Chapter II: Part 2

Visitors to Newport nowadays come mainly for the sake of Carisbrooke Castle, which is perhaps the chief attraction of the Island, drawing thousands of excursionists on a holiday occasion. Carisbrooke, at one time overshadowing the humble beginnings of Newport, is now almost one of its suburbs, the distance being only a mile or so. From the end of High Street, the way is by the Mall, a dignified parade that suggests Bath or Clifton. The road divides at a memorial cross to Sir John Simeon, Tennyson’s friend and neighbour at Swainston, notable as the first Catholic to sit in a modern parliament, though he belonged to a family whose theological associations were expressed by the Simeon Trust for stocking pulpits with Evangelical divines. Either fork leads to Carisbrooke, that to the right being the highway for the village, and the other going more directly to the castle, under a height on which is the cemetery.

The Windsor of Newport is in itself a place to delight our American guests, a long, steep village street of true British irregularity, giving off straggling lanes of rose-wreathed cottages, through which, in the hollow, flows a clear and shallow brook, bordered by luxuriant hedges, and by notices of “Teas Provided.” The main thoroughfare, mounting up to the Church, shows an unusual number of hotels and other places of entertainment; and the excursion vehicles that rendezvous here in summer rather disturb the peaceful charm of Carisbrooke, which too evidently lives on its visitors.

What is left of the Church, originally a double one divided between the parish and a priory that stood here, still makes a spacious structure, rearing the best tower in the Island, and enshrining some monuments and relics, most notable among them the tomb of Sir Nicholas Wadham’s wife, two generations before the founder of Wadham College. A quaint wooden tablet recalls the career of William Keeling, one of the earliest of our East Indian officials, whose name is preserved by the Keeling or Cocos Islands discovered by him far out in the Indian Ocean, in our time to be occupied by a Scottish family named Ross, who made this atoll group into a thriving settlement. The churchyard has a good show of old tombstones, including a weeping willow, railed in, as fanciful memorial of a former vicar.

A late incumbent was the Rev. E. Boucher James, whose Archæological and Historical Letters made valuable contributions to the annals of the Island. He does not omit to dig up the buried renown of his predecessor, the Rev. Alexander Ross, that erudite and voluminous Scot, now remembered only by the luck of rhyme that made a “sage philosopher” to have “read Alexander Ross over,” yet by his pen or his preaching, or somehow, he seems to have gained a considerable fortune, part of which he left to the poor of Carisbrooke. Any modern reader who cares to tackle this once-esteemed author, might try a spell at his “Πανσεβεια: View of all Religions,” which is still to be seen at libraries, if not on railway bookstalls. Another Carisbrooke worthy commemorated by Mr James was William Stephens, who, after losing his fortune and his seat as member for Newport, took part in General Oglethorpe’s philanthropic plan for settling Georgia, came to be president of the colony, and ended his life rather miserably in squabbles with the disciples of Whitfield and other discontented immigrants. Among this learned parson’s records is the pretty story of Dorothy Osborne, who, travelling with her father and brother in the days of the Civil War, at an inn hereabouts fell in with the future Sir William Temple, and the beginning of their courtship was through one of the young men scrawling on the window some disrespectful words about the Parliament, which led to the whole party being haled before the governor, to be released when Dorothy took the offence on herself: those stern Ironsides did not war against ladies. More than once the late vicar has to speak of his “friend and parishioner,” Henry Morley, who here ended the labours on English literature that made his name well known both in England and America.

Beside the parsonage is a sixpenny show of pavements, and other remains of a Roman villa unearthed about half a century ago, but since thrown into the shade by the larger one discovered at Brading. A more recent sign of Roman invasion is the establishment here of foreign religious communities, driven by French secularism into this pleasant exile. It is no common village that clusters about the tower, looking down “from its centuries of grey calm on the fitful stir and fret around it, and the fevered hopes and fears that must end at last in the quiet green mounds at its feet.”

The Castle stands across the valley, where its grey walls, buoyed by a flagstaff, hardly peep out above the wooded slopes and the thick greenery that floods the moat. This most picturesquely situated pile represents a very ancient fortress, held by the Romans, as by ruder warriors before them, then expanded and strengthened according to the needs of different times, so as now in its half-dilapidated, half-restored state, to form a charming medley of ruinous repair, wreathed with various historic memories, and specially haunted by those of the last year in which its walls were sternly guarded.

The oldest part is the Norman Keep, raised upon a mound that gives a fine prospect over Newport and down the Medina. Beautiful views can also be had from the moated walls within which Carisbrooke’s inner defences were enclosed by an Italian engineer in the days of the Armada. His work appears to have been stopped by the failure of that enterprise; had it been completed after his designs, this would have made the strongest fortress in Elizabethan England; and it enjoys the distinction of a virgin stronghold with no record of capture, unless may be counted to the contrary its honourable surrender by Lady Portland’s tiny garrison to the Parliamentary forces. The outer entrance bears the date 1598. The massive inner Gate-house, begun at the same time as the Keep, shows work of different periods, including recent restoration. Here, as so often in the Island, something has to be paid for admission; and there are further small charges for what an irreverent mind might term the side-shows. The main attraction is the remains of the royal prison that gives this castle its special interest as scene of almost the latest English romance in the history of such “grey and ivied walls where ruin greenly dwells.” Its earliest note

in more misty annals seems to be that here Sir Bevis of Hampton, having overcome his wicked stepfather, Sir Murdour, caused that traitor to be boiled to death in a caldron of pitch and brimstone, one of the facts not now known to “every schoolboy.” But such a well-informed personage is no doubt aware how the most famous event of this castle’s story was King Charles’ confinement here.

After his escape from Hampton Court in November 1647, attended by three gentlemen, the king made for the Solent, and crossed to the Isle of Wight, believing the Governor, Colonel Hammond, to be favourable to him. But Hammond, a connection of Cromwell, and son-in-law of John Hampden, received Charles as a prisoner rather than a sovereign,--at first, indeed, treated with respect and allowed to ride out hunting about Parkhurst Forest, with the governor in his train. Carisbrooke was so slightly guarded, that the king judged it easy to escape when he pleased. At the end of the year, he did propose to escape to Southampton down the Medina, but found himself baffled by a change of wind to the north. After that, he was kept in closer restraint, most of his faithful attendants being dismissed, and the Castle made a real prison. One Captain Burley tried to raise a rescue for him at Newport, but was taken prisoner, to be with legal mockery tried and executed for treason against the king in his parliament.

Poor Charles was soon stripped of what royal ceremonial had been left him. For exercise he walked up and down the Tilt Yard turned into a bowling-green, or round the ramparts, looking sadly out on the green slopes that bounded his view. He spent much time in reading, writing, and gloomy meditation. Now, according to a discredited tradition, he finished that _Eikon Basilike_ which has been almost conclusively shown to be the work of Dr Thomas Gauden. Nor should his admirers press a dubious title for him as poet, in the verses entitled _Majesty in Misery_, that begin by a rather lame invocation--

Great Monarch of the world, from whose power springs
The potency and power of kings,
Record the royal woe my suffering brings,

And teach my tongue that ever did confine
Its faculties in truth’s seraphic line,
To track the treasons of Thy foes and mine.

As sympathising attendants he had Harrington, author of _Oceana_, and Thomas Herbert, who stuck by him to the end; while one Osborne, put near him as a spy for the Parliament, seems to have been so far won by the captive’s woes, that he is found helping an attempt at escape. The most authentic occupation for the king’s too much leisure was intriguing with his friends, by means of letters in cipher and other communications through the trusty servants left him, till this secret correspondence was tapped by his custodians.

His cause was not yet lost. While Cromwell strove to trim the captainless ship of State between the extreme Presbyterians and Levellers, there were signs of reaction in the king’s favour. Fresh civil war broke out from the still smouldering embers in different parts. Hamilton with his army of Scots invaded England. Prince Charles with a loyal section of the fleet hovered upon the east coast from his base in Holland; and it seems strange that he made no attempt to rescue his father by a landing on the Island, even when Parliamentary ships guarded the Solent. The queen, on the continent, was hatching war against the distracted government _de facto_, which had good reason for holding her husband fast, lest he should place himself at the head of any of these movements.

In March a plot had nearly succeeded, by which Charles should have broken out and ridden away with a band of loyal gentlemen of the Island, as Mary did from Loch Leven. But he was not so lucky as his bewitching grandmother. He stuck fast in a barred window, and had to give up the attempt. Two months later, the bar having been filed or eaten away with acid, he tried again, but being more closely watched, found Hammond on the alert and double guards posted on the walls. Now confined in closer quarters, the king seems to have lost heart. His uncrowned head turned grey, he let his beard grow, and the once trim cavalier became careless of his dress. Nor had his gaoler Hammond a happy time of it, who is found complaining to Cromwell of the “sad and heavy burden” laid upon him, when he had hoped for peace and quiet in retiring from active service to this backwater of civil strife.

Yet still Charles might have been saved by a little more of the craft that had brought him to ruin. In September he was moved to Newport for a last effort at negotiation between himself and the Parliament, which now saw reason to dread the army as a more formidable tyrant. But hopes of an understanding stuck upon the point of religion, the “conscientious and untrustworthy” king proving firm in his devotion to prelacy. He once again seems to have thought of escaping, in spite of having given his word to remain at Newport. Then, while the treaty dragged itself on, the soldiers, exasperated by renewed bloodshed, raised a cry for sharper measures. Cromwell began to talk loudly of justice. A band of his troopers appeared in the Island to “guard” the residence of Charles, who now refused to escape, as bound by his parole. On the last night of November, the shifty and irresolute king was forcibly carried off to Yarmouth by two troops of horse, to be ferried across to Hurst Castle, and thence, before Christmas, taken to Windsor as prisoner of the army, that meanwhile, by “Pride’s Purge,” had got rid of the moderate party in Parliament, putting England under martial law.

After Charles’ execution, Carisbrooke received two more royal prisoners, Princess Elizabeth and the little Duke of Gloucester, kept in hand as possible figure-head of a constitutional monarchy, now that his two elder brothers were out of the Commonwealth’s power. The treatment of these young captives makes a pleasant contrast to the fate of Louis XVI.’ss children in their harsh prison, though some extremists had proposed that the young malignants should be “apprenticed to honest trades.” A yearly £1000 was granted for their support, £5000 having been the king’s allowance. But almost at once the poor princess caught cold through getting wet at a game of bowls, and a month later was laid, as we saw, in Newport Church. The little duke, addressed as “Master Harry,” was kept here for two years, then allowed by the Protector to join his family on the continent, England being by this time provided with a ruler who made more than a figure-head. This young prince died of small-pox, just as the Restoration was opening brighter prospects for his house. A later captive at Carisbrooke was Sir Henry Vane, a man too good for those troubled times, whose fate was to offend all parties, driven out of his governorship in Massachusetts, imprisoned by Cromwell, and executed under Charles II. Sir William Davenant is said also to have spent part of his imprisonment here.

The scenes traditionally connected with that moving story are shown to visitors. Relics of the unfortunate Charles and his family are preserved in a museum above the gateway, a part of the castle restored by way of memorial to her husband by Princess Henry of Battenburg, who, as Governor of the Island, is _châtelaine_, her deputy occupying a habitable portion as keeper. The ruined chapel of St Nicholas in the courtyard has also been restored, in memory of the king whom modern historians make not so much of a saint and a martyr. Another sight of the Castle is its deep well, from which water is drawn by a wheel worked by a dynasty of donkeys that have the reputation of enjoying longer life than falls to the lot of most monarchs.

Carisbrooke has a station, a little to the north, on the Freshwater line. Beyond this, the westward high-road is edged by a front of dark firs that mark the enclosure of Parkhurst or Carisbrooke Forest, compact fragment of a once more extensive woodland, swelling up into eminences of two or three hundred feet. This is Government property, but ways through it are open for shady rambles, very pleasant on a hot day. A field-path from Newport, starting by a footbridge beside a prominent block of brewery buildings just below the station, leads to the south-east corner of the forest, where workhouse, prison, and barracks adjoin one another to make up a little town. Parkhurst Prison, whose inmates one has seen engaged in the idyllic occupation of haymaking within a fence of fixed bayonets, ranks as a sort of sanatorium among our convict depôts, to which delicate criminals are sent rather than to the bleak heights of Portland or Dartmoor.

The soldiers at the barracks are kept in better order than that Scots regiment that proved such a curse and corruption to the quiet Wight parishes in Oglander’s time. He represents them as billeted in the Island “because they should not run away, being constrained for the most part to serve contrary to their wills”--_volunteers_, as he elsewhere calls them “a proud, beggarly nation, and I hope we shall never be troubled with the like [again], especially the red-shanks, or the Highlanders, being as barbarous in nature as their clothes.” These strangers, “insolent by reason of their unanimous holding together,” brought about so many “inconveniences,” murders, rapes, robberies, and so forth, that when at length they were shipped off to the siege of La Rochelle, after being reviewed by Charles on Arreton Down, the worthy knight can record how “we were free from our Egyptian thraldom, or like Spain from the Moors, for since the Danish slavery never were these Islanders so oppressed.” In the outspoken fashion of his day, he notes how the Scots left behind them a considerable strain of northern blood, which may have been not altogether an evil for a too closely connected neighbourhood, where, if all tales are true, marrying in and in has generated a good deal of physical and mental feebleness.

Keats, who seems to have written part of _Endymion_ at Carisbrooke, denounces the barracks at Parkhurst as a “nest of debauchery.” But at the worst, they may have been an Arcadian nook compared to that East India Company’s recruits depôt near Ryde, described by Scott, in _The Surgeon’s Daughter_, as a gaol of adventurous scum of society swept together by crimps and kidnappers. Sir Walter must have visited or at least coasted “the shore of that beautiful island, which he who once sees never forgets,” when in 1807 he stayed with his friend Stewart Rose at Gundimore on the Hampshire coast. Since his day, the Island has seen various samples of Highland soldiers, and found them not too barbarous either in dress or manners.

By Parkhurst there is a pleasant way to Gurnard Bay, the nearest bathing-place on the coast. Cowes, under half a dozen miles off, may be gained by roads on either side the river, or by boat when the tide serves. The well-shod and wary explorer might trace the Medina upwards through the Downs, and among the peaty bogs of the “Wilderness” on to its obscure source behind the Undercliff. On either side the “quarried downs of Wight” offer fine airy walks with valley villages for goal, or such points as the ancient British settlement, whose pit dwellings may be traced by an antiquary’s eye in the hollow below Rowborough Downs, near the road leading south from Carisbrooke. On the other side of the Medina, by St George’s Down, is mounted the ridge of chalk stretching to Brading and Bembridge.

In fact Newport, too much neglected by tourists, unless as a halting-place, would make an excellent station for visiting the whole Island. I must be content with taking the reader on by the central railway to the Undercliff. This goes out from Newport with the line to Sandown, threading the Downs into the Yar Valley; then at Merston Junction it turns off towards the southern heights swelling up beyond Godshill station. But one must not forget to mention Shide, on the outskirts of Newport, not only as a station for its golf-links on Pan Down, but as a spot in wider touch with the world than any other on the Island, for here Dr John Milne, F.R.S., has his Seismological Observatory, if that be a fit title for an installation of instruments by which earthquakes, thousands of miles away, are recorded long before they get into newspapers--some indeed that never get into further notice, spending their force at the bottom of the sea or in wildernesses beyond the ken of “our own correspondent.”

Godshill is one of the prettiest of the Island villages, claiming its name from that oft-told legend of supernatural interference with the building of a church, which by miraculous power was moved to its present site on an eminence, where it holds up its tower as a conspicuous landmark. This church is often visited both for the prospect from it, and for its architectural merits and interesting memorials. Besides a sixteenth century altar tomb of Sir John Leigh and monuments of the Worsley family, it contains a specimen of their once famous art collection in a picture of _Daniel in the Lion’s Den_, said to be in part by Rubens, or at least after his style. An older patron is recorded by a tablet praising one of the benefactors of the Newport Grammar School.

Here lies the mortal part of Richard Gard,
While his freed spirit meets with heaven’s reward;
His gifts endowed the schools, the needy raised
And by the latest memory will be praised.
And may our Isle be filled with such a name,
And be like him whom virtue clothed with fame;
Blessed with the poor, the scholars too were blest
Through such a donor that is gone to rest.

A strange commentary on the truthfulness of epitaphs is the account of that late lamented given by his contemporary Oglander, declaring him the knavish son of a French refugee, whose father, Pierre Garde, had been executed for treason in his own country. An extract on this head makes a good specimen of Sir John’s random jottings, that open such curious peeps into the state of his native Island at that date. One takes the liberty of correcting his spelling; but the style seems past mending.

Richard, the father, was a notable sly fellow, dishonest and given
to filching; he brought some tricks out of France with him.
_Vide_--he would steal a cow, and putting a loaf of bread hot out
of the oven on her horns, make her horns so supple that they would
turn any way he pleased, so as to disfigure the beast that the
owner might not know her again. Many other shifts he had, being a
man of no great conscience, by which means he recovered some
wealth, and died. His sons, Richard and Peter, did not degenerate;
Richard was as crafty a knave as any (except his brother) in a
whole country; he was good at reading and understanding of old
evidences, whereby he got many into his hands, and so forced the
owners to a composition. He was indifferently skilled in law, a
most penurious base fellow, and of little religion; he died about
1616, and in his will gave Richard, the eldest son of Peter, the
better part of his estate, having no children of his

own. He willed his body to be coffined in lead, and to be laid but
2 foot deep in the earth, in the porch of Godshill Church, as
unwilling that too much earth should hinder him from rising at the
resurrection; where we will leave him, to speak of Peter, the
second brother, and son of Richard the Bandit.

This Peter had left him by his father a little land at St Helens
(which how it might be purchased in his own name, being an alien, I
leave) worth per annum £5. Richard the elder brother being willing
to cheat his brother Peter of the land, was an importunate suitor
to buy it of him; the other, as crafty, permitted him to feed him
with money, and having had half or better of the worth of it, was
drawn (as he made himself very unwilling) to sign a deed of sale
thereof to his brother; but he being at that time under age; the
first act he did when he came of age was to cheat the cheater, and
nullify that deed by non-age. The enmity then between the two
brothers was great; they vilified one another, and discovered each
other’s knavery to the view of the whole Island. I cannot omit one
in silence, being so notorious. Richard Garde had good store of
monies, and durst not trust any man with it, no not his own house,
but hid it in a pot underground in the field, where one Smyth, his
neighbour, mistrusting some such matter, observed him more
narrowly, and by watching him found an opportunity to gain the
hidden pot. The other when he missed it, esteeming it little less
than his God, had well-near hanged himself, but that he had some
confidence by the devil’s means to recover it, whereupon the
brothers, now friends, consult of the means--Peter as the more
active man undertakes it, goes to a witch near Kingwood, or
somewhere, and brought home certain hope of the short return of the
monies; whereupon this Smyth, the Saturday following, was taken on
Hazely Hill on his return from Newport, and there in a great storm
was beaten, haled, whipped, misused, and almost killed (had not
some the next morning found him by chance) not knowing or seeing
who did act it, but affirmed it was the devil; and being long ill
after, could not be quiet in conscience till he had brought home
the pot of silver again to Richard Garde’s house to Binstead,
according to the true relation formerly made to Peter by the witch.
Peter, he got still lands and livings, whether by right or wrong I
suppose he little respected; he was, and is, one of the slyest,
craftiest knaves that I know; wit and judgment in matters of law he
hath enough both to serve his own turn and to cozen his neighbours;
a man worse spoken of I never knew.

A more honourable name was the Worsleys, here commemorated, long one of the chief families in the Island, that had its principal seat at Appuldurcombe on the high downs above Godshill. Its most notable member was Sir Richard Worsley, a cultured Georgian squire, who wrote the history of the Island in quarto, and on his travels made a celebrated art collection to adorn the stately classical mansion which he completed, replacing what had been a Benedictine Abbey. By marriage, the house and its treasures passed to the Earls of Yarborough, who, half a century ago left the Island, carrying away the art collection to be mainly dispersed.

The Lord Yarborough of early Victorian times was a “character,” doughty commodore of the R.Y.S., who tried to play Canute against the advance of railways, a prejudice then shared by high and low, as we learn in Herbert Spencer’s autobiography. His arbitrary lordship had his lands protected against this radical innovation by a guard charged to take into custody anybody with a theodolite, or who looked in the least like a railway engineer. Upon one occasion, a man newly appointed to the post, meeting his master in a secluded part of the estate, at once collared him, an incident to be paralleled by Mr John Mytton’s famous fight, in the disguise of a sweep, with his own keeper.

The mansion, whose name should be strongly accented on the last syllable, stands in a combe, well displayed against its background of dark wood. Since it passed to “overners,” it has been turned into an hotel, then into a school; and a few years ago was acquired by a community of Benedictine monks exiled from France, thus coming back to its original owners. As already mentioned, this Order has since acquired Quarr Abbey, and are spreading their establishments so fast over the Island, that sound Protestants dread to see given up to cloisters all of it that is not dedicated to golf.

For laymen and strangers in general the most interesting spot of this demesne is the Worsley obelisk on the highest point of the Downs, raised by Sir Richard Worsley to a height of 70 feet, but in 1831 struck by lightning that shattered its huge blocks of granite into wild confusion. From this half-ruined landmark the most extensive view in the Island displays its whole length and breadth, from the chalk cliffs of Culver to those about the Needles.

The railway, whose whistle might make that prejudiced Lord Yarborough turn in his grave, of course keeps clear of far prospects, taking a break in the Downs to thread its way through by Whitwell, which has a remarkable restored church, originally composed of two chapels, one belonging to Gatcombe, some miles north-west, once seat of another branch of the Worsley family, and having an ancient church of its own. Thus the line drops down into the rich greenery of the Undercliff, at St Lawrence turning eastward above the shore, to reach Ventnor beside Steephill Castle.

THE EAST SIDE

The more direct route from Ryde to Ventnor is by road, rail, or boat along the east coast. From the Newport line diverges the old Ventnor railway, at Brading sending off a branchlet for Bembridge, then holding on behind Sandown and Shanklin. Thus on this side are strung together the oldest and one of the youngest settlements of the Isle of Wight.

Brading, an hour’s walk from Ryde, seems an insignificant place now; but it claims to have been the ancient metropolis of the Island in days when St Helens was its chief port. Brading Harbour, still a tidal creek that at high water dignifies the landscape, once made a wider and deeper gulf, which guide-books of a century back describe as an inland lake set in woods. Time was, says Sir John Oglander, that boats came up to the middle of Brading Street, and in the haven below there would be choice of twenty good shipmasters to undertake any voyage. Then the harbour having become choked by unwholesome marshes, an attempt was made to embank them, in which work Sir Hugh Middleton of New River fame had a hand, and certain “ignorant Dutchmen” were brought over to put in practice the art to which they owed their own native soil. But the Dutchmen’s dykes broke down; and the land was not thoroughly reclaimed till our own time saw the enterprise accomplished by that “Liberator” Company of else evil renown.

Thus Brading came to be gradually stranded some mile or two inland. The townlet, that once sent two members to Parliament, has relics to show of its old dignity, its bull ring, its stocks, and its Norman Church, rich in monuments, notably the Oglander Chapel enshrining tombs of a family settled at Nunwell on Brading Down for many centuries, among them the effigy of that Sir John Oglander, whose memoranda have been so much drawn on by later writers. He tells how then “many score” of Oglanders lay in this oldest church of the Island, where the latest addition to the family chapel is a fine monument to his descendant of the Victorian age.

The churchyard contains more than one celebrated epitaph, such as that set to music by Dr Calcott--

Forgive, blest shade, the tributary tear!

and another on a child--

This lovely bud, so young, so fair,
Called hence by early doom,
Just came to show how sweet a flower
In Paradise would bloom.

Here was buried “Jane the young Cottager,” whose humble name has been spread far by Legh Richmond, curate of this parish at the end of the eighteenth century. It is to be feared that his writings are not so well known to our generation as they once were in the religious world, for he belonged to that school of Evangelical saints, who dwelt more on “Gospel truths” than on “sound Church feeling”; and his long-spun deathbed scenes are hardly to the taste of readers who have learned to look for more piquant flavours in the literature of edification. But in the Isle of Wight, where Protestantism puts down its foot the more firmly for recent Catholic invasion, this kindly pastor’s “Annals of the Poor” still seem to find a sale, as they once did in many languages. Mr Boucher James goes so far as to say that “in a small way Legh Richmond did for the Isle of Wight what Walter Scott did for the Scottish Highlands,” by drawing tourists to seek out the scenes of his tracts. At all events he deserves the brass now placed to his memory in Brading Church.[2]

The much restored Church claims to represent that first erected on the same site by Wilfred, apostle of the Island. But another lion of Brading is older than its church, though unknown to Legh Richmond’s generation. This is the Roman villa, discovered a generation ago by Mr Hilton Price, Director of the Society of Antiquaries, which boasts itself to be the finest of such miniature Pompeiis in England. It stands about a mile to the south-west, near Yarbridge, the way being easily found, since direction posts are never wanting in the Isle of Wight where there is anything to pay for admission; and the tarred sheds that protect the remains stand conspicuous against a chalk cutting on the Downs. A score or so apartments have been unearthed, in some of which were found many relics of the Roman occupation, the most interesting part of the show being the tesselated pavements with their mosaic designs. There appear traces of two successive ownerships, and of the villa having been destroyed by fire, perhaps on the evacuation of Britain by the Roman troops. The complete building seems to have been composed of the _Urbana_, or master’s dwelling, the _Rustica_, or quarters for dependents, and the _Fructuaria_, store-houses and offices, arranged on three sides of a rectangle.

From Brading the central line of downs runs westward for half-a-dozen miles to the valley of the Medina. On the height known as Ashey Down, a stone pyramid, erected as a sea-mark, makes one of the favourite view-points, looking over half the Island and across the Solent to Portsmouth. Further along, below a crest marked by Saxon burrows, Arreton has a fine prospect upon the valley of the Yar to the south. This is one of the Island’s show villages, where excursion coaches stop to let their passengers see the Church with its medley of Gothic features, and the grave of the “Dairyman’s Daughter,” another of Legh Richmond’s heroines, lying at peace among warriors and knights of old. The old manor-house of this scattered village bears marks of bygone dignity; but destruction has come upon Knighton, which a century or so back could still be called the stateliest hall of the Island.

In the _Dairyman’s Daughter_, Legh Richmond turns his thoughts from heaven to earth to give a description of what one surveys from the Ashey Down sea-mark; one may omit some final features which have altered since his day, as well as the moral drawn by the good clergyman from the fact that so “much of the natural beauties of Paradise still remain in the world.”

Southward the view was terminated by a long range of hills, at
about six miles distance. They met, to the westward, another chain
of hills, of which the one whereon I sat formed a link, and the
whole together nearly encompassed a rich and fruitful valley,
filled with corn-fields and pastures. Through this vale winded a
small valley for many miles; much cattle were feeding on its banks.
Here and there lesser eminences arose in the valley; some covered
with wood, others with corn or grass, and a few with heath or fern.
One of these little hills was distinguished by a parish church at
the top, presenting a striking feature in the landscape. Another of
these elevations, situated in the centre of the valley, was adorned
with a venerable holly-tree, which has grown there for ages. Its
singular height and wide-spreading dimensions not only render it an
object of curiosity to the traveller, but of daily usefulness to
the pilot, as a mark visible from the sea, whereby to direct his
vessel safe into harbour. Villages,

churches, country-seats, farmhouses, and cottages were scattered
over every part of the southern valley....

South-eastward, I saw the open ocean, bounded only by the horizon.
The sun shone, and gilded the waves with a glittering light that
sparkled in the most brilliant manner. More to the east, in
continuation of that line of hills where I was placed, rose two
downs, one beyond the other; both covered with sheep, and the sea
just visible over the farthest of them, as a terminating boundary.
In this point, ships were seen, some sailing, others at anchor.
Here the little river, which watered the southern valley, finished
its course, and ran through meadows into the sea, in an eastward
direction.

On the north the sea appeared like a noble river, varying from
three to seven miles in breadth, between the banks of the opposite
coast and those of the island which I inhabited. Immediately
underneath me was a fine woody district of country, diversified by
many pleasing objects. Distant towns were visible on the opposite
shore. Numbers of ships occupied the sheltered station which this
northern channel afforded them. The eye roamed with delight over an
expanse of near and remote beauties, which alternately caught the
observation, and which harmonised together, and produced a scene of
peculiar interest.

Westward the hills followed each other, forming several
intermediate and partial valleys, in a kind of undulations, like
the waves of the sea; and, bending to the south, completed the
boundary of the larger valley before described, to the southward of
the hill on which I sat.

This river Yar, not to be confounded with its namesake on the other side of the Island, rises in the southern downs that bound the prospect over its valley. At Brading, it finds a gap through the northern heights, beyond which it winds sluggishly into that shrunken harbour. Above the left side stands St Helens, with its wide green and fringe of leafy lanes, having moved up from a lower site, where an ivied fragment of the old church shows its whitewashed face to the sea as a beacon. The sandy spit here has also been turned to use for golf-links, that helped yachting to make the fortune of Bembridge. The Island seems now in a fair way of being half laid out in golf grounds, but these were the first, or among the first, which, though small, had the advantage of a mild climate to invite enthusiasts in winter, when elsewhere red balls would be necessary for their absorbing pastime. Links for ladies are a later addition, on the opposite side of the river, that the eyes of neither sex may be distracted from a foursome to what might become a twosome game of life.

Bembridge itself, linked to St Helens by a ferry boat, nestles very prettily on the wooded point opposite. The nucleus of nautically named inns and cottages is much overlaid by hotel and lodging-house accommodation, and by villas whose owners declare Bembridge to be the Island’s pleasantest spot. One of its chief attractions, after golf, is the view of shipping in the Solent mouth; but it has some pretty spots on land, such as the avenue running inland from the bathing beach. To the south it is sheltered by the Foreland, the most easterly point, over which we may hold by mounting lanes, or take a rough path round the shore, tide permitting, that has also to be considered in boating about the dangerous Bembridge Ledges roughening the sea at low water.

Thus we pass on to the curve of Whitecliff Bay, where the chalk of the Downs is broken by an expanse of Eocene beds, making for the geologist a foretaste

of that more glowing transformation scene shown in Alum Bay at the Island’s western end. The Culver Cliffs at this end are protected by a fort which has masked the Hermit’s Hole, a cave once used by smugglers. On the other side of Bembridge is a small fortress, now so far behind the times that it was lately advertised as suitable for a private residence or an hotel.

Beyond Whitecliff Bay, the cliffs curve into the block of Bembridge Down, crowned by a modern fort that has usurped the originally more conspicuous site of Lord Yarborough’s monument, now neighboured by a Marconi Telegraph Station. On the southern slope are the tiny Norman Church and decayed manor-house of Yaverland, which makes a scene in the _Dairyman’s Daughter_. Here we have come round to Sandown Bay, the largest and openest in the Island, reached byroad and rail from Brading through the gap at Yarbridge.

Sandown stands in a break of the cliffs, behind the centre of its bay, compared of course to the Bay of Naples by those who never saw Vesuvius. With its hotels, rows of smart lodging-houses, batteries of bathing-machines, esplanade, arcade, and other very modern features, this seems one of the most growing places in the Island; and I trust Sandown will not take it amiss to be described as perhaps the most commonplace resort here, or at least the most like the ordinary Saturday-to-Monday. Its strong point is wide, firm sands for children, and, on a common behind the town, excellent golf-links for their elders, about the height known as “Majuba Hill,” the views from which are complained of by votaries as interfering with strict attention to their game. The summer season of this bathing-place is so prosperous that some day its esplanade and Shanklin’s may stretch out to meet along the couple of miles of cliff walk separating them. As link between them springs up Lake, with its sumptuous “Home of Rest,” and its headquarters of Isle of Wight cricket, behind the cliff descent at Littlestairs.

Sandown Pier has met with rough handling from winter waves, to which, however, the enterprising town will not give in so easily as did King Canute, whose renowned object-lesson against pride, according to legend, had its scene not far off, across the Solent. The railway station, which stands some way back from the sea, is a junction of lines to Newport, Ventnor, and Ryde, so that Sandown visitors can easily reach more picturesque corners of the Island, or can soon gain the Downs framing the green valley of the Yar. Up this valley the first station is Alverston, near a knoll known as Queen’s Bower, from the tradition that upon it Isabella de Fortibus watched the chase in what was then Bordwood Forest. Near the next station, on an eminence beside the river, stands up the ancient fane of Newchurch, a parish that, in spite of its name, is old enough to have once included both Ryde and Ventnor in its ample bounds. Then by Harringford Station below Arreton Down, the line comes to Merston Junction, there forking north and south.

In old days Sandown, then known rather as Sandham, was distinguished by a “castle,” which has given place to less imposing but more formidable modern forts, serving as models for sand-engineering to the troops of children encamped here in summer. Its only other historical association seems to be as retreat of the notorious John Wilkes in his old age, cheered by more gentle pursuits than might be expected of a so unedifying demagogue. He was given to rearing pigeons, as well as to collecting books and china, at his Sandown “Villakin,” a sort of tawdry miniature of Horace Walpole’s show, to which the owner’s notoriety attracted many visitors. One describes him as walking about his grounds “in Arcadian costume,” raking up weeds with a hoe and destroying vipers. He complained that the pigeons he got from England, Ireland, and France always took the first chance of flying home, so that he had almost given up pigeon-keeping, “when I bethought myself to procure a cock and hen pouter from Scotland: I need not add that _they never returned_.” This cockney bitterness against North Britons, it will be remembered, made a common subject between Dr Johnson and the ex-Lord Mayor, when Boswell had his wish of bringing them together. Wilkes showed one visitor a pond in the garden stocked with carp, tench, perch, and eels, because, he said, fish could not be had by the seaside. Here he also employed himself in writing the memoirs which he had the decency to destroy. The toothless old rip, with one foot in the grave, bragged how his squinting eye had done great execution with the pretty farmers’ daughters at Newport market: well known is his boast, that, monster of ugliness as he was, he could “talk away his face,” so as to be only a quarter of an hour behind the handsomest man. Another story is that when, on his last crossing of the Solent, the vessel was becalmed, he jocularly affected to take this as a presage of death, since he had never been able to live in a calm; but his retreat at Sandown seems to have been quiet enough for Cowper or Hannah More.

If, to set off against that ribald sojourner of its neighbour’s, Shanklin wanted to boast a notorious character, it was a generation ago the headquarters, as perhaps rather it would prefer to forget, of one of the most audacious criminals of our time, whose life, so far as I know, has never been written, unless in criminal calendars. His real name, it appears, was Benson, which does not figure in the Dictionary of National Biography, though it deserves a place there beside Claude Duval’s and George Barrington’s; while I am mistaken if it were not qualified by nationality. On this side of the Channel he called himself a Frenchman; but he spoke French and English equally well, as would hardly have been the case, had he not passed his youth in England. He was certainly a Jew, of typically Jewish aspect. His adventurous career would make a theme for the pen that chronicled Jonathan Wild’s; and if I offer a sketch of it, _faute de mieux_, it is because I had the advantage of knowing him. He did me the honour of trying to make me one of his dupes, in which enterprise, I am glad to say, he succeeded less well than in other cases; and I did not care to cultivate an acquaintance which he pressed upon me. But with a little help from hearsay and surmise, I believe I can supply an outline of his history, wrapped as it was in clouds of deceit.

He was, I am told, the son of a prosperous Jewish tradesman established at Paris, who had means to put him in a position of respectability, if not of wealth, “instead of which,” young Benson from his youth took to knavery like a duck to the water. I have heard that in early life he had been connected with the French or the Belgian press; and he showed some familiarity with journalism, which he sought to turn to account in his swindling schemes. That part of his life, indeed, lies in deep shadow, which might be cleared up by research among police _dossiers_ of the continent.

His first notable _coup_ in England seems to have been during the Franco-Prussian War, when he flew at such high game as the very Lord Mayor. A French town had been burned by the Prussians. While this disaster was still fresh on our news sheets, there burst into the Mansion House a voluble gentleman professing to be the mayor of that town, come to throw himself on the generosity of the great English nation. Our sympathetic Lord Mayor handed out a thousand pounds; and it was whispered at the time that this plausible guest carried off also the heart of his lordship’s daughter. The clever trick ended in detection, arrest, and two years’ imprisonment; then by way of varying the monotony of Newgate, Benson tried to set fire to his cell, but succeeded only in burning himself about the spine, so as to be henceforth a helpless cripple. There were some who surmised that he made the most of this injury as helping out his disguise of deceit; but I never saw his slight figure unless as recumbent on a couch, or carried like a child in the arms of a big Frenchman, who passed as his valet, being really one of the swindling gang of which Benson was the brain. His crippled state was put down to a railway accident.

After his release from Newgate comes a period of obscurity, from which he emerges about 1875 as living in some style at Shanklin, with a London _pied à terre_ in Cavendish Square, a brougham, and everything genteel about him. It was at this time I made his acquaintance. He then passed under the name of Yonge, with some explanation which I forget; but he confided to me and to others how he was really the Count de Montague, a Frenchman engaged in conspiring for the Empire, business that was to account for the seclusion in which he lived. This struck me as dubious: in those days, before dynamite outrages, one could conspire at the pitch of one’s voice in the middle of Piccadilly without anyone caring to interfere. Moreover, in writing to me, he signed himself _De Montagu_, whereas, for a more favoured friend, he decorated the name with a final _e_. It took little Sherlock Holmes’ faculty to detect that a French nobleman ought to know how to spell his own name; but I am glad to say that from my first sight of the “Count,” I distrusted a gentleman whose dress and manners seemed too fine to be true. He never deceived me by his pretensions; and his overdone elegance served to set others on their guard. Indeed, like Joseph Andrews, he might have passed for a nobleman with one who had not seen many noblemen.

For not being taken in by him, I have perhaps to thank my deficiencies. His chief accomplishment, it seems, was playing the piano like an angel, which left me cold, while it drew tuneful flies into his web of treasons and stratagems. Some women were much taken by his feline manners, which on others produced such a feeling of repulsion as was my experience. One family became so captivated as to act as his social sponsors in the Isle of Wight, where he was received with open arms. If I remember right, it was a house belonging to this family which he tenanted; and rumour went that his admiring landlady’s eyes were hardly opened even by the exposure that cost her dear. Several writers for the press were brought into relations with him through a well-known author, who has to confess that he allowed his honesty to be deceived. When urged to search closer into Benson’s antecedents, he was content to let himself be put off with audacity. “Go to the French Ambassador!” exclaimed that plausible knave; but no such inquiry was carried out; and his most solid credentials were from a London bank, that knew nothing of him but his having a considerable balance to draw upon.

How he got the means to figure thus as a wealthy foreigner, I know not; but I have a good guess as to a main aim of his schemes which never came to light. At this time he was concerned in founding a periodical which was to champion religion, loyalty, honesty, and other causes he professed to have at heart. He knew very little about the higher walks of the press; and his design wavered between a newspaper and a half-crown monthly. In the latter form the organ financed by him did appear, soon to be eclipsed. Its name and short history are best forgotten. The pious founder, not being so ready with his pen as with his tongue, proposed to me to write an article on certain money-market matters, the tone and facts of which article were to be dictated by him. He was such a shallow knave that he did not take the precaution of carefully testing my likelihood to be a fit tool in his hands; and at my first interview with him, he took for granted that I knew nothing of French; then, by the way in which he and his valet _parlez-voused_ to each other before my face, I soon got a suspicion they were not master and servant.

By no means prepossessed in his favour by the ease with which he reckoned on catching me, I refused to enlist myself as literary bravo in affairs quite beyond my scope. He did find a more subservient scribe to write such an article as he had outlined, which the publisher refused to print as libellous; then Benson was for bringing an action against the firm by way of advertisement for his organ, now launched with a great flourish of trumpets. This was at a time when certain papers had done more or less good service, to themselves and the public, by exposing scandals in the financial world. On that example, I believe Benson aimed at gaining a character for audacious honesty, then using it to rig the money-market to his own profit _quo cumque modo_, or to levy blackmail in a manner since perfected by certain “financial” papers that are the disgrace of our journalism.