Morning journal and courier., 1891-02-14
MIR. wAKEMAN,S JOURNEYINGS

mas become the rule Oh actlOn.
HILARY.
MIR. wAKEMAN'S JOURNEYINGS.
At Hucknall Torkard, EnGland-Lo-
eating the Grave of Byron-Sur-
roundings of the Tomb-The Huge
Norman Tower.
HUCKNALL ToRKARD, England, Jan. %.
To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
In o railway carriage between Bayreuth
and Nuremburg once heard little Bava-
rian schoolgirl ask Travelled Philadel-
phian where the great and good Benjamin
Franklin was buried. Gracious and
prompt as we Americans always are in
supplying effete Europeans with informa-
ton, he promptly answered that Frank
Inns ashes reposed in Westminster Abbey
This American man was undoubtedly
born within half a mile of Franklin's
tomb in his own city, and may have passed
within few feet of the meanly kept, un-
honored grave nearly every day of his
own home life. Englishmen may cherish
the herita to Britain of Byron's immor-
tai genius; but Byron's grave is no more a
shrine to them than was Franklin's to his
townsman.
This may seem incredible to intelligent
Americans. The gradually acquired re-
cognition of its truth was astounding to
me- AS probably to millions of others
who, at some period of life, have adoring-
" pored over the pages of Byron, it was a
forgivable dream of youth and early man
hood to some day come to the scenes he
knew; walk the very ground he trod in
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 con-
secrated soil, endeavor to fathom for my
own consciousness, with just measurement
for his 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 mind
and whatever else engaged attention Cor
the time being, my stereotyped inquiry of
all classes of Englishmen has been,
"Where is the grave of Byronf'
Though 1 had come to know, in a geo.
graphical sense, 1 found it was with SINH
lar vagueness any other body knew at all
| and SO few even knew this poor bit about
where Byron lay, that the repetition of
the question and replies came to possess a
| melancholy fascination. Over one thou
sand answered, cat Westminster; half
that number, cat Newstead Abbey"
Many believed his remains rested in
Greece. An astonishingly large number
were sorely puzzled at the query and con-
fessed complete ignorance. Of course any
English guide-book would answer the
question. But guide-books are for stran-
gers, not residents. And to whatever
stranger may have accidentally seen the
two or three line statements that the tomb
of Byron might be found at the little
church of Hucknall, in Hucknall Torkard,
Nottinghamshire there came a sense of re-
pellant indefniteness; as though the guide
book maker were not quite certain of the
matter himself. Even if 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!
w uuc I1OOu luuu,
1 unconsciously passed many times within
few miles of the spot where repose the
ashes of Byron. But there is 10 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 property and home. No
body at Arnold, four miles away, even
| among the owners of the looms and spin
| dies, can tell you how to find Hucknall
Torkard, or why anybody should wish to
| find it. The colliery town itself is per-
haps eight miles north of Nottingham
But one might ask thousand of that
| citys hundred thousand people without
ascertaining just where to find the place;
| and inquire of good many more than
| that before discovering that the town pos
sessed anything but colliers and coal. Af-
| ter had finally made sure Hucknall Tor
| kard was near Nottingham, and that per-
| haps some man ''of quality" was buried
there, as it was ''famously unhealthy" l
was then twice sent over wrong railway
| lines to find it, Then 1 tramped. A two
hours walk through the dreariest of Eng
| lish alf-manufacturing villages, over the
worst highway in England, brought me,
past dreary, moor-like reaches and scrag-
gy, unlovely fields, to an utterly cheerless
| collection of half cottages and shops.
These were low, cramped, inadequate, un-
| slightly. The houses were pinched side
wise, endwise, up aud down. The win,
dows and doors were pinched. Passage
| ways, wynds, closes, alleys and shops were
| all pinched and mean and small. Every
thing exposed for sale seemed sparse, lit
| tie and shriveled. The faces of the old
women, slatternly wives, and hosts of dir
| ty children rolling in doorways and on
pavements with pinched and ragged haired
| l~al
else in the poor, 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 profting
| to the extent of human endurance from
the use of vast aggregate dependent labor.
1t was Hucknall Torkard, where three
thousand miners dig one thousand yards
"below grass" for coal, at twenty-o one
shillings week for half the weeks in the
year, and starve, with their families, the
other half. Every structure was of brick
Every object was besmeared with the taint
of coal. Even the struggling outlying
streets, and the fiat, clayey country round
utterly hedgeless and treeless, seemed tc
have the filth and CRIME of the locality
ground into it. Bnt one object within tht
horizon disk gave relief to the hard, mis-
cradle feature of every visible thing il
Hucknall Torkard Away down the long
colorless street, nearly mile away, rose
huge Norman tower. 1t was dark ant
grim, and frowned upon the town and tn,
mean little church beneath it if sensi
tive of its sodden and insensate surround
ings. You win see hundred towers like
it, ecclesiastic brothers of hoary age, from
Penzance to Penrith, all over England
They defy time like the Round Towers o
Ireland, and their origin in essential oil
decorative architecture is almost as in
scrutable. Picturesque they are, agains
the horizon of an English landscape a:
the suggestive spire in the glorious gloani
ing of Millet's .'Angelus;" but their ag'
and strength are all else of merit they pos
sess; for, like this one of st. Mary Magda
lens church at Hucknall Torkark, they
are all of more consequence in space thar
the little broken-backed, chapel-lik,
churches they quite overshadow.