of very pure clay, and pure sand, with ferruginous sand and shale.
Of these beds some are several feet, whilst others are not an
eighth of an inch in thickness. Next to the chalk, is a vertical
bed of chalk marl; then one of clay of a deep red colour, or
sometimes mottled red and white. This is succeeded by a very thick
bed of dark blue clay with green earth, containing nodules of marl
or argillaceous limestone with fossil shells. Then follows a vast
succession of alternating beds of sand of various colours, white,
bright yellow, green, red and grey; plastic clay, white, black,
grey and red; ferruginous sandstone and shale, together with
several beds of a species of coal, or lignite, the vegetable origin
of which is evident. The number and variety of these vertical
layers is quite endless, and I can compare them to nothing better
than the stripes on the leaves of a tulip. On cutting down pieces
of the cliffs, it is astonishing to see the extreme brightness of
the colours, and the delicacy and thinness of the several layers of
white and red sand, shale and white sand, yellow clay and white or
red sand, and indeed almost every imaginable combination of these
materials. These cliffs, although so highly coloured that they
could scarcely come within the limits of picturesque beauty, were
not, however, without their share of harmony. The tints suited each
other admirably; and their whole appearance, though almost beyond
the reach of art to imitate, was extremely pleasing to the eye.
Their forms, divested of colour, when viewed near, and from the
beach, were often of the most sublime class; resembling the
weather-worn peaks of Alpine heights. This circumstance they derive
from the same source as those primitive mountains; for the strata
being vertical, the rains and snow water enter between them, and
wear deep channels, leaving the more solid parts sharp and pointed.
The alum that gives the name to this bay, oozing from its motley face,
seems no longer of commercial account; but the pure white sand is used
in glass-making, and the coloured sands are arranged in fantastic
patterns to make curiosities or memorials for the excursionists who
flock to this spot by coach, by steamer from Bournemouth and other
seaside towns, or by an hour’s walk from Freshwater station. For their
entertainment, there are two hostelries and some humbler refreshment
rooms; but as yet Alum Bay has not been turned into a bathing-place,
though round its northern corner rises one of the favourite summer
resorts of the Island.
Another contrast appears from the hollow behind the bay. The chalk downs
on one side are smooth, as if shaved by their own razor-like edges; on
the other, Headon Hill swells up in moorland knolls and banks of
heather, its rough sides clothed with tufts of yellow flowerets and
ragged grass. Headon Warren is a fitting _alias_. From its blunt head,
some 400 feet, we look down upon the lower and darker cliffs of the
inner coast, studded with brick forts that would be an ugly sight to an
enemy seeking to force the passage of the Solent.
We have done now with wonders, but the north-western face of the Island
makes a pleasant shore line, on which, in a mile or so, is reached the
snug beach of Totland Bay, the chief bathing-place of this end, all new
and smart, its big hotel standing out over the pier, like colonel of a
regiment of lodging-houses and villas. Round the next corner comes
Colwell Bay, another stretch of sand on which a younger resort is
growing up beside crumbling cliffs and tiny chines. At the further horn
stands Albert Fort, nicknamed the “brick three-decker,” commanding the
narrowest part of the Solent, where a long narrow spit from the mainland
throws Hurst Castle more than half-way across the three-knot channel,
hardly needed as a stepping-stone by any giant who might care to hop
over. The next corner, bearing up the Victoria Fort, brings us round to
the estuary of the Yar, a stream that shows more estuary than river,
opening out with as much complacency as if it drained a basin of ten
times three miles. The mouth of this shallow gulf, towards the sea
pleasantly masked in woods, is crossed by a causeway leading into
Yarmouth.
[Illustration: TOTLAND BAY]
YARMOUTH
Among its other misfortunes this little Yarmouth has had that of being
over-crowed by the bloated renown of Great Yarmouth, which trumpets
forth many high notes of interest, from its cathedral-like church and
its ancient “Rows,” to its herring fleet and its Cockney paradises. The
author of _David Copperfield_ himself might not find much to say about
the Isle of Wight Yarmouth, which yet, by its past dignity, seems to
demand a chapter, where it must play at least the part of text like that
blessed word Mesopotamia. If we writers might never fill a few pages
without having anything particular to say, what would become of the
circulating libraries? So let us see what may be said under the head of
Yarmouth, taken with a stretch of country beyond which deserves to be
better known than it is to the Island visitors.
This little town or big village is best known to strangers by the pier
of the shortest crossing from Lymington, not indeed the most convenient
one, as there is a gap between the landing and the station, and trains
of the Freshwater line seem to run in no close connection with the
steamers, or make only a mocking show of connection that adds insult to
injury. So one may find oneself stranded here for an hour or two, unless
he can go straight on by coach to Freshwater Bay or to Totland Bay, to
which also some of the steamers run in the season. But weak-stomached
voyagers hail the half-hour’s passage as being mostly in the winding mud
flats of the Lymington River, with an open prospect towards the Needles,
and the low walls of Hurst Castle at the point of its long spit.
Hereabouts is the proposed line of a Solent Tunnel which as yet remains
in the air, but as _fait accompli_ might lift poor Yarmouth’s head, or
Totland Bay’s, to the height of proud Ryde.
Simple as it stands now, Yarmouth is one of the Island’s three ancient
boroughs, old enough to have been more than once burned by French
excursionists in the bad old days, and a place of comparatively more
importance a century ago, when fleets of sails might be wind-bound here
for weeks. As bulwark against French and other attacks, a castle was
built at the mouth of the Yar, whose remains are now enclosed in the
grounds of the Pier Hotel, itself still recalling its state when it was
the mansion of Sir Robert Holmes, and entertained Charles II. Else,
Yarmouth has not much to boast in the way of architecture, unless some
quaint old houses, refreshing after the modernity of Totland Bay. The
Church, dating from James I., shows a collection of Holmes’ monuments,
chief among them a fine statue of Sir Robert Holmes, which had a curious
history: it is
[Illustration: YARMOUTH]
said to have been meant for Louis XIV., but being captured at sea along
with the sculptor, he was forced to fit it with a head of Sir Robert.
This local worthy, Governor of the Island under Charles II., and a
benefactor to the town by embanking its marshy estuary, had a wider
renown as one of our early Nelsons; he is repeatedly mentioned in Pepys’
_Diary_, and his epitaph tells in sounding Latin how, among other
exploits, he more than once beat the Dutch, not always beaten at sea by
Charles’ sailors, how he took from them the colony of _Nova Belgia_, now
better known as New York, and how he captured a cargo of Guinea gold
that was coined into a word of much credit in our language.
The Island boasts at least one other sailor as having earned a place in
our story. There was a poor tailor’s apprentice of Bonchurch who,
according to the legend, ran away to the king’s navy, proved himself in
his first fight worth more than nine men, and rose to be Admiral Sir
Thomas Hopson, knighted by Queen Anne for breaking the boom at Vigo.
These rough coasts have all along nursed a breed of stout sea-dogs, not
always so well employed as in fighting the battles of their country. A
century ago Yarmouth, and indeed all this corner, seems to have been a
nest of amphibian waiters on the tides of fortune, passing as fishermen
plain, but often coloured as smugglers, and proving excellent food for
powder when they could be pressed into the navy blue.
Such proof spirits made boon companions for the eccentric painter
George Morland, when in 1799 he fled from London to escape bailiffs. He
had thus nearly jumped from the frying-pan into the fire, since at
Yarmouth he and his brother were arrested by a party of the Dorset
militia on suspicion of being spies for the French--why else should
strangers be sketching the coast? At Shanklin, the same suspicion fell
upon another artist, whom the fishermen began to pelt from his easel,
but he, being a very fat man, cleared himself by patting his paunch, and
exclaiming, “Does this look like anything French?” There was a spy-fever
all over the Island at that time. In Morland’s case, amid the hoots of a
patriotic populace, the military Dogberries marched off their prisoners
to Newport, where they were discharged by the magistrates only on
condition of making no more sketches. In spite of such prohibition, some
of Morland’s best work represents the Freshwater cliffs and the fishing
folk of this coast.
Yarmouth gives itself few seaside airs; yet one has seen bathing-places
with no more to build on. There is a stretch of sand where a few
bathing-machines are unlimbered; and at low tide the smell of seaweed
and salt mud might be considered medicinal. The Pier Hotel (the
ex-“George”) has recently enlarged itself to invite custom; and on the
other side of the pier the Solent Yacht Club makes a showy patch upon a
general aspect of well-worn old-fashionedness. If one yearn for a
thicker mixture of up-to-date buildings, one has only to take the two
or three miles’ walk, or few minutes’ railway run to Freshwater.
To the east, the Bouldnor estate has been trying to blossom into a red
brick resort upon its wooded shore fringed with sand. By the low cliffs
on this side we pass on towards the Hamstead Ledges, mines of fossils
wealth, which I have heard a British Association President declare to be
the most interesting part of the Island; but the general public takes
quite an opposite view. The northern shore, with its muddy flats and
crumbling banks, has no attraction for the many, till the sands of
Gurnard Bay bring us round to the far stretched esplanade of Cowes.
Behind the coast, Parkhurst Forest once extended from Yarmouth to Cowes,
where the country is still dotted with its fragments in woods, copses,
and straggling hedgerows. Here, between the Downs and the Solent, runs
the railway to Newport, keeping well back in the green plain, with more
apparent regard for economy of line than for the convenience of the
villages it serves on either hand. Its course, indeed, is soon turned
inland by the Newton River, whose crops are raised from salterns and
oyster-beds, across which the railway gets glimpses of the sea two or
three miles away.
Among the branching creeks of this shallow inlet may be sought out
Newton, now a mere hamlet, but, in the teeth of its name, boasting
itself the oldest borough in the Island, which till not so long ago
returned two members of Parliament, among them such celebrities as
Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, and George Canning. Though the place has
a tiny, tumbledown Town Hall, it was only in the last century that it
got a church of its own. But its now larger neighbour Shalfleet, nearer
the railway, has one of the most notable churches on the Island, with a
massive Norman tower and other relics, such as the rude carving over the
north door, the subject of which makes a riddle for antiquaries.
On the opposite side of the line, the pretty village of Calbourne shows
another old church, a good deal “restored,” to the scandalising of
architectural purists; and near it Swainston is one of the most
dignified Wight mansions, incorporating the remains of what was once an
episcopal palace of the Winchester diocese. One Rector of Calbourne was
that Nicholas Udall, now remembered as author of _Ralph Roister
Doister_, the first English comedy, but as Headmaster of Eton noted in
his own day for out-Heroding the Tudor Herods in school discipline, if
Thomas Tusser’s experience were not exceptional--whose works the irony
of time puts on library shelves beside those of his old tyrant--
From Paul’s I went, to Eton sent,
To learn straightways the Latin phrase,
Where fifty-three stripes given to me
At once I had;
For fault but small, or none at all,
It came to pass, thus beat I was.
See, Udall, see, the mercy of thee
To me, poor lad!
[Illustration: SHALFLEET]
The Eton boys who painfully learned to act this Orbilius’ comedy, may
often have been as sad over it as is the traditional clown in private
life. If any of them grew up to be dramatic critics, they might have
found some satisfaction in “slating” their ex-master. To us indeed the
humours of this farcical piece suggest that our forefathers must have
been as easily amused as were Mr Peter Magnus’ friends, to Mr Pickwick’s
thinking. But also a play evidently modelled upon Plautus and Terence,
with more than a hint of our old friend _Miles Gloriosus_, is remarkable
for keeping in view a motto much neglected by many playwrights, _Maxima
debetur puero reverentia_, while indeed it condescends to rough
vernacular fun such as might not be expected from that strict
disciplinarian, who, after retirement to a country parsonage, ended his
days in another mastership at Westminster.
Calbourne one understands to be the “Malbourne” of a novel that made
some noise, _The Silence of Dean Maitland_, where this countryside and
its people are gauzily veiled under such names as “_Old_port” with its
“_Burton’s_ Hotel,” and the “_Swaynestone_” lords of the manor; while
other scenes of this moving story seem better masked as “Chalkbourne”
and “Belminster.” One rather wonders that novelists think it needful to
affect such a thin disguise. In another good story of the Isle of Wight,
Mrs Oliphant’s _Old Mr Tredgold_, we find the same trick of nomenclature
used rather more carelessly, when “Steephill” stands inland from
“Sliplin,” and the “_Bunbridge_ cliffs” once betray themselves as
Bembridge by a slip of the author’s pen, or of the printer’s eye. We
plodding writers of fact are fain to grudge our fanciful brethren such
half measures in reality. We would not drive them back upon “the
pleasant town of A----” or “the ancient city of B----,” all the letters
of the alphabet having long ago been used up in this service; but they
might be at a little pain of invention to christen their “St Oggs” and
“Claverings”; or at least let them be consistent, and not dump down
Portsmouth by its honest name, as that first mentioned novelist does,
among her ineffectual _aliases_.
Ground so well trodden by honeymooning couples seems to offer a fit
stage for fiction; and the Isle of Wight, if it sometimes finds itself
called out of its proper names, has less cause to complain of want of
appreciation among the novelists who deal with it. Jane Austen only
sights it from the walls of Portsmouth, but her interest was in human
rather than natural features; and she at least compliments it with its
local title “the Island.” Mr Meredith coasts or touches its shores here
and there, taking such snapshots as:--“The Solent ran up green waves
before a full-blowing South-wester. Gay little yachts bounded out like
foam, and flashed their sails, light as sea nymphs. A cloud of deep
summer blue topped the flying mountains of cloud.” Mr Zangwill pushes
inland, and writes this testimonial:--“A maze of loveliness, abounding
in tempting perspectives. Every leafy avenue is rich in promise; such
nestling farmhouses, such peeping spires, such quaint red tiled
cottages, such picturesque old-fashioned mullioned windows, such
delicious wafts of perfume from the gardens and orchards, such bits of
beautiful old England as are perhaps nowhere else so profusely
scattered!” But another popular novelist, who shall here be nameless,
playing _Advocatus Diaboli_ through the mouth of one of his characters
in a perverse humour, puts the seamy side thus:--“That the Isle of Wight
was only a trumpery toyshop, that its ‘scenery’ was fitly adorned with
bazaars for the sale of sham jewellery, that its amusements were on a
par with those of Rosherville Gardens; that its rocks were made of mud
and its sea of powdered lime.”
This does not exhaust the catalogue of stories which have their scene
here. Professor Church’s _Count of the Saxon Shore_ and Mr F. Cowper’s
_Captain of the Wight_ come rather into the category of boys’ books, the
latter being specially well stuffed with swashing blows and strong
“language of the period.” Mr Headon Hill’s _Spies of the Wight_ gives a
lurid peep into the machinations of a foreign power against our coast
defences, and the tricks of a Fosco-like villain foiled by one of those
Sherlock Holmes intellects that find it so easy to discover what has
been invented for discovery. We are now approaching the most fashionable
resort in the Island, and there perhaps may come across some of those
scandals and sins of society that give a popular relish to so much of
our circulating literature. Meanwhile, since there is nothing like
seeing ourselves as others see us, for a careful picture of Isle of
Wight life, let us turn to a French story-teller whose modesty might
prefer his name to be withheld.
A collection of novelettes entitled _Amours Anglais_, one of which
centres in the Island, is put forth by this writer as an essay in a new
school of romance. His preface, dated from “Margate, Isle of Thanet,”
lets us understand how after long years of sojourn in England he has
observed John Bull as closely and profoundly as is possible for a
stranger to do, and that he proposes to present English life to his
countrymen, stripped of the ridiculous exterior with which it is charged
by their caricaturing spirit. This sympathising stranger knows the
British soul to be not less interesting and more wholesome than the
gloomy and flabby Russian sentiment that has had such a vogue in French
fiction. To the facts of _Outre-Manche_, then, he will apply his native
“psychologic methods,” writing as a Frenchman what he has felt as an
Englishman. His aim is “to create an international _genre_ of romance,
marrying our taste to the humour and the morality of our neighbours.
Have I succeeded? The public will judge.” So, with the best intentions,
our _entente cordialiste_ appeals to his French readers. Let the English
public now judge.
The heroine of this story is Lilian North, nearly out of her teens,
whose home is a cottage wreathed with ivy and honeysuckle in the
outskirts of Newport. Her father, who “says the service in the chapel”
across the road, is “in orders,” not indeed Anglican orders, he being a
fanatical Baptist who holds that “one is surer of going to hell with the
Archbishop of Canterbury than with the Pope of Rome himself.” Her mother
is dead. She has a married sister not far off at Plymouth--in which, for
once, the author makes a slip, as he evidently means Portsmouth. Poor
Lilian sees almost no society, except Jedediah, “papa’s disciple,” a
sort of apprentice minister who “is to read the service when papa dies.”
This young colleague and successor loves Lilian, with her father’s
approval; but she loves him not, as how should she when he has red eyes,
hair of no particular colour, and can talk about nothing but going to
heaven!
Jedediah looks like turning out the hypocritical villain of the piece.
Lilian likes him less than ever when the hero appears in the person of
Harry Gordon, a young city clerk who has come courting Miss Arabella
Jones, elder daughter of the Baptist minister at Newport. Mr Jones has
the advantage of his colleague in being a rich man who “preaches only
for his amusement”; and his daughters lead a rackety life that must have
scandalised the connection, especially in the Ryde yachting season, when
they are always at some party of pleasure, “sometimes in a boat,
sometimes on horseback, sometimes in _char-à-bancs_, never knowing in
the morning where they shall lunch in the afternoon, nor where and with
whom they shall dance in the evening”; and when they visit Newport it is
with a train of ever fresh cavaliers.
At a picnic in the ruins of Carisbrooke, Lilian makes the acquaintance
of Harry Gordon, whom her friend Arabella Jones professes to disdain as
a shy awkward boy. But Lilian takes to him, and Harry begins to pay more
attention to her than to the proud Miss Jones. At a game of blindman’s
buff among the ruins, the blindfolded hero is more deliberate than need
be in pawing over Lilian’s face and figure before giving her name. Cupid
catches them both.
Another day there was a party to Freshwater, where the sea is always
_méchant_, even in fine weather. The ladies having ventured out in a
boat, found themselves in such danger that they were glad to get on
shore. Then Arabella put her backward swain to the test with the
question--“if we had gone down, which of us would you have saved first?”
Harry did not answer, but his looks were on Lilian, to the spiteful
displeasure of Miss Jones. So, in talking of a ball about to be given by
the wealthy Baptist pastor of Ryde, she scornfully bid Lilian come to it
only if properly dressed--“none of your shabby dyed frocks and halfpenny
flowers!”
Lilian’s cheeks glowed with shame under this insult, and she took the
first opportunity of stealing away to weep all alone by moonlight. But
Harry, indignantly sympathetic, had followed her, guided by her sobs.
In vain she bid him return to his Arabella. Arabella indeed! He had
never much cared for Miss Jones, whom he now detested after such an
exhibition of ill-natured rudeness. As they strolled on the Freshwater
esplanade, Lilian’s foot slipped; and Harry, holding-her up, took the
opportunity to clasp the heroine in his arms. They went back an engaged
couple--_cela va sans dire_.
The courtship had to be done on the sly; yet the young couple must have
attracted suspicion in any more censorious neighbourhood, such as that
not far away, which we hear of, on good authority, as bubbling over with
“gossip, scandal, and spite.” Every day Harry rode from Ryde to Newport,
met at her garden-gate by Lilian, to keep company with all the freedom
of a British maiden and of an innocent heart. “I gave sugar to his
horse, which was called Fly; we picked flowers, and ran races against
each other.” Only the jealous Jedediah guessed what was going on. When
Harry entered the house, he feigned great attention to the religious
exhortations of the father, but could not make way in his good-will,
while Jedediah scowled at every sight of his rival, whose ring Lilian
wore “hidden under my mitten,” yet not perhaps from that
green-spectacled monster.
Autumn broke up the gay non-conformist society of the Island. The Misses
Jones went off to make fresh conquests at Brighton. Harry had to go back
to his London office, but every week-end he took a bed at the “Bugle”
Hotel of Newport, spent Sunday with his _fiancée’s_ family, and returned
to business by the last train. In spite of this breaking of the Sabbath,
the Baptist minister believed that the young man came all the way from
London to hear him preach. But at last the neighbours began to talk; so
the lovers saw themselves obliged to meet only in secret, and to pour
out their hearts in long letters. The worst of it was that Harry grew
cross and impatient. His father, a rich shipowner at Cardiff, would
never consent to his engagement with the daughter of a poor Baptist
preacher. If he knew, he would cut his son off with a shilling, “as the
law authorises him to do.” The Rev. Mr North, for his part, would frown
on his child’s union with a family far from sound in faith. Lilian was
for a long engagement, in hopes that the old people would come round.
Harry’s more heroic remedy was an immediate secret marriage such as, in
tale and history, has sooner or later the effect of forcing parents to
make the best of a bad business. The wooer becomes ill-temperedly
pressing; Lilian at length consents; but when these unpractical
youngsters lay their heads together, they run up at once against the
serious difficulty of finding a minister to marry them. Then the heroine
takes the desperate resolution of throwing herself upon the generosity
of her unsuccessful suitor. She leads Jedediah into the garden; and now
for a scene in the best style of French fiction.
“Do you love me, Mr Jedediah?” I said.
The poor fellow had a moment of joy and hope.
“I ask if you love me well enough to wish my happiness, even if
that should cause you pain?”
“Yes,” said he, all at once overcast again.
“And do you feel yourself capable of doing all you can to aid the
accomplishment of what will be grievous to you?”
“Perhaps,” replied Jedediah with a sigh.
“Mr Jedediah, I love Harry Gordon.”
“I feared so!”
“I wish to marry him.”