would have been originally no more than an _Austerbourne_ or
_Oyster-bed_, that, from the Bowermans, an old Island family not yet
extinct, came to belong to one Eustace Mann, who, during the troubles
of the Civil War, is supposed to have buried a mass of gold and silver
coins in a coppice still known as Money Coppice, and having forgotten to
mark the spot, was never afterwards able to recover his treasure. Had it
been found in the course of the last half century, a curious lawsuit
might have arisen between the rights of the Crown and of the Queen as
private owner. By marriage the estate came into the hands of the
Blachfords. From Lady Isabella Blachford it was purchased by Queen
Victoria in 1840, who enlarged her property here to an area of upwards
of 5000 acres, bounded north by the Solent, south by the Ryde and
Newport road, east by the inlet of King’s Quay, and west by the Medina.
The Blachford mansion, spoken of a century ago as one of the largest and
best in the Island, gave place to the palace of Osborne, royally adorned
with pictures and statuary, that turns its Palladian face to the Solent,
while from the road behind only the flag tower and campanile can be seen
peeping above the rich foliage of the park. A “Swiss Cottage” contained
the model dairy and kitchen, where the princesses are understood to have
been instructed in housewifely arts, and a museum of curiosities
collected by the princes in their travels through an empire on which the
sun never sets. At Barton Manor-house, a picturesque old mansion added
to the estate and adapted as residence of the steward, was the Prince
Consort’s home-farm, which “a Mr Wilkinson, a clergyman” is quoted in
guide-books as praising for a model of all that could be done to make
the best of a naturally poor soil. The late Queen’s love of seclusion
prompted her to increase and enclose her demesne, till she could drive
for miles in her own grounds, kept strictly private during the royal
residence.
Behind Osborne, overlooking the Medina, is Whippingham Church, whose
parish takes in Osborne and East Cowes, as West Cowes was a dependent on
Northwood. This church, sometimes attended by the royal family, is rich
in mortuary memorials, among them Theed’s monument of the Prince
Consort, placed here by “his broken-hearted and devoted widow, Queen
Victoria,” and the chapel that is the tomb of Prince Henry of
Battenberg, married in Whippingham Church, 1885. The structure, finely
situated, has a singularly un-English look, its German Romanesque
features understood to have been inspired by the taste of the Prince
Consort, on which account her late Majesty’s loyal subjects would fain
have admired the effect, as many of them could not honestly do. A wicked
tale is told of a gentleman well known in the architectural world, who,
on a visit at Whippingham, was surprised by a summons to Osborne.
Unfortunately, this stranger had not been furnished with a _carte du
pays_, and when the Queen led the conversation to Whippingham Church,
asking advice what should be done with it, he bluntly gave his opinion:
“The only thing to be done, madam, is to pull it all down!”--whereupon
the uncourtly adviser found his audience soon brought to an end.
Other stories or legends are locally current, illustrating the
difficulties of etiquette that hampered her Majesty’s desire to be on
friendly terms with her less august neighbours. One hears of guests
scared off by the sight of a red cloth on the steps to mark how royalty
would be taking tea or counsel within; and of others suddenly bundled
out of the way, when the Queen’s unpretentious equipage was announced as
approaching. It seems that majesty’s neighbours were not all
neighbourly. A lady of title here is said to have closed her gates to
the Queen’s carriage, which never again took that direction. Such an
assertion of private rights would have astonished that high-titled
Eastern potentate, of whom it is told that, being entertained at the
seat of one of our greatest dukes, he advised the then Prince of Wales
to have their host executed without delay as much too powerful a
subject!
After the death of Queen Victoria, the present Sovereign gave up this
estate to be in the main a public memorial of her, though Osborne
Cottage is still occupied by the Princess Henry of Battenberg, Governor
of the Island with which she has so many happy and sorrowful
associations. The palace has been in part adapted as a home for
convalescent officers, the room in which the Queen died and other
[Illustration: WHIPPINGHAM CHURCH]
apartments being kept as used by her, to make a sight at present open on
certain days. In the grounds are the new buildings of a Naval College,
whose cadets will be brought up in view of the famous anchorage haunted
by memories of our “wooden walls,” and often stirred by the mighty
machines that have taken their place, we trust, to the same good
purpose.
Of all the naval pageants these shores have beheld, none could be more
impressive than when, that dull winter afternoon of 1901, stirred only
by tolling bells and booming minute guns, the body of Europe’s most
venerated Sovereign was borne across the Solent through a mile-long lane
of British and foreign war-ships, on her last journey to Windsor.
THE GATES OF THE ISLAND
Before turning away from the Solent, we may take a look at its northern
shores, and the mainland ports making gateways of the strait and island
that serve their populations as playground.
Cowes lies opposite Southampton, with which it has direct communication
up the long inlet of Southampton Water, the least expeditious passage to
the Island, but the pleasantest in fine weather, most of the hour’s
voyage being by that wooded arm of the Solent, where on one side stretch
the heaths and copses of the New Forest’s Beaulieu corner; while the
other is broken by the mouths of the Hamble and of the Itchen. Between
these creeks, stands conspicuous the Netley Hospital, said to be the
longest building in England, overshadowing Netley Castle, adapted as a
modern mansion, and the picturesque old ruins of Netley Abbey, fallen to
be a junketing resort for Southampton. The Royal Victoria Hospital, a
name well earned by the late Queen’s interest in it, was built for
soldiers invalided in the Crimean War, and became to our army what the
Haslar Hospital, at Gosport, is to the navy. Netley Bay is now
headquarters of the Motor-Yacht Club, housed in an ex-Admiralty yacht.
Too many of the Isle of Wight passengers who embark or land at
Southampton Pier, know not what a mistake they make in hurrying on
without a look at one of the most interesting old towns in England,
which from the railway or the docks may appear to be no more than one of
its most prosperous ports. The Northam and Southam of early days have
here grown into a still growing municipality, whose lively streets imbed
some most notable fragments of the past, now reverently preserved. The
largest portion of the walls is a stretch of curious archways facing the
west shore, behind which filthily picturesque slums have been cleared
away and replaced by a pile of model lodging-houses that our era of
sanitation puts in bold contrast with the Middle Ages. These Arcades, as
they are called, seem to have been the defensible entrances to a line of
mansions, very eligible for their period. Behind, beside the spire of
Southampton’s oldest church, is a Tudor house said to have accommodated
Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn on their brief honeymoon. The oldest of the
houses on the sea front, by the “King’s Quay” as it used to be called,
is believed to have been tenanted by King John, perhaps by Henry III;
and among the many King John’s lodges and King John’s palaces scattered
over England, this seems to have the best right to the honour thus
claimed for it.
Further on, near the end of the pier, is the West Gate, under which
Henry V.’s men-at-arms and archers clanked out on their way to
Agincourt.
Suppose that you have seen
The well-appointed king at Hampton pier
Embark his royalty, and his brave fleet
With silken streamers the young Phœbus fanning:
Play with your fancies, and in them behold
Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing;
Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give
To sounds confused; behold the threaden sails,
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind,
Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea,
Breasting the lofty surge: O do but think
You stand upon the rivage and behold
A city on the inconstant billows dancing;
For so appears this fleet majestical,
Holding due course to Harfleur.
Such a floating city as Shakespeare saw here in his mind’s eye, would
seem but a hamlet beside the streets of craft from all the world that
now crowd Southampton docks. Behind them, near the foot of High Street,
is a building which, if tradition lie not, may boast itself the oldest
house in England, for, stable as it is now, it sets up to be a remnant
of King Canute’s residence, who on the shore hereabouts, perhaps enacted
his famous scene of commanding the waves, more effectually restrained by
the heroes of modern industry; but on that oft-told tale Leslie Stephen
drily remarks, “that an anecdote is simply the polite name of a lie.”
From the Quay quarter, what a well-known novelist styles the “brightest,
airiest, lightest, prettiest High Street in England,” leads up to the
Bargate, imposing survival of mediæval architecture, with which
Southampton is proud to hamper her busy main thoroughfare, long after
prosaic Londoners have banished their obstructive Temple Bar. The long
street, hence known as “Above Bar,” goes out between pleasant parks,
then as a lordly avenue that begins one of the finest high-roads in the
kingdom, running on to Winchester. As this avenue is approached, on the
left stands a building that should be viewed with grateful respect by
all conscientious tourists and their guides, since it is the
headquarters of the Ordnance Survey maps. Further on, beside the road,
is reached Southampton Common, one of the prettiest natural parks and
playgrounds at the gate of any great town, seeming to be, what indeed it
is, a half cleared bit of the New Forest.
The woods of the New Forest come within a few miles of Southampton,
which has other pleasant scenes about its salubrious site on a gravelly
spit projecting between the Itchen and the Test, angling streams of
fame. Its sea-front on the West Bay is hardly an admirable point unless
at high water, as it more often shows a green expanse of slime and
malodorous weed that by no means _ladet zum Baden_, fit rather for the
paddling of adventurous mud larks. But the citizens, more ingenious than
Canute, catch the elusive tide in a basin that makes an excellent
open-air swimming bath. The strong smell of seaweed is offensive to some
strangers, who may comfort themselves by considering it as wholesome:
had this rubbish bank been German, it would probably be utilised for
some sort of _Kur_, with a three weeks’ course of sanatory sniffs, and a
_Nach-kur_ of whey treatment in the Isle of Wight. Southampton had once
indeed a chalybeate spa of its own, to which its Victoria Rooms seems a
monument.
This old seaport has had notable sons, from Isaac Watts, whose statue in
the park looks down on a flower-bed visited by busy bees, to Charles
Dibdin, whose nautical songs were not so well adapted to the restraint
of angry passions. If all tales be true, its oldest celebrity is that
Bevis of Hampton, whose story, indeed, inconvenient critics father upon
a twelfth century French romance; and it has certainly been told in
several languages: so far off as Venice, this widely popular hero is
found figuring as a sort of local Punch. But for the confusion of all
who doubt his Hampshire origin, the name Bevis Mount still preserves on
the Itchen bank the memory of a stronghold he threw up here against the
Danes; and who was he if not Bevis of Hampton? The story also gives him
a connection with the Isle of Wight; so, as we began with dull history,
let us draw towards an end with a taste of what, one fears, must count
rather as fiction, perhaps expanded about some core of legendary fact.
_Sir Bevis of Hampton_ was one of the favourite romances of the feudal
age; and his adventures were familiar to John Bunyan’s unregenerate
youth, if little known to the Southampton boys who in our time pass the
sixth standard, however well versed they may be in our own “penny
dreadful” literature. Yet _Ivanhoe_, _Pathfinder_, and the _Three
Musketeers_ rolled into one, would make a tame hero beside Sir Bevis. As
became a hero, he had difficulties to contend with all along, the first
being an unnatural mother who, one grieves to say, was a Scottish
princess. Married to Guy, Earl of Southampton, whose name suggests some
connection with the still more famous lord of Warwick, she preferred a
foreign prince, Sir Murdour, a name that gives plain hint of his nature,
as well as a dim anticipation of David Copperfield’s tyrant.
Guy being betrayed by his wife and slain by her paramour when Bevis was
only seven years old, the wicked pair’s next object would naturally be
to get rid of a child who might avenge his father. With a fortunate want
of wisdom often shown by the bad characters of romance, the mother did
not see to this business herself, but charged it on Saber, the child’s
uncle, by whom he had been reared; then the kind Saber, as proof of
compliance, sent her his nephew’s princely garments sprinkled with the
blood of a pig, while he kept the boy safe and sound, disguised as a
shepherd. But Bevis had too high a spirit to await the opportunity of
revenge promised by his uncle when he should come to manhood. Feeding
his sheep on the downs, he became so infuriated by the sounds of revelry
in which his mother and her new husband sought to drown the memory of
their crime, that he burst into the hall, knocking down the porter who
would have shut him out, unpacked his young heart of its indignation
before the whole company, and with three blows of a “mace” laid his
stepfather senseless before them all. Thus did this seven-year-old
princeling show a resolution that might well put Hamlet to shame; and as
he was so terrible with a stick, we may guess what feats he would
perform when it got to sword-play.
The guilty mother was so much displeased by such conduct, that she
punished her precociously brave child by sending him to be sold for a
slave in heathen lands. Thereby he came into the hands of a Saracen king
named Ermyn, whose daughter, Josyan, at once fell in love with the young
captive, according to the romantic precedent followed in such cases down
to the days of Pocahontas. Ermyn, too, recognising the boy’s quality at
a glance, proposed to make him his heir and son-in-law on condition of
his abjuring Christianity. But the heroes of old were as orthodox as
gallant. Bevis, though not yet in his teens, lifted up such a bold
testimony against the errors of Mahound, that the king saw well to drop
the subject, and for the present took him on as page, promising him
further advancement in the course of time. Still no amount of friendly
intercourse with unbelievers could shake the youngster’s faith. He had
reached the age of fifteen, when certain Saracen knights rashly ventured
to touch on his religion, whereupon he slew them all, some sixty or so,
with remarkable ease. Ermyn forgave him for this once, and Josyan with
kisses and salves soon cured him of his wounds; then, in return for
their kindness, he obligingly rid them of a fearful wild boar that had
long been the terror of the country.
These petty exploits had made merely the work of our hero’s ’prentice
hand; the time was now come for him to be dubbed a knight, presented on
the occasion with a marvellous sword called “Morglay,” and the best
horse in the world, by name “Arundel.” Ermyn had soon need of a peerless
champion. Bradmond, King of Damascus, was demanding Josyan’s hand, with
threats to lay waste the land if his suit were refused; but a lad of
mettle like Bevis, of course, found no difficulty in laying low that
proud Paynim and all his host. Josyan was so lost in admiration of such
prowess, that she proposed to her Christian knight after a somewhat
unmaidenly fashion; but Bevis would give her no encouragement till, for
his sake, she professed herself ready to renounce the Moslem faith.
But when the king heard how his daughter was being converted to
Christianity, his patience came to an end. Not daring to use open
violence against the invincible youth, he sent him on an embassy to King
Bradmond, his late adversary, who at the point of Bevis’ sword had
lately sworn to be Ermyn’s vassal, and was now commanded, on his
allegiance, to secure the bearer of the sealed letter which Bevis
carried to his own destruction. The author of _Hamlet_ may have taken
another hint from this incident. But our impetuous knight needed no
treacherous credentials to get him into trouble. At Damascus he found a
crowd of Saracens worshipping an idol, which his sound principles moved
him to knock over into the mud with proper contempt: the Mohammedans,
whatever their doctrinal shortcomings might be, were, as a matter of
fact, strongly set against idolatry, but Christian minstrels allowed
themselves a poetical license on such points. King Bradmond and all his
men, backed by the fanatical population of Damascus, were odds too great
even for a pious hero. Bevis, fairly overpowered for once, was thrown
into a dungeon with two ravenous dragons to keep him company. It was
only a matter of some twenty-four hours’ combat for him to kill the
dragons with the butt-end of a staff that came to his hand; but hunger
proved a sorer enemy. Now we have the two most familiar lines of this
long poem, as quoted in _King Lear_--
Rats and mice and such small deer,
Were his meat for seven long year.
At the end of seven years, he escaped by something like a miracle, and
after visiting Jerusalem, rode off to Josyan, whom he found still
faithful to him at heart, though formally the bride of an outrageous
heathen, the King of Mounbraunt. To his castle Bevis proceeded, not
without blood-curdling adventures on the way, and introduced himself as
a poor palmer, welcomed for the sake of her Christian lover by Josyan,
though she did not recognise him so soon as did his good horse Arundel,
that in its vehement excitement at his voice outdoes the fidelity of
Argus; then his springing on its back without touching a stirrup reveals
him like the bending of Ulysses’ bow. Having got the king out of the way
by means of a somewhat unchivalrous fib, Bevis and Josyan eloped
together, meeting encounters which showed how little his long
imprisonment had unsteeled the paladin’s sinews. His first feat was to
kill a brace of lions at one blow; and next he fell in with a giant
named Ascapard who, wounded all over his thirty feet of length, was glad
to save his life by becoming Bevis’ page.
It was now high time for our hero to be turning homewards. Several years
back, before his imprisonment, he had casually fallen in with one of his
cousins, sent to search him out and bring him to the immediate
assistance of his uncle Saber, who had fled to the Isle of Wight for
refuge from the tyrant Murdour. As the first stage of his journey, Bevis
proceeded by sea to Cologne, where the bishop happened to be another
uncle of his, so he took the opportunity to have Josyan and Ascapard
christened, the latter behaving most irreverently under the rite, so as
to play the part of a mediæval gargoyle in the edifying story. The
bishop, for his part, used the opportunity of having such a champion at
hand to destroy a fiery dragon that infested the country; and in return
for this service of some little difficulty, equipped Sir Bevis with a
hundred knights, at the head of whom he landed in Hampshire, leaving
Josyan at Cologne with Ascapard in attendance.
Under an assumed name, so grown and sun-tanned that his own mother
treated the stranger politely, he now introduced himself into the house
of Sir Murdour, undertaking to serve him against Saber, but playing a
trick on him in the way of carrying off his best horses and arms to the
enemy. Before coming to an end with that caitiff, however, Bevis had to
return to Cologne to rescue Josyan from certain perils she had got into
through her devotion to him; then at last they both joined his uncle in
the Isle of Wight. The local Macbeth’s fate now drew to its fifth act.
In vain he summoned to his aid both a Scotch and a German army. When he
had to do with such prodigies of strength as Bevis and Ascapard, Murdour
could expect nothing but to be overthrown, captured, and boiled into
hounds’ meat in a great caldron of pitch, brimstone, and lead, as duly
befell at Carisbrooke. His wicked wife, hearing how it had fared with
him, very properly threw herself from the top of a high tower. His
triple army had no more fight in them after the death of their leader,
and the delivered citizens of Southampton hailed with joy their true
lord, who at last thought himself entitled to wed Josyan after so long
and chequered a courtship.
But the author of this long poem is not yet out of breath, and he still
takes his hero through what may be called an appendix of adventures, in
which Bevis once more goes abroad. King Edgar’s son so much admired
Arundel’s form in a horse-race at court, that he tried to steal this
peerless steed, and was kicked to death in the stable for his pains. The
angry father was for having the horse’s master hanged; but the barons
got him off with exile. While wandering homeless, his wife presents him
with twin sons, as fresh hostages to their troubled fortune. Ascapard
now turns unfaithful, and steals Josyan from him to restore her to her
Saracen husband; but after a separation of seven years or so all comes
right again, unbelievers and traitors are duly slain as they deserve,
and Bevis meets no further check in his triumphant career of baptising
heathen lands in blood, if not otherwise. Meanwhile, in his absence,
King Edgar spitefully did him further wrong by confiscating the family
estate, which the nephew had handed over to Saber. This injury must be
redressed by a visit of Bevis to London, where his exploits seem hardly
historical. He had now two sturdy sons to back him up, and these being
chips of the old block, they easily contrived to kill sixty thousand
people in a battle fought about Cheapside and Ludgate Hill, which
brought the king to a reasonable mood.
So many men at once were never seen dead,
For the water of Thames for blood wax red
From St Mary Bowe to London Stone.
In short, one of Bevis’ sons won the crown of England, with the hand of
its heiress; the brother was provided with a kingdom abroad; and Bevis
himself returned to another of his foreign dominions, to live happily
ever afterwards till, at a good old age, he, Josyan, and Arundel died
within a few minutes of each other, the knight and his true lady
sumptuously buried in a church, where even his dead body continued to
work miracles.
Thus ended Bevis of Hampton
That was so bold a baron.
Have I said enough to persuade strangers that they are wrong in not
stopping at Southampton on a visit to the tourist-haunted Island? To
Americans this port should be of special interest, as hence sailed the
_Mayflower_ and the _Speedwell_, freighted with the hopes of a New
England, but the smaller vessel proving unseaworthy, the adventurers,
all packed on board the _Mayflower_, finally embarked at Plymouth, which
thus gets credit for the departure of an expedition that really set out
from Delft Haven, winged by the parting charge of its large-minded
pastor. I had the pleasure of recommending a stay at Southampton West to
Mr W. D. Howells, who in a recent book owns to having enjoyed it; and
indeed there is more to be seen and enjoyed in or about Southampton than
at many places better famed in the tourist world.
On the west side of Southampton Water, through outskirts of the New
Forest, is soon reached the Boldre River, near the mouth of which stands
Lymington, a town before mentioned as pier of the shortest crossing to
the Island, at its Yarmouth end, where it has been proposed to make a
tunnel from the spit on which Hurst Castle rises. Of Lymington there is
not much else to be said, but that it has a look of having come down in
the world, its trade of shipbuilding not being what it once was, though
the estuary still makes a station for yachts. From the open sea it is
separated by flats, that were utilised as salterns. The scenery in the
background is more taking, where the edge of the New Forest plantations
is soon reached over the heathy swells of Sway Common.