[Byron’s Grave]

BY WILLIAM WINTER

It was near the close of a fragrant, golden summer day when, having driven from Nottingham, I alighted in the market-place of the little town of Hucknall-Torkard, on a pilgrimage to the grave of Byron.  The town is modern and commonplace in appearance,—­a straggling collection of low brick dwellings, mostly occupied by colliers.  On that day it appeared at its worst; for the widest part of its main street was filled with stalls, benches, wagons, and canvas-covered structures for the display of vegetables and other commodities, which were thus offered for sale, and it was thronged with rough, noisy, dirty persons, intent on barter and traffic, and not indisposed to boisterous pranks and mirth, as they pushed and jostled each other among the crowded booths.  This main street terminates at the wall of the graveyard in which stands the little gray church wherein Byron was buried.  There is an iron gate in the center of the wall, and in order to reach this it was necessary to thread the mazes of the marketplace, and to push aside the canvas flaps of a pedler’s stall which had been placed close against it.  Next to the churchyard wall is a little cottage, with a bit of garden, devoted, at that time, to potatoes; and there, while waiting for the sexton, I talked with an aged man, who said that he remembered, as an eye-witness, the funeral of Byron.  He stated his age and said that his name was William Callandyne.  Pointing to the church, he indicated the place of the Byron vault.  “I was the last man,” he said, “that went down into it before he was buried there.  I was a young fellow then, and curious to see what was going on.  The place was full of skulls and bones.  I wish you could see my son; he’s a clever lad, only he ought to have more of the suaviter in modo.”  Thus, with the garrulity of wandering age, he prattled on, but his mind was clear and his memory tenacious and positive.  There is a good prospect from the region of Hucknall-Torkard Church, and pointing into the distance, when his mind had been brought back to the subject of Byron, my aged interlocutor described, with minute specification of road and lane,—­seeming to assume that the names and the turnings were familiar to me,—­the course of the funeral train from Nottingham to the church.  “There were eleven carriages,” he said.  “They didn’t go to the Abbey” (meaning Newstead), “but came directly here.  There were many people to look at them.  I remember all about it, and I’m an old man—­eighty-two.  You’re an Italian, I should say,” he added.  By this time the sexton had come and unlocked the gate, and parting from Mr. Callandyne we presently made our way into the Church of St. James, locking the churchyard gate to exclude rough and possibly mischievous followers.  A strange and sad contrast, I thought, between this coarse, turbulent place, by a malign destiny ordained for the grave of Byron, and that peaceful, lovely, majestic church and precinct at Stratford-upon-Avon which enshrine the dust of Shakespeare....