BYRON SIR, —There are two other probable explanations of the effect
of Byron's death on the dinner party at Belvoir, described by Mr. Harold Nicolson last week, either of which would relieve the members of that company of feeling that the poet was a " cissie " or that he held their own avoca- tions in contempt. First, he was a sportsman. I happen to be stationed near the Byron country at the moment, and spent a long, quiet after- noon recently going over Newstead. The lake in which he swam, the singlesticks, the boxing gloves, the inscription to Boatswain, the two helmets he had at Missolonghi, even the letters deriving from the scandals, all told, among other things, of a more than somewhat ta!ented young buck.
Then he was a neighbouring landlord, who had great respect for his position. "Byron, a Peer of England," was one of the signatures on display ; and surely it was his ingrained pride, dignity and sense of responsibility in this character which, though almost invisible to his fellow-Englishmen, would have struck Goethe as a blinding splendour of civilised character. Moreover,' Newstead is almost the next large estate westward from Belvoir. If the Abbey were not in a wooded hollow you would be able to see it from the high ground near Burton' Joyce, and, standing there two Sundays ago, looking onwards to the East, we suddenly saw Belvoir Castle itself, square and grey among its own trees, shimmer out of the haze across the broad Trent valley.
It is not difficult to believe Lord John Manners' story.—Yours truly, ALAN COLLINGRIDGE.
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