and Whale Chine, which are as notable as Blackgang in their way, but not
so famous; and several others yawn more obscurely on the coast line to
Freshwater. Some couple of miles beyond Chale, a name of grim notoriety
is Atherfield Point, where many vessels have been lost on its dangerous
ledge, like the German Lloyd _Eider_, in 1892, that grounded in a fog,
all hands being saved, and the steamer remaining stuck fast for weeks,
so as to give this neighbourhood the excitement without the horror of a
great shipwreck. In bad old days the people of Chale had an evil name as
wreckers, luring poor seamen to destruction by deceptive lights, and not
sticking at murder as a prelude to robbery, since the law held the death
of the survivors to extinguish their title in what goods might be
salved.
From Chale, the seaboard opens out for a stretch of some ten miles along
the Back of the Island, a part not so well known to strangers, unless as
hurrying by on their way to Freshwater. But the path along the rough
shore edge is full of points of interest, especially to the geologist,
who, from exposures of the green-sand formation passes on to mottled
earthy cliffs of the Wealden age, then again finds sand pressed down by
masses of chalk. Behind, runs a silent military road made to link the
Island defences, which is not altogether passable for wheels; indeed the
Freshwater end of it has tumbled into the sea. The usual driving-road
turns inland to pass through the villages below the Downs, which now
draw back a mile or two from the beach. Let us, then, follow Edmund
Peel, the poet of this _Fair Isle_.
Back from the brink and rest the stagger’d eye
On the green mound, whose western slope reveals
A landscape tranquil as the deep blue sky,
Of hill and dale a rich variety,
Down over down, vale winding into vale,
Where peaceful villages imbosom’d lie,
And halls manorial, from green-swarded Chale,
To Brixton’s fruitful glebe and Brooke’s delicious dale.
Behind Chale, by the outlying Chale Green near the head of the Medina,
is reached the tiny village of Kingston with its tiny and picturesquely
perched Church, some half-dozen miles south of Newport. The road to
Freshwater turns west, soon reaching Shorwell, in its setting of
unusually rich woods, from which rises the spire of the Church, notable
for very curious and striking features, as for its show of Leigh
monuments, a once obliterated wall-painting, and other relics. Its
vestry preserves the Gun Chamber,
[Illustration: SHORWELL]
in which several of these Island churches once kept a cannon for defence
of the coast. This village is said to have won Queen Victoria’s special
admiration, as well it might.
Two miles on, comes another pretty place, Brixton _alias_ Brighstone,
very unlike its metropolitan namesake, with a goodly Church that counts
among former parsons Bishops Ken, Samuel Wilberforce, and Moberley. In
the beautiful garden of the parsonage, Ken is said to have composed his
far-sung Morning and Evening Hymns; and a tree is shown here under which
Wilberforce wrote his _Agathos_. Hence one can descend to the shore by
Grange Chine, which the military road crosses by a lofty viaduct; or
over the Downs goes the road to Calbourne, the nearest station on the
Freshwater line.
The next village on the road is Mottistone, from whose too much restored
Church, a steep, shady lane leads up to the Mote Stone, or Long Stone, a
block of ferruginous sandstone 13 feet high, with a smaller one fallen
beside it, seeming to have both made part of an ancient cromlech; but
this is said to have served as a mote or public meeting-place, while a
natural legend sees here the stones of a diabolic and angelic
putting-match on St Catherine’s Down. These high downs were a favourite
prehistoric burying place; and several barrows hereabouts have been
excavated by a generation whose _tumuli_ have shrunk to the tees of
golf. The Tudor manor-house, beside Mottistone Church, is one of the
best of the picturesque old structures of that period, which in this
corner of the Island have not been so much shouldered off by
spick-and-span villas.
Leaving the road, beyond the hamlet of Hulverston one can pass down to
the shore by Brook, which has a chine to show, and a fossil forest on
the west side of Brook Point, explained by the geologist Mantell as
having “originated in a raft composed of a prostrate pine-forest,
transported from a distance by the river which flowed through the
country whence the Wealden deposits were derived, and became submerged
in the sand and mud of the delta, burying with it the bones of reptiles,
mussel-shells, and other extraneous bodies it had gathered in its
course.... Many of the stems are concealed and protected by the fuci,
corallines, and zoophytes which here thrive luxuriantly, and occupy the
place of the lichens and other parasitical plants with which the now
petrified trees were doubtlessly invested when flourishing in their
native forests, and affording shelter to the Iguanodon and other
gigantic reptiles.” The beach yields pretty pebbles; and huge fossils
have been found in the cliffs hereabouts.
Hence the military road skirts Compton Bay, upon which the Downs close
in again with a steep slope of chalk that makes no safe play-place for
children, especially when the turf is slippery after long drought, a
caution enforced by the monument to a poor boy who fell here sixty years
ago. Beyond Afton Down, at the west end of Compton Bay, the little
esplanade of Freshwater marks a new division of the Island, which,
indeed, but for this much strained isthmus, would have made two
islands.
FRESHWATER AND THE NEEDLES
At the south-western corner of the Island comes a cleft in the Central
Downs, through which the little Yar flows across the narrowed end from
Freshwater Gate, or Gap, whose name seems to denote the peculiar fact of
a river having its source by the seashore, so near that in rough weather
salt water is said to be washed into the stream. Through that hollow the
spray of the waves can from north and south meet across the three miles
of land; and unless something be done to protect such a weak spot, it
appears that before long this promontory may be cut off from the Island,
as itself was from the mainland by rushing Solent tides. The War Office,
as one of the chief occupiers, is understood to have been more than
indifferent about the sea getting its way in making the nest of forts
here a miniature of the whole kingdom--
Fortress, built by nature for herself
Against infection or the hand of war.
In Charles I’s. reign it was indeed proposed to insulate this corner
artificially as a citadel of defence. Private owners and tenants, for
their part, are inclined to plans for forming some kind of breakwater,
where the tiny esplanade of Freshwater is battered by every gale. Local
authorities have been calling on the Hercules aid of a Royal Commission;
and as a beginning of defence, the Board of Trade has forbidden
Freshwater Bay being used by reckless neighbours for a quarry of
shingle.
Into the nook beyond, crossed each way in an hour’s walk, is packed some
of the finest scenery of the Island--the finest of all, some will say,
who find the rich charms of the Undercliff more cloying. On the south
side the Downs raise their steep wall of chalk to drop into the sea at
the Needles point, round which the inner coast shows a more varied line
of cliff. Between lies a huddle of very pleasant rurality, bowery lanes,
hedgerow paths, thatched cottages, and thick-set hamlets, that in the
very breath of the sea recall the most characteristic aspects of the
green heart of England. Even the new Church has a thatched roof. But
this corner, while more out of the way and the taste of trippers, is a
good deal given up to Mars, whose temples here are forts and
public-houses. Also it is swept by a bombardment of golf balls, which
has caused punsters to suggest that this end of the Island as well as
the eastern deserves the name of _Fore_land.
Freshwater itself is a modestly diffused village, which copies modern
military tactics in taking very open order against the assaults of time.
The main body of the place stands loosely ranked some way back from the
shore, to which it throws out an advanced work held against wind and
waves by hotels and a picket of bathing-machines; then a chain of
rearward outposts connects it with the railway station a mile or so
inland. Here the rebuilt Church, with its trappings of antiquity, makes
a rallying point for hamlets in the rear, bearing such by-names as
School Green, Pound Green, Sheepwash Green and Norton, beyond which the
forts on the north side, among their bivouacs of camp followers, are
mixed up with lines of new building, in summer garrisoned by
holiday-makers on the bathing beaches of Totland Bay and Colwell Bay.
The road from the station to the esplanade passes by a mansion hidden in
“a carelessly ordered garden” among thick trees, “close to the ridge of
a noble down,” where
Groves of pine on either hand
To break the blast of winter, stand;
And further on, the hoary Channel
Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand.
The house is more closely sheltered by fine growths like the
Wellingtonia planted by Garibaldi, the great cedar, “sighing for
Lebanon,” and the grand ilex, also made evergreen by one who was a
“lover of trees.” For this is Farringford, famous as the home of
Tennyson for more than half his life, and the sojourn of so many
contemporary celebrities, guests at his house or at his neighbour Mr
Cameron’s, a retired Indian official, whose wife became so notable
[Illustration: FARRINGFORD HOUSE]
by her influence over “Alfred,” by her unconventionally generous
impulses, and by her skill in the then young art of photography. Later
on the Camerons disappear from their renowned friend’s story, going to
die in Ceylon; but all along flit across the page names of renown in
both continents, Maurice, Jowett, Sir Henry Taylor, G. F. Watts,
Browning, Longfellow, Lowell, O. W. Holmes, and others drawn by the same
magnet to this shore.
The mellifluous poet, so dear to his intimates, failed to make himself
universally popular in the Island, whose inhabitants were not all able
to appreciate him. There is the amusing case of a fly-driver who could
not understand the squire of Farringford’s greatness. “Why, they only
keep one man, and he doesn’t sleep in the house!” But that some
residents could value their illustrious neighbour is shown by another
story of a visitor arriving when the house was in a confusion of
unpacking, and being kept waiting in the hall till he was recognised as
the Prince Consort.
It is pretty well understood that he who figures too much as an
alabaster saint in his official biography, had an earthier side to his
nature. His gloomy moods and sensitive shyness sometimes broke out in
fits of ill-humour, such as caused Mrs Cameron to remonstrate with him
on behalf of a friend of hers found trespassing on his domain, who had
come expecting to “see a lion, not a bear.” While he shrank in almost
morbid horror from peeping pilgrims, he pointed himself out to their
gaze by a picturesque “get up,” as to which one of his favoured
grandchildren is said to have bluntly asked him, “If you don’t like
people to look at you, why do you wear that queer hat and cloak?” I have
a story to tell which has not yet, I think, been in print, but was
vouched for by one of those concerned. As the Poet-laureate, with his
friends Palgrave and Woolner, the sculptor, were walking through a
village, irreverent urchins, having no fear of he-or she-bears, ran
after them with the cry “Old Jew!”--“Poor Palgrave’s nose!” Tennyson
whispered to Woolner, while Palgrave, for his part, presently took the
opportunity of an aside to their companion, “That’s what Tennyson gets
by dressing himself up in such a way!”
Another story of Tennyson’s manners reached me in two pieces, at a long
interval, each dovetailing into each other. I knew a kind and gentle
lady who venerated all genius, and especially his who was the flower of
Victorian literature. Many years ago she told me, how being invited to
see the University boat-race from George Macdonald’s house at
Hammersmith, she found herself beside an unknown gentleman of her own
mature age, to whom she remarked that it would be well if a window could
be opened. He turned his back on her without a word and walked out of
the room, which he would not enter again. To her dismay, my friend heard
that this was the Poet-laureate, who did not like to be spoken to. She
went to her grave hardly able to forgive herself for having unwittingly
hurt such a man. Many years afterwards, on his coming to be buried at
Westminster, another friend told me how in her girlhood, she was at
George Macdonald’s boat-race party, when Tennyson was so offended at
being spoken to by an old lady, that he shut himself up in a separate
room, to which she was sent with some food for him, in the hope that a
mere child might be a David to the mood of Saul; and that he spoke very
crossly to her because she had forgotten to bring the mustard.
Why tell such tales? it may be asked by those who remember how Tennyson
looked forward with horror to his weaknesses being exposed to the public
eye. Because a great man’s life cannot be kept private; and no picture
of him is of value with all the warts painted out. Those who knew the
poet agree that he had rough ways and some coarse tastes singularly in
contrast with the “saccharinity ineffable” which certain tart critics of
another generation distaste in his verse. Those who knew him best are
most emphatic as to the essential nobility of character that for them
veiled all short-comings. The main interest of his life, as a human
document, is that a man who had such faults should by force of genius
have been able to transmute them into lessons of purity, courtesy, and
charity, that will shine all the brighter as rays of a soul not
“faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.” And there will be
an end to all fruitful biography, if the “good taste” so much admired by
this generation is to overlay truth. Who would read the memoirs of a
former age if they represented Samuel Johnson as a model of polite
elegance, Goldsmith of practical common sense, and Wilkes of untarnished
public spirit. So, without wanting in honest admiration for the greatest
poet of my time, I protest against the conspiracy of silence by which he
has been raised to a House of Lords among the immortals, his old cloak
and hat forgotten in ermine and coronet, and his strong tobacco and
full-bodied port glorified as nectar and ambrosia.
But if there were some to find the poet no more than a man, and others
to regret that he let his world-wide fame be obfuscated in such a title
as is sold to a prosperous brewer or money-broker, all tongues are at
one in praise of the gentle lady still remembered as a devoted wife, as
a friendly neighbour, and as an open-handed mistress of the manor. To
William Allingham, Tennyson reported the character given of them by an
ex-servant: “She is an angel--but he, why he’s only a public writer!”
Many a tear was shed when, after long suffering, Lady Tennyson came to
rest in the churchyard of Freshwater, her husband lying apart among our
renowned dead. Within the Church are memorials of their second son
Lionel, whose promising career was cut short by fever in the far East,
and he found a hasty grave on a sun-blighted island of the Red Sea.
The bard whose “lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share” indeed, while
more than one of his publishers dropped off “flaccid and drained,” was
able later on to build himself a retreat on the Sussex wilds of
Blackdown, in a sense even further “from noise and smoke of town.” But
he still spent part of the year at Farringford; and much of his poetry
is coloured by the Isle of Wight scenery, notably _Maud_, that “pet
bantling” of his to which early critics were so unkind. Enoch Arden,
too, might be thought to have hailed from this shore, but that hazel
nuts do not flourish in the Island, unless in the half fossilized form
of “Noah’s nuts” found in Compton Chine; also, on critical
consideration, there appears no long street climbing out of Freshwater,
whose “mouldered church,” moreover, has been quite masked by
rebuilding--but these are poetical properties readily inserted into any
picture, such as one that could be taken from a hundred villages on our
coast--
Long lines of cliff breaking have left a chasm;
And in the chasm are foam and yellow sands;
Beyond, red roofs about a narrow wharf,
In cluster; then a moulder’d church, and higher,
A long street climbs to one tall-tower’d mill;
And high in heaven behind it a grey down
With Danish barrows; and a hazelwood,
By autumn nutters haunted, flourishes
Green in a cup-like hollow of the down.
Often from these downs, the poet must have watched--
Below the milky steep
Some ship of battle slowly creep,
And on through zones of light and shadow
Glimmer away to the lonely deep.
From his own window, he could catch--
The voice of the long sea-wave as it swelled,
Now and then in the dim-gray dawn.
And often his steps were turned to that finest scene within an hour’s
stroll--
The broad white brow of the Isle--that bay with the coloured sand--Rich
was the rose of sunset there, as we drew to the land.
On such points of vantage, he was inspired with loyalty and patriotism
very different from the feelings of his predecessor in the laureateship,
who “uttered nothing base,” but who was certainly disposed to frown,
when, from the Island cliffs, he saw a British fleet sailing forth
against the soon clouded dawn of liberty in France.
Tennyson naturally had a dread of new building about Freshwater; and
some other landowners here seem to share the same exclusive spirit,
which may account for the neighbourhood not being more “developed” as a
resort, while its warmest admirers lament how much it has grown since
the Laureate settled here. It has no want of attractions, not always
accessible on the steep face of chalk, scarred and pitted by works of
time like Freshwater Arch and Freshwater Cave near the little bay,
beyond which come honeycombings known by such names as “Neptune’s Caves”
and “Bar Cave”--“Frenchman’s Hole,” from an escaped prisoner said to
have starved here--Lord Holmes’ “Parlour,” “Kitchen,” and “Cellar,”
where that governor was in the way
[Illustration: FRESHWATER BAY]
of entertaining his friends--“Roe’s Hall”--“Preston’s Bower”--the “Wedge
Rock,” a triangular mass wedged in between the cliff and an isolated
pyramid some 50 feet high--the “Arched Cavern” in Scratchell’s Bay, and
the “Needles Cave,” into which small boats can peep before rounding the
jagged corner. It is said that Professor Tyndall used to keep himself in
climbing practice by scrambling on these treacherous rocks; and if this
be true, I so far question the wisdom of that pundit. The harrying of
airy nests makes a better excuse for such riskful gymnastics. The
fissured cliff line is tenanted by sea-fowl, which the report of a gun
brings out in screaming and hovering crowds, conspicuous among them the
black and white cormorants nicknamed “Isle of Wight parsons.”
These sights are to be visited by boat, if a stranger have stomach for
the adventure. On foot one can mount the back of the cliff known at
first as the Nodes, then as the Mainbench, or in general as the High
Downs. At the highest point of the Nodes, nearly 500 feet, the old
beacon has been replaced by an Iona Cross in memory of Tennyson, with
whom this was a favourite walk in the wildest weather. A grand walk it
is upon a crest of greensward so smooth that bicycles find a track here
among the flying golf balls. In dry weather this smooth turf is
slippery, as one might find too late on its treacherous edges. Further
on, the straight way is barred by a fort, where, between Scratchell’s
Bay and Alum Bay, the ridge narrows and drops to the spur pointed by
those insular masses known as the “Needles,” that, seen at a hazy
distance, rise out of the sea like three castles.
The name of this famous point has been connected with the German _Nieder
Fels_; but there seems no need of going further than a homely simile
that would come to mind and mouth of sailors who, in another language,
have threaded the same suggestion on the southernmost rocks of Africa.
Of the three sharp-backed islets that stand out here braving the winds
and waves, the innermost is known to have risen 120 feet higher in a
tall pillar called “Lot’s Wife,” which fell in 1784. Since Turner
painted them, unless they loomed for him through a haze of imagination,
the Needles have dwindled in size. Naturally of course they are worn
away by every gale, like their kinsmen “Old Harry and his Wife” on the
Dorset coast, one of which isolated masses has been washed down to a
stump within the last few years, the same end as threatens the “Parson
and Clerk” off the red sandstone cliffs of Devon; and in the far north
the more robustly gigantic “Old Man of Hoy” has now but one leg to stand
on.
Bitten at as they are by old _Edax Rerum_, the Needles have still a bulk
which, dwarfed against the cliffs behind, might not be guessed till
one’s eyes are fixed upon the lighthouse on the outermost rock, or upon
human figures displayed against them, to give their due proportion.
Thomas Webster, the geologist, saw them about a century ago under most
picturesque conditions, when the fifty-gun frigate _Pomone_ had stuck
fast upon the outer edge, and lay captive there, to be broken up by the
next gale, the waves already spouting through her ports and hatchways,
while all around swarmed a fleet of smaller vessels engaged in salving
the wreck, or bringing idle spectators to such a singular scene: he was
surprised to find the frigate’s hull overtopped by more than
three-fourths of the rock.
On the north side of the Needles opens Alum Bay, where German visitors
will not fail to exclaim _Wunderschön!_ and Americans to admire the
works of nature as “elegant!” This famous geological transformation
scene is formed by the Eocene strata turning up beside the chalk, as at
the east end of the Island, but here with more striking effect, so as to
be a spectacle for the most unlearned eye as well as a lesson of
extraordinary value for those who can read it, through the manner in
which the beds have been heaved, contorted and thrown into a vertical
position of display. The chalk on one side with its tender tints is
faced on the other by variegated bands of clay, marl, and sand, the hues
of which, after heavy rain especially, are vivid far beyond our common
experience of the “brown old earth,” in some lights presenting the
rainbow of colour described by Englefield, to be so often quoted: “deep
purplish-red, dusky blue, bright ochreous-yellow, grey approaching
nearly to white, and absolute black, succeed each other, as sharply
defined as the stripes in silk; and after rain the sun, which, from
about noon till his setting in summer, illuminates them more and more,
gives a brilliancy to some of these nearly as resplendent as the high
lights on real silk.”
His geological ally Webster renders an almost as high-coloured account
in more matter-of-fact style. The Alum Bay cliffs, he says,