BYRON'S HONEYMOON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19382, 17 July 1926, Page 7 (Supplement)

BYRON'S HONEYMOON.

STORY OF HALNABY HALL. There is still standing in the North of England a house, Halnaby Hall, a few miles from Darlington, which was for a short time intimately associated with Bvron. This was the house where the poet spent his honeymoon. Little attention seems to have been paid to it by his biographers, says Mr. Oliver Brackett, writing in the London Observer, but It remains to-day, inside and outside, almost unaltered, and is not lacking in romantic associations. . The house itself is an imposing red brick structure of the 17th with a central block and side-wings crowned with a balustrade and having tall sash windows of the type associated with the later Renaissance in England. On one face projects a stone porch in two storey, a feature suggestive of the period of Elizabeth or James 1., and giving the impression that the building with its transitional character may have been the work of Inigo Jones or his pupil Webb. The interior shows signs of been redecorated toward the middle of the 18th century. One room, originally, the hall, and now used as the dining room, is most elaborately ornamented on walls and ceiling with "relief decoration in the French style, which became fashionable about this date. Much of the furniture, which includes a pair of extravagant gilt mirrors in the Chinese-Chippendale style, can be assigned to this period. Nevertheless, all the interior as it stands to-day remains almost unaltered since the time of Byron's visit.

It was through his marriage with Miss Milbanke that Byron comes to be associated with Halnaby - Hall. The house belonged to the Milbanke family and was lent to the poet and his wife for their honeymoon. A few of Byron's letters written from Halnaby have been preserved, one of which, addressed to his friend Moore, shows his characteristic, if somewhat forced, sense of humour:—

Halnaby, Darlington, Jan. 10, IBIS. I was married this day week. The parson has pronounced it—Perry has announced it —aad the Morning .Post also, as if it were a fabrication, or t£se puS-direct of a new stay-maker.

Then, after various references to literary matters, follows s footnote:—

P.S.—Lady Byron is vastly well. How are Mrs. Moore and Joe Atkinson's "Graces?" We mast present our women to one another. There is a story told of Byron's stay at Halnaby which is reproduced through the courtesy of Lady Wilson-Todd, the present owner of the estate. It relates to a nightmare or fit of madness which overcame the poet. The episode was related in a letter written out® by Dr. Skey-Muir, whose father is said to have received it in Greece from Byron himself. Byron, according to this legend, sleeping in an old-fashioned bedstead with red 'moreen hangings, dreamed about Orpheus and Eurydice,

and when half awake, imagined himself to be Orpheus. The firelight shining through the bright red hangings made the dream more vivid and impressive. He seised Lady Byron in a- sort of frenzy to carry her on, using at the same time fearful language: the more she resisted, the mo?e wilder he grew—in fact, it was like & sudden temporary madness, as Byron himself described it. The writer suggests that this was the commencement of Lady Byron's suspicions of her husband's madness, suspicions which his subsequent conduct did not help to allay.