guest only to be detained as a prisoner. The room he occupied has
disappeared, but the window in its outer wall, through which he twice
essayed to escape, may yet be seen. It was during his captivity here
that he first lost hope; his hair turned gray and his trim, jaunty
cavalier air forsook him. Finally, on the last night of November,
1648, he was seized by two companies of Roundhead horse and carried to
Yarmouth and from thence to Windsor Castle. This was the beginning of
the end. After the King's execution, the Princess Elizabeth and the
young duke of Gloucester were sent here by order of Parliament. The
princess soon died and is buried in Newport Church, where a marble
effigy marks the tomb. Aside from the melancholy history of King
Charles, the annals of Carisbrooke have few events of importance. Its
decay and resulting ruin were due to ages of neglect.
Beginning at Ryde, four miles north of Newport, we followed the coast,
passing a succession of resort towns. Ryde is situated on a hillside
sloping toward the sea, and its water front with drives and gardens,
is one of the most charming we know of. The road from Ryde to Ventnor
is crooked, narrow, and highly dangerous in places. At times it runs
through closely bordering forests; again along the edge of an almost
precipitous incline; then it climbs a long, terribly steep hill, but is
never more than a few hundred yards from the coast.
The Royal Hotel at Ventnor comes up to its pretensions but poorly.
We were surprised to find the last three parties registered in the
visitors' book coming from France, Germany and Sweden respectively,
while our own added a fourth foreign registry in succession. The number
of foreign guests at this hotel seemed to indicate that Ventnor is
more popular with continental people than the average English resort
town, for as a rule we found very few European guests. Ventnor is
situated on a precipitous hill-slope, quite sheltered from the north
and east. The houses run up the hill in terraces and the ledge of rock
along the beach is barely wide enough for the promenade. The climate
is mild and few spots in England are more favored by invalids. It was
this that brought poor John Keats in 1817, and he composed "Lamia"
during his stay. Here was a favorite resort of Tennyson before he
settled in Freshwater, and Longfellow's visit in 1868 is commemorated
by an inscription which he composed for the fountain near the hotel in
Shanklin, the old town nearly contiguous to Ventnor. Shanklin contains
many bits of the picturesque old-time island--touches of antiquity
quite wanting in Ventnor.
The following day was one to be remembered; a day as near perfection
as one may have in England--the sky pale blue, cloudless and serene,
toning to lucent gray near the horizon, and the air fresh and
invigorating. Our road closely followed the coast with an almost
continual view of the sea. The ocean lay darkly under the rocks,
rippled over stretches of silvery beach, or glittered under the long
headlands, whose white chalk cliffs were almost dazzling in the
sunlight. There were flower-embowered cottages along the road, but
no villages for many miles. We gave two hours to the twenty miles to
Freshwater and enjoyed the beauty to our hearts' content--but no! to do
that one must linger until darkness shuts out the view.
Freshwater became famous through its association with Tennyson,
and the poet by coming here destroyed to a certain extent the very
retirement and quiet that he sought, for the tourists followed him,
much to his disgust. Yet he used to go about in a great slouching
hat and military cloak that advertised his presence to everyone--an
inconsistency that even his little grandchild is said to have noticed,
and that she queried in her childish innocence, "If you don't like
people to look at you, Grandpa, why do you wear that queer hat and
cloak?" But in any event, the trippers, though often snubbed for their
pains, flocked to Freshwater. They still come to the old home of the
poet, and the present Lord Tennyson is said to welcome them even less
than did his father.
We stopped at a post card shop just opposite the rear entrance to
Farringford--a rustic gate opening into a narrow roadway between
tall trees--and they told us that the ban on visitors was absolute.
But one might see the house from the road. The unprecedented snow of
the preceding winter had almost destroyed the tree so beloved of the
poet--the
"giant Ilex, keeping leaf
When frosts are keen and days are brief,"
which hid the front of the house. Besides, the owner was now at
Aldworth and the gardener might not be so averse to visitors--but
we ignore the hint and content ourselves with a visit to Freshwater
Church. Lady Tennyson is buried in the churchyard, her grave marked
by a white marble cross. Inside there are tablets inscribed to the poet
and his wife, who were regular attendants at the church, and a marble
statue to the memory of Lionel, the son who died on shipboard in the
Red Sea when returning from India. The village of Freshwater is full of
picturesque cottages, and there are many more pretentious modern villas
which indicate that the blight of a popular watering place threatens
it. High on the hill, over the town and sea, towers the Tennyson
memorial, a great Celtic cross, forty feet in height, reared by the
poet's admirers in England and America.
[Illustration: THE TENNYSON HOME, FRESHWATER, ISLE OF WIGHT.]
There is little to see at Yarmouth, where we wait an hour or more for
the boat. In the church is buried Admiral Holmes, the man who took the
village of New Amsterdam from the Dutch and called it New York, and
a marble statue, representing the great seaman standing by a cannon,
commemorates this and other achievements. An English writer tells this
curious story of the monument:
"Even a poor judge of such things can see at a glance that this is
no ordinary piece of work. It is said that the unfinished statue was
intended to represent Louis XIV. and was being conveyed by the sculptor
in a French ship to Paris in order that the artist might model the head
from the living subject. Holmes captured the vessel and conceived the
brilliant idea of compelling the artist to complete the work with his
(the admiral's) likeness instead of that of le Grand Monarque. The old
fellow seems to wear a grim smile as he thinks of the joke, but as the
head is undoubtedly of inferior workmanship to the body, the artist may
have felt that he had his revenge."
The admiral was a native of Yarmouth and a part of his mansion is
incorporated into the Pier Hotel. It still retains the old staircase
and much antique paneling; and a tablet on the wall recites that
Charles II. was a guest here in 1671 on a visit to Holmes.
We were soon aboard the little steamer, and despite marine rules and
regulations, on the bridge with our friend the captain. We noticed that
he was going far out of the usual course, directly toward the wreck of
the Gladiator. For the warship Gladiator lay on her side a few furlongs
off the coast west of Yarmouth, whither she had staggered and fallen
when mortally wounded in a collision with the American liner, St. Paul,
a few months before. Salvage crews were working to raise her and we
naturally expressed interest in the sight. Our ancient mariner heard
it and as he steered toward the wreck muttered something about getting
"out of the way of the current," but added, "They may think I did it to
give you a good view of the Gladiator!"--and we are still wondering if
that was the reason for his detour. Far down the Solent he pointed
out the Needles, Swinburne's "loose-linked rivets of rock," and he told
us of the wild storms and shifting bars that confound the navigators in
this locality. Ere long he had to attend closely to business, for the
channel to Lymington is narrow and tortuous, being navigable only at
high tide. A large coaling steamer partly obstructed our way and called
forth a series of marine objurgations from our friend, but he quickly
swung to the pier and the motor soon scrambled out of her little craft
up the steep bank to terra firma.
We find that our jaunt in the Isle of Wight has covered only seventy
miles and occupied just a day; still, thanks to our trusty car, we have
seen about all the points of interest that the average tourist would
care to see and which it would have required several days to visit in
the ordinary manner of travel.
[Illustration: COTTAGE, FRESHWATER, ISLE OF WIGHT.]
XVII
SOUTH ENGLAND NOOKS
One will find Lyndhurst in New Forest a pleasant place for a day's rest
after returning from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. Especially is
this so if it be early in the summer before the more crowded season
comes on. The town will be fairly quiet then and the Crown Inn has an
air of solid comfort that almost takes it out of the class of resort
hotels. Its spacious gardens to the rear afford a sylvan retreat that
is an agreeable variation from an almost continual life on the open
road. Lyndhurst, it is true, is no longer the retired village of
half a century ago, when Leighton and Millais came here to get away
from busy London and to pursue their sketching without interruption.
The rather ugly red brick church just over the way from the Crown
evidences Lyndhurst's modernity, though its distressing newness may be
momentarily forgotten in contemplation of Leighton's great altar piece,
illustrating the story of the ten virgins.
One may care little about William Rufus, who was so fond of hunting in
New Forest and who, while engaged in his favorite pastime, was killed
by a forester's arrow; yet a pilgrimage to the spot where he is said
to have fallen is worth while--not merely to see the iron casting which
encases the old stone, but to view one of the prettiest glades in the
forest. We came early in the day, which is the time to come to avoid
the crowds of trippers who flock here in season, and we had undivided
possession of the scene of sylvan beauty. A shaded byway leads to the
main road, which soon brings us to Romsey.
There is little to detain the wayfarer in Romsey aside from the abbey
church, whose high roof reaches almost to the top of its central
tower--in fact, the noble bulk of the church rises over the town,
completely dwarfing the low buildings that crowd closely around it. One
can but admire its great size and perfect proportions, and though there
may be incongruous details, these will hardly be noticed by the layman.
The interior is almost pure Norman--massive pillars supporting the
great rounded arches. The height and size of the columns give the
church an impressiveness that is hardly surpassed by any other in the
Kingdom, and after Durham, it easily ranks as the finest example of
Norman architecture extant. It dates mainly from the twelfth century,
and a Saxon church previously occupied the site, slight remains of this
being incorporated into the present building. The most remarkable Saxon
relic is a life-size image of Christ upon the cross, of a type not
found later than the eleventh century.
There is often a gruesome side to the old English church--a bit of
human skin flayed from a living church robber is shown at Gloucester,
frightful effigies representing decayed corpses at Canterbury and
Sherborne, and at Romsey a broad plait of human hair, found in recent
restoration work. It was in a leaden casket and even the bones had
mouldered to dust, but the soft brown hair was almost unaltered, and
it is thought to have adorned the head of some Roman maiden, for the
casket showed traces of Roman work. The old caretaker has reserved this
weird little relic for the last of his wonders--we leave the abbey and
pass out into the sunshine of the perfect summer day. We shall not soon
forget Romsey Abbey Church and we cast more than one backward glance as
its giant bulk recedes in the distance.
[Illustration: ABBEY CHURCH, ROMSEY.]
Surely Twyford, a few miles south of Winchester, has quite outlived any
claim to its one-time title of "Queen of Hampshire villages." It has
paid the price of its popularity; modern brick buildings crowd upon its
creeper-clad cottages or have superseded them altogether. Its church
has been restored to the point of newness, and its yew tree, locally
reputed to be the largest in England, is easily surpassed by the one
at Selborne. Still, Twyford is not without an especial interest to
American visitors. Here stands the Elizabethan mansion where Benjamin
Franklin penned his autobiography while a guest of the vicar of St.
Asaphs. The rambling old house with a fine stretch of lawn in front of
it may be plainly seen from the road.
No matter how frequently the wanderer may pause in Winchester, the
attraction of the ancient capital can never be outworn. One might
spend a day among the college buildings, whose rough flint walls and
slate roofs, sagging but little beneath the weight of years, stand
much the same as when the builder finished them six hundred years ago.
Nor should St. Cross and its quaint brotherhood, one of those strange
medieval charities, be forgotten. A great quadrangle of buildings
and an elaborate church, all for "thirteen poor men decayed and past
their strength," seems a great means for a small achievement. Much
has fallen into disuse, but the church is still in good condition and
in many respects a remarkable piece of architecture. But after all,
Winchester's greatest charm is not in her college or her cathedral, but
in her old-world streets and odd corners. Nor should one forget the
shops in which antiques of merit in furniture, books and other articles
may be found.
A broad easy road leads from Winchester through Alton to Jane Austen's
Chawton, from whence a secluded byway brings us to Selborne, a nook
that every tourist knows. But Selborne, nestling beneath its hills, its
thatched cottages and weather-worn buildings stretching along a wide
grass-grown street, has no hint of the resort town. There are other
villages in the Hampshire and Surrey hills that may match it, but none
of them had a Gilbert White to give it immortality.
The street was quite deserted on the drowsy summer afternoon when
we checked our car under the great tree beneath which the village
worthys congregate in Selborne. A shopkeeper pointed out the Wakes,
once White's vicarage, which a modern owner has extended into a large
rambling house, probably bearing little resemblance to the modest home
of the curate of Selborne. Still, it incorporates his cottage, though
red brick and tile have displaced the half-timber gables and thatched
roof. But his church is not much altered and the giant yew, the largest
we saw in England, is still standing, hale and green. Its circumference
measured twenty-three feet in White's time, and he declared that its
years must be at least coeval with Christianity. Its girth at present
exceeds twenty-five feet. One cannot stand beneath it without being
impressed with its hoary antiquity, and the great events that crowd the
procession of years which have passed over the old tree quite overwhelm
one.
Indeed, it must have stood here when the Romans ruled in Britain; it
was sturdy and green when the Conqueror came a thousand summers past,
and it looks today as if it well might weather the storms of a third
millennium. Such historic trees have almost a human personality; and,
fortunately, they are carefully guarded by an enlightened public
sentiment in England.
The day is a quiet one in Selborne; we have the yew tree and church
all to ourselves. We wander about the churchyard and with difficulty
locate the unpretentious headstone with the almost illegible initials,
"G. W."--a simple memorial, indeed--though inside the church there is
an appropriate tablet to the memory of the well beloved naturalist. One
can easily see how he could lead in Selborne the simple studious life
reflected in his works. Verily, we need a revival of his plain common
sense today when the fiction of the nature-faker bids fair to supersede
the facts of natural history.
From Selborne it is but a step across the border into the downs of
Sussex--"Green Sussex, fading into blue," as the poet so aptly puts
it. The low sun strikes along the rough hills as we enter Midhurst,
nestling in a nook in the downs and reached by rather difficult roads.
It is a quiet town with an air of thorough self-contentment; a town of
weather-beaten houses with over-hanging timbered gables, sagging tile
roofs and diamond-paned casements; one long wide street sweeps through
it with narrow crooked lanes branching to either side--an unspoiled
old-country town, as yet quite undiscovered by the globe-trotters.
And yet Midhurst is not without historic importance, having been a
place of considerable size at the time of the Conquest. The site of
its strong castle which once stood on the banks of the pretty little
river, Rother, is now marked only by a grass-covered mound; but it was
once the home of a powerful Norman family, the Bohuns, who in 1547
entertained King Edward VI. in great splendor. Nor is Midhurst wanting
in associations with famous men, for Sir Charles Lyell, the great
geologist, and Richard Cobden, the "Father of English Free Trade,"
received their early education in the ancient grammar school which may
yet be seen.
But the romance of Midhurst is in Cowdray Park, the estate which
adjoins the town. What a pity it is that the mansion and the story
did not seize the fancy of Walter Scott--who alone could have done
it justice. We entered the park and drove through an avenue of giant
chestnuts directly to the shattered palace. And what a glorious ruin
it is, with its immense stone-mullioned windows, its great grouped
chimneys, and sculptured mantels and bosses that cling to the wall here
and there. Though roofless, the walls are almost entire, and over
them the ivy flings its dark mantle and falls in heavy masses from the
broken battlements. One does not care to analyze the ruin into its
component parts--what did we care for hall and chapel and chamber? It
is the impression that came to us as we wandered through it in the
fading light that lingers with us now. What a memory it is of darkened
halls, of great empty windows, through which the light falls mellow and
ghostly, and of weird traditions which the old crone who keeps the key
constantly droned in our ears.
[Illustration: COWDRAY CASTLE, NEAR MIDHURST.]
The curse of Cowdray has made more than one listener shudder and turn
pale and even those who listen as we do in benevolent scepticism can
only say, "Strange--strange!" For the lands of Cowdray were rent from
the monkish owners by the ruthless Henry and were given into the
possession of the first viscount of Montague, who built the splendid
palace, one of the costliest and most imposing in the Kingdom. It
was in no sense a fortified castle, but a great baronial residence,
standing on low-lying grounds with no attempt at strength of position.
In some respects the palace recalls Kirby Hall, though here ruin is
more complete.
When the last monkish habitant departed from the lands of Cowdray,
he left his curse upon them: that the line of the Montagues should
perish by fire and water. It was long in being fulfilled, but in 1793
the palace was destroyed by fire and the last Montague was drowned
in a foolhardy attempt to swim across the Rhine above the Falls of
Schoffhausen. He must have perished without knowing the fate of his
ancestral home. With the palace were burned many works of art and
antiquities of inestimable value, among the latter the roll of Battle
Abbey and the coronation robes and sword of William the Conqueror.
The estate descended to the sister of Lord Montague, who, dreading
the curse, is said to have guarded her two sons with the greatest
care, even filling the fish ponds near her home and keeping the youths
jealously away from sea and river. Yet one day they escaped from the
care of their attendants and were both drowned in the sea at Bognor.
The broken-hearted mother sold Cowdray to the Earl of Egremont, who had
no issue to inherit it. But the curse seems to cling to it still--after
our visit a wealthy London contractor purchased the estate and began a
thorough repair of the modern house (not the ruined palace), but while
the work was in progress the mansion caught fire and was burned to the
ground.
Darkness overtakes us as we sweep along the hills toward Worthing,
where we arrive by lamplight. Morning reveals a quiet and somewhat
secluded watering-town, patronized by people who seek to get
away from the ceremony and expense of such places as Brighton
and Bournemouth. Its hotels are unpretentious, comfortable and
accommodating--qualities not so common to resort inns as to go without
notice. But Worthing is modern; there is little to detain one on such
a pilgrimage as our own. We follow the broad white road which climbs
steadily northward from the sea to the distant hills and winds among
them to the dreary hamlet of Washington. The name, so familiar to us,
bears no reference to the distinguished family. It is of old Saxon
derivation--Wasa-inga-tun (town of the sons of Wasa).
[Illustration: A SUSSEX HARVEST FIELD.
From the Original Painting by Daniel Sherrin.]
Near at hand is Warminghurst, once the Sussex home of William Penn,
who bought the great house in 1676. One of his children died here and
is buried in Coolham churchyard close by. Penn was wont to attend
services at the meeting house not far away, which was built of timbers
taken from one of his ships. It goes locally by the strange designation
of "The Blue Idol"--just why, no one seemed to know--and we wandered
long in unmarked byroads ere we found it. It is a mile and a half from
Coolham, and one follows for a mile a narrow lane branching from the
Billingshurst road.
The simple old caretaker lives in a modern addition to the chapel and
tills the plot of ground in connection with it. The chapel is a low
brick-and-timber building whose interior is the plainest imaginable;
a half dozen high-backed benches, a platform pulpit without a stand,
and a few books made up its furnishings. As at Jordans, the women
sat during worship in a gallery which could be cut off by a sliding
partition in case of interruption by persecutors. The old law forbade
the assembling of women in the Quaker meetings, but from the gallery
they could participate in the services, yet could instantly be shut
out of the room if the king's officers should arrive. Outside, the
chapel is surrounded by greensward and tall trees, and the old man was
mowing the grass in the tiny burying-ground. Services are still held
at intervals, as they have been for the past two centuries or more.
Probably the spot was chosen on account of its very retirement, since
when the chapel was built it was a criminal offense for the Quakers to
assemble in any place of worship. The chapel is unaltered and seems
quite as remote and lonely as it must have been in Penn's time; and
the spirit of that old day comes very near as one stands in the tiny
room where the founder of the great American Commonwealth was wont to
worship according to his conscience, coming hither from Warminghurst in
his heavy ox-wagon.
[Illustration: THE "BLUE IDOL," PENN'S MEETING HOUSE, SUSSEX.]
We now begin an uninterrupted run to the east through Mid-Sussex over
an unsurpassed road to Cuckfield, Hayward's Heath, and Uckfield.
We continue on the London and Eastbourne road to Hailsham, from
whence a digression of three or four miles brings us to the ruins of
Herstmonceux Castle. Though styled a castle, it was really a great
castellated country mansion, never intended as a defensive fortress.
It reminds one in a certain way of Cowdray, though it lacks much of
the beauty and grace of the Midhurst palace, and its conversion by its
owner into a picnic ground also does much to detract.
The story of its destruction is peculiar. It was deliberately
dismantled and partially torn down in 1777 by its owner, who used the
materials in erecting a smaller house, now called Herstmonceux Place,
which would be less expensive to maintain. It is interesting to know
that Wyatt, the architect who dealt so barbarously with Salisbury and
Hereford Cathedrals, was the advisor of this wanton destruction. The
last descendant of the original owner died in 1662, and since then the
estate has changed hands many times. It is now one of the most popular
tripper resorts in Sussex and during the summer months the daily
visitors number hundreds.