Byronic beauty

This lovely scene at George Gordon Byron's home, Newstead Abbey, surely deserves to be accompanied by some quotes from the Romantic poet himself:

'There's music in the sighing of a reed;
There's music in the gushing of a rill;
There's music in all things, if men had ears;
The earth is but the music of the spheres.' 

'Are not the mountains, waves and skies a part of me and my soul, as I of them?'

'There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.'

'When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.'

He also said: 'The English winter - ending in July to recommence in August'.
It certainly feels like that this year!

Ghostly gardeners

Scattered around the gardens at Newstead Abbey was an army of ghostly gardeners.  I really liked them.... I could do with a green-fingered handyman in my own patch at home!

Newstead's gardens

Newstead Abbey has wonderful gardens. Set in a wooded estate (once part of Robin Hood's Sherwood Forest), it has a series of lakes, formal ponds, several beautiful walled gardens, a Victorian fernery and an interesting Japanese-style garden. At one time, the gardens were managed by the son of some friends of my parents. He had spent some time in Japan and married a Japanese girl, so he knew something about Japanese gardens and did a good job of restoring it.

Newstead's large estate also holds a number of elegant houses, well-hidden from view among the trees. When I was a teenager, one of my friends lived in one of them; I was always envious!

Mad, bad and dangerous to know...

Lord Byron, considered by some to be the greatest romantic poet of his time, was Newstead Abbey's most famous owner. He inherited the estate from his great-uncle at the age of ten, and lived there at various times between 1808 and 1814. His life was short but tempestuous and filled with scandal: huge debts, numerous love affairs and a rumoured incestuous liaison with his half-sister. One of his mistresses, Lady Caroline Lamb, said that he was 'mad, bad and dangerous to know'. There is speculation that he may have suffered from bipolar disorder. He died, aged 36, from a fever contracted in Greece, where he went to fight against the Ottoman Empire in the Greek War of Independence. The equivalent of a modern-day rock star, Byron was popularly mourned but various institutions including Westminster Abbey refused to bury or honour him. He was buried in a church near Newstead. It was not until 1969 that a memorial was finally placed in Westminster Abbey.

Byron had a beloved Newfoundland dog called Boatswain, who died of rabies and was buried, with a monument (see photo) larger than that later accorded to its master! The inscription is from Byron's poem 'Epitaph to a Dog'.

Near this Spot Are deposited the Remains of one Who possessed Beauty Without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferosity, And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning flattery If inscribed over Human Ashes, Is but a just tribute to the Memory of "Boatswain," a Dog Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, And died at Newstead Abbey Nov. 18, 1808.

Newstead Abbey

More photos that I haven't found time to post - from my May visit 'back home'..... This magnificent old building is a few miles away from the house I grew up in, in Nottinghamshire. Its extensive grounds hold many happy memories for me..... of family days out, as well as youthful and magically romantic walks, hand-in-hand with my 'first love'. (Aww!)

Newstead Abbey started life as an Augustinian priory. In 1540 when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, it was given to Sir John Byron, who converted it to a private house. (An eagle lectern, thought to have been thrown by the monks for safekeeping into the abbey's fishpond, was dredged from the lake in the late 17th century and is now in Southwell Minster.) The house and its estate eventually passed, in 1798, to George Gordon Byron, better known as the Romantic poet Lord Byron.