The record-union., 1891-02-15

In railway carriage between Bayreuth
and Nuremburg, L once heard little
Bavarian schoolgirl ask travelled Phil
adelphian where the great and good Ben
Jamin Franklin was buried. Gracious
and prompt as we Americans always are
in supplying effete Europeans with in
formation, he promptly answered that
Franklin's ashes reposed in Westminster
Abbey.
This American man was undoubtedly
born within a half mile of Franklin's
tomb in his own city, and may have pass
ed within few feet of the meanly-kept,
unhonored grave nearly every day OF
his own home life. Englishmen may
cherish the heritage to Britain of Byron's
immortal genius; but Byron's grave is
no more shrine to them than was Frank
Inns to his townsman
This may seem incredible to intelligent
Americans. The generally-acquired rec
ognition of its truth was astounding to
Inc. AS probably to millions of others
who, at some period Of life, have adoring-
ly pored over the pages ofByron, it was a
1orglvable dream ofyouth and early man.
hood to some day come TO the scenes he
knew; walk the very ground he trod i'm
England; dream in the same monk
wraithed cloisters of Newstead; and then
at his grave, through the infinite spirit
reach OF loving memory, brooding by
consecrated soil, endeavoring to f;,thom
1of may own consciousness, with Just
measurement of his own career and
genius, the wretched mystery of his sad
and unhappy life.
Indeed for the past five years, in fire.
quently passing through, or during peri
DDS of travel in England, this wish and
impulse have been uppermost in my
hot nlx,
tlon Tor the time being, my stereotyped
inquiry OF all classes OF Englishmen has
been, '.Where is the grave Of Byron?''
Though had come to know, in a geo
graphical sense, l found it was with SIM
liar vagueness any other body knew at
all; and so few knew even this poor bit
about where Byron lay, that the repeti-
ton OF the question and replies came to
possess melancholy fascination. Over
1000 answered, ''At Westminster;' half
that number, ''At Newstead Abbey"
Many believed his remains rested in
Greece. An astonishingly large number
We're Sorely puzzled at the query and
confessed complete ignorance. OF course
any English guide-book would answer
the question. But guide-books are for
strangers, not residents. And to what
ever stranger may have accidentally seen
the two or three line statement that the
tomb of Byron might be found at the lit
tie church of Hucknall, in Hucknall
Torkard, Nottinghamshire, there came a
sense of repellant indefiniteness; as
though the guide-book maker We're not
quite certain of the matter himself Even
II the statement were accepted as a true
one, where then might one hunt for the
unknown hamlet with so mystifying a
name as Hucknall Torkard?
While wandering in Robin Hoods
Land, L unconsciously passed many
times within few miles of the spot
where repose the ashes of Byron. But
there was no one in the region to call the
strangers attention to the fact. He would
hardly discover it at Newstead Abbey
three miles distant, once the poets prop
erty and home. Nobody at Arnold four
miles away, even among the owners of
the looms and spindles, can tell you how
TO find Hucknall Torkard, or why any
body should wish to find it. The colliery
town itself Is perhaps eight miles north
of Nottingham. But one might ask 600
OF that city's 100000 people without ascer-
tanning just where to find the place; and
inquire of q good many more than that
before discovering that the town possessed
anything but golfers and coal After l
had finally made sure Hucknall Torkard
was near Nottingham and that perhaps
some man ''of quality" was buried there,
as it was ''famously unhealthy" 1 was
then twice sent over wrong railway lines
to find it. Then l tramped. A two hours
walk through the dreariest of English
half-manufacturing villages, over the
worst highway in England, brought me,
past dreary, moorlike reaches and
scraggy, unlovely fields, to an utterly
cheerless collection Of half cottages and
shops. These were low, cramped, made
quate, unsightly. The houses were
pinched sidewise, endwise, up and down.
Passage-ways, wynds, closets, alleys and
shops all were pinched and mean and
small. Everything exposed for sale
seemed sparse, little and shriveled. The
faces OF the old women, slatternly wives,
and hosts of dirty children rolling in
doorways and on pavements with pinched
and ragged-haired ours, were pinched
more sadly than all else in the DOOR,
pinched place.
1t was one of those many places in Eu-
rope, and, less credit to us, in our own
country, where coal-barons huddle and
herd families at profit, after first profiting
TO the extent of human endurance from
the use of vast aggregate dependent labor
1t was Hucknall Torkard, wnere 5000
miners dig 1000 yards ''below grass for
coal, at Il shiliings week for half the
weeks in the year, and starve, with their
families, the other half. Every structure
was of brick. Every object was be-
smeared with the taint of coal. Even the
struggling outlying streets, and the flat,
clayey country round, utterly hedgeless
and treeless, seemed to have the filth and
CRIME of the locality ground into it. But
one object within the horizon disk gave
relief to the hard miserable feature of
every visible thing in Hucknall Torkard.
Away down the long, colorless street,
nearly mile away, rose a huge Norman
tower. 1t was dark and grim, and frowned
upon the town and the mean little church
beneath 1t as II sensitive of its Sodden
and insenate surroundings. You will see
a hundred towers like it, ecclesiastic
brothers of hoary age, from Penzance to
Penrith, all over England. They defy
time like the Round Towers of Ireland,
and their origin in essential or decorative
architecture is almost as inScrutable.
Picturesque they are, against the horizon
of an English landscape,as the suggestive
Spire in the glorious cleaning of Millet's
'AngeluS;" but their age and strength
are all else of merit they possess; for, like
this one of st. Mary Magdalen's church
at Hucknall Torkard, they are all of more
consequence in space than the little
broken-backed chapel-like churches they
quite overshadow.
If it was in that little church with the
big tower where Byron lay buried no.
body in Hucknall Torkard seemed able
to disclose it. L inquired here and there
of those L met, and was either laughed at,
or informed that while they would not
deny, it was very wide of their habit to
assert what they did not know.
''Ah O could ma tell ee, mon. Vicar
Phillips maun tell eei'' came from all
who would speak. At little shops as |
progressed along the street, was told to
ask at the next door; and groups gath
cred behind me to tap their noses and
shake their heads gravely. To be bad
gered thus when searching for the grave
of one known to all the world, yet un-
known to the thousands within rifie-shot
of his own sepulture, was confusing in
Indignation and regret. Halfway up
the street l took refuge from curious and
suspicious eyes in draper's on pretense