Part 7
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
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.
Westward, the shore has openings known as Walpen Chine, Ladder Chine, 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,
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
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.