half-way up the steep bank rising behind Ventnor to be the highest point
of the Island, nearly 800 feet. This down bears the name of St Boniface,
in honour of whom passing ships used to lower their topsails. The ridge
is reached by chalky paths from a road near the station, and from other
approaches at the top of the town; and however stuffy the air may be
below, the perspiring climber will not fail to find invigoration on the
open crest. For goal of the ascent, there is a wishing-well, as to which
old tradition has it that, if you reach the spot, Orpheus-like, without
casting a backward glance, the wish you may form while drinking of its
welcome spring will speedily be fulfilled. Certainly no finer view could
be wished for than one gains from the summit and along a wide stretch of
rambles on either hand. Holding on round a horse-shoe hollow, one may
turn down on the right to Shanklin; or, in the other direction, crossing
the rail and road to Ryde at Wroxall, pass over to the heights of
Appuldurcombe, where the Worsley monument makes a beacon. Hence another
lofty sweep brings one back to Ventnor by Week Down and Rew Down, used
as a golf ground, which must try the strength of elderly devotees on
their preliminary ascent to the clubhouse, standing out like an Alpine
chapel.
The stiff-kneed pilgrim who has not heart for such arduosities, may
follow the road along the face of St Boniface Down, or the sea-walk
below, to Bonchurch, that choice and lovely east-end of Ventnor,
clustered round a pond, overhung by a rich bank of foliage. The mildness
of the climate is attested by huge arbutus growths, recalling those of
Killarney, by fuchsias like trees, with trunks as thick as a strong
man’s wrist, and by scarlet geraniums of such exuberance that a single
plant will cover several square yards of wall in front of a house. This
one fact, more than any word-painting, gives an idea of the way in which
Bonchurch, and indeed most parts of Ventnor, are embowered by foliage.
In all sorts of odd nooks, either nestling against the steep wall of the
Undercliff, or hiding away in its leafy hollows, perch the picturesque
cottages and handsome villas that have attracted only too many
neighbours. The road is much shut in between walls of private grounds,
within which are enclosed some of the finest spots, such as the “Pulpit
Rock,” a projecting mass of sandstone marked by a cross, and another
known as the “Flagstaff Rock.”
Threading our way between these forbidden paradises, the road would take
us up by the new Church with its sadly beautiful graveyard. A lane turns
steeply downwards past the old church, now disused, one of the many
smallest churches in England, that has the further note of being the
sole wholly Norman structure in the Island. Here are buried the Rev. W.
Adams, author of the _Shadow of the Cross_, and John Sterling, Carlyle’s
friend, who came to die at Hillside, now a boarding-house near the upper
station at Ventnor. Another literary celebrity who lived here was
Elizabeth Sewell, whose _Amy Herbert_ and other edifying novels were so
popular in her own generation; and in one of them, _Ursula_, she has
described the scenery about her home.
The old church is said to be now in danger of slipping down towards the
sea. Below it, one descends to Monks’ Bay, traditional landing-place of
the French Benedictines who made themselves once so much at home on the
Island, as their spiritual descendants are doing now. The sea-walk
round
[Illustration: BONCHURCH OLD CHURCH, NEAR VENTNOR]
this bay leads into the Landslip, so called _par excellence_, as the
rawest and wildest disturbance of the Undercliff, its last fall being
not yet a century old. This wilderness of overgrown knolls and hillocks,
tumbled from the crags above, is not to be equalled on our south coast
unless by the similar chaos near Lyme Regis, whose broken and bosky
charms have been stirred into fresh picturesqueness by slips of more
recent date. Over daisied turf one here takes a twisting path that leads
by banks of bracken and bramble into thickets of gnarled thorn and other
blossoming shade, half-burying green mounds and grey boulders in a
tangle where one would soon lose oneself but for occasional glimpses of
the sea below, or for running upon the wall of a private enclosure
behind, guide for the wanderer in his descent towards Luccombe Chine,
who can also ascend to the cliff-walk for Shanklin. The scene is thus
described by Thomas Webster, a geologist who visited it a century ago,
while the first convulsion was still fresh, before the last slip of 1818
came to make confusion worse confounded.
A considerable portion of the cliff had fallen down, strewing the
whole of the ground between it and the sea with its ruins; huge
masses of solid rock started up amidst heaps of smaller fragments;
whilst immense quantities of loose marl, mixed with stones, and
even the soil above with the wheat still growing on it, filled up
the spaces between, and formed hills of rubbish which are scarcely
accessible. Nothing had resisted the force of the falling rocks.
Trees were levelled with the ground, and many lay half buried in
the ruins. The streams were choked up, and pools of water were
formed in many places. Whatever road or path formerly existed
through this place had been effaced; and with some difficulty I
passed over this avalanche, which extended many hundred yards.
Proceeding eastwards, the whole of the soil seemed to have been
moved, and was filled with chasms and bushes lying in every
direction. The intricate and rugged path became gradually less
distinct, and soon divided into mere sheep tracks, leading into an
almost impenetrable thicket. I perceived, however, on my left hand,
the lofty wall of rock which belonged to the same stratum as the
Undercliff, softened in its rugged character by the foliage which
grew in its fissures, and still preserving some remains of its
former picturesque beauty. Neglect, and the unfortunate accident
which had lately happened, had now altered the features of this
once delightful spot; and I was soon bewildered among rocks,
streams of water, tangling thorns, and briars.
The labyrinth between Luccombe and Bonchurch was not the only landslip
in modern times; and though there is believed to be little fear of any
further serious disturbance, occasional falls of rock are a warning how
this gracious ruin of nature might be renewed. _The_ Landslip here[3]
makes to my mind the _bouquet_ of the whole Undercliff, whose similar
features, on an ampler scale, of older wrinkles, and usually more veiled
by the work of man, stretch for miles westward along a rugged platform
varying up to half a mile in width. Words but feebly paint the charms of
a miniature Riviera, its broken land-waves foaming into groves, gardens,
and tangles of shrubbery. Between the wall of downs and cliff-buttresses
shutting it in to the north, and the sea dashing at its foot, the
foliage runs as rank as in a giant’s greenhouse, beautifully
[Illustration: THE LANDSLIP NEAR VENTNOR]
displayed by the accidents of the irregularly sloping ground.
Crags, knolls, and mounds confusedly hurl’d,
The fragments of an earlier world.
This line of cliffs may indeed remind us of the Trossachs, with one side
opened out to the sun and a richer vegetation at its base. Hawthorns,
elders, and other bushes grow here to a huge height, dappling the green
of the woods with their blossoms. Myrtle and other semi-tropical plants
flourish hardily; everywhere there are flowers prodigal as weeds,
notably the red Valerian flourishing on walls and broken edges. Huge
boulders are half hidden in ivy, heaps of old ruins are buried in almost
impassable thickets. It is hard to say when the huge bank of greenery is
most beautiful--whether in spring with all its blossoms and tender buds;
or in summer wearing its full glory of leafage; or again in autumn
brilliant with changing tints and spangled by bright berries: even in
winter there are evergreens enough to make us forget the cold winds
banished from this cosy nook. The one blot on such a paradise seems the
many notices to trespassers, warning that its most tempting nooks are
“private,” or the still more ominous placards of “valuable building land
to let on lease.”
The Bonchurch Landslip must be traversed on foot. On the other side of
Ventnor, a good road winds up and down beneath the inland heights, from
the edge of which one better sees how many houses and gardens are
hidden away here in their own greenery. Other aspects are presented from
a path rising and falling along the broken cliffs of the shore. The
road, in fine weather, will be astir with coaches, brakes, and other
wheels making for Blackgang Chine, that renowned goal of excursions from
all over the Island. Beyond Steephill Castle, it leads through St
Lawrence, the western, as Bonchurch is the eastern wing of Ventnor.
St Lawrence, known to guide-books that used to pass Ventnor Cove without
a word, has another of the smallest churches in England, now replaced by
a new one. The old church, till slightly enlarged by Lord Yarborough,
measured twenty feet by twelve under a roof which must have obliged a
tall knight to doff his helmet. Its saint, like St Boniface, gave his
name to a well now enclosed under a Gothic arch. But the great
institution of the parish, standing in a long terrace by the roadside,
is the Hospital for Consumption, which Ventnor people insist on as being
at St Lawrence, just as Woking pushes off the honour of the Brookwood
Cemetery. There was a time when this model hospital made an
advertisement for Ventnor; now new notions as to germ-infection tend to
scare away more profitable guests than its patients, who might be
expected to fall off under new theories of treatment for consumption,
but the building has had a recent addition in memory of Prince Henry of
Battenberg.
We are now among mansions and cottages of thick-set gentility, the
nucleus of which was a villa built by Sir R. Worsley, who made the
hardly successful experiment of planting a vineyard here. The oldest
structure seems to be a little ivy-clad ruin at Woolverton on the shore,
as to the character of which antiquaries for once have differed like
doctors, while its antiquity, like that of the old church, offers
hopeful promise for the permanence of modern buildings on these oft-torn
slopes. But we must not stop to speak of every house on this road, nor
of every private pleasance like that known to Swinburne--
The shadowed lawns, the shadowing pines, the ways
That wind and wander through a world of flowers,
The radiant orchard where the glad sun’s gaze
Dwells, and makes most of all his happiest hours;
The field that laughs beneath the cliff that towers,
The splendour of the slumber that enthralls
With sunbright peace the world within their walls,
Are symbols yet of years that love recalls.
On one hand, ascents like the “Cripple Path” would lead us to fine
prospects from the cliff-brow, while below, we might seek out Puckaster
Cove, or the Buddle Inn near a good stretch of sand, such as is rather
exceptional hereabouts, where fragments of the destruction above are
found trailing out into the sea to form dangerous reefs. One theory
makes Puckaster the Roman tin-shipping port; and it certainly proved a
haven of refuge for Charles II. in a storm, as recorded in a
neighbouring parish-register. Along the broken slope, the high-road
takes us as described by William Black, who has caught the
characteristic features of so many English scenes.
There was a great quiet prevailing along these southern shores.
They drove by underneath the tall and crumbling precipices, with
wood-pigeons suddenly shooting out from the clefts, and jackdaws
wheeling about far up in the blue. They passed by sheltered woods,
bestarred with anemones and primroses, and showing here and there
the purple of the as yet half-opened hyacinth; they passed by lush
meadows, all ablaze with the golden yellow of the celandine and the
purple of the ground-ivy; they passed by the broken, picturesque
banks where the tender blue of the speedwell was visible from time
to time, with the white glimmer of the star-wort. And then all this
time they had on their left a gleaming and wind-driven sea, full of
motion, and light, and colour, and showing the hurrying shadows of
the flying clouds.
The goal of Black’s party was the Sandrock Hotel, prettily situated by
the roadside at Undercliff Niton, which has a chalybeate spring, and
near it some local worthy thought desirable to erect a small shrine to
the memory of Shakespeare, anticipating the more pretentious monument by
which he is now to be glorified in London. From this seaside outpost
turns off the way to the inland village of Niton, lying behind in a
break of the chalk heights. It has been distinguished from Knighton by
the sobriquet of Crab Niton, “a distinction which the inhabitants do not
much relish, and therefore it will be impolitic to employ it,” as a
venerable guide-book very prudently suggests; and Knighton being
nowadays little more than a name, strangers will find no inconvenience
in taking that hint. The place boasts at least one sojourner of note, as
we learn from the
[Illustration: THE UNDERCLIFF NEAR VENTNOR]
tomb of Edward Edwards, leader of the Free Public Library movement that
has now so many monuments all over the country.
The parish of Niton is a large one, containing the head springs of the
Medina and of the eastern Yar, which the well-greaved adventurer might
hence try to track across the Island to their not very distant mouths.
More otiose travellers will find a road passing under St Catherine’s
Down for Newport and the central parts. From the sturdy church tower
with its low spire, a lane leads up to the top of the Down, whence we
could take a wide view of our wanderings, backwards and forwards. And
here, since we are almost at the end of the Undercliff, let us break off
to survey the longer but less famed stretch of this coast, westwards,
under its more comprehensive title.
THE BACK OF THE ISLAND
Our Pisgah for this stage is St Catherine’s Down, once held the highest
point of the Island, but now dethroned, like Ben Macdhui, in favour of
the Ben Nevis of St Boniface. It appears that in Georgian days Week Down
was charged with hiding Shanklin Down from the view of St Catherine’s,
as is no longer the case, the moral being that one or other of these
heights has been raised or depressed, as may well have happened to
superstructures upon so slippery foundation. In such a question of
measurements, at all events, “the self-styled science of the so-called
nineteenth century” with its more elaborate observations, gives a surer
title to eminence. But St Catherine’s is only a few feet lower than the
ridge above Ventnor; and from it, too, a fine prospect may be had,
ranging over the Isle of Wight to the heights of the mainland, and
across the Channel to the French coast in clear weather.
This broad and steep block of down is well provided with landmarks. On
the inland side a tall pillar was erected by a Russian merchant, in
honour of the Czar Alexander’s visit to England after the fall of
Napoleon; which monument a later generation very inappropriately adorned
with a memorial of our soldiers fallen in the Crimean War. On the top
are the restored remains of a chapel, where in old days a hermit-priest
made himself truly useful by keeping a light burning to warn mariners
off this stormy coast, and chanting prayers for their safety. A less
pious legend attributes the building of the old beacon here to a layman
amerced in such a penalty for having stored his cellars with wine sold
him by shipwrecked sailors, a class not very scrupulous as to owner’s
rights--
Full many a draught of wine had he y-draw
From Bourdeaux-ward, while that the chapmen sleep:
Of nicé conscience took he no keep.
Hard by is a later ruin to show how a lighthouse was designed in the
eighteenth century, but a practical age gave up the attempt to rear a
pharos on this cloudy height. Experience since then has gone to show
that a lighthouse serves its end better at the water’s edge than on
commanding cliffs like Beachy Head and Portland Point, from both of
which the old beacons have lately been moved to a lower level.
St Catherine’s Lighthouse stands on the point of that ilk, the most
southerly projection of the Island, where it has Lloyd’s signal station
for neighbour. Its recently intensified electric light is said to be the
most powerful in the world, every few seconds flashing over the sea a
beam of concentrated glare equal to millions of candles. It is also
equipped with a fog-horn, whose hoarse note of warning resounds for
miles, not altogether to the satisfaction of neighbours safe on land.
Yet they may take comfort to think how this screech is more fearsomely
disquieting when heard at sea. I once had such a note ringing in my ears
for two days together running through a chill fog off Newfoundland, with
icebergs about us that could be felt but not seen. Our boat was one of
the few that have crushed into an iceberg and crawled to land with the
tale; then to keep us cheerful we had on board a survivor of that
adventure, the perils whereof it pleased him to depict as looming
through a somewhat befogged imagination.
Another of our fellow-passengers was an American gentleman, who in
Europe had been qualifying himself to come out as an opera tenor. He was
coy of giving us a specimen of his talent, till one night we persuaded
him to begin _Ah, che la morte!_ But at once the officer of the watch
stepped up to silence him, explaining that his singing might drown the
sound of fog-horns. The vocalist was much offended at his organ being
coupled with a fog-horn; and I fear I gave him fresh offence by
suggesting “Signor Fogorno” as a suitable _nom de guerre_, when he
consulted me as to Italianising his rather commonplace patronymic. But
that careful officer was right, if the story be true that a German liner
ran ashore on the back of the Island because her own brass band deafened
her to the warning note that surely should have drowned all sweeter
sounds. And if our insulted tenor had known it, this artificial organ
has a very old theatrical connection, for _persona_ seems the earliest
form of such a sounding contrivance, originally a megaphonic mouthpiece
fitted to a mask which, as one of the classical stage properties, came
to denote the personage thus represented; and in time the name gained
respectability as the person or parson of a parish, who more or less
loudly warned his convoy of souls from the rocks and shoals of
ill-doing.
A different kind of signal would be keenly watched for in days when the
storm of Napoleon’s invasion was expected to burst upon our shores; and
on all prominent points beacons were kept ready to spread the alarm of
the enemy’s approach. The Isle of Wight was fully on the alert,
remembering how often it had been a vulnerable point in mail-clad wars
with France, though one would think that the bugbear, Boney, knew his
business too well to seek a difficult landing in an island, beyond which
he would be brought up by a dangerous channel, a strong arsenal, and a
naval rendezvous. It is said that the signalman at St Catherine’s,
probably having drunk the king’s health too freely in smuggled spirits,
mistook some fishing-boats for a French fleet, and lighted his beacon to
set men mustering in arms and women and children flying for refuge to
Newport. Sir Walter Scott tells us how the same sort of blunder stirred
a great part of Scotland. But on one side of the Island the scare did
not spread far, since the watcher at Freshwater very sensibly reasoned
that the wind then blowing would keep this coast clear of hostile ships,
and forbore to pass on the alarm.
Before the building of St Catherine’s lighthouse in 1840, shipwrecks
were terribly common on the Island. A famous one was that of the
_Clarendon_ West India-man, in 1836. Fourteen vessels in one night are
said to have gone ashore on Chale Bay. This is no coast for amateur
mariners. One is warned also against bathing as dangerous hereabouts,
yet I, unconscious, have swum below Blackgang in my hot youth; while in
cooler age I echo the caution. The hero of _Maud_, whose haunts we are
now approaching, would sometimes have been all the better and wiser for
a morning dip to cool his fevered brow; but he was not so much out of
conceit with life as to venture a bathe--
Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung, shipwrecking roar,
Now to the scream of a maddened beach dragged down by the wave.
--a sound which, Tennyson states, can sometimes be heard nine miles
inland.
Chale Bay, in which is Blackgang Chine, opens on the west side of St
Catherine’s Point, where, at Rocken End, the Undercliff seems tumbling
into the sea in a chaos of blocks of chalk and sandstone stormed upon by
the waves with freshly ruinous fury. Above, on the side of St
Catherine’s Down, the scenery alters from nests of Riviera greenery to
bare
[Illustration: BLACKGANG CHINE]
slopes broken by huge boulders and scars, that expose the geological
structure of the Downs to a spectacled eye. Here a slip of 100 acres
happened at the end of the eighteenth century; and the masterful
south-west blasts keep the ruin still somewhat raw, not skinned over as
in more sheltered nooks. The road, passing out of shade, makes a
Switzerlandish turn under the cliffs, as it descends to Blackgang Chine,
the final goal of lion-hunters on this route.
Entrance to the so much sought sight is through a sort of museum or
bazaar, where one must either buy something or frankly pay sixpence.
This reminds me of a visit to Pompeii more than forty years
ago--_eheu!_--when the soldier who conducted me seemed strangely
officious in repeatedly declaring that he was not entitled to any tip;
but, he added, “I have some photographs to sell.” There are those who
hint darkly at illicit entrances by which the unprincipled or
impecunious can smuggle themselves into Blackgang Chine without paying
or buying anything; but considerate visitors will not grudge a toll for
use of the walks and steps that open up the recesses of this great
chasm, through which echoes the boom of waves breaking on the beach
below. It differs from the Shanklin Chine in being not overgrown with
greenery, but showing through its nakedness the various _viscera_ of
greenish-grey sand and dark ferruginous clay that charm the geologist.
Description may not prove “up-to-date,” as the weather-worn sides
crumble away from year to year; yet Sir Henry Englefield’s account is
still to be quoted after more than a century.
No vegetation clothes any part of this rude hollow, whose flanks
are in a state of continual decay. They are mostly composed of very
dark blue clay, through which at intervals run horizontal strata of
bright yellow sandstone, about 12 or 15 feet thick, which naturally
divide into square blocks, and have exactly the appearance of vast
courses of masonry built at different heights to sustain the
mouldering hill. What has been hitherto described may be called the
upper part of the chine, for on descending to the seashore we find
that the stratum of ironstone already mentioned, forms a cornice
from whose edge the rill falls perpendicularly 74 feet. As the
substratum is of a softer material than the ironstone, being a
black indurated clay, the action of the fall has worn it into a
hollow, shining with a dusky polish from damp, and stained with the
deep greens of aquatic lichens, or the ferruginous tinge of
chalybeate exudations. The silver thread of water which falls
through the air in the front of this singular cove is, when the
wind blows fresh, twisted into most fantastic and waving curves;
and not seldom caught by the eddy and carried up unbroken to a
height greater than that from whence it fell, and at last
dissipated into mist. When a south-west wind creates a heavy swell
on the shore, the echo of the sound of the waves in this gloomy
recess is truly astonishing, and has exactly the effect of a deep
subterraneous roar issuing from the bottom of the cave. When sudden
heavy rains or the melting of snows increase the quantity of water
in the fall, the scenery of this spot must be more striking than
most in England.
Half a mile behind Blackgang Chine lies the village of Chale, whose grey
church tower stands among the grass-grown graves of many a drowned
mariner, that seem an imitation in miniature of the half-buried rocks
and mounds of the Undercliff. Chale is a resort on its small scale, with
some good old houses and fine scenes to attract visitors, not to speak
of a chalybeate well on the strength of which the place once aspired to
become a spa; and Dr Dabbs’ opinion is emphatic that its bracing air
deserves a success Chale has not yet commanded in rivalry to Shanklin or
Ventnor. Its patients may at least make sure of having their fill of the
south-west wind, that gives such a leeward lurch to hardier trees now
that they are out of shelter in the Undercliff’s sun-trap.