Collection Spotlight: Newstead Abbey

As a major celebrity of his day (something he worked very hard at), he suffered from bad press just like  modern day celebrities. Newstead became a refuge for him, somewhere he could escape prying eyes.

When Byron inherited the Abbey it was in bad repair. His view of Newstead was as a romantic ruin, comparable to the decline of his family name. He wrote of it:

Thro' thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle;
Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay.

Lord Byron, ‘On leaving Newstead Abbey’ (1803)

He spent a lot of money on it, but the changes he made were mainly cosmetic, leaving the major structural demage unrepaired and it soon returned to its original state of disrepair.

Boatswain the beloved dog

While at Newstead Byron had a beloved pet dog, a Newfoundland called Boatswain. Boatswain died in 1808 after becoming infected with rabies, and was buried at Newstead . In true British canine-mad style a monument was made in his honour, on which was inscribed Byron's Epitaph to a Dog (which has since become one of his best known works):

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.

The monument is even bigger than Byron's monument on the Newstead grounds. 

 

Marriage, children and leaving Newstead

Lord Byron had a many love affairs with both men and women in his life time and did not show much interest in settling down. However increasing debt forced his hand, and in January 1815 Lord Byron married heiress Anne Isabella Milbanke. Lady Byron was a brilliant woman and gifted mathematician but was also very moral and religious, therefore a strange match for the ammoral and agnostic Byron.  Their marriage was not a happy nor very long one. Byron's colourful romantic life caused his wife a lot of concern, particularly the rumours of an ongoing incestuous love affair with his half-sister Augusta Maria Leigh. Eventually she declared Lord Byron insane and in January 1816 - only a year after they were married - Anne began proceedings for a legal separation. The scandal of the separation, as well the rumours of his affair with Augusta and his mounting debts, caused Byron to leave Newstead Abbey and Britain forever. He would never return. He died in Greece in April 1824 after joining the Greeks in their fight for independence from Ottomon rule.

Before they separated, Anne and Lord Byron had a child, a girl called Ada, who was born in December 1815. She was to be Byron's only legitimate child. Augusta Ada King-Noel, Countess of Lovelace (née Byron) like her mother, grew up to be a brilliant mathematician. She became chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. She was the first to recognise that the machine had applications beyond pure calculation, and published the first algorithm intended to be carried out by such a machine. As a result, she is sometimes regarded as the first to recognise the full potential of a computing machine and the first computer programmer. Although she never met her father, she felt very close to him, and requested that she be buried next to him upon her death.