Hester had been the sister I had always longed for, and I mourned her deeply. In my grief I turned to William, but he was too overcome with his own sorrow to offer me the comfort I needed. I wish that we could have come together in our time of mutual loss, and lessened the burden of our grief by sharing it, but William and I had drifted further apart with each passing year, until we only infrequently spent any time together. It was not deliberate, at least not at first, but with the children scattered, the compelling purpose of family unity no longer required us to live together unless we chose to, and often I preferred one residence for matters of taste or convenience and William was occupied with improvements or business at another.
I think—in fact, I am certain of it—that even then, the chasm separating us might have remained an easily overstepped fissure if not for William’s determination that Byron should go to sea. William had spoken of enlisting our eldest child in the Royal Navy for years, insisting that the discipline would strengthen his character and rid him of his irritating, childish habits. “He is too young,” I protested every time William dragged the idea out for a good airing, but as the months passed and Byron became more fractious with his tutors and more sullen, obstinate, and unpleasant at home, I found my resistance wavering. Still, I raised every reasonable objection I could think of—he was too young, life at sea was too dangerous, he would not see his siblings for years, and they would lose all sense of family connection. One by one William parried my thrusts by listing the many benefits Byron would attain through military service, until I was quite worn down and disarmed.
And so in the summer of 1849, thirteen-year-old Byron went off rather reluctantly to sea, and the rest of the Lovelace family withdrew to Ashley Combe to distract ourselves from missing him. I worried constantly for the first fortnight he was gone, expecting every day to receive word that his ship had gone down with all hands, but a body could not long endure such constant fear and vigilance. Eventually my worries hardened into a stone that sank deep into the pool of my mind—always present, never forgotten, but no longer set directly before me, blocking all else from view.
It may seem contradictory, but through the disillusionment, the discord, and the disappointments, William and I remained fond of each other. In fact, I venture to say that we loved each other very much. We encouraged each other in our separate pursuits, we made each other laugh, and each would staunchly defend the other from unjust criticism from the children and any attack from beyond the family circle. And so when William proposed that we tour the North of England together in the lovely late summer and early autumn of 1850, I readily agreed.
“Perhaps it’s time we accepted Colonel Wildman’s invitation to visit him at Newstead Abbey,” he said, almost as an afterthought. “He’s been asking us to visit since the day we married, and Nottinghamshire would be on the route.”
My heart seemed to stop for a moment. I took a deep breath, ignored a brief flash of worry at the thought of my mother’s reaction, and told William I thought that was an excellent idea.
We planned an itinerary, wrote to friends we hoped to visit along the way, and packed our bags for an extended journey. We departed East Horsley Park at the end of August, heading first to Knebworth House in Hertfordshire, the home of our friend the writer Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton. From there we moved on to Thrumpton Hall, the residence of my father’s successor, Lord George Anson Byron, and his family, about eight miles from Nottingham, where we enjoyed a pleasant family reunion.
During our first dinner together, William remarked that we intended to visit Newstead Abbey later in our tour, although it was the nearest of our remaining stops. “It would be more convenient to go there from here,” he acknowledged, “but Colonel Wildman is not home to receive us, so he suggested September instead.”
Lord Byron’s eyebrows rose as he turned a quizzical look upon me. “Does your mother know?”
“Of course,” I said, feigning innocence. “We sent her a copy of our itinerary before we departed, and we’ve each written her several letters since.”
“And she does not object?” Lady Byron asked.
“Why should she object?” asked William.
“Lord Lovelace, don’t be coy,” scolded Lady Byron, smiling.
“Newstead Abbey may no longer belong to the Byron family, but it is an important part of Lady Lovelace’s heritage, and she ought to see it,” said William. “Colonel Wildman has been inviting us to visit since we were married, and it’s well past time we accepted.”
“If we neglected the colonel this time too, while visiting so many other families, he would surely feel slighted,” I said. “He would be quite right not to forgive us.”
“I wholeheartedly agree with the visit and the intentions.” Attempting to restore the jovial mood, Lord Byron added, “However, I suspect Lord Lovelace’s true purpose is to study Colonel Wildman’s improvements to the estate and compare them to his own efforts, and perhaps borrow a few ideas. Is that not so, Lord Lovelace?”
“I should have known better than to think I could keep my ulterior motives hidden from you,” said William with forced humor. “That is, in fact, the only reason I intend to drag Lady Lovelace back to Nottinghamshire so soon after we will have left it.”
We all smiled, some of us more tentatively than others.
“Of course you must go to Newstead Abbey,” Lady Byron said to me. “You should have gone long ago. But all teasing aside, do take care how you describe your visit to your mother.”
I nodded. She was kind to warn me, but I already knew my mother would be upset if I praised my father’s former estate too highly, just as she took it as a personal insult if I admired his poetry, his portrait, his inkstand, or anything else that was from him or of him.
After a few days with Lord Byron’s family, we continued on to Lea Hurst in Derbyshire, and then to Yorkshire, where we visited the second Earl of Zetland, Thomas Dundas, and his wife, Sophia, at Aske Hall. We had become friends through our mutual enjoyment of horse racing—my enjoyment, rather, not William’s—for they owned my favorite horse, Voltigeur, one of the great champions of the day. From there William and I continued on to the Cumberland lakes, where we admired the breathtaking scenery, relaxed on the serene shores of clear waters, and enjoyed many delightful, strenuous rambles in the forests and fells. In this romantic place we discovered anew our old affection and desire, and I almost wished that we could remain forever, but instead I resolved to carry our rekindled passion home with us, and not to allow the distractions and duties of ordinary life to divide us again.
Then our journey turned south and east, as we set out for the Byron ancestral seat of Newstead Abbey.
Chapter Thirty
A Noble Wreck in Ruinous Perfection
September 1850
My mother had rarely spoken of the Byron ancestral estate secluded deep within Sherwood Forest, except perhaps once or twice in reproving asides to rebuke my father for the careless, spendthrift ways that had obliged him to sell it to pay off excessive debts and save himself from poverty. Even so, it was too well-known, and too important to my heritage, for me to have learned nothing of its history along the way.
Newstead Abbey had begun life as an Anglican priory, founded by King Henry II around 1170 as part of his penance for the murder of Saint Thomas of Canterbury. In 1540, during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, King Henry VIII granted the original building and the surrounding lands to my ancestor, Sir John Byron of Colwick, who converted it to a country house. Through the years, his heirs expanded the house and improved the grounds until the estate came to my father’s great-uncle, William Byron, the fifth Baron Byron, in 1736. He was known as “the Wicked Lord,” and “the Devil Byron,” two interesting sobriquets to find on one’s family tree, to say the least.
By all accounts, he earned those names. He was violent and erratic and, according to some, quite mad. He lived to excess, adding Gothic follies t
o the estate and transforming the abbey into a stately and elegant home, but he also built a miniature castle in the forest, where he threw lavish parties and wild orgies, and he constructed two forts near a lake, where he staged naval battles complete with a live cannon to lend them an air of authenticity.
That marked him as eccentric; he was called wicked beginning in 1765 after he killed his cousin at a London tavern, running him through the stomach with his sword after a drunken argument over whose estate was more flush with game. He was tried for murder, but due to a quirk of the law, he was found guilty only of manslaughter and was commanded to pay a modest fine. Afterward, he had the sword he had used to kill his cousin mounted on his bedroom wall.
On another occasion, during another argument, William Byron shot his coachman dead, heaved the corpse into the coach over his wife’s lap, took up the reins, and drove on. It was little wonder that his wife, Elizabeth, left him after this, but he unconcernedly took one of the maids as his mistress and required everyone to call her “Lady Betty.”
Newstead Abbey might have survived his tenure as lord if his son and heir, also called William, had not defied him to elope with his beautiful cousin Juliana. The Wicked Lord had objected to the marriage on the grounds that he needed his son to marry a wealthy heiress in order to rescue the family from his own massive debts, and also because he believed they were too closely related and their children would be prone to madness, and clearly there was enough of that in the bloodline already. Outraged and vengeful, he resolved to despoil the beautiful estate so that his defiant son would inherit nothing but debt and ruins. He hacked down acres of ancient forest, slaughtered more than two thousand deer, pillaged once fertile fields, let ponds grow stagnant, and allowed the magnificent abbey to fall to pieces.
In the end, his vicious destruction of his ancestral estate was all for nothing, for he did not get the revenge he sought. He son died in 1776, and his grandson eighteen years later. Thus, upon the Wicked Lord’s own death four years later, his legacy of madness and ruination, as well as the title of Lord Byron, fell unexpectedly to his ten-year-old grand-nephew, George Gordon, my father.
Newstead Abbey was leased to another baron until my father came of age, at which time he came to live in the derelict residence, despite the nearly caved-in roof and the rain-soaked paper left to rot on the walls. He promptly commenced the badly needed and very expensive renovations, and he tried to raise a mortgage so that he could afford them, but he was never able to manage it, and on the advice of lawyers and friends, he reluctantly decided to sell his ancient family home. For several years, one prospective sale after another fell through, but in 1818, when I was little more than two years old and living contentedly with my grandparents at Kirkby Mallory, oblivious to my father’s struggles, he finally sold the estate for ninety-five thousand pounds to Colonel Thomas Wildman, who had been an admirer and sympathetic friend since they were schoolboys together at Harrow. In his more than three decades as master of Newstead Abbey, Colonel Wildman had invested a fortune in restoring it to its former glory, painstakingly preserving significant artifacts from my father’s time there in tribute to the great poet.
William and I drove through the front gates of Newstead Abbey on the evening of Saturday, the seventh of September, crossing through the restored forest, rounding a corner, and glimpsing in the distance a clear, bright lake and the ruins of the Wicked Lord’s fortresses on opposite shores. And then, in the autumn twilight, I caught sight of Newstead Abbey itself, rising above the lake and reflected in its waters. It seemed to be split in two—one half a stately baronial hall, strong, whole, and resplendent; the second half the derelict ruins of the abbey, many of its stones evidently appropriated to restore the first.
The coach halted at the front entrance, where Colonel Wildman waited to welcome us, footmen standing ready nearby to assist us with our luggage. “Welcome to Newstead Abbey at long last, Lady Lovelace, Lord Lovelace,” he said as we descended. “While you’re here, and ever after, you must think of this as your own home.”
“Thank you very much,” I murmured, overcome with apprehension and anxiety, which had been steadily rising since we passed through the front gates. I felt the strange, unsettling sensation that I had been there before, as if I were observing my ancestral seat through my forebears’ eyes. To my relief, I realized that I merely recognized it from its appearance in Don Juan, for my father had written it into the poem as Norman Abbey, the Amundevilles’ country house.
Colonel Wildman was a slender, athletic man, as befitted an accomplished officer, of slightly more than average height, with tousled dark hair, a small mustache, and a minuscule beard that was little more than a vertical tuft of hair beneath his lower lip. “You must be famished and exhausted after your long journey,” he said as he led us through the tall, arched front entrance. “Dinner is nearly ready, and I promise we won’t keep you up too late afterward. We’ll reserve the tour for tomorrow.”
I could only nod as I gazed around the grand foyer in awe and inexplicable sadness. It was magnificently appointed with portraits and tapestries, dark wood and white plasterwork, illuminated by brilliant candelabra, but by my unhappy mood, I might have stumbled into a dark, foreboding cavern.
Just then, a small, brown-haired, apple-cheeked woman in a modest dark blue gown with gigot sleeves and a white lace fichu swept into the room. “Lord and Lady Lovelace,” she said, smiling warmly, extending her hand as she crossed the room to join us. “My apologies for not being here to greet you, but I was detained by some last-minute excitement in the kitchen. It’s all sorted now, so please do come in and restore yourselves with some good Nottingham food and drink.”
She was so warm and merry that my spirits began to lift, and I sighed in relief as I took William’s arm and Colonel and Mrs. Wildman showed us to the dining room. To my surprise, this was, in fact, the abbey’s Great Hall, which was larger than ours at East Horsley Park and superior in comfort. It had a medieval character, with heraldic devices and armor adorning the paneled walls; a tall, peaked ceiling with dark beams and braces; an ornate oak screen framing the entrance; a massive fireplace in the center of one long wall; tall windows set back in alcoves that reached nearly to the ceiling on the wall opposite; and a minstrels’ gallery, where I imagined I glimpsed the shadow of a bard strumming a lute, but it was only a trick of the light.
Mere moments after we walked in, another couple entered the hall from a doorway at the far end of the room. The Wildmans introduced us to their other guests, the Hamilton Greys, and we all sat down to table together.
The meal was excellent, exactly what I needed: wholesome, nourishing, and flavorful rather than fussy and heavy. Colonel Wildman entertained us with stories of his extensive renovations to the estate, some comical, others harrowing, but all bearing witness to his love for Newstead Abbey, his admiration for my father, and his devotion to his memory.
After supper, the men withdrew, but sensing my exhaustion, Mrs. Wildman kindly offered to show me to my room, which was on the second floor, dark with oak wainscoting and opening above the old cloister to the east, overlooking a Gothic fountain. Alone, I prepared for bed almost soundlessly, feeling as if I had entered a shrine, not only to my father, but also to his poetic heroes, like Childe Harold and Don Juan, and to other Byrons long past—the Wicked Lord and the first Lord Byron and all the others before and between.
It was a haunted room, filled with shades and memories, and though the bed was soft and warm, it was only with great difficulty that I drifted into restless sleep.
The next day, Colonel Wildman devoted himself to showing us around the estate, beginning with the interior of the abbey and then, after luncheon, leading us around the gardens and the grounds nearest the house. He courteously tried to draw me into conversation, but I felt too melancholic to reply except in brief murmurs. Fortunately William carried his share of the conversation and mine, too, and as I walked along quietly a few
paces behind them, they discussed the colonel’s renovations as only two devotees of that particular sport could. I was gratified to see that the baronial hall had been restored with taste and feeling, and that relics of my father and other ancestors had been respectfully preserved. I admired the stately, well-lit gallery and a cloister that formed a library, and I could see that the many rooms had been furnished with both comfort and elegance in mind—and yet none of the loveliness I observed could dispel my sense of desolation, as if I were walking through my family’s tomb.
“The colonel’s renovations are solid work, of excellent quality,” William remarked to me when we were briefly alone before dressing for dinner. “Our bedchambers, however—” He glanced around, shaking his head. “They’re far too gloomy and want better light. The arrangement of the house is too complicated, and the grounds are too encumbered with trees. Clearing them out would improve the views tremendously.”
I murmured polite replies, but except for the gloomy bedchambers, I had not disliked any of the features my husband found objectionable. My problems with Newstead Abbey were of an entirely different nature.
Later that evening, after supper, I found myself again unable to sleep, so I dutifully wrote a letter to my mother, knowing that she would be expecting, and perhaps dreading, an account of my first impression of my father’s former home. “We came here yesterday,” I began.
I have not yet been over the whole, but it is grandly monastic, and everything speaks of the past history of the place and of the Byrons, for centuries. The repairs and restorations are most admirably done, and certainly no Byron could have afforded to do such justice to this antique and historical residence.
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