Chapter V: Part 5

It is easy to understand how Cowes came to be the Tilbury and Gravesend of Newport, then by and by to supplant it as the Island’s chief port. In the days of small vessels, such a harbour as Newport offers was roomy and accessible enough, while it had the advantage of being more out of the way of hostile attack. London, Glasgow, Newcastle, Exeter, Bristol are only a few examples of great ports lying some way up navigable rivers; then on the larger scale of the world, one at once thinks of Calcutta, Canton, Montreal, New Orleans, Rosario, and so on. Some of these inland havens have kept their commercial position only by pains and cost hardly worth while to save half-a-dozen miles of water carriage; so, as ships grew too big for the tiny wharves of Newport, they would unload at the mouth of the river that makes the one good harbour on the Island. Thus Cowes grew apace; and a century ago it bid fair to be at least the second Wight town, till Ryde took a sudden start in prosperity. Like Ryde and Yarmouth it throve by victualling the great war fleets and convoys that often lay wind-bound in the Solent. But Cowes got a special string to its bow in the ship-building industry rooted here, then another in its position as headquarters of Solent yachting; and royal favour went to bring it into fashion. There was a time when it aspired to be a mere Margate or Sandown, in honour of which a Georgian poet named Jones is moved to predict--

No more to foreign baths shall Britain roam
But plunge at Cowes and find rich health at home!

To tell the truth, Cowes hardly shines in this capacity. Its bathing is not everywhere safe in the currents of the Solent; and to pick out a sandy oasis on the rough beach one must go eastward towards Gurnard Bay. Nowadays, indeed, the place is so spoilt by the patronage of European royalties and American millionaires, that it does not much care to lay itself out for the holiday-making _bourgeois_ and his olive branches. The straggling town, divided by the Medina, has no particular charm unless that of a marine flavour. It is far from being so picturesque as Ventnor, or so imposing as Ryde; and apart from the artificial beauties of the parks enclosing it, its surroundings are commonplace beside those of Newport. Its main interest is on the sea-face looking over the shallow waters of the Solent, beside which East Cowes huddles along a narrow main street, that winds up and down, in and out, here and there, making a quaint show of houses old and new, half and half, dwellings mixed with shops, an unusual proportion of them providing refreshments, when they do not display such wares as ship’s lanterns, and other sea-fittings from cordage to carronades. The central point is the steamboat pier opposite the station; then further west comes the Victoria Pier with its pavilion, on a scale that shows how little Cowes cares to cater for your common Saturday to Monday visitor.

Cowes makes the Mecca of the yachtsman, as St Andrews of the golfer. It is the most famous station of those idle craft that in our day diverge into two different forms--the steam vessels, models of comfort and elegance, even luxury, some of them fitted for making pleasure-cruises all over the world; and the mere sailing boats, that seem utterly useless but as racing machines to skim like butterflies over some quiet sea, with their decks as often as not half under water--“a sort of metal torpedo with two or three balloons fixed on to it.” This is a pastime as expensive as the turf, and sometimes as unsatisfactory to the amateurs who seek social glory thereby. Not all the gentlemen who swagger about in blue jackets here are so much at home on the ocean wave as for the nonce they would fain appear. Not all those big and smart craft so much admired in the roads of Cowes are very familiar with the breeze or the billow of the open sea. The sailing masters and crews of some of them must have a good easy time of it; and one suspects they prefer being in the service of a fine-weather sailor, whose purse is his main qualification for seamanship, to taking orders from some old salt who knows the ropes as well as they do. We remember Jack Brag and his skipper Bung. But there are yachtsmen of another school, whose blood has the salt in it that goes so far to make England what it is, men who, without having the means to own idle vessels, dearly love playing the mariner in good earnest, and can spend no happier holiday than in working some small craft with their own hands, taking rough and smooth as it comes, getting health and pleasure out of return for a month or so to something like the old Viking life, and all its tingling charm of a struggle with the forces of nature. Sailors of this stamp can here buy or hire craft of all kinds, but perhaps more cheaply at other ports on the Solent, for it is not only at regatta-time that Cowes has a name for high charges.

The Solent with its almost landlocked waters, its many creeks, and its havens of refuge never more than a few miles off, makes a good cruising-ground for small craft such as can be sailed by the owner with the help of one or two hands working for love or money. Yet there are special difficulties here in the broken shore-line, the shifting banks, the shallows, and the treacherous currents, that call for some nautical ability, and even local experience to interpret the many buoys and beacons marking the channels of a watery labyrinth. The chief danger, apart from an occasional rough sea and squalls to be looked out for through openings in the land, is the violence of the tides, that encounter one another from each end of the Solent, so as to produce the peculiar result of a double high water--the ebb, after an hour or so, being driven back up to Southampton by a fresh flow.

There are, of course, various yacht clubs that take the Solent for their province; but the admiral of them all is the “Squadron,” one of the most exclusive clubs in the world, whose members have the much coveted right to fly St George’s white pennant on their yachts, and other privileges. Its membership is the port for which some of the most sumptuous yachts are fitted out. Many a millionaire would give a large slice of his fortune for admission to this body; but ill-gotten gold that buys titles, social advantages, and lordly yachts, is not an _Open Sesame_ here; and there are aspirants who know, like Spenser, what it is in this matter “to have thy Prince’s grace and want _his_ peers’.” Princely, royal or imperial patronage is seldom wanting for the regatta at the beginning of August, with which, passing on to the coast from Goodwood, the fashionable world disperses itself for the season in the blaze of fireworks that marks the end of “Cowes week.” During this week, Cowes becomes the focus of “smart” society, money and champagne flying over it like sea spray, and all its accommodation crammed; indeed, it would have no room for half its visitors, if not a few of them did not bring their own quarters in the shape of the innumerable yachts that by day are radiant with rainbow bunting, and by night illuminate the waters of the

Solent with thousands of lights. It is said indeed that, of late years, yachting begins to decline in fashion; that the expensive craft are allowed to take longer holidays, and that “Cowes week” is not filled with such a cloud of canvas. It may well be that our “smart set” find the winds and waves disturbing to the calculations of Bridge.

During Cowes’ water-carnival, some of the finest yachts afloat may still be seen at anchor off the R. Y. S. Clubhouse, standing out prominently on the sea-front, with its flagstaff and jetty, at which only members and officers of the navy are privileged to land, under the muzzles of a miniature battery brought from Virginia Water for holiday service. This building, whose glass gallery is the grand stand of yacht racing, has been adapted from the old castle of Henry VIII., in the seventeenth century used as a state prison. Here Sir William Davenant spent his hours of confinement in writing an heroic poem, _Gondibert_, which one fears to be hardly read nowadays, unless it makes part of prison libraries. There are some score cantos of it, filling eight score or so of folio pages; and this, as in the contemporary case of the bear and the fiddle, brings the story only to the middle, for as the author puts it in metaphors readily suggested at Cowes, “‘tis high time to strike Sail, and cast Anchor (though I have run but half my Course) when at the helm I am threatened with Death, who, though he can visit us but once, seems troublesome, and even in the Innocent may beget such a gravity as diverts the Musick of Verse.”

The parade of Cowes runs on beyond the castle, past gardened villas, to open out as the Green, a strip of sward set with seats that make the pit of the open-air theatre for which the Solent is stage in its yacht-racing season. At the end of this is the point marked by a brick ivy-clad mansion called Egypt, why so called, one knows not, unless that the name, occurring elsewhere in England, seems sometimes connected with gipsy memories. Did one wish to go gipsying, this end of Cowes was once fairly well adapted for such purposes; but cottages of gentility keep on spreading along the sea edge.

At Egypt is the bathing beach, from which the sea wall extends onward towards a bank of wild shrubbery called the “Copse,” a miniature Undercliff, where, rooted in singularly tenacious mud, an almost impassable jungle offers scope for the adventurous imagination of youth. This is skirted by a rough path above the shore, where at morn and eve may be seen flesh and blood _replicas_ of Frederick Walker’s “Bathers,” or of Mr Tuke’s “August Blue” scene, exhibited “without the formality of an apparatus,” as the Oxford man in _Humphrey Clinker_ has it. As for the bathing-machines further back, a guide-book of his generation states that “from the manner in which they are constructed, and the position they occupy, a person may safely commit himself to the bosom of Neptune at almost any state of the tide.” Yet one may hint to strangers not desirous of committing themselves to Abraham’s bosom, that the currents run strong here, and that some parts of the shallow shore deepen suddenly.

One of the sandiest bathing-places on this shore is at Gurnard’s Bay, about two miles along, which has an hotel of its own and other beginnings of a seaside resort. This used to be a landing-place from the mainland; and here was the site of another Roman villa. The guide-books of a future generation may have more to say about Gurnard’s Bay; but I must ask the reader now to turn back to Cowes.

At the back of the town is its Church, built in the time of the Commonwealth, that did not much foster church architecture; and behind this stands the manorial mansion of Northwood Park in somewhat gloomy grounds opened by funereally classical gates. The older parish church is that of Northwood, some way inland, which itself, in its day, had been an offshoot of Carisbrooke. Northwood Park hived for a time the foreign nuns who lately swarmed to other quarters at Ryde. This mansion had long been looked on by true blue Protestants as a half-way house to Rome, when it was the home of William George Ward, a prominent name in the “Oxford Movement” that so much shifted the Anglican establishment’s centre of gravity. He went over to the Roman Church, and moved to another house near Totland Bay, where his neighbour Tennyson had warm words to say over his grave--

My friend, the most unworldly of mankind,
Most generous of all ultramontanes, Ward,
How subtle at tierce and quart of mind with mind,
How loyal in the following of thy Lord!

The chief hotels and lodging-houses are found on that part of the parade east of the “Squadron,” which at one time occupied the Gloucester Hotel. The crooked main street leads us to the river suburb of Mill Hill, and to the floating bridge by which the Medina is crossed to East Cowes. There has been talk of a tunnel here, as under broader channels; but the amphibious folk of this port are still content with their ferry.

East Cowes, though at one time the more important side, has long been eclipsed by its western neighbour. It may be described as a suburb of ambitious roads mounting the wooded background from a rather mean frontage, so as to bring into curious juxtaposition some characteristics of Norwood and Rotherhithe. At the seaward end it has a short esplanade of its own, from which is to be had a fine sunset view over the Solent. The old fortress on this side has entirely disappeared. The most interesting house here is Slatwoods, the boyhood’s home of Dr Arnold of Rugby, his father having been collector of customs at this port. Arnold, born in a house at West Cowes now marked by a tablet, but brought up on the other side, always had

an affection for Slatwoods, and slips of its great willow tree were transplanted to his successive homes at Laleham, Rugby, and Fox How.

East Cowes is shut in by the grounds of East Cowes Castle and Norris Castle, mansions of the modern Gothic period, that have had noble occupants and royal guests. Norris Castle, at the point of the estuary open to briny breezes from every quarter, was in 1833 tenanted by the Duchess of Kent, sea-air having been ordered for her daughter’s precious health. The Princess Victoria made here a collection of sea-weeds which she presented to her friend Maria da Gloria, the girl-queen of Portugal; and no doubt in this sequestered nook she was able to go about more freely than at Bognor or Brighton. She seems to have much enjoyed her stay on the Solent, probably then taking a fancy to this neighbourhood, which in later life led to the purchase of Osborne, her favourite residence when Balmoral was too bleakly bracing. The park begins beyond the ascent out of East Cowes, extending along the wooded northern shore towards the small inlet called King’s Quay, that pretends to be a landing-place of King John, who, after signing Magna Charta, is dubiously said to have sulked here among the pirates of the Island.

Osborne Manor, whose name has been clipped to so aristocratic a sound, 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

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.

Westward, the crumbling cliffs of the coast are fringed by groups of hotels and lodging-houses growing along Christchurch Bay to Highcliffe Castle, which was recently selected as _Kur-ort_ for the Kaiser, who here seems to have profited by the mild air and by the views of the Isle of Wight that are the chief attraction of this shore. He may also have admired the prospect on Hengistbury Head, which some stories make the scene of the first German invasion of England. Then beyond the mouth of the Stour and Avon, are reached the purlieus of Bournemouth, where the Island drops out of sight.

On the other side, between Lymington and Southampton Water, extends to the Solent a heathy projection of the New Forest, not so much known to strangers as it deserves. The centre of interest here is the ruined Beaulieu Abbey, from the materials of which Henry VIII. is said to have built Hurst Castle, while its foundation is the one good deed recorded of King John, and that wrung out of him with as much pain as was Magna Charta. The legend goes that this graceless king, bearing a grudge against the Cistercian Order, had persuaded or compelled its abbots to attend a parliament at Lincoln, where he threatened to fling them under the feet of wild horses. But at night he was terrified by a dream: brought to trial before a nameless judge, with the churchmen he had menaced for witnesses against him, he found himself condemned to a severe scourging at their hands, like his father’s chastisement for the death of Thomas à Becket. And lo! when he awoke, the lashes had left no visionary smart. So he saw wise to make expiation for the sacrilege he had meditated; then his repentance took the established form of building and endowing a Cistercian Abbey at Beaulieu. The remains still make a hoary show by the Beaulieu River, further down which Buckler’s Hard was once a building place of men-of-war; and at the mouth was an old ferry to the Island. There is not much traffic now about this muddy shore, near which, towards Lymington, Sowley Pond takes rank as the largest Hampshire lake. The Solent, here locked in by the Isle of Wight, has the aspect of a great lake in views that Cobbett took to bear out the title _Bellus locus_, vernacularly corrupted into _Bewley_. And, as I have given a catalogue of novels dealing with the Island, let me mention an excellent one, Mr A. Marshall’s _Exton Manor_, which clearly has for its scene this edge of the New Forest.

The chief Solent ferry is, of course, at Portsmouth, whereof tourists might do well to see more than is seen from the railway line to its pier, the main knot of Isle of Wight communications, while by Gosport and Southsea, on either side of the town, are alternative crossings to Ryde. Portsmouth is not so rich in antiquities as Southampton, its most notable buildings being the fine modern Church of Portsea, one of the grandest town-halls in England, and the largest Naval Barracks in the world; but it is an ancient place, interesting as our chief marine arsenal, which in case of war might become a Sebastopol or a Port Arthur. Like Plymouth, it is rather a group of towns, Portsmouth, Portsea, and Southsea, run together beside the wide inlet of the harbour, on the other side of which stands Gosport. Naturally it has a marked naval flavour, strongest on the Hard, familiar to so many generations of Jacks and Sues, behind which the narrow main street of Landport makes such a lively scene of a Saturday night. Off Gosport Hard is moored the old _Victory_, whose deck no Briton can tread without pride, nor would a generous enemy be unmoved on the spot where “mighty Nelson fell,” and in the gloomy cockpit where he died. Portsmouth has for another shrine the birthplace of Charles Dickens, at No. 387 Commercial Road, Landport, now cared for as public property and containing a collection of relics. Walter Besant was also a native, who has celebrated the scenes of his boyhood in _Celia’s Arbour_.

The great sight is the Dockyard, over which all visitors who can glory in the name of Briton are conducted by its garrison of Metropolitan Police; but foreigners must bring special credentials for admission. A visit to the _enceinte_ of fortifications cannot be recommended, as these are of a modestly retiring disposition, and make a purposed blank on the faithful Ordnance Survey maps. Beyond the fort-crowned Downs behind, some fine country may be reached by tram; but the scenery of the low island on which Portsmouth has its site, too much consists of bastions, barracks, prisons, and other useful, but unlovely institutions.

Southsea, the moral West End of Portsmouth, which is at its east end, holds out most attractions to tarrying strangers. It seems a favourite place of residence or sojourn for retired or idle officers of both services, who enjoy the stir of parades and regimental bands, and the view of the Solent always alive with yachts, steamers, and men-of-war; but it is not so well adapted for a quiet family bathing-place, unless to the taste of nursery maids, who here would be well off for red-coated and blue-jacketed “followers.” A special feature is the wide Common cutting off the houses from the sea-front, with its gay piers and long esplanade leading round the modernised walls of Southsea Castle. Hence let us take our last gaze upon the wooded shores of the Isle of Wight, where, four or five miles off across the Solent, Ryde steeple stands up as the starting-point of our arm-chair tour, now to be ended, I trust, with the reader’s gratuity of good-will towards his _cicerone_.

INDEX

Adams, Rev. W., 84

Afton Down, 103

Albert, Prince, 107, 151

Alexandrian Pillar, 92

_All Moonshine_, 137

Alum Bay, 115

Alverston, 62

_Amours Anglais_, 128

Approaches to Island, 17, 154

Appuldurcombe, 52

Arnold of Rugby, 148

Arreton, 57

Ashey Down, 57

Atherfield Point, 99

Back of the Island, 77, 92

Badd, E., Epitaph on, 31

Barton Manor-house, 150

Battenberg, Prince of, 11, 151

Battenberg, Princess Beatrice, 11, 46, 152

Beaulieu, 168

Bembridge, 60

Bembridge Down, 61

Benedictine Monks, 27, 53

Benson, story of, 64

Bevis of Hampton, romance, 41, 158

Binstead, 25

Black, William, _quoted_, 90

Blackgang Chine, 97

“Blue Slipper,” the, 77

Bonchurch, 83

Bordwood Forest, 62

Bouldnor Cliffs, 123

Brading, 54

Brighstone or Brixton, 101

Brook Point, 102

Buddle Inn, 89

Calbourne, 124

Cameron, Mrs, 106

Captains of the Island, 8

Carisbrooke, 36
---- Castle, 39

Caves at Freshwater, 112

Chale, 98

Chale Bay, 96

Charles I., imprisonment of, 41

Chines, formation of, 74

Clarke, Sir James, 78

Climate, 14

Colepeper, Lord, 9

Colwell Bay, 118

Compton Bay, 102

Consumption Hospital, 88

Cook’s Castle, 74

Cowes, 139

Cripple Path, the, 89

Culver Cliffs, 61

_Dairyman’s Daughter, The_, 58

Davenant’s _Gondibert_, 145

De Montague, “Count.” _See_ Benson

Dewar, Mr G. A. B., _quoted_, 29

Downs, the, 2, 48, 53, 62, 82, 92, etc.

Dunnose, 75 East Cowes, 148

Egypt Point, 146

Elizabeth, Princess, 35, 44

Empress Eugenie, escape of, 23

Englefield, Sir Henry, _quoted_, 22, 98, 115

_Eurydice_, loss of the, 75

Fairfax family in America, 10

Farringford, 106

Fielding at Ryde, 20

Fishbourne, 27

Fitz-Osborne, William, 7

_Flora Vectensis_, 16

Foghorns, 94

Foreland, the, 60

Fossil Forest, 102

Freshwater, 104

Freshwater Bay, 104, 112

Garde Family, 50

Gatcombe, 53

Geology of the Island, 2, 100

Gloucester, Duke of, 44

Godshill, 49

Gosport, 169

Governors of the Island, 10

Grange Chine, 101

Gurnard Bay, 48, 147

Hammond, Colonel, 41

Hamstead Ledges, 123

Harringford, 62

Haven Street, 28

Headon Hill, 117

Highcliffe Castle, 167

History of Island, 5

Holmes, O. W., _quoted_, 15

Holmes, Sir Robert, 120

Hopson, Sir T., 121

Horsey, Sir E., 8, 13, 34

Howells, Mr W. D., 81, 166

Hulverston, 102

Hurst Castle, 44, 118, 167

Industries of the Island, 13

Invasion, alarms of, 95, 122

Isabella de Fortibus, 8, 62

James, Rev. E. B., 38, 56

_Jane the Young Cottager_, 55

Jeffrey, Lord, _quoted_, 73

John, King, 149, 155, 168

Keats in the Island, 47, 73

Ken, Bishop, 101

King of the Island, 8

King’s Quay, 149

Kingston, 100

Knighton, 58

Ladder Chine, 99

Lake, 62

Landslip, the, 85

Lira, Monks of, 7

Lisle Family, 27

Longfellow in the Island, 73

Long Stone, the, 101

“Lot’s Wife,” 114

Luccombe Chine, 75

Lugley Stream, the, 33

Lymington, 17, 119, 167

Main Bench, the, 113

Mantell the geologist, _quoted_, 102

Medina River, 3, 34, 48, 139

Meredith, Mr George, _quoted_, 126

Merston Junction, 49, 62

Military Road, the, 100

Moberley, Bishop, 101

Monks’ Bay, 84

Morland, George, 122

Morley, Henry, 39

Mottistone, 101

Naval College at Osborne, 153

Needles, the, 114

Netley, 154

Nettleston Green, 31

Newchurch, 62

New Forest, the, 157

Newport, 33

Newton, 123

Niton, 90

“Noah’s Nuts,” 111

Nodes, the, 113

Norris Castle, 149

Northwood, 147

Novels about the Island, 125

Nuns from abroad, 147

Nunwell, 55

Oglander, Sir John, 11, 26, 31, 47, 50, 54, 139

Osborne, 149

Osborne, Dorothy, 38

Pan Down, 49

Parkhurst Forest, 46, 123

Peel’s _Fair Isle_, _quoted_, 100

Population of Island, 4

Portsmouth, 17, 169

Pound Green, 106

Priory Bay, 31

Puckaster Cove, 89

Puckpool Fort, 30

Quarr Abbey, 25

Queen’s Bower, 62

Railways of Island, 17, 33

_Ralph Roister Doister_, 124

Redvers Family, 7, 25

Rew Down, 83

Reynolds, J. H., 35

Richmond, Rev. Legh, 55

Rocken End, 96

Roman villas, 6
---- Brading, 57
---- Carisbrooke, 39

Ross, Alexander, 38

Rowborough remains, 48

_Royal George_, loss of, 22

Royal Yacht Squadron, 144

Ryde, 19

St Boniface Down, 82

St Catherine’s Down, 92

St Catherine’s Point Lighthouse, 93

St George’s Down, 48

St Helens, 31, 59

St John’s, 28

St Lawrence, 88

Sandown, 62

Sandrock, 90

School Green, 106

Scott, Sir W., _quoted_, 48

Scottish Soldiers in Island, 47

Scratchell’s Bay, 113

Sea View, 28

Seismological Observatory, Dr Milne’s, 49

Sewell, Elizabeth, 16, 84

Shanklin, 72

Sheepwash Green, 106

Shide, 49

Shipwrecks, 96

Shorwell, 100

Simeon, Sir John, 36

Solent, the, 1, 28, 143, 154, 168, 170

Solent Tunnel, proposed, 120

Southampton, 17, 155

Southsea, 170

Spithead, 22

Spring Vale, 30

“Squadron,” the, 144

Steephill Castle, 81

Stephens, William, 38

Sterling, John, 84

Swainston, 124

Swinburne, Mr A. C., _quoted_, 89

Temple, Sir W., 39

Tennyson, Lady, 110

Tennyson, Lord, 14, 106, 111, 148

Totland Bay, 117

“Turf Frauds” case, the, 70

Tyndall, Professor, 113

Udall, Nicholas, 124

Undercliff, the, 77

Vane, Sir H., 44

Ventnor, 78

Victoria, Queen, 149

Walpen Chine, 99

Ward, W. G., 147

Wardens of the Island, 8

Webster, T., _quoted_, 85, 116

Week Down, 83, 92

Whippingham, 151

Whitecliff Bay, 61

Whitwell, 53

Wilberforce, Bishop, 101

“Wilderness,” the, 48

Wilfred of Selsey, 7, 56

Wilkes, John, 63

William the Conqueror at Carisbrooke, 7

Wishing Well, 82

Woodvile, Sir E., 8

Wootton, 27

Wordsworth in the Island, 112

Worsley Family, the, 49

Worsley, Sir R., 8, 52

Worsley Monument, 53

Wroxall, 75

Yar, the Eastern, 3, 59, 62

Yar, the Western, 3, 104, 118

Yachting, 142

Yarborough, Lord, 52

Yarbridge, 57

Yarmouth, 119

Yaverland, 61

Zangwill, Mr I., _quoted_, 126

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