The inhabitants of Newstead Abbey and Annesley Hall were neighbours and related to one another by marriage. Her ancestor, William Chaworth was killed in a duel with his cousin - William the 5th Baron Byron. His son, William Chaworth was unmarried and left the property to his first cousin - George Chaworth. George married his housekeeper, Anne Bainbridge and they had one daughter – Mary Ann Chaworth, heiress of Annesley (1785 – 1832). George Byron was fifteen years old and Mary Chaworth seventeen, when they met during the school holidays in the Summer of 1803. At first the attachment was mutual and encouraged by Mary’s parents who seemed delighted that the two houses might one day be re-united. Byron fell deeply in love. Later in life, he declared their relationship to be “the most romantic period of his life.”
Mary was kind to the fifteen-year-old adolescent - but did not give him reason to believe that she loved him to the extent that she would marry him. She famously exclaimed to her maid –
“What! Do you think I could care anything for that lame boy”.
Initially, Byron used to spend a mini break at Annesley Hall - away from his mother and Southwell. Nanny Marsden told the author Washington Irving–
“He used to ride over here and stay three or four days at a time, and sleep in the blue room Ah! Poor fellow! He was very much taken with my young mistress; he used to walk about the garden and the terraces with her and seemed to love the very ground she trod on. He used to call her ‘his bright morning star of Annesley’.”
“He was always a welcome guest, and some think it would have been well for him to have had her; but it was not to be! He went away to school, and the Major Musters saw her, and so things took their course”.
In her favourite sitting room, Byron would sit and listen to Mary as she played the piano and sung songs. The chamber built over the porch, at the entrance to the building, was described as the Oratory and referred to in Byron’s poem The Dream. It was here that Byron pictured his departure from Annesley after learning that she was engaged to be married.
He took her hand; a moment o'er his face
A tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came;
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu,
For they did part with mutual smiles; he passed
From out the massy gate of that old Hall,
And mounting on his steed he went his way;
And ne'er repassed that hoary threshold more.
In September 1803, Byron refused to return to Harrow at the start of the autumn school term. His mother wrote -
“He has no indisposition that I know of but love, desperate love, the worst of all maladies in my opinion”.
Mary Chaworth married John (‘Jack’) Musters of Colwick Hall in 1805. He was a great sportsman, a renowned foxhunter and Master of the Hounds - ten years her senior - and a well-known philanderer. He became High Sheriff of Nottingham and Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st regiment of Nottingham Militia. Their marriage united the estates of Annesley and Colwick and led to the joint surname Chaworth-Musters. They lived initially at Annesley Hall before moving to Colwick Hall in 1827.
A popular local legend states that after reading Byron’s poem The Dream, her husband, in a fit of jealousy, ordered the famous ‘diadem’ of trees to be felled. “The diadem of trees however was gone. The attention drawn to it by the poet, and the romantic manner in which he had associated it with his early passion for Mary Chaworth, had nettled the irritable feelings of her husband… The celebrated grove stood on his estate, and in a fit of spleen he ordered it to be levelled with the dust – mere roots of the trees were visible”. (Washington Irving)
In Epistle to a Friend (1811) Byron wrote to Francis Hodgson regarding his unrequited love for Mary Chaworth. The poem describes Byron’s heartbreak upon seeing her with her husband and their child during a visit to Annesley Hall in 1808.
Have seen her seated by his side, -
Have seen the infant which she bore
Wear the sweet smile the mother bore,
When she and I in youth have smiled
As fond and faultless as her child; -
And I have acted well my part,
And made my cheek belie my heart:
Return’d the feeling glance she gave,
Yet felt the while that woman’s slave; -
Have kiss’d, as if without design,
The babe which ought to have been mine,
And shew’d alas! in each caress,
Time had not made me love the less.
On another occasion a few days after he had been invited to dine at Annesley, he wrote –
While thou are blest I’ll not repine;
But near thee I can never stay;
My heart would soon again be thine.
I saw thee gaze upon my face,
Yet meet with no confusion there:
One only feeling could’st thou trace –
The sullen calmness of despair.
Byron looked back on their relationship with sadness and regret, imagining how different his life would have been if they had married. In 1821, in his diary, he wrote:
“Our union would have healed feuds in which blood had been shed by our fathers – it would have joined lands - broad and rich - it would have joined at least one heart and two persons not ill-matched in years (she is two years my elder) and - and - and - what has been the result? - She has married a man older than herself - been wretched - and separated. - I have married - & am separated. - and yet we are not united.”
What increased the melancholy character of this unfortunate and unrequited attachment, was that Mary’s marriage proved to be an unhappy one – marked by significant personal unhappiness, domestic instability and eventually a tragic end. Their relationship was marred by Jack’s lifestyle and infidelity, leading to a significant period of separation between 1813 and 1816 when she lived apart from him at Edwalton. Jack Musters was a renowned and obsessive sportsman, particularly famous as a huntsman and Master of the Hounds for several packs. His intense focus on field sports often led to Mary isolated with their eight children while he pursued his public and social interests. Their marriage had ‘soured’ early on and Mary reportedly began to regret rejecting her childhood suiter and even attempted to correspond with Byron during the separation.
Mary’s health began to fail in later years. She was described as having a ‘feeble state of health’ for several years leading up to her death, which included mental instability exacerbated by her unhappy marriage. In October 1831, during the Second Reform Bill riots, Colwick Hall was sacked by a mob of rioters. In the night, Mary was forced to hide outside in a shrubbery with her daughter Sophia during a freezing rainstorm, while the house was pillaged and set on fire.
The physical exposure and severe psychological shock from this event proved fatal. She never recovered and died four months later at Wiverton Hall in February 1832. Musters continued to live the life of a prominent landowner and sportsman for another seventeen years until his own death in 1849. He was often referred to as the ‘King of gentleman hunters’.
Despite the family discord, the couple had eight children. Their lives were closely intertwined with the Hamond family of Norfolk.
Mary Ann Musters (1806 – 1900): married Anthony Hamond and lived to be 94 years old. They had at least ten children.
John George Musters (1807 – 1842): married Emily Hamond and lived at Wiverton Hall. He served in the 10th Royal Hussars but died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-four. Their son George was a Commander in the Royal Navy and a famous explorer. He travelled with native tribes in South America and was known as the ‘King of Patagonia’.
Rev. William Musters (1809 – 1870): married Harriet Fitzbridges and had seven children. He became Rector of Colwick and West Bridgford.
Sophia Caroline Musters (1811 – 1894): famously hid with her mother during the 1831 riots and later married Commander Robert Nicholas Hamond. They settled in Norfolk and had at least seven children.
Henry Musters (1813 – 1896): married twice, leaving several children. He spent much of his later life in Ireland, serving as a High Sheriff and in the Dublin militia.
Charles Musters (1818 – 1832): midshipman in the Royal Navy, he served on HMS Beagle alongside Charles Darwin. He died of malaria in South America at the age of fourteen, just months after his mother’s death.
Alicia Augusta Sophia Musters (1819 – 1902): remained unmarried and became a beloved aunt to a vast number of nieces and nephews, effectively serving as a family matriarch until her death at the age of eighty-two.
Musters Chaworth (1820): died in infancy.
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