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The feud, however, which prevailed for a time, promised to be cancelled by the attachment of two youthful hearts. While Lord Byron was yet a boy, he beheld Mary Ann Chaworth, a beautiful girl, and the sole heiress of Annesley. With that susceptibility to female charms, which he evinced almost from childhood, he became almost immediately enamored of her.
I, but a few months older, am already a woman in age, experience, feeling, character. It is always thus with persons of our sexes who contract childish friendships one outgrows the other. Then there are bitterness, reproach, suffering, resentment, on one part or the other. But is this just? Remember Byron and Miss Chaworth how was it with them?
Mary Gray, a nurse and early teacher of Byron's, has told us that kindness was the unfailing touchstone with this boy; no other plan would work. But Harrow knew nothing of Froebel methods, and does not yet. Byron's first genuine love-affair occurred when he was sixteen. The object of this affection, as all the world knows, was Miss Chaworth, whose estate adjoined Newstead.
In the year 1803, when a youth of fifteen, he formed a strong attachment for a Miss Chaworth, two years his senior, who, looking upon him as a mere schoolboy, treated him cavalierly, and made some slighting allusion to "that lame boy." This treatment both saddened and embittered him.
Chaworth, who was the more expert swordsman of the two, received a mortal wound, and shortly afterwards expired. Lord Byron was brought to trial for the murder before the House of Lords; and it appearing clearly, that the duel was not premeditated, but fought at once, and in the heat of passion, he was found guilty of manslaughter only, and ordered to be discharged upon payment of his fees.
This was my grandfather, Hugh Le Despenser, Earl of Winchester, who at the age of twenty-five advanced the fortunes of his house by wedding a daughter of Warwick, Isabel, the young widow of the Lord de Chaworth, and the mother's mother of Alianora of Lancaster. Thou and thy father's wife, therefore, are near akin.
The chamber, like all the other parts of the house, had a look of sadness and neglect; the flower-pots beneath the window, which once bloomed beneath the hand of Mary Chaworth, were overrun with weeds; and the piano, which had once vibrated to her touch, and thrilled the heart of her stripling lover, was now unstrung and out of tune.
I set out for the Hall on horseback, in company with Colonel Wildman, and followed by the great Newfoundland dog Boatswain. In the course of our ride we visited a spot memorable in the love story I have cited. It was the scene of this parting interview between Byron and Miss Chaworth, prior to her marriage.
Chaworth, always kept the sword he had used with such fatal effect and had it hanging in his bedroom when he died. Although the neighbouring Suffolk Street is a most decorous thoroughfare at the present time, and entirely innocent of taverns, it was furnished with two, the Cock and The Golden Eagle, in the latter portion of the seventeenth century.
Musters was the Mary Chaworth made famous by Lord Byron in his poem of the "Dream," and other poems as well the Mary Chaworth who was his first love, and whom, at one time, he believed destined to be his last love also. Mary Chaworth does not seem to have taken the poet's adoration very seriously at all events, she married Mr. Musters, a country gentleman of good position. Mrs.
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