2 foot deep in the earth, in the porch of Godshill Church, as
unwilling that too much earth should hinder him from rising at the
resurrection; where we will leave him, to speak of Peter, the
second brother, and son of Richard the Bandit.
This Peter had left him by his father a little land at St Helens
(which how it might be purchased in his own name, being an alien, I
leave) worth per annum £5. Richard the elder brother being willing
to cheat his brother Peter of the land, was an importunate suitor
to buy it of him; the other, as crafty, permitted him to feed him
with money, and having had half or better of the worth of it, was
drawn (as he made himself very unwilling) to sign a deed of sale
thereof to his brother; but he being at that time under age; the
first act he did when he came of age was to cheat the cheater, and
nullify that deed by non-age. The enmity then between the two
brothers was great; they vilified one another, and discovered each
other’s knavery to the view of the whole Island. I cannot omit one
in silence, being so notorious. Richard Garde had good store of
monies, and durst not trust any man with it, no not his own house,
but hid it in a pot underground in the field, where one Smyth, his
neighbour, mistrusting some such matter, observed him more
narrowly, and by watching him found an opportunity to gain the
hidden pot. The other when he missed it, esteeming it little less
than his God, had well-near hanged himself, but that he had some
confidence by the devil’s means to recover it, whereupon the
brothers, now friends, consult of the means--Peter as the more
active man undertakes it, goes to a witch near Kingwood, or
somewhere, and brought home certain hope of the short return of the
monies; whereupon this Smyth, the Saturday following, was taken on
Hazely Hill on his return from Newport, and there in a great storm
was beaten, haled, whipped, misused, and almost killed (had not
some the next morning found him by chance) not knowing or seeing
who did act it, but affirmed it was the devil; and being long ill
after, could not be quiet in conscience till he had brought home
the pot of silver again to Richard Garde’s house to Binstead,
according to the true relation formerly made to Peter by the witch.
Peter, he got still lands and livings, whether by right or wrong I
suppose he little respected; he was, and is, one of the slyest,
craftiest knaves that I know; wit and judgment in matters of law he
hath enough both to serve his own turn and to cozen his neighbours;
a man worse spoken of I never knew.
A more honourable name was the Worsleys, here commemorated, long one of
the chief families in the Island, that had its principal seat at
Appuldurcombe on the high downs above Godshill. Its most notable member
was Sir Richard Worsley, a cultured Georgian squire, who wrote the
history of the Island in quarto, and on his travels made a celebrated
art collection to adorn the stately classical mansion which he
completed, replacing what had been a Benedictine Abbey. By marriage, the
house and its treasures passed to the Earls of Yarborough, who, half a
century ago left the Island, carrying away the art collection to be
mainly dispersed.
The Lord Yarborough of early Victorian times was a “character,” doughty
commodore of the R.Y.S., who tried to play Canute against the advance of
railways, a prejudice then shared by high and low, as we learn in
Herbert Spencer’s autobiography. His arbitrary lordship had his lands
protected against this radical innovation by a guard charged to take
into custody anybody with a theodolite, or who looked in the least like
a railway engineer. Upon one occasion, a man newly appointed to the
post, meeting his master in a secluded part of the estate, at once
collared him, an incident to be paralleled by Mr John Mytton’s famous
fight, in the disguise of a sweep, with his own keeper.
The mansion, whose name should be strongly accented on the last
syllable, stands in a combe, well displayed against its background of
dark wood. Since it passed to “overners,” it has been turned into an
hotel, then into a school; and a few years ago was acquired by a
community of Benedictine monks exiled from France, thus coming back to
its original owners. As already mentioned, this Order has since acquired
Quarr Abbey, and are spreading their establishments so fast over the
Island, that sound Protestants dread to see given up to cloisters all of
it that is not dedicated to golf.
For laymen and strangers in general the most interesting spot of this
demesne is the Worsley obelisk on the highest point of the Downs, raised
by Sir Richard Worsley to a height of 70 feet, but in 1831 struck by
lightning that shattered its huge blocks of granite into wild confusion.
From this half-ruined landmark the most extensive view in the Island
displays its whole length and breadth, from the chalk cliffs of Culver
to those about the Needles.
The railway, whose whistle might make that prejudiced Lord Yarborough
turn in his grave, of course keeps clear of far prospects, taking a
break in the Downs to thread its way through by Whitwell, which has a
remarkable restored church, originally composed of two chapels, one
belonging to Gatcombe, some miles north-west, once seat of another
branch of the Worsley family, and having an ancient church of its own.
Thus the line drops down into the rich greenery of the Undercliff, at St
Lawrence turning eastward above the shore, to reach Ventnor beside
Steephill Castle.
THE EAST SIDE
The more direct route from Ryde to Ventnor is by road, rail, or boat
along the east coast. From the Newport line diverges the old Ventnor
railway, at Brading sending off a branchlet for Bembridge, then holding
on behind Sandown and Shanklin. Thus on this side are strung together
the oldest and one of the youngest settlements of the Isle of Wight.
Brading, an hour’s walk from Ryde, seems an insignificant place now; but
it claims to have been the ancient metropolis of the Island in days when
St Helens was its chief port. Brading Harbour, still a tidal creek that
at high water dignifies the landscape, once made a wider and deeper
gulf, which guide-books of a century back describe as an inland lake set
in woods. Time was, says Sir John Oglander, that boats came up to the
middle of Brading Street, and in the haven below there would be choice
of twenty good shipmasters to undertake any voyage. Then the harbour
having become choked by unwholesome marshes, an attempt was made to
embank them, in which work Sir Hugh Middleton of New River fame had a
hand, and certain “ignorant Dutchmen” were brought over to put in
practice the art to which they owed their own native soil. But the
Dutchmen’s dykes broke down; and the land was not thoroughly reclaimed
till our own time saw the enterprise accomplished by that “Liberator”
Company of else evil renown.
Thus Brading came to be gradually stranded some mile or two inland. The
townlet, that once sent two members to Parliament, has relics to show of
its old dignity, its bull ring, its stocks, and its Norman Church, rich
in monuments, notably the Oglander Chapel enshrining tombs of a family
settled at Nunwell on Brading Down for many centuries, among them the
effigy of that Sir John Oglander, whose memoranda have been so much
drawn on by later writers. He tells how then “many score” of Oglanders
lay in this oldest church of the Island, where the latest addition to
the family chapel is a fine monument to his descendant of the Victorian
age.
The churchyard contains more than one celebrated epitaph, such as that
set to music by Dr Calcott--
Forgive, blest shade, the tributary tear!
and another on a child--
This lovely bud, so young, so fair,
Called hence by early doom,
Just came to show how sweet a flower
In Paradise would bloom.
Here was buried “Jane the young Cottager,” whose humble name has been
spread far by Legh Richmond, curate of this parish at the end of the
eighteenth century. It is to be feared that his writings are not so well
known to our generation as they once were in the religious world, for he
belonged to that school of Evangelical saints, who dwelt more on “Gospel
truths” than on “sound Church feeling”; and his long-spun deathbed
scenes are hardly to the taste of readers who have learned to look for
more piquant flavours in the literature of edification. But in the Isle
of Wight, where Protestantism puts down its foot the more firmly for
recent Catholic invasion, this kindly pastor’s “Annals of the Poor”
still seem to find a sale, as they once did in many languages. Mr
Boucher James goes so far as to say that “in a small way Legh Richmond
did for the Isle of Wight what Walter Scott did for the Scottish
Highlands,” by drawing tourists to seek out the scenes of his tracts. At
all events he deserves the brass now placed to his memory in Brading
Church.[2]
The much restored Church claims to represent that first erected on the
same site by Wilfred, apostle of the Island. But another lion of Brading
is older than its church, though unknown to Legh Richmond’s generation.
This is the Roman villa, discovered a generation ago by Mr Hilton Price,
Director of the Society of Antiquaries, which boasts itself to be the
finest of such miniature Pompeiis in England. It stands about a mile to
the south-west, near Yarbridge, the way being easily found, since
direction posts are never wanting in the Isle of Wight where there is
anything to pay for admission; and the tarred sheds that protect the
remains stand conspicuous against a chalk cutting on the Downs. A score
or so apartments have been unearthed, in some of which were found many
relics of the Roman occupation, the most interesting part of the show
being the tesselated pavements with their mosaic designs. There appear
traces of two successive ownerships, and of the villa having been
destroyed by fire, perhaps on the evacuation of Britain by the Roman
troops. The complete building seems to have been composed of the
_Urbana_, or master’s dwelling, the _Rustica_, or quarters for
dependents, and the _Fructuaria_, store-houses and offices, arranged on
three sides of a rectangle.
From Brading the central line of downs runs westward for half-a-dozen
miles to the valley of the Medina. On the height known as Ashey Down, a
stone pyramid, erected as a sea-mark, makes one of the favourite
view-points, looking over half the Island and across the Solent to
Portsmouth. Further along, below a crest marked by Saxon burrows,
Arreton has a fine prospect upon the valley of the Yar to the south.
This is one of the Island’s show villages, where excursion coaches stop
to let their passengers see the Church with its medley of Gothic
features, and the grave of the “Dairyman’s Daughter,” another of Legh
Richmond’s heroines, lying at peace among warriors and knights of old.
The old manor-house of this scattered village bears marks of bygone
dignity; but destruction has come upon Knighton, which a century or so
back could still be called the stateliest hall of the Island.
In the _Dairyman’s Daughter_, Legh Richmond turns his thoughts from
heaven to earth to give a description of what one surveys from the Ashey
Down sea-mark; one may omit some final features which have altered since
his day, as well as the moral drawn by the good clergyman from the fact
that so “much of the natural beauties of Paradise still remain in the
world.”
Southward the view was terminated by a long range of hills, at
about six miles distance. They met, to the westward, another chain
of hills, of which the one whereon I sat formed a link, and the
whole together nearly encompassed a rich and fruitful valley,
filled with corn-fields and pastures. Through this vale winded a
small valley for many miles; much cattle were feeding on its banks.
Here and there lesser eminences arose in the valley; some covered
with wood, others with corn or grass, and a few with heath or fern.
One of these little hills was distinguished by a parish church at
the top, presenting a striking feature in the landscape. Another of
these elevations, situated in the centre of the valley, was adorned
with a venerable holly-tree, which has grown there for ages. Its
singular height and wide-spreading dimensions not only render it an
object of curiosity to the traveller, but of daily usefulness to
the pilot, as a mark visible from the sea, whereby to direct his
vessel safe into harbour. Villages,
[Illustration: WATER MEADOWS OF THE YAR NEAR ALVERSTONE]
churches, country-seats, farmhouses, and cottages were scattered
over every part of the southern valley....
South-eastward, I saw the open ocean, bounded only by the horizon.
The sun shone, and gilded the waves with a glittering light that
sparkled in the most brilliant manner. More to the east, in
continuation of that line of hills where I was placed, rose two
downs, one beyond the other; both covered with sheep, and the sea
just visible over the farthest of them, as a terminating boundary.
In this point, ships were seen, some sailing, others at anchor.
Here the little river, which watered the southern valley, finished
its course, and ran through meadows into the sea, in an eastward
direction.
On the north the sea appeared like a noble river, varying from
three to seven miles in breadth, between the banks of the opposite
coast and those of the island which I inhabited. Immediately
underneath me was a fine woody district of country, diversified by
many pleasing objects. Distant towns were visible on the opposite
shore. Numbers of ships occupied the sheltered station which this
northern channel afforded them. The eye roamed with delight over an
expanse of near and remote beauties, which alternately caught the
observation, and which harmonised together, and produced a scene of
peculiar interest.
Westward the hills followed each other, forming several
intermediate and partial valleys, in a kind of undulations, like
the waves of the sea; and, bending to the south, completed the
boundary of the larger valley before described, to the southward of
the hill on which I sat.
This river Yar, not to be confounded with its namesake on the other side
of the Island, rises in the southern downs that bound the prospect over
its valley. At Brading, it finds a gap through the northern heights,
beyond which it winds sluggishly into that shrunken harbour. Above the
left side stands St Helens, with its wide green and fringe of leafy
lanes, having moved up from a lower site, where an ivied fragment of the
old church shows its whitewashed face to the sea as a beacon. The sandy
spit here has also been turned to use for golf-links, that helped
yachting to make the fortune of Bembridge. The Island seems now in a
fair way of being half laid out in golf grounds, but these were the
first, or among the first, which, though small, had the advantage of a
mild climate to invite enthusiasts in winter, when elsewhere red balls
would be necessary for their absorbing pastime. Links for ladies are a
later addition, on the opposite side of the river, that the eyes of
neither sex may be distracted from a foursome to what might become a
twosome game of life.
Bembridge itself, linked to St Helens by a ferry boat, nestles very
prettily on the wooded point opposite. The nucleus of nautically named
inns and cottages is much overlaid by hotel and lodging-house
accommodation, and by villas whose owners declare Bembridge to be the
Island’s pleasantest spot. One of its chief attractions, after golf, is
the view of shipping in the Solent mouth; but it has some pretty spots
on land, such as the avenue running inland from the bathing beach. To
the south it is sheltered by the Foreland, the most easterly point, over
which we may hold by mounting lanes, or take a rough path round the
shore, tide permitting, that has also to be considered in boating about
the dangerous Bembridge Ledges roughening the sea at low water.
Thus we pass on to the curve of Whitecliff Bay, where the chalk of the
Downs is broken by an expanse of Eocene beds, making for the geologist a
foretaste
[Illustration: SANDOWN BAY]
of that more glowing transformation scene shown in Alum Bay at the
Island’s western end. The Culver Cliffs at this end are protected by a
fort which has masked the Hermit’s Hole, a cave once used by smugglers.
On the other side of Bembridge is a small fortress, now so far behind
the times that it was lately advertised as suitable for a private
residence or an hotel.
Beyond Whitecliff Bay, the cliffs curve into the block of Bembridge
Down, crowned by a modern fort that has usurped the originally more
conspicuous site of Lord Yarborough’s monument, now neighboured by a
Marconi Telegraph Station. On the southern slope are the tiny Norman
Church and decayed manor-house of Yaverland, which makes a scene in the
_Dairyman’s Daughter_. Here we have come round to Sandown Bay, the
largest and openest in the Island, reached byroad and rail from Brading
through the gap at Yarbridge.
Sandown stands in a break of the cliffs, behind the centre of its bay,
compared of course to the Bay of Naples by those who never saw Vesuvius.
With its hotels, rows of smart lodging-houses, batteries of
bathing-machines, esplanade, arcade, and other very modern features,
this seems one of the most growing places in the Island; and I trust
Sandown will not take it amiss to be described as perhaps the most
commonplace resort here, or at least the most like the ordinary
Saturday-to-Monday. Its strong point is wide, firm sands for children,
and, on a common behind the town, excellent golf-links for their
elders, about the height known as “Majuba Hill,” the views from which
are complained of by votaries as interfering with strict attention to
their game. The summer season of this bathing-place is so prosperous
that some day its esplanade and Shanklin’s may stretch out to meet along
the couple of miles of cliff walk separating them. As link between them
springs up Lake, with its sumptuous “Home of Rest,” and its headquarters
of Isle of Wight cricket, behind the cliff descent at Littlestairs.
Sandown Pier has met with rough handling from winter waves, to which,
however, the enterprising town will not give in so easily as did King
Canute, whose renowned object-lesson against pride, according to legend,
had its scene not far off, across the Solent. The railway station, which
stands some way back from the sea, is a junction of lines to Newport,
Ventnor, and Ryde, so that Sandown visitors can easily reach more
picturesque corners of the Island, or can soon gain the Downs framing
the green valley of the Yar. Up this valley the first station is
Alverston, near a knoll known as Queen’s Bower, from the tradition that
upon it Isabella de Fortibus watched the chase in what was then Bordwood
Forest. Near the next station, on an eminence beside the river, stands
up the ancient fane of Newchurch, a parish that, in spite of its name,
is old enough to have once included both Ryde and Ventnor in its ample
bounds. Then by Harringford Station below Arreton Down, the line comes
to Merston Junction, there forking north and south.
In old days Sandown, then known rather as Sandham, was distinguished by
a “castle,” which has given place to less imposing but more formidable
modern forts, serving as models for sand-engineering to the troops of
children encamped here in summer. Its only other historical association
seems to be as retreat of the notorious John Wilkes in his old age,
cheered by more gentle pursuits than might be expected of a so
unedifying demagogue. He was given to rearing pigeons, as well as to
collecting books and china, at his Sandown “Villakin,” a sort of tawdry
miniature of Horace Walpole’s show, to which the owner’s notoriety
attracted many visitors. One describes him as walking about his grounds
“in Arcadian costume,” raking up weeds with a hoe and destroying vipers.
He complained that the pigeons he got from England, Ireland, and France
always took the first chance of flying home, so that he had almost given
up pigeon-keeping, “when I bethought myself to procure a cock and hen
pouter from Scotland: I need not add that _they never returned_.” This
cockney bitterness against North Britons, it will be remembered, made a
common subject between Dr Johnson and the ex-Lord Mayor, when Boswell
had his wish of bringing them together. Wilkes showed one visitor a pond
in the garden stocked with carp, tench, perch, and eels, because, he
said, fish could not be had by the seaside. Here he also employed
himself in writing the memoirs which he had the decency to destroy. The
toothless old rip, with one foot in the grave, bragged how his squinting
eye had done great execution with the pretty farmers’ daughters at
Newport market: well known is his boast, that, monster of ugliness as he
was, he could “talk away his face,” so as to be only a quarter of an
hour behind the handsomest man. Another story is that when, on his last
crossing of the Solent, the vessel was becalmed, he jocularly affected
to take this as a presage of death, since he had never been able to live
in a calm; but his retreat at Sandown seems to have been quiet enough
for Cowper or Hannah More.
If, to set off against that ribald sojourner of its neighbour’s,
Shanklin wanted to boast a notorious character, it was a generation ago
the headquarters, as perhaps rather it would prefer to forget, of one of
the most audacious criminals of our time, whose life, so far as I know,
has never been written, unless in criminal calendars. His real name, it
appears, was Benson, which does not figure in the Dictionary of National
Biography, though it deserves a place there beside Claude Duval’s and
George Barrington’s; while I am mistaken if it were not qualified by
nationality. On this side of the Channel he called himself a Frenchman;
but he spoke French and English equally well, as would hardly have been
the case, had he not passed his youth in England. He was certainly a
Jew, of typically Jewish aspect. His adventurous career would make a
theme for the pen that chronicled Jonathan Wild’s; and if I offer a
sketch of it, _faute de mieux_, it is because I had the advantage of
knowing him. He did me the honour of trying to make me one of his dupes,
in which enterprise, I am glad to say, he succeeded less well than in
other cases; and I did not care to cultivate an acquaintance which he
pressed upon me. But with a little help from hearsay and surmise, I
believe I can supply an outline of his history, wrapped as it was in
clouds of deceit.
He was, I am told, the son of a prosperous Jewish tradesman established
at Paris, who had means to put him in a position of respectability, if
not of wealth, “instead of which,” young Benson from his youth took to
knavery like a duck to the water. I have heard that in early life he had
been connected with the French or the Belgian press; and he showed some
familiarity with journalism, which he sought to turn to account in his
swindling schemes. That part of his life, indeed, lies in deep shadow,
which might be cleared up by research among police _dossiers_ of the
continent.
His first notable _coup_ in England seems to have been during the
Franco-Prussian War, when he flew at such high game as the very Lord
Mayor. A French town had been burned by the Prussians. While this
disaster was still fresh on our news sheets, there burst into the
Mansion House a voluble gentleman professing to be the mayor of that
town, come to throw himself on the generosity of the great English
nation. Our sympathetic Lord Mayor handed out a thousand pounds; and it
was whispered at the time that this plausible guest carried off also the
heart of his lordship’s daughter. The clever trick ended in detection,
arrest, and two years’ imprisonment; then by way of varying the monotony
of Newgate, Benson tried to set fire to his cell, but succeeded only in
burning himself about the spine, so as to be henceforth a helpless
cripple. There were some who surmised that he made the most of this
injury as helping out his disguise of deceit; but I never saw his slight
figure unless as recumbent on a couch, or carried like a child in the
arms of a big Frenchman, who passed as his valet, being really one of
the swindling gang of which Benson was the brain. His crippled state was
put down to a railway accident.