5acf? /II^usters 135 



What chance had the fat, bashful, lame boy against such a 

 ' young Greek god ? ' 



Whether Jack Musters knew of Byron's attachment 

 to Miss Chaworth I cannot say — if he did, he probably 

 regarded his rival with contemptuous pity, though he 

 had reason to alter his opinion later, as I gather from 

 the poet's description of his first meeting with his 

 successful rival in love. It was at a dinner at Lord 

 Jersey's place, and the details are prosaic enough. 

 Musters, I should state, had taken his wife's name on his 

 marriage. ' Chaworth the foxhunter,' writes Byron, 'nick- 

 named Cheek Chaworth, and I sweated the claret, being 

 the only two who did so. Chaworth, who loved his 

 bottle, and had no notion of meeting with a bon vivant 

 in a scribbler, in making my eulogy to somebody one 

 evening, summed it up, " By God, he drinks like a man." ' 



Some years later Byron dined with Mary Chaworth 

 and her husband at Annesley, and was much affected at 

 the sight of her little daughter. That his love and ad- 

 miration for his idolised Mary had not abated may be 

 surmised from what he said to one of his friends : ' I 

 found in her all that my youthful fancy could paint of 

 beautiful.' 



Mary Chaworth's marriage, as I have already hinted, 

 was not a happy one. Handsome Jack unfortunately 

 had an ineradicable propensity to make love to every 

 woman he met. His irregularities in this respect caused 

 discord at home, which culminated in a separation from 

 his wife, whose mind became subsequently affected to 

 a degree which almost justified Byron's words, ' the one 

 to end in madness.' Her end was tragic. During the 

 riots which followed the rejection of the Reform Bill in 

 1 83 1, a mob of Nottingham roughs attacked and sacked 



