[Illustration: THE NEEDLES]
ISLE OF WIGHT
PAINTED BY
A. HEATON COOPER
DESCRIBED BY
A. R. HOPE MONCRIEFF
[Illustration: colophon]
LONDON
ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK
1908
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE ISLAND 1
II. RYDE 19
III. NEWPORT 33
IV. THE EAST SIDE 54
V. THE UNDERCLIFF 77
VI. THE BACK OF THE ISLAND 92
VII. FRESHWATER AND THE NEEDLES 104
VIII. YARMOUTH 119
IX. COWES 139
X. THE GATES OF THE ISLAND 154
List of Illustrations
1. The Needles _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
2. Ryde--Moonrise 20
3. Newchurch--the Mother Church of Ryde 24
4. Newport 34
5. Carisbrooke Castle 40
6. Godshill 50
7. Water Meadows of the Yar near Alverstone 58
8. Sandown Bay 60
9. Shanklin Village--Moonlight after rain 72
10. Shanklin Chine 74
11. Bonchurch Old Church near Ventnor 84
12. The Landslip near Ventnor 86
13. The Undercliff near Ventnor 90
14. Blackgang Chine 96
15. Shorwell 100
16. Farringford House 106
17. Freshwater Bay 112
18. Totland Bay 118
19. Yarmouth 120
20. Shalfleet 124
21. Calbourne 138
22. Yachting at Cowes 144
23. Osborne House 148
24. Whippingham Church 152
_Map at end of volume_
ISLE OF WIGHT
THE ISLAND
_The_ Island, as its people are in the way of styling it, while not
going so far as to deny existence to the adjacent islands of Great
Britain and Ireland--the Wight, as it is sometimes called by old
writers--has for the first fact in its history that it was not always an
island. It once made a promontory of Dorset, cut off from the mainland
by a channel, whose rush of encountering tides seems still wearing away
the shores so as to broaden a passage of half a dozen miles at the most,
narrowed to about a mile between the long spit of Hurst and the
north-western corner of the Island. It may be that what is now a strait
has been the estuary of a great river, flooding itself into the sea,
which, like Hengist and Horsa, is apt to prove an invading ally
difficult to get rid of. _Wight_ is taken to represent an old British
name for the channel, that, by monkish Latinists, came to be christened
_pelagus solvens_; but the Solent may have had rather some etymological
kinship with the Solway.
The Channel Island, as thus its full style imports, has a natural
history of singular interest to geologists, who find here a wide range
of fossiliferous strata, from the Upper Eocene to the Wealden clay, so
exposed that one scientific authority admiringly declares how it “might
have been cut out by nature for a geological model illustrative of the
principles of stratification.” Perhaps the general reader may thank a
writer for not enlarging on this head; but a few words must be said
about the geological structure that shapes this Island’s scenery,
forming, as it were, a sort of abridged and compressed edition of no
small part of England. It divides itself into three zones, which may be
traced in the same order upon the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. Through the
centre runs a backbone of chalk Downs, a few hundred feet high and an
hour’s walk across at the broadest, narrowing towards either end to
crumble into the sea at the white cliffs of Culver and of the Needles.
To the south of this come beds of sand and marl, through which the chalk
again bulges out in isolated masses on the south coast to top the
highest crests of the Island, resting on such an unstable foundation
that extensive landslips here have thrown the architecture of nature
into picturesque ruin. The north side in general is tamer, a plain of
clays dotted by gravel, better wooded than the rest, though much of its
old timber has gone into the wooden walls of England, once kept in
repair at Portsmouth.
Across these zones of length, the Island is cut into two almost equal
parts by its chief river, the Medina, cleaving the central Downs near
Newport; and through gaps at either end flow two smaller rivers bearing
the same name of Yar, which seems to call Celtic cousinship with the
Garonne of France. For the Medina, as for the Medway, some such
derivation as the _Mid_ stream has been naturally suggested; but with
the fear of Dr Bradley upon me, I would pass lightly over the quaking
bog of place nomenclature. These three rivers have the peculiarity of
flowing almost right across the Island, a course so short that they may
well take their time about it. The other streams are of little
importance, except in the way of scenery. On the north side they form
shallow branching creeks which get from as much as they give to the sea,
that at high tide bears brown sails far inland among trees and hedges.
On the south, wearing their way down through the elevated shore line,
they carve out those abrupt chasms known as Chines, celebrated among the
beauty spots of this coast. The richest valley seems to be that of the
larger Yar, which turns into the sea at the north-east corner. The parts
most rich in natural charms are the south-eastern corner, with its
overgrown landslips, and the fissured chalk cliffs of the western
promontory beyond Freshwater.
All that variety of soil and surface is packed together into a roughly
rhomboidal shape, 23 miles long by 13 or 14 miles at the broadest, about
the size of Greater London, or say 1/36000 part of the habitable globe.
Within its circumference of 60 miles or so, this space of some 96,000
square acres holds a population of 82,000, beside innumerable transient
visitors. A pundit of figures has taken the trouble to calculate that
all the population of the world could find standing room in the Island
on the foot of four to the square yard, if the human race agreed on
spending a Bank Holiday here; but then little room might be left for
donkey-rides or switch-back railways. While we are on the head of
statistics, it may be mentioned that several scores of guide-books to
the Isle of Wight have been published, from Sir Henry Englefield’s noble
folio to the small brochures issued by hotels, these works containing on
an average 206,732 words, mostly superfluous in many cases; that 810,427
picture post-cards or thereabouts pass annually through the post-offices
of the island; that, in ordinary seasons, it sits to 1723 cameras; that
the hotel-bills annually paid in it would, if tacked together, reach
from St Petersburg to Yokohama, or if pasted over one another, make a
pile as high as the new War Office; and that 11.059 per cent. of the
newly married couples of Brixton, Balham, Upper Tooting, etc., are in
each year estimated to spend at least part of their honeymoon here, who
come back to confirm a prevailing belief that in no other part of the
British Isles does the moon shine so sweetly; while, indeed, a not quite
clearly ascertained proportion of them live to assert that the scenery
of the Island and the happiness of the marriage state have alike been
more or less overrated. I give these figures for what they are worth,
along with the unquestioned fact that the Isle of Wight belongs, in a
manner, to the county of Hants, but has a County Council of its own, and
in general maintains a very insular attitude of independence, modelled
on the proud bearing of Great Britain towards mere continental
countries.
Facts and figures somewhat fail one who comes to lecture on the original
population of this Island. The opinion fondly held in a certain section
of “smart” society, that the lawn of the Squadron at Cowes represents
the Garden of Eden, seems to rest upon no critical authority; indeed
Adam and Eve, as owners of no yacht, would not be qualified for
admission to this select enclosure. With some confidence we may state
that the Island was first peopled by aborigines enjoying no protection
against kidnappers and conquerors, who themselves found it difficult in
the long run to blackball undesirable aliens, as Australia and New
Zealand try to do under the protection of fleets steaming forth from the
Solent. There are well-marked indications of invasion by a Belgic tribe
from the mainland, to make this a “free” state, as early prelude to King
Leopold’s civilisation of the Congo. But we may pass lightly over the
Celtic period, with place-names and pit-dwellings as its records, to
come into clearer historic light with Vespasian’s conquest in A.D. 43.
For more than three centuries, with apparently one episode of revolt,
the Romans held Vectis, as they called it; and it has been maintained,
though this goes not unquestioned, that here was their _Ictis_ port, at
which they shipped the tin drawn from the mines of Cornwall. If so, the
island described by Diodorus Siculus was then an island only at high
water. The clearest marks left by Rome are the remains of villas
unearthed at different points, at least one of which indicates a tenant
of luxurious habits and tastes. We can understand how Italian exiles
might prefer this station to one in the bleak wilds of Derbyshire or
Northumberland, as an Anglo-Indian official of to-day thinks himself
lucky to have his compound at Poona or Bangalore, if not at Mahableshwar
or Simla. The Brading villa, indeed, like those of Bignor in Sussex and
Brough in Norfolk, seems rather to have been the settled home of a rich
nobleman, Roman or Romanised British, who had perhaps strong opinions as
to the way in which Rome neglected the wishes and interests of her
colonies. These remains were unearthed only in living memory, so that
writers of a century ago ignore such traces of Roman occupation.
Next came northern pirates, who would be not so much interested in the
mild climate of the Island, as in the creeks and landing-places of its
shores. They, too, have left relics of their occupation, chiefly in the
graves furnished with utensils and ornaments of heathen life. But when
Jutes and Saxons had destroyed the Roman civilisation, they fell under
another influence spread from the Mediterranean. Bishop Wilfred of
Selsey has the credit of planting, or replanting, Christianity in the
Island. It could hardly have taken deep root, when the Danes came to
ravage the monastic settlements. For a time the Cross and the Raven must
have struggled for mastery here like the encountering tides of Solent,
till that new wave of invaders ebbed back or was absorbed into the old
one; then again the Island became overflowed by a fresh storm of
conquest. If we consider from how many races, in three continents, the
Roman soldiery were drawn, and how the northmen must have mixed their
blood with that of a miscellany of captives, it is clear that, when
overrun by a fresh cross-breed between Gauls and Vikings, the population
of our islands, large and small, could in many parts have been no very
pure stock, such as is fondly imagined by the pride of modern
Pan-Celticism and Anglo-Saxondom.
In Norman England, the Wight soon emerges into note. King William
visited it to seize his ambitious brother Odo at Carisbrooke. The
fortress there was enlarged by William Fitz-Osborne, to whom the Island
had been granted, and who salved his conscience for any high-handed acts
of conquest by giving six churches to the Norman Abbey of Lira, the
beginning of a close connection with that continental foundation. His
son lost this lordship through treason; then for two centuries it was in
the hands of the Redvers, Earls of Devon, who grew to be
quasi-independent princes. The last of their line was Isabella de
Fortibus, holding her head high as Lady of the Island till on her
deathbed, her children being dead, she sold her rights to Edward I. for
6000 marks.
Henceforth this dependency was governed for the crown through
lieutenants at first known as Wardens, an office held by great names
like Edward III. in his childhood, the Earl of Salisbury, the Duke of
York, the Duke of Gloucester, Anthony Woodvile, Earl of Rivers; and in
such hands more than once showing a tendency to become hereditary. Their
post was no sinecure, for at this period the Island made a striking
point for French raids that have left their mark on its towns. Not that
the raiding was all on one side. The islanders long remembered ruefully
how Sir Edward Woodvile led the flower of their manhood into France,
when of more than four hundred fighters only one boy escaped to tell the
tale of their destruction, that seems to have been wrought by French
artillery, turning the tables on the English long-bow.
The weak Henry VI. had crowned young Henry Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick,
as “King of the Isle of Wight.” Politic Henry VII., for his part, saw
well to restrain the power and dignity of those Island deputies, now
styled Captains. In the Tudor time, three Captains came to note, Sir
Richard Worsley as carrying out the reformation policy of Henry VIII.,
Sir Edward Horsey, as a doughty soldier of fortune, who is said to have
begun his career with a plot to betray the Island to the French, but on
coming into this office kept a sharp eye both on foreign enemies and on
his private interests, doing a bit of piracy for his own hand, if all
stories be true; then Sir George Carey, who had the anxious task of
defence against the Spanish Armada. When that peril went to pieces, the
Island at last began to enjoy a period of secure prosperity, testified
to by the fact that most of its old houses, mansion or cottage, appear
to date from Elizabeth or James. Yet so late as 1627, soon after the
captaincy of Lord Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron, it got a scare from
a Dutch fleet, taken for Spaniards.
New confusion came with the Civil War, in which the Wight people were
mostly on the parliament’s side, while the leading gentry stood for the
king. The best-known episode of the Island’s history is Charles I.’s
imprisonment at Carisbrooke, which may be passed over here to be dealt
with more fully _in loco._ The Isle of Wight might well back up the
parliament; as then and till the Reform Bill it sent six members, an
over-representation now reduced to one, and formerly, indeed, apt to be
qualified by official interference with freedom of election.
In Charles II.’s “golden age of the coward, the bigot and the slave,”
the governorship of the Island was given to Lord Colepeper, who made
himself obnoxious here, and got a wider field of domination in
Virginia, where also he seems to have been unbeloved. His huge colonial
grants passed by marriage of his daughter to Lord Fairfax, whose eldest
son settled on his American property, said to extend over five million
acres, giving up the English estates to his younger brother. This was
clearly hint for Thackeray’s story of the Virginian Warringtons. Only
the other day the heir of this family, America’s sole peer, became
naturalised afresh in England, after his title had been laid up in
lavender, or tobacco, for several generations. Another personage in _The
Virginians_, General Webb, held the governorship of the Island for a few
years. But now the Captains, or Governors as they came to be styled, had
little to do which could not be done by deputy, while the post was worth
holding by men of high rank, as by the Dukes of Bolton and Montague
under George II., when its salary was £1500 a year.
Under them the Island was happy enough to have little history, though it
had again to be on its guard when Dutch admirals talked of sweeping the
English ships from the Channel. It saw William’s fleet sail by on the
way to Torbay; and two years later it seemed about to have from its
southern cliffs the spectacle of a hundred French sail engaging the
English and Dutch squadrons; but the scene of that encounter was shifted
to Beachy Head, where it ended in a manner not much dwelt upon in our
naval annals. Then the long struggle with Napoleon once more turned this
outpost of England into a camp. In the peaceful days that followed, the
governorship became a mere ceremonial function. The title, held by
Prince Henry of Battenberg, was passed on to his widow, the youngest
daughter of Queen Victoria, whose death at Osborne makes the last date
in this Island chronicle.
An insulated people naturally formed a race apart, speaking a marked
dialect, and cherishing a strong local feeling. Their situation, and the
once pressing need to stand on defence by land and sea, bred a sturdy
race, whose vigour in old days was apt to run to such enterprising ways
of life as piracy, wrecking, and smuggling; but all that may be
forgotten like scandal about Queen Elizabeth. One evil of the islanders
keeping so much to themselves has been a stagnation of population, that
through intermarriage made for degeneracy. Sir John Oglander, the Stuart
worthy whose jottings on his contemporaries prove so amusing, says that
the Island once bore the reproach of not producing a good horse, a wise
man, or a pretty woman; but he hastens to add _Tempora mutant_; and on
the last head, the stranger can judge the calumny for himself. Hassell,
an eighteenth century tourist, remarks for his part on the beauty and
even elegance of the farmers’ daughters at Newport market, while of the
fathers he hints at grog-blossoms as a too common feature. The lately
published memoirs of Captain Elers treat the former point as matter of
notoriety. A certain boisterous pertness noted in the male youth of the
Island has been referred by sociologists to an absence of birch in its
flora. All ages have been noted for a clannishness that was once
disposed to look askance on such “overners” or “overers” as found their
way into the Wight, whose own stock we see to have sprung from
immigrants of different breeds. But here, as elsewhere, schools,
newspapers, and facilities of travel are fast rubbing down the
prejudices of parish patriotism.
The upper class, indeed, is now largely made up of well-to-do strangers
drawn to the Island by its various amenities; while the sons of the soil
have laid aside suspicious dislike of the outsiders whom they know as
profitable guests. From pictorial cards, valentines, and such vulgar
documents, they appear to bear the nickname of Isle of Wight “Calves,”
which may be taken as a sub-species of the “Hampshire Hogs,” who suffer
such neighbourly satire as is shown in by-words like “Norfolk
Dumplings,” “Lincolnshire Yellow-bellies,” or “Wiltshire Moonrakers.”
Some strangers, however, at the height of the season, have been more
inclined to find for the natives a zoological similitude in the order of
_Raptores_. “I do not mean,” as a precise old gentleman once explained
to me of his landlady, “that she has feathers and claws like a bird; but
I assert that, in character and in disposition, she resembles a
vulture.” It is often, indeed, made evident to the meanest capacity that
the Island hosts belong to a long-billed family; but they perhaps as
often as not may be classed as overners, or referred to the hydra-like
form of polyzoic organism popularly known as a Company, Limited.
The soil is well cultivated, and many of the farms look thriving, though
the rank hedges and the flowers that colour some of the pastures, spread
a more pleasing view for an idle stranger than for a practical
cultivator. The Downs support flocks as well as golf clubs; the breed of
Island sheep was highly esteemed of old, where the climate makes for
early lambing. When some parts were overrun with “conies,” Sir E. Horsey
had the name of bringing in hares, which he paid for at the rate of a
lamb a-piece; but foxes and badgers have not crossed the Solent.
The coast folk carry on amphibious business, from oyster beds to
ship-chandling. Ship-building at Cowes, and cement-making on the Medina,
are the only large industries I know of. The chief trade seems to be in
tourists, who are taxed, tolled, and touted for at every turn by the
purveyors of entertainment for man and beast, the managers of
excursions, and the enclosers of natural curiosities. Visitors come from
far and near, the Island making a holiday resort for the townsfolk of
Portsmouth and Southampton, while among foreign tourists, it seems to
have a special attraction for Germans; and some of the American
travellers who “do” Europe in three weeks are known to spend as much as
several hours in scampering across to Ventnor.
A good many visitors, however, come for a considerable time, delicate or
luxurious folk, lucky enough to be able to take advantage of a milder
climate in our uncertain winter or still more treacherous spring. One
must not indeed expect too much of any British climate. About Torquay,
the chief rival of Ventnor as a sheltered resort, a well-known novelist,
after living there through many winters, says bluntly that it is a
little less cold than the rest of England. Such places are apt to bid
for patronage by statistics of sunshine, temperature, and so forth,
which may prove bamboozling, not to say deceptive, when it is difficult
to tabulate the occurrence of trying extremes under the changes and
chances of our fickle sky. The best test of climate is its general
effect on vegetation; and it may be said with truth that the Isle of
Wight, on the whole, is two or three weeks ahead of inland districts of
our country. But it cannot claim to be such a halcyon spot as the
dream-world of another poet, who knew it well in all weathers.
The island-valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor any wind blows loudly, but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea.
There is snow here, sometimes, and rain pretty often; while wind makes
for the islanders as touchy a point as the title “Lady of Snows” for
Canada; but in fact, being an island, this nook must take the
consequences of such a situation, swept by breezes from all quarters,
especially from the south-west. The north and east sides of course are
more exposed to bracing winds, and their resorts, from Cowes to Sandown,
come into favour rather in the summer season, that fills the sails of
yachts and pleasure-boats, as well as greases the wheels of coaches
cruising upon land excursions. The “Back of the Island” is more stormed
upon by Atlantic gales, while one half of it, the famous Undercliff, is
so snugly shut in to the north, as to make a winter garden of myrtles,
fuchsias, arbutus, and still rarer evergreenery. Here, perhaps, it was
that a Miss Malaprop complained of this Island as not “embracing”
enough, and got advice to try then the Isle of Man.
As to the best time for a visit, that depends partly on which aspect of
the Island is to be sought, not to say on circumstances and opportunity;
but to my mind it wears its fairest face in its dullest season, when its
hotel-keepers see cause to take their own holiday. Then, in early
summer, flocks of sheep-like tourists miss seeing at their freshest and
richest the clumps of umbrageous foliage, the hedgerows and copses sweet
with gay blossoms, the turfy slopes spangled with wild flowers, the
glowing meadows, the blooming cottage plots, the “weeds of glorious
feature,” and in short, all the charms that make this one of “the
gardens of England,” in which, exclaims Oliver Wendell Holmes,
“everything grows with such a lavish extravagance of greenery that it
seems as if it must bankrupt the soil before autumn.” It is better
visited in spring, which comes so early up this way, that Easter as well
as Whitsuntide holiday-makers may catch the first flush of one of those
nooks described by Dr Bromfield in his _Flora Vectensis_--“a blooming
wilderness of primroses, wood-anemones, violets, and a hundred other
lovely and fragrant things, overtopped by the taller and purple-stained
wood-spurge, early purple orchis, and the pointed hoods of the
spotted-leaved wake-robin; the daisy-besprinkled track leading us
upward, skirted by mossy fern-clad banks on one hand, and by shelving
thickets on the other, profusely overshadowed by ivy-arched oak and ash,
the graceful birch, and varnished holly.” Then still sooner may be
looked for the spangling of the sheltered Undercliff, where, as Miss
Sewell describes: “The ground is tossed about in every direction, and
huge rocks lie scattered upon it. But thorns and chestnuts and ash-trees
have sprung up amongst them upon the greensward; ivy has climbed up the
ledges of the jagged cliffs; primroses cluster upon the banks; cowslips
glitter on the turf; and masses of hyacinths may be seen in glades, half
hidden by the foliage of the thick trees, through which the jutting
masses of grey rock peep out upon the open sea, sparkling with silver
and blue some hundreds of feet beneath them.”
Old books frequently dwell on what was once a drawback, the difficulty
of getting to the Island--the getting away from which is more apparent
to one class of his present Majesty’s subjects, housed here at
Parkhurst, much against their will. Piers and steamboats have now made
it as accessible as the Isle of Thanet, and more often visited than the
Isle of Dogs. There are half-a-dozen routes from London, through the
three opposite ports of Portsmouth, Southampton, and Lymington, not to
speak of Southsea and Stokes Bay. The Portsmouth route comes into
closest touch with the Island’s own railways, made up of several local
enterprises, amalgamated into the two systems styled the Isle of Wight
Railway, and the Isle of Wight Central Railway. Of these lines the Rev.
Mr Chadband would be bound to say that they are perhaps the worst, the
dearest, and the most provoking in the country; to which their
shareholders could reply only by a groan worthy of Mr Stiggins, while a
want of mutual connection and convenience may be referred to relations
like those of Messrs Jorkins and Spenlow. From their exactions it is the
hasty stranger that suffers most, the inhabitants being better versed in
devices of season-tickets, parliamentary fares, and other mitigations of
a tariff, by which, for example, it costs sixpence to go from one end of
Ryde Pier to the other, and half-a-crown or so for the dozen miles’ trip
across the Island.
But if the visitor grudge such charges, he will find plenty of
competition in the excursion coaches that gape for him as soon as he
gets off Ryde Pier, or the motor ’buses that hence ply in several
directions. For his own wheel there are excellent roads, as well as
others; and to see the best of the Island, he does well if he can avail
himself of that oldest and cheapest conveyance known to merry hearts as
“Shanks’ mare.” It is on this footing, chiefly, that I have wandered
about the Isle of Wight, through which I am now to conduct the gentle
reader on a rambling and gossiping tour in his own arm-chair.
RYDE
We need not cast about for the spot at which to make our landing on the
shores of Wight. Lying opposite Portsmouth, with a crossing of
half-an-hour or so, Ryde is the chief gateway of the Island and knot of
its railways to every part, Cowes being more in touch with Southampton,
and Yarmouth at the west end coming closest to the mainland port of
Lymington. With its suburbs and dependencies, Ryde is considerably the
largest place, having outgrown Newport, the titular capital, by a
population largely made up of retired veterans, families of officers on
service, and other select society such as one finds thickly settled at
Southsea, across the Solent. So much one can guess from the look of the
brick villas that spread over the swelling heights of Ryde’s background,
and of the smart shops in and about its Union Street, while an unusual
proportion of hotels and refreshment rooms hint at influx of transient
visitors both from the classes and the masses.
A century ago, this could be described in a local guide-book as a “place
of some consequence.” Only since then has Ryde become the goodly town
we now see, yet it is no mushroom resort, but old enough to have been
burned by French assailants under Richard II. The sheltered anchorage
behind the Isle of Wight was once too well known to wind-bound
travellers, who might have to fret here for weeks or months, as Leigh
Hunt, on his voyage to Italy, spent half a year at Plymouth. So
Fielding, sailing to die at Lisbon, was detained at Ryde, which seems
then to have been little more than a hamlet. No tea could be got there;
it had a butcher, but he was not “killing”; and though the inn at which
the travellers put up could supply a long bill, its other accommodations
were such that they preferred to take their dinner in the barn. The
landing of a helpless invalid proved a trying adventure where, “between
the sea and the shore, there was at low water an impassable gulf, if I
may so call it, of deep mud, which could neither be traversed by walking
nor swimming, so that for near one half of the twenty-four hours, Ryde
was inaccessible by friend or foe.” In spite of such disadvantages, the
dying novelist has nothing but good to say of it, once he had got over
its moat of mud.
This pleasant village is situated on a gentle ascent from the
water, whence it affords that charming prospect I have above
described. Its soil is a gravel, which, assisted with its
declivity, preserves it always so dry, that immediately after the
most violent rain, a fine lady may walk without wetting her silken
shoes. The fertility of the place is apparent from its
extraordinary verdure, and it is so shaded with large and
flourishing elms, that its narrow lanes are a
[Illustration: RYDE--MOONRISE]
natural grove or walk, which in the regularity of its plantation
vies with the power of art, and in its wanton exuberancy greatly
exceeds it. In a field, in the ascent of this hill, about a quarter
of a mile from the sea, stands a neat little chapel. It is very
small, but adequate to the number of inhabitants: for the parish
doth not seem to contain above thirty houses.
Marryat also speaks of the muddy shore, over which voyagers had often to
be carried ashore pickaback or in a horse and cart, as was the way of
landing at Buenos Ayres till not so long ago. But he saw the
construction of its pier, one of the earliest pleasure piers in England,
that made a great difference to Ryde; and for a time it shot up into
more note and fashion as a seaside resort than it enjoys now among so
many rivals. A hint of that palmy time is given by some dignified old
mansions about the town, which, during the last half century or so, has
looked for quantity as much as quality in its visitors.
At the present day, the bed of mud has been overlaid by a coat of sand,
taken advantage of for bathing facilities still too dependent on the
tide, ebbing out beyond an unfinished pier that serves as a swimming
bath at certain hours. By means of groynes, the sand is now being coaxed
to gather less thinly on the shore, where a battery of bathing machines
stands in position. Else Ryde is no very good bathing place; nor,
exposed to cold winds, does it invite invalids like the other side of
the Island. Its interests have been rather in yachting and boating; and
its frequenters those who relish a breezy marine flavour in life.
August, gay with regattas, is the great time for this Solent shore. The
broad pier, 2000 feet long, sets the tide at defiance, carrying out both
a railway and a tramway to meet the steamers that land holiday crowds as
well as passengers for all parts of the Island. For the amusement of
youthful visitors a canoeing lake has been made in the gardens, behind
the sea-wall running eastwards, with its fine view of Spithead and the
chequered forts islanded in the Solent.
It was off this Esplanade that in 1782 went down the _Royal George_, one
of our finest men-of-war, upset by a land breeze when heeled over safely
enough, as was supposed, in calm weather. The story goes that a
pig-headed officer of the watch would not attend to the carpenter’s
report that she was filling; then naval discipline cost the loss of
seven hundred lives. Great numbers of bodies came ashore at Ryde, to be
buried under what is now a trim promenade. Others found a resting-place
in Portsea Churchyard, where a monument to their memory stands under the
noble tower of the new Church, so well seen from the railway as it
enters Portsmouth. The catastrophe is best remembered by Cowper’s
epitaph, “Toll for the Brave!” and by the narrative in Marryat’s _Poor
Jack_. Less well known are Sir Henry Englefield’s lines, written when
the graves could still be seen near the shore.
“Thou! who dost tread this smooth and verdant mead,
Viewing delighted the fair hills that rise
On either hand, a sylvan theatre;
While in the front with snowy pinions closed,
And thunders silent, Britain’s guardian fleet
On the deep bosom of the azure sea
Reposes aweful--pass not heedless by
These mould’ring heaps, which the blue spiry grass
Scarce guards from mingling with the common earth.
Mark! in how many a melancholy rank.
The graves are marshall’d--Dost thou know the fate
Disastrous, of their tenants? Hushed the winds,
And smooth the billows, when an unseen hand
Smote the great ship, and rift her massy beams:
She reeled and sunk.--Over her swarming decks
The flashing wave in horrid whirlpool rushed;
While from a thousand throats, one wailing shriek
Burst--and was heard no more.
Then day by day,
The ebbing tide left frequent on the sand,
The livid corpse; and his o’erloaded net
The shuddering fisher loathed to drag ashore.
And here, by friends unknown, unmarked, unwept,
They rest.”[1]
Another event in Ryde’s history was the landing here of the Empress of
the French after Sedan. Her escape from Paris had been conducted by Dr
Evans, the American dentist; then from Deauville, Sir John Burgoyne
brought her across in his yacht through such stormy weather, that it had
almost been forced to put back into some French port. At sunrise, a Ryde
hotel close to the pier turned away two travel-worn ladies accompanied
by a gentleman, who found refuge in the York Hotel. So the unfortunate
Empress, with her small suite, could at last rest in peace. The first
thing she did, Dr Evans tells us, was to seek comfort in a Bible that,
by chance as she supposed, lay in the small top room given to this
_incognita_. Charles X. on his final exile, had also made for the Isle
of Wight, arriving off Cowes, but he does not seem to have landed there.
On the approach by sea, Ryde presents an attractive aspect, displayed as
it is upon a hillside, with its steeply sloping streets, its conspicuous
spires, and its fringe of handsome villas embowered in rich woods that
enclose the town on either side. The most prominent landmark is the
far-seen steeple of the parish Church in the upper part of the town,
built after designs of Sir G. G. Scott, and ornamented with a fine show
of modern art. Beside this stands the Town Hall, beyond which another
church combines a Strawberry Hill Gothic effect, with a light colouring
that at first sight suggests Oriental associations: it might do for a
chapel to the Brighton Pavilion. Ryde has its fair allowance of churches
and chapels of all denominations; but we need not look here for ancient
dignity or picturesqueness, even the parish churches of such modern
resorts as
[Illustration: NEWCHURCH--THE MOTHER CHURCH OF RYDE]
Ryde or Ventnor having been originally chapels of ease to some now
obscure metropolis inland. Georgian solidity or Early Victorian stucco
are the highest notes of antiquity in this smart and cheerful town,
which at the last census, taking in its outskirts, counted 18,000
inhabitants.
Church architecture, it may be said, is not the strongest point of the
Island; though several of its churches have interesting remnants of
Norman work; and I have heard of one native claiming for his parish
steeple an unrecorded antiquity of more than 1600 years, in proof of
which he showed the figures 1620 still legible on the fabric. One of the
most notable ecclesiastical antiquities, Quarr Abbey, lies a pleasant
couple of miles’ walk westward from Ryde. The way is by the adjoining
parish of Binstead, with its modern Church preserving some fragments of
the old one, originally built by the Abbot of Quarr, “because he would
not have all his tenants and the inhabitants of Binstead come to trouble
the Abbey Church.” A gravelled path and a lovers’ lane through a series
of oak copses, giving peeps of the mainland coast, bring one in view of
Quarr Abbey, whose ivied ruins are now to be restored. The name Quarr or
Quarraria is said to come from the Binstead quarries of Upper Eocene
limestone, that figures largely in Winchester Cathedral. The abbey was
founded in the middle of the twelfth century by Baldwin de Redvers, in
fulfilment of a vow made during his banishment for taking Maud’s part
against Stephen, after which his head was lifted up again, so that he
became Lord of the Island and Earl of Devon. He was the first to be
buried here, as later were other persons of note, among them the Lady
Cicely, second daughter of Edward IV., who had married a gentleman of
the Island. Among the numerous traditions attached to the abbey, there
is one that connects a wood called Eleanor’s Grove with the queen of
Henry II., said to have been imprisoned here.
This was the second Cistercian house established in England, which
before long absorbed so much of the Island, that the Abbot of Quarr
became a petty prince. “Happy was that gentleman that could get his son
to attend upon him,” says Oglander: such offices as treasurer, steward,
chief butler, and rent-gatherer of the abbey being sought by the cadets
of the chief families. But after the Dissolution it soon fell into
decay, monuments and all being sold; and in the beginning of the
seventeenth century, Sir John Oglander found that the very site of the
church had already been forgotten by old men, even by one who remembered
the days of its glory. At this time it had been bought for £3000 by Mr
Fleming, descendant of the Dutch mason brought over from the Low Country
by the founder to carry out the work. “Such,” moralises the knight, “is
the inconstancy of Fortune, which, with the aid of her servant Time,
pulleth down great things and setteth up poor things.”
Since then, the outlines have been more carefully uncovered, or traced,
including part of a wall with which, by license of Edward III., this
abbey was fortified against the attacks of sea-rovers, and of the French
invaders who often assailed the Island. Among the old monuments recorded
by Oglander was one to a “great Monsieur of France” slain here in
Richard II.’s reign. The structure, of which some interesting fragments
remain, was in part adapted as farm buildings, the refectory turned into
a barn. But Quarr has now been bought by the community of French
Benedictines that some years ago crossed the Channel to Appuldurcombe on
the southern downs of the Island; and it is understood that they propose
to restore the abbey as a congenial home. A swarm of nuns of the same
Order has lately settled at Ryde, after a temporary residence at
Northwood, near Cowes. Carisbrooke houses other foreign _religieux_, who
have also a school at Ventnor. Thus the whirligig of time brings about
its revenges, heretic England giving sanctuary to the churchmen of
Catholic France.
From Quarr Abbey, one can stroll on to Fishbourne at the mouth of a
creek called the Wootton River, which, a mile or so up, at Wootton
Bridge is crossed by the road from Ryde to Cowes, passing presently
behind the grounds of Osborne. Wootton is another of the oldest Wight
churches, still preserving some features of the time when it was built
by one of the Lisle family (_De l’Ile_) who took their name from this
Island, and gave it to Dame Alice Lisle, the victim of Judge Jeffrey’s
bloody assize. Holding on up the wooded bottom of Wootton River, one
reaches the village of Haven Street, from which an hour’s walk leads
back to the southern outskirts of Ryde, where all but the name of St
John’s Park is now overspread by brick and stone. The way by road gives
a fair notion of the Island scenery on this side; and might be very
pleasantly extended by lanes and field-paths, copses and commons,
seaming and roughening the three mile belt between the sea and the Chalk
Downs to the south.
But the many rambles that may be taken here-abouts are the business of
guide-books; and the high-roads leading out of Ryde need not be pointed
out to its crews of coach excursionists, and to passengers on the motor
omnibuses that start here for different parts of the Island, some faring
as far as Shanklin and Blackgang Chine. For the present let us leave
roads and railways, to stroll along the shore to Seaview, which, at the
north-eastern corner, makes a sort of chapel of ease to Ryde, as
Paignton to Torquay or Westgate to Margate.
This gives another very pleasant hour’s walk, to be taken along the
sea-wall that continues Ryde’s Esplanade. On the land side the way is
much shut in by park woods and castellated villas, but it has an open
view over the Solent, across which at night gleam the myriad lights of
Portsmouth and Southsea; daylight shows this strait enlivened by all
kinds of shipping, and often glorified by the spectacle of a British
fleet, as sometimes by international naval encounters in peace and
courtesy. Our modern ships of war may make a more impressive display,
yet no longer such a picturesque one as when a century ago one visitor
could tell how he saw the whole Channel filled by a convoy, several
hundreds strong, so that “the blue waters in the distance were almost
hidden by the snow-white cloud of sails.” The pictorial place of these
sails, indeed, is often taken by the racing yachts, which run all to
sail; and “a sail is one of the most beautiful things which man ever
invented!” So exclaims Mr George A. B. Dewar, whose “Pageant of the Sea”
papers in the _Saturday Review_ give us Turneresque pictures of this
landlocked waterway:--
In autumn the sea and landscapes of the Isle of Wight, towards
evening and in very still weather, seem to belong to some enchanted
country. The hills of the Island, seen from the water, grow utterly
unsubstantial then. They turn dove-coloured, and so soft and light
in their appearance that they might, to a stranger to the place,
pass for clouds on the horizon. The sea, with the mild sun on it,
is emerald; and the band of colour that adjoins it to the north,
given by the wooded shores of Hamble and Southampton Water, is a
splendid purple. At other times, on an autumn evening like this,
but with some imperceptible difference in the atmosphere, the faint
outlines of hills far beyond Portsmouth and its land forts, have
the peculiar appearance of being partly covered with a thin coating
of stained snow. Every shade of blue and green touches these waters
between mainland and island in early autumn as in summer, often
changing with a changing sky from minute to minute.... Not all the
illusions of this sea are kept for the hush of sundown and the
shade of coming night. The sea blooms of the Solent, films and
hazes, at all seasons glorify and mystify every ship they touch,
clumsy coal barge, harbour-dredger, graceful racing yacht.
More than half-way on our path starts up Puckpool or Spring Vale, a row
of seaside lodgings nestling under the protection of a fort that makes a
link in Portsmouth’s fortified _enceinte_. Here the shallow shore
spreads at low water a wide stretch of sand, so firm that horses as well
as children can disport themselves upon it; and it seems as if the
nearest fort could almost be reached on wheels. The path holds on by a
strip of meadowland; and thus we come to Seaview, that has overlaid the
old name of Nettlestone Point.
Seaview, indeed, was first Seagrove before it became a flourishing
family bathing-place, with the unusual setting of woods so close down to
the water’s edge that one may lie in a boat and hear the nightingale
almost overhead; but these groves tantalise the landlubber by a crop of
forbidding notices to trespassers. It has a chain pier of its own, and a
regular service of steamboats from Southsea, that run on to Bembridge.
This pier, with the hotel behind, splits the place into two separate
sections, marked by their architecture as belonging to different strata
of pleasure-seeking. The part nearer Ryde is the true old Seaview of
wandering rows, bow-windowed lodging-houses, and modest refreshment
rooms. On the east side of the bay has sprung up a newer, smarter,
redder bit of esplanade, making a pretty contrast to its dark green
background. A private road leads to this end, which, else, at high tide
is cut off, so that the butcher or greengrocer may be seen delivering
his wares by boat in quite Venetian manner. There are sands for
children, and rocks for scrambling, and a shallow beach for launching
canoes on these safe waters, where the red sails of the Bembridge Yacht
Club make dots of colour, as do the tents here taking the place of
bathing-machines. Another peculiar feature is the diving-boards anchored
out at sea, since the tide, creeping up to the Esplanade garden gates,
woos paddlers rather than swimmers. Seaview, in short, holds itself
something out of the common in the way of bathing-places, dealing with
strangers rather in the wholesale way of house-letting than the retail
trade of apartments.
Beyond the broken point, where one seems to catch Nature in her
workshop, kneading clay into firmer forms, a rough walk along the shore
of Priory Bay leads on to St Helen’s, reached inland by the road through
Nettlestone Green. Once clear of houses, we plunge among the rank
greenery of the Island, too much monopolised here by the grounds of the
Priory, which preserves the name of a colony of monks swarmed over from
France to St Helen’s in early Plantagenet days. This was one of the
properties bought by Emmanuel Badd, who, _teste_ Sir John Oglander,
began life as a poor shoemaker’s apprentice at Newport, “but by God’s
blessinge and ye loss of 5 wyfes, he grewe very ritch,” rose to be High
Sheriff of Hants, and was buried under an epitaph in Jacobean taste,
ending
So good a Bad doth this same grave contain,
Would all like Bad were that with us remain!
But at St Helen’s we have rounded the corner of the Island, which we may
now survey from another line of operations.
NEWPORT
Before holding on by road, rail, or boat along the coast, let us take a
course through the centre of the Island, on which we can pay due respect
to its capital. From Ryde, Cowes, and Freshwater run railways that meet
at Newport, where the Medina begins to be navigable, and thence go off
branches to Ventnor and Sandown. This junction, then, makes the
radiating point of the Isle of Wight’s communications; and all its main
roads converge at Newport, which, though not quite so large as Ryde, and
not so well recruited by strangers, is a flourishing place of over
10,000 people.
One sees at once that this is no _ville de plaisance_, but the home of
all sorts and conditions of men, taking toll on the country round by
varied industry. Roman origin has been claimed for it on hint of the
straight streets and crossings that give it a more regular aspect than
most country towns, shading off indeed on the skirts into wandering
lanes and rising outgrowths of the “Mount Pleasant” order. A peculiar
feature is the little Quay quarter, where the Lugley stream from
Carisbrooke comes in to make the Medina navigable for small vessels
freighted with timber, coals, malt, wheat, and so forth. But the tidal
river below Newport adorns the landscape only at high water, being too
often a broad ribbon of slime creeping between low banks, not beautified
by the big cement works lower down, that get their raw material in mud
as well as chalk. More picturesque are the Chalk Downs, on the other
side embracing the town with their green shoulders and quarried faces.
The central cross-way is marked by a memorial to Queen Victoria. Close
by, too narrowly shut up in its square, stands St Thomas’s Church, whose
stately tower and high roof pitch makes the boss of Newport from all
points of view. This is little more than half a century old, taking the
place of the ancient shrine dedicated to the memory of St Thomas à
Becket, which was rather unwarrantably pulled down, that “holy blissful
martyr’s” dedication being at the same time usurped by Thomas the
Apostle, a saint more congenial to our age. Some of its old treasures
are preserved in the present structure, notably the Charles I. pulpit,
carved with personifications of Justice and Mercy, the Three Graces, the
Four Cardinal Virtues, and the Seven Liberal Arts, among which a goat
marks the name of the artist, Thomas Caper. Another antiquity is the
monument to Sir Edward Horsey, Captain of the Island, 1565-82, showing
his canopied effigy in armour with an epitaph attributing to him, after
the manner of such, more virtues than he gets credit for in history.
The
[Illustration: NEWPORT]