lessons, and I rarely." Peel, however, had his Achilles heel. He had not learnt to converse in French on the Hill. This was one of the main reasons for Sir Robert not succeeding Lord Castlereagh at the Foreign Office in 1822. The post went to George Canning, who certainly had not to thank Eton for his knowledge of French. Why Byron liked Peel, and disliked Palmerston, is a riddle that is not now likely to be solved. Had he known Palmerston, Byron would have been drawn to him just as he was drawn to Sir Walter Scott. When Pitt died (1806), three Public School men, Palmerston, Althorp (Harrovians) and Henry Petty (Westminster) stood for the vacancy thus created in the representation of Cambridge University. Byron, who was then a rollicking undergraduate of Trinity, in the following lines refers to Petty (who was Chancellor of the Exchequer) as "one", and to Palmerston as "the other". One on his power and place depends, Though neither will convince by that. Before Palmerston was twenty-five, he had twice stood for Cambridge University and had been twice rejected. Byron did not live to learn what a noble conception Palmerston had of the strength and the duties of England. Harrow can lay claim to three Senior Wranglers-the very Rev. Alexander Ellice, sometime Archdeacon of Calcutta, Charles Perry, sometime Bishop of Melbourne, and the Hon. J. W. Strutt (Lord Rayleigh). The now famous discoverer of argon had a very dangerous competitor in the well-known Political Economist, Mr. A. Marshall, who was Second Wrangler. The late Mr. Todhunter was not given to paying compliments, but after reading Mr. Strutt's papers he remarked-"They say a man writes like a book. I only wish I could find a book written like Strutt's papers." One of Lord Shaftesbury's most active supporters in good works was Byron's former fag, William Malton. On leaving Harrow the late Mr. Malton became a London solicitor and founded, with the coöperation of Bishop Blomfield and others, "The Church of England Scripture Readers' Association," "The Metropolitan Visiting and Relief Association" and "The Christian Union Almshouses" of which the late Lord Herschell was Chairman. In fact he served on the Committees of most of the benevolent Societies of London of his day, and died "valde deflendus." Such was his personal devotion to Byron that his guardians stopped his going to Trinity, Cambridge, for fear of his falling too completely under the poet's magnetic influence. Byron was at the height of his skylarking when he left Harrow. For instance, in his rooms at Trinity he kept a live bear, adorned in cap and gown! He mentions the bear in his letter to Miss Picot of 26th October, 1807, but not the cap and gown-that extra comes to me from my friend, Capt. Thomas Malton. Many lovers of Byron share his own opinion that had he married Mary Chaworth, "the whole tenor of his life would have been different." The heiress of Annesley preferred the Old Etonian, Jack Musters, a splendid speciman of the race, to "a fat bashful boy." This description of the Harrovian Byron was not hers, but Miss Picot's. There must, however, have been a heartless fibre in Mary Chaworth, for her to have said to her maid, "Do you think I could ever care anything for that lame boy?" even though she did not know that her lover would overhear the remark. It will scarcely be credited, but Byron missed one entire quarter at Harrow (the Christmas quarter of 1803) simply and solely because he refused to leave Mary Chaworth. At the present time no boy who stayed away a whole term to please his own whims, would be allowed to come back. I have to thank a near relative, familiar with Byron's country, for the following information about the poet's first love, which will, I believe, be new to students of his works both in England and America. The mother of Mary Chaworth was a Miss Bainbridge, the daughter of the village wheel-wright, near Thurgarton, a small village about eleven miles from Newstead. The Bainbridges in former days had been a rich and influential family, but by the close of the 18th century had come down in the world. Mary's mother was housekeeper to John Chaworth, the Squire of Colwick, who married her. Colwick is about 13 or 14 miles from Newstead, on the south side of the Trent. The only child of this marriage was Mary, and on her father's death she inherited all his property. Her mother married as her second husband the Rector of Thurgarton, Mr. Clark, and Mary went to live at the Rectory, an unpretentious old brick house covered with ivy. Mr. Clark had a particular dislike to "Jack" Musters, on account of his varied attentions to the fair sex. He forbade Musters the Rectory, but love laughs at rectors as well as locksmiths. In spite of all opposition this "king of the hunting field" and Mary were married in 1805. Byron told Capt. Medwin in 1822, that Mary Chaworth granted him interviews in Mr. Chaworth's grounds, but he had the manliness to admit that Mary only liked him as "a younger brother". Mr. Martin, a landowner of Colston Bassett, who died a few years ago at an advanced age, knew Mary Chaworth well and used often to speak of her to my friend. She had light hair and blue eyes. There are still Bainbridges about the county, and most of them possess the same characteristics. 1 Mr. Leslie Stephen in the Dictionary of National Biography, and the anonymous author of that excellent book, Kings of the Hunting Field, are, so my friend tells me, in error in stating that Mary Chaworth's marriage proved unhappy. With all his faults Jack Musters was a gentleman and treated his wife with respect and affection. With Byron the wish was the unconscious father of the thought, and in The Dream he thus refers (1816) to Mary and himself—"It was a strange order, that the doom of these two creatures should be thus traced out, almost like a reality—the one to end in madness-both in misery." Sixteen years after this poem Mary Chaworth died, not of a broken heart, nor in a madhouse, but from the effects of exposure. The Nottingham rioters, on the rejection of the Reform Bill 1 Mr. Rowland E. Prothero, the Editor of the most sumptuous edition of Byron's Works (John Murray), and to whose labours all lovers of Byron are indebted, also speaks of Mrs. Musters' "unhappy married life." (Vol. i., Letters and Journals, p. 17 note.) in 1831, burnt down Colwick Hall where she was residing with her daughter, at sight of whom Byron had been so much affected. Byron died at Missolonghi on 19th April, 1824. Henry Manning, who lived to become the best known of English Cardinals since the days of Cardinal Wolsey, was then in the school and in the cricket eleven. He tells us that as soon as the news reached the Hill, Dr. George Butler preached in the parish church on the abuse of natural gifts. This was rather a different spirit from that which made Sir Walter Scott exclaim on hearing of Byron's death-"It is as if the sun had gone out." A packet of letters, written during the years 1824 and '25 by the late Arthur Martineau to his schoolfellow G. M. Batten, have been kindly placed at my disposal by the latter's son. Arthur Martineau was head of the school in 1824 and '25, and subsequently became a Prebendary of St. Paul's. He tells his friend that a portrait of Byron adorns his mantelpiece. "I have been recommended," he writes on 25th February, 1825, "to read the Excursion by William Wordsworth, but I doubt. Talking of Lakists, have you read Master Bob Southey's infamous letter in abuse of Lord Byron? It disgraces him as Christian." Bravo Martineau! 1824, Martineau gives us the school-life-"With respect to the business of the Head of the School, it is far less than I imagined, and Butler and Harry (ie. Drury) are both uncommonly civil to me. I cannot say much in favour of -'s house, after a state of anarchy, during which was licked twice by Toogood, has been turned down, together with Lord --, for going out shooting." J. J. Toogood rowed No. 5 in the Oxford Boat (1829) and subsequently became a Rural Dean. a man, an author, and a Writing on 2nd November, following frank picture of In these letters Martineau makes no allusion to his contemporary Manning, but Manning himself tells us that he had "no daily companion and few friends." Manning when a Cardinal, wrote that he and his schoolfellow Charles Wordsworth had stripped his father's glasshouse of its grapes on a day on which (unknown to them) he was giving a dinner-party, and yet, added the Cardinal, both the culprits are now Prelates! Ashden Oxenden, who afterwards became Metropolitan of Canada, was another contemporary of Manning's. In his History of my life Oxenden speaks of the "little selfassertion in Manning's character." The late Dean of Ely used to tell a story to illustrate the truth that from philosophy to platitude there is but one step. Manning hit a ball at cricket, and as it curved gracefully away exclaimed-"What a mysterious thing a cricket-ball is!" The influence of Byron for good is not dead at Harrow. Clement Harris, the generous lad who lost his life fighting for Greece in the last Turko-Greek campaign, is a proof of this. When he was at Harrow he used to spend hours by Peachey's stone, where "Byron lay, lazily lay." We may be sure that two boys who were at Harrow some thirty years after Byron had left the Hill felt his influence to the full. These boys were Julian Fane and Lord Lytton, his friend and biographer; the one was in Mr. Oxenham's house, the other in Mr. Harris's. The future Viceroy of India has been described to me by one of his contemporaries at Harrow as "a wild-looking boy with large eyes." He disliked athletics and seemed unable to do anything with his hands. Both Fane and Lytton were artists-the one in music and the other in verse. Lytton has himself drawn the distinction between filigree work and massive work in poetry. Byron was a massive worker, and Childe Harold was written for all time; but Lytton's filigree work was surely of the most exquisite design. Neither Fane nor Lytton (as young men) much relished diplomacy. Writing of his friend our future ambassador at Paris refers to those "subservient ingenuities whereby a diplomatist must endeavour to give practical effect to instructions which at the best scarcely inspire him with any moral or intellectual enthusiasm." This is scarcely a fair view of diplomacy, which teaches patience and reticence, as few other callings do. Fane's grandfather (a Carthusian) made the famous 1 Lytton's Julian Fane, p. 260. |