Part 18

It is open day at Osborne House and the short excursion by steamer from Southampton appeals to English people as few other holiday trips. And it is not strange when one reflects that no other place was in such a strict sense the home of Queen Victoria as Osborne House, or has so many memories of her life. The rather ineffective Italian villa was designed and built by herself and the Prince Consort and here were passed the happy years of the early married life of the royal couple. It was the queen's private property and descended to King Edward, who presented it to the nation. As it stands now, it may be said to be a memorial to the queen. Here are the family portraits and the marvelous presents given to Victoria on the occasions of her golden and diamond jubilees; some were from other rulers, but the most wonderful came from Indian potentates and the colonies. These defy all description. The queen died here in 1901, and altogether Osborne House is full of the deepest significance to the average British subject. The crowds that thronged the palace grounds on the day of our visit, we were told, were quite representative of the open days of the summer season.

Newport, the capital and metropolis of the island, is a modern-looking town, whose greatest interest is Carisbrooke Castle, the stronghold of the ancient governors. It stands on an eminence overlooking the town and charming indeed was the prospect that greeted us from the walls on that shimmering summer afternoon. The town, with its red-brick, slate-roofed buildings, lay just below us; about it were the tiny fields, with the green meadowlands, the ripening grain, great trees and snug cottages. One may walk on the battlements--in part modern replacements--entirely around the castle walls, and thus view the ruin from every angle.

Carisbrooke's chief memory is of Charles I., who came here as a guest only to be detained as a prisoner. The room he occupied has disappeared, but the window in its outer wall, through which he twice essayed to escape, may yet be seen. It was during his captivity here that he first lost hope; his hair turned gray and his trim, jaunty cavalier air forsook him. Finally, on the last night of November, 1648, he was seized by two companies of Roundhead horse and carried to Yarmouth and from thence to Windsor Castle. This was the beginning of the end. After the King's execution, the Princess Elizabeth and the young duke of Gloucester were sent here by order of Parliament. The princess soon died and is buried in Newport Church, where a marble effigy marks the tomb. Aside from the melancholy history of King Charles, the annals of Carisbrooke have few events of importance. Its decay and resulting ruin were due to ages of neglect.

Beginning at Ryde, four miles north of Newport, we followed the coast, passing a succession of resort towns. Ryde is situated on a hillside sloping toward the sea, and its water front with drives and gardens, is one of the most charming we know of. The road from Ryde to Ventnor is crooked, narrow, and highly dangerous in places. At times it runs through closely bordering forests; again along the edge of an almost precipitous incline; then it climbs a long, terribly steep hill, but is never more than a few hundred yards from the coast.

The Royal Hotel at Ventnor comes up to its pretensions but poorly. We were surprised to find the last three parties registered in the visitors' book coming from France, Germany and Sweden respectively, while our own added a fourth foreign registry in succession. The number of foreign guests at this hotel seemed to indicate that Ventnor is more popular with continental people than the average English resort town, for as a rule we found very few European guests. Ventnor is situated on a precipitous hill-slope, quite sheltered from the north and east. The houses run up the hill in terraces and the ledge of rock along the beach is barely wide enough for the promenade. The climate is mild and few spots in England are more favored by invalids. It was this that brought poor John Keats in 1817, and he composed "Lamia" during his stay. Here was a favorite resort of Tennyson before he settled in Freshwater, and Longfellow's visit in 1868 is commemorated by an inscription which he composed for the fountain near the hotel in Shanklin, the old town nearly contiguous to Ventnor. Shanklin contains many bits of the picturesque old-time island--touches of antiquity quite wanting in Ventnor.

The following day was one to be remembered; a day as near perfection as one may have in England--the sky pale blue, cloudless and serene, toning to lucent gray near the horizon, and the air fresh and invigorating. Our road closely followed the coast with an almost continual view of the sea. The ocean lay darkly under the rocks, rippled over stretches of silvery beach, or glittered under the long headlands, whose white chalk cliffs were almost dazzling in the sunlight. There were flower-embowered cottages along the road, but no villages for many miles. We gave two hours to the twenty miles to Freshwater and enjoyed the beauty to our hearts' content--but no! to do that one must linger until darkness shuts out the view.

Freshwater became famous through its association with Tennyson, and the poet by coming here destroyed to a certain extent the very retirement and quiet that he sought, for the tourists followed him, much to his disgust. Yet he used to go about in a great slouching hat and military cloak that advertised his presence to everyone--an inconsistency that even his little grandchild is said to have noticed, and that she queried in her childish innocence, "If you don't like people to look at you, Grandpa, why do you wear that queer hat and cloak?" But in any event, the trippers, though often snubbed for their pains, flocked to Freshwater. They still come to the old home of the poet, and the present Lord Tennyson is said to welcome them even less than did his father.

We stopped at a post card shop just opposite the rear entrance to Farringford--a rustic gate opening into a narrow roadway between tall trees--and they told us that the ban on visitors was absolute. But one might see the house from the road. The unprecedented snow of the preceding winter had almost destroyed the tree so beloved of the poet--the

"giant Ilex, keeping leaf When frosts are keen and days are brief,"

which hid the front of the house. Besides, the owner was now at Aldworth and the gardener might not be so averse to visitors--but we ignore the hint and content ourselves with a visit to Freshwater Church. Lady Tennyson is buried in the churchyard, her grave marked by a white marble cross. Inside there are tablets inscribed to the poet and his wife, who were regular attendants at the church, and a marble statue to the memory of Lionel, the son who died on shipboard in the Red Sea when returning from India. The village of Freshwater is full of picturesque cottages, and there are many more pretentious modern villas which indicate that the blight of a popular watering place threatens it. High on the hill, over the town and sea, towers the Tennyson memorial, a great Celtic cross, forty feet in height, reared by the poet's admirers in England and America.

[Illustration: THE TENNYSON HOME, FRESHWATER, ISLE OF WIGHT.]

There is little to see at Yarmouth, where we wait an hour or more for the boat. In the church is buried Admiral Holmes, the man who took the village of New Amsterdam from the Dutch and called it New York, and a marble statue, representing the great seaman standing by a cannon, commemorates this and other achievements. An English writer tells this curious story of the monument:

"Even a poor judge of such things can see at a glance that this is no ordinary piece of work. It is said that the unfinished statue was intended to represent Louis XIV. and was being conveyed by the sculptor in a French ship to Paris in order that the artist might model the head from the living subject. Holmes captured the vessel and conceived the brilliant idea of compelling the artist to complete the work with his (the admiral's) likeness instead of that of le Grand Monarque. The old fellow seems to wear a grim smile as he thinks of the joke, but as the head is undoubtedly of inferior workmanship to the body, the artist may have felt that he had his revenge."

The admiral was a native of Yarmouth and a part of his mansion is incorporated into the Pier Hotel. It still retains the old staircase and much antique paneling; and a tablet on the wall recites that Charles II. was a guest here in 1671 on a visit to Holmes.

We were soon aboard the little steamer, and despite marine rules and regulations, on the bridge with our friend the captain. We noticed that he was going far out of the usual course, directly toward the wreck of the Gladiator. For the warship Gladiator lay on her side a few furlongs off the coast west of Yarmouth, whither she had staggered and fallen when mortally wounded in a collision with the American liner, St. Paul, a few months before. Salvage crews were working to raise her and we naturally expressed interest in the sight. Our ancient mariner heard it and as he steered toward the wreck muttered something about getting "out of the way of the current," but added, "They may think I did it to give you a good view of the Gladiator!"--and we are still wondering if that was the reason for his detour. Far down the Solent he pointed out the Needles, Swinburne's "loose-linked rivets of rock," and he told us of the wild storms and shifting bars that confound the navigators in this locality. Ere long he had to attend closely to business, for the channel to Lymington is narrow and tortuous, being navigable only at high tide. A large coaling steamer partly obstructed our way and called forth a series of marine objurgations from our friend, but he quickly swung to the pier and the motor soon scrambled out of her little craft up the steep bank to terra firma.

We find that our jaunt in the Isle of Wight has covered only seventy miles and occupied just a day; still, thanks to our trusty car, we have seen about all the points of interest that the average tourist would care to see and which it would have required several days to visit in the ordinary manner of travel.

[Illustration: COTTAGE, FRESHWATER, ISLE OF WIGHT.]

XVII

SOUTH ENGLAND NOOKS

One will find Lyndhurst in New Forest a pleasant place for a day's rest after returning from the Isle of Wight to the mainland. Especially is this so if it be early in the summer before the more crowded season comes on. The town will be fairly quiet then and the Crown Inn has an air of solid comfort that almost takes it out of the class of resort hotels. Its spacious gardens to the rear afford a sylvan retreat that is an agreeable variation from an almost continual life on the open road. Lyndhurst, it is true, is no longer the retired village of half a century ago, when Leighton and Millais came here to get away from busy London and to pursue their sketching without interruption. The rather ugly red brick church just over the way from the Crown evidences Lyndhurst's modernity, though its distressing newness may be momentarily forgotten in contemplation of Leighton's great altar piece, illustrating the story of the ten virgins.

One may care little about William Rufus, who was so fond of hunting in New Forest and who, while engaged in his favorite pastime, was killed by a forester's arrow; yet a pilgrimage to the spot where he is said to have fallen is worth while--not merely to see the iron casting which encases the old stone, but to view one of the prettiest glades in the forest. We came early in the day, which is the time to come to avoid the crowds of trippers who flock here in season, and we had undivided possession of the scene of sylvan beauty. A shaded byway leads to the main road, which soon brings us to Romsey.

There is little to detain the wayfarer in Romsey aside from the abbey church, whose high roof reaches almost to the top of its central tower--in fact, the noble bulk of the church rises over the town, completely dwarfing the low buildings that crowd closely around it. One can but admire its great size and perfect proportions, and though there may be incongruous details, these will hardly be noticed by the layman.

The interior is almost pure Norman--massive pillars supporting the great rounded arches. The height and size of the columns give the church an impressiveness that is hardly surpassed by any other in the Kingdom, and after Durham, it easily ranks as the finest example of Norman architecture extant. It dates mainly from the twelfth century, and a Saxon church previously occupied the site, slight remains of this being incorporated into the present building. The most remarkable Saxon relic is a life-size image of Christ upon the cross, of a type not found later than the eleventh century.

There is often a gruesome side to the old English church--a bit of human skin flayed from a living church robber is shown at Gloucester, frightful effigies representing decayed corpses at Canterbury and Sherborne, and at Romsey a broad plait of human hair, found in recent restoration work. It was in a leaden casket and even the bones had mouldered to dust, but the soft brown hair was almost unaltered, and it is thought to have adorned the head of some Roman maiden, for the casket showed traces of Roman work. The old caretaker has reserved this weird little relic for the last of his wonders--we leave the abbey and pass out into the sunshine of the perfect summer day. We shall not soon forget Romsey Abbey Church and we cast more than one backward glance as its giant bulk recedes in the distance.

[Illustration: ABBEY CHURCH, ROMSEY.]

Surely Twyford, a few miles south of Winchester, has quite outlived any claim to its one-time title of "Queen of Hampshire villages." It has paid the price of its popularity; modern brick buildings crowd upon its creeper-clad cottages or have superseded them altogether. Its church has been restored to the point of newness, and its yew tree, locally reputed to be the largest in England, is easily surpassed by the one at Selborne. Still, Twyford is not without an especial interest to American visitors. Here stands the Elizabethan mansion where Benjamin Franklin penned his autobiography while a guest of the vicar of St. Asaphs. The rambling old house with a fine stretch of lawn in front of it may be plainly seen from the road.

No matter how frequently the wanderer may pause in Winchester, the attraction of the ancient capital can never be outworn. One might spend a day among the college buildings, whose rough flint walls and slate roofs, sagging but little beneath the weight of years, stand much the same as when the builder finished them six hundred years ago. Nor should St. Cross and its quaint brotherhood, one of those strange medieval charities, be forgotten. A great quadrangle of buildings and an elaborate church, all for "thirteen poor men decayed and past their strength," seems a great means for a small achievement. Much has fallen into disuse, but the church is still in good condition and in many respects a remarkable piece of architecture. But after all, Winchester's greatest charm is not in her college or her cathedral, but in her old-world streets and odd corners. Nor should one forget the shops in which antiques of merit in furniture, books and other articles may be found.

A broad easy road leads from Winchester through Alton to Jane Austen's Chawton, from whence a secluded byway brings us to Selborne, a nook that every tourist knows. But Selborne, nestling beneath its hills, its thatched cottages and weather-worn buildings stretching along a wide grass-grown street, has no hint of the resort town. There are other villages in the Hampshire and Surrey hills that may match it, but none of them had a Gilbert White to give it immortality.

The street was quite deserted on the drowsy summer afternoon when we checked our car under the great tree beneath which the village worthys congregate in Selborne. A shopkeeper pointed out the Wakes, once White's vicarage, which a modern owner has extended into a large rambling house, probably bearing little resemblance to the modest home of the curate of Selborne. Still, it incorporates his cottage, though red brick and tile have displaced the half-timber gables and thatched roof. But his church is not much altered and the giant yew, the largest we saw in England, is still standing, hale and green. Its circumference measured twenty-three feet in White's time, and he declared that its years must be at least coeval with Christianity. Its girth at present exceeds twenty-five feet. One cannot stand beneath it without being impressed with its hoary antiquity, and the great events that crowd the procession of years which have passed over the old tree quite overwhelm one.

Indeed, it must have stood here when the Romans ruled in Britain; it was sturdy and green when the Conqueror came a thousand summers past, and it looks today as if it well might weather the storms of a third millennium. Such historic trees have almost a human personality; and, fortunately, they are carefully guarded by an enlightened public sentiment in England.

The day is a quiet one in Selborne; we have the yew tree and church all to ourselves. We wander about the churchyard and with difficulty locate the unpretentious headstone with the almost illegible initials, "G. W."--a simple memorial, indeed--though inside the church there is an appropriate tablet to the memory of the well beloved naturalist. One can easily see how he could lead in Selborne the simple studious life reflected in his works. Verily, we need a revival of his plain common sense today when the fiction of the nature-faker bids fair to supersede the facts of natural history.

From Selborne it is but a step across the border into the downs of Sussex--"Green Sussex, fading into blue," as the poet so aptly puts it. The low sun strikes along the rough hills as we enter Midhurst, nestling in a nook in the downs and reached by rather difficult roads. It is a quiet town with an air of thorough self-contentment; a town of weather-beaten houses with over-hanging timbered gables, sagging tile roofs and diamond-paned casements; one long wide street sweeps through it with narrow crooked lanes branching to either side--an unspoiled old-country town, as yet quite undiscovered by the globe-trotters.

And yet Midhurst is not without historic importance, having been a place of considerable size at the time of the Conquest. The site of its strong castle which once stood on the banks of the pretty little river, Rother, is now marked only by a grass-covered mound; but it was once the home of a powerful Norman family, the Bohuns, who in 1547 entertained King Edward VI. in great splendor. Nor is Midhurst wanting in associations with famous men, for Sir Charles Lyell, the great geologist, and Richard Cobden, the "Father of English Free Trade," received their early education in the ancient grammar school which may yet be seen.

But the romance of Midhurst is in Cowdray Park, the estate which adjoins the town. What a pity it is that the mansion and the story did not seize the fancy of Walter Scott--who alone could have done it justice. We entered the park and drove through an avenue of giant chestnuts directly to the shattered palace. And what a glorious ruin it is, with its immense stone-mullioned windows, its great grouped chimneys, and sculptured mantels and bosses that cling to the wall here and there. Though roofless, the walls are almost entire, and over them the ivy flings its dark mantle and falls in heavy masses from the broken battlements. One does not care to analyze the ruin into its component parts--what did we care for hall and chapel and chamber? It is the impression that came to us as we wandered through it in the fading light that lingers with us now. What a memory it is of darkened halls, of great empty windows, through which the light falls mellow and ghostly, and of weird traditions which the old crone who keeps the key constantly droned in our ears.

[Illustration: COWDRAY CASTLE, NEAR MIDHURST.]

The curse of Cowdray has made more than one listener shudder and turn pale and even those who listen as we do in benevolent scepticism can only say, "Strange--strange!" For the lands of Cowdray were rent from the monkish owners by the ruthless Henry and were given into the possession of the first viscount of Montague, who built the splendid palace, one of the costliest and most imposing in the Kingdom. It was in no sense a fortified castle, but a great baronial residence, standing on low-lying grounds with no attempt at strength of position. In some respects the palace recalls Kirby Hall, though here ruin is more complete.

When the last monkish habitant departed from the lands of Cowdray, he left his curse upon them: that the line of the Montagues should perish by fire and water. It was long in being fulfilled, but in 1793 the palace was destroyed by fire and the last Montague was drowned in a foolhardy attempt to swim across the Rhine above the Falls of Schoffhausen. He must have perished without knowing the fate of his ancestral home. With the palace were burned many works of art and antiquities of inestimable value, among the latter the roll of Battle Abbey and the coronation robes and sword of William the Conqueror. The estate descended to the sister of Lord Montague, who, dreading the curse, is said to have guarded her two sons with the greatest care, even filling the fish ponds near her home and keeping the youths jealously away from sea and river. Yet one day they escaped from the care of their attendants and were both drowned in the sea at Bognor. The broken-hearted mother sold Cowdray to the Earl of Egremont, who had no issue to inherit it. But the curse seems to cling to it still--after our visit a wealthy London contractor purchased the estate and began a thorough repair of the modern house (not the ruined palace), but while the work was in progress the mansion caught fire and was burned to the ground.

Darkness overtakes us as we sweep along the hills toward Worthing, where we arrive by lamplight. Morning reveals a quiet and somewhat secluded watering-town, patronized by people who seek to get away from the ceremony and expense of such places as Brighton and Bournemouth. Its hotels are unpretentious, comfortable and accommodating--qualities not so common to resort inns as to go without notice. But Worthing is modern; there is little to detain one on such a pilgrimage as our own. We follow the broad white road which climbs steadily northward from the sea to the distant hills and winds among them to the dreary hamlet of Washington. The name, so familiar to us, bears no reference to the distinguished family. It is of old Saxon derivation--Wasa-inga-tun (town of the sons of Wasa).

[Illustration: A SUSSEX HARVEST FIELD.