Byromania

Today we went to visit the family seat of the Byrons. One of the more rapacious members of the family, George Gordon (the wascawy poet) lived there and wrote a bunch of poems about it. None of his biographers suggests that he was mentally ill, but it sure seems like he was from his behavior. I think a person can be literate and mentally ill at the same time.

The abbey is, of course, quintessentially gothic both in terms of the medieval structures and in terms of the literary sense of decay, transgression, and darkness. The great ruined arch that has stood since Henry VIII (having his 500th anniversary) ravaged the church has moss and plants growing all over it, but it seems sound enough in 2009. However, there are little cattle guards all around it, so I suppose it may have been dropping some bricks lately. Still, 500 years is a pretty good run. The gardens are in great shape now, better I suppose than when Mr. Romantic Decay was in charge, but a lot of the ruin of the family seat is attributed to the "Wicked Baron", the 5th Lord Byron, who deliberately let the place fall into ruin out of spite. It is sure is hard to be rich and titled: work, work, work. George Gordon referred to the place as a "massy pile" and seemed to feel oppressed by the history of the place, a history he felt he could not live up to. It's not like he yeilded to that pressure much: he just seemed to complain about it. The next set of owners, liberated from the pressure of the Byron name, seem to have done quite well by the place, fixed it up, and now it is quite pleasant and full of people who come to enjoy the place. One of the guides insists that Byron haunts the place and on Bryon's bithday all kinds of weird things happened like lights going out and "other uncanny events." She was a very enthusiastic guide. She also related the story of two young girls who saw the "black monk" in the upper chambers. Creeeeeeepy.


The most entertaining part of the house tour were the two dress-up rooms. In one room you could put on Byronic robes and pose. While in another room, you could put on dresses and pose. We had great fun in both rooms.


The gardens were lovely. I'm a sucker for any landscape view, and there were so many. There were the neoclassical gardens, the English jumble gardens, and the Japanese garden, which I believe is a new resident of the grounds. It was easy to wander around the grounds for two hours, each view more lovely than the next. But they were so very very manicured and carefully walled in. Sherwood Forest and the Yorkshire moors, being open areas where plants did what they wanted, had a less constrained feel. These gardens, while outside, still had an interior feeling to them as if they were green rooms. The gift shop, in stark contrast was the most chaotic gift shop ever. There was apparently no theme, no consistency to the offerings on the shelves, and no organization them either. There were recipe books, jam, candy, coasters, plastic things stamped "Newstead Abbey", Beatrix Potter books, and a few books by and about Byron. Oh, and magnets and book marks with quotes by other American and British authors. Clearly, this was a token gift shop because one is required to have one. What really counted here was the experience, and not the material culture.

I think this is quite a propos of Byron's experience of Newstead. I get the impression from his poetry that the Abbey was more about the idea of his family history than a nice place to live. His poems addressed to Newstead are all about the history of the place, not the place itself.

Now that the estate has passed to the public domain, it is all the better for it because we common people can enjoy it for itself, not the weighty history nor the aristocratic limits.