite in his drinking?”
(So Collier and Knight. The Quarto reads “expert”). —Othello, act II sc. 3, lines 71–74]
