The Island, as its people are in the way of styling it, while not going so far as to deny existence to the adjacent islands of Great Britain and Ireland—the Wight, as it is sometimes called by old writers—has for the first fact in its history that it was not always an island. It once made a promontory of Dorset, cut off from the mainland by a channel, whose rush of encountering tides seems still wearing away the shores so as to broaden a passage of half a dozen miles at the most, narrowed to about a mile between the long spit of Hurst and the north-western corner of the Island. It may be that what is now a strait has been the estuary of a great river, flooding itself into the sea, which, like Hengist and Horsa, is apt to prove an invading ally difficult to get rid of. Wight is taken to represent an old British name for the channel, that, by monkish Latinists, came to be christened pelagus solvens; but the Solent may have had rather some etymological kinship with the Solway.
The Channel Island, as thus its full style imports, has a natural history of singular interest to geologists, who find here a wide range of fossiliferous strata, from the Upper Eocene to the Wealden clay, so exposed that one scientific authority admiringly declares how it “might have been cut out by nature for a geological model illustrative of the principles of stratification.” Perhaps the general reader may thank a writer for not enlarging on this head; but a few words must be said about the geological structure that shapes this Island’s scenery, forming, as it were, a sort of abridged and compressed edition of no small part of England. It divides itself into three zones, which may be traced in the same order upon the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. Through the centre runs a backbone of chalk Downs, a few hundred feet high and an hour’s walk across at the broadest, narrowing towards either end to crumble into the sea at the white cliffs of Culver and of the Needles. To the south of this come beds of sand and marl, through which the chalk again bulges out in isolated masses on the south coast to top the highest crests of the Island, resting on such an unstable foundation that extensive landslips here have thrown the architecture of nature into picturesque ruin. The north side in general is tamer, a plain of clays dotted by gravel, better wooded than the rest, though much of its old timber has gone into the wooden walls of England, once kept in repair at Portsmouth.
Across these zones of length, the Island is cut into two almost equal parts by its chief river, the Medina, cleaving the central Downs near Newport; and through gaps at either end flow two smaller rivers bearing the same name of Yar, which seems to call Celtic cousinship with the Garonne of France. For the Medina, as for the Medway, some such derivation as the Mid stream has been naturally suggested; but with the fear of Dr Bradley upon me, I would pass lightly over the quaking bog of place nomenclature. These three rivers have the peculiarity of flowing almost right across the Island, a course so short that they may well take their time about it. The other streams are of little importance, except in the way of scenery. On the north side they form shallow branching creeks which get from as much as they give to the sea, that at high tide bears brown sails far inland among trees and hedges. On the south, wearing their way down through the elevated shore line, they carve out those abrupt chasms known as Chines, celebrated among the beauty spots of this coast. The richest valley seems to be that of the larger Yar, which turns into the sea at the north-east corner. The parts most rich in natural charms are the south-eastern corner, with its overgrown landslips, and the fissured chalk cliffs of the western promontory beyond Freshwater.
All that variety of soil and surface is packed together into a roughly rhomboidal shape, 23 miles long by 13 or 14 miles at the broadest, about the size of Greater London, or say 1/36000 part of the habitable globe. Within its circumference of 60 miles or so, this space of some 96,000 square acres holds a population of 82,000, beside innumerable transient visitors. A pundit of figures has taken the trouble to calculate that all the population of the world could find standing room in the Island on the foot of four to the square yard, if the human race agreed on spending a Bank Holiday here; but then little room might be left for donkey-rides or switch-back railways. While we are on the head of statistics, it may be mentioned that several scores of guide-books to the Isle of Wight have been published, from Sir Henry Englefield’s noble folio to the small brochures issued by hotels, these works containing on an average 206,732 words, mostly superfluous in many cases; that 810,427 picture post-cards or thereabouts pass annually through the post-offices of the island; that, in ordinary seasons, it sits to 1723 cameras; that the hotel-bills annually paid in it would, if tacked together, reach from St Petersburg to Yokohama, or if pasted over one another, make a pile as high as the new War Office; and that 11.059 per cent. of the newly married couples of Brixton, Balham, Upper Tooting, etc., are in each year estimated to spend at least part of their honeymoon here, who come back to confirm a prevailing belief that in no other part of the British Isles does the moon shine so sweetly; while, indeed, a not quite clearly ascertained proportion of them live to assert that the scenery of the Island and the happiness of the marriage state have alike been more or less overrated. I give these figures for what they are worth, along with the unquestioned fact that the Isle of Wight belongs, in a manner, to the county of Hants, but has a County Council of its own, and in general maintains a very insular attitude of independence, modelled on the proud bearing of Great Britain towards mere continental countries.
Facts and figures somewhat fail one who comes to lecture on the original population of this Island. The opinion fondly held in a certain section of “smart” society, that the lawn of the Squadron at Cowes represents the Garden of Eden, seems to rest upon no critical authority; indeed Adam and Eve, as owners of no yacht, would not be qualified for admission to this select enclosure. With some confidence we may state that the Island was first peopled by aborigines enjoying no protection against kidnappers and conquerors, who themselves found it difficult in the long run to blackball undesirable aliens, as Australia and New Zealand try to do under the protection of fleets steaming forth from the Solent. There are well-marked indications of invasion by a Belgic tribe from the mainland, to make this a “free” state, as early prelude to King Leopold’s civilisation of the Congo. But we may pass lightly over the Celtic period, with place-names and pit-dwellings as its records, to come into clearer historic light with Vespasian’s conquest in A.D. 43.
For more than three centuries, with apparently one episode of revolt, the Romans held Vectis, as they called it; and it has been maintained, though this goes not unquestioned, that here was their Ictis port, at which they shipped the tin drawn from the mines of Cornwall. If so, the island described by Diodorus Siculus was then an island only at high water. The clearest marks left by Rome are the remains of villas unearthed at different points, at least one of which indicates a tenant of luxurious habits and tastes. We can understand how Italian exiles might prefer this station to one in the bleak wilds of Derbyshire or Northumberland, as an Anglo-Indian official of to-day thinks himself lucky to have his compound at Poona or Bangalore, if not at Mahableshwar or Simla. The Brading villa, indeed, like those of Bignor in Sussex and Brough in Norfolk, seems rather to have been the settled home of a rich nobleman, Roman or Romanised British, who had perhaps strong opinions as to the way in which Rome neglected the wishes and interests of her colonies. These remains were unearthed only in living memory, so that writers of a century ago ignore such traces of Roman occupation.
Next came northern pirates, who would be not so much interested in the mild climate of the Island, as in the creeks and landing-places of its shores. They, too, have left relics of their occupation, chiefly in the graves furnished with utensils and ornaments of heathen life. But when Jutes and Saxons had destroyed the Roman civilisation, they fell under another influence spread from the Mediterranean. Bishop Wilfred of Selsey has the credit of planting, or replanting, Christianity in the Island. It could hardly have taken deep root, when the Danes came to ravage the monastic settlements. For a time the Cross and the Raven must have struggled for mastery here like the encountering tides of Solent, till that new wave of invaders ebbed back or was absorbed into the old one; then again the Island became overflowed by a fresh storm of conquest. If we consider from how many races, in three continents, the Roman soldiery were drawn, and how the northmen must have mixed their blood with that of a miscellany of captives, it is clear that, when overrun by a fresh cross-breed between Gauls and Vikings, the population of our islands, large and small, could in many parts have been no very pure stock, such as is fondly imagined by the pride of modern Pan-Celticism and Anglo-Saxondom.
In Norman England, the Wight soon emerges into note. King William visited it to seize his ambitious brother Odo at Carisbrooke. The fortress there was enlarged by William Fitz-Osborne, to whom the Island had been granted, and who salved his conscience for any high-handed acts of conquest by giving six churches to the Norman Abbey of Lira, the beginning of a close connection with that continental foundation. His son lost this lordship through treason; then for two centuries it was in the hands of the Redvers, Earls of Devon, who grew to be quasi-independent princes. The last of their line was Isabella de Fortibus, holding her head high as Lady of the Island till on her deathbed, her children being dead, she sold her rights to Edward I. for 6000 marks.
Henceforth this dependency was governed for the crown through lieutenants at first known as Wardens, an office held by great names like Edward III. in his childhood, the Earl of Salisbury, the Duke of York, the Duke of Gloucester, Anthony Woodvile, Earl of Rivers; and in such hands more than once showing a tendency to become hereditary. Their post was no sinecure, for at this period the Island made a striking point for French raids that have left their mark on its towns. Not that the raiding was all on one side. The islanders long remembered ruefully how Sir Edward Woodvile led the flower of their manhood into France, when of more than four hundred fighters only one boy escaped to tell the tale of their destruction, that seems to have been wrought by French artillery, turning the tables on the English long-bow.
The weak Henry VI. had crowned young Henry Beauchamp, Duke of Warwick, as “King of the Isle of Wight.” Politic Henry VII., for his part, saw well to restrain the power and dignity of those Island deputies, now styled Captains. In the Tudor time, three Captains came to note, Sir Richard Worsley as carrying out the reformation policy of Henry VIII., Sir Edward Horsey, as a doughty soldier of fortune, who is said to have begun his career with a plot to betray the Island to the French, but on coming into this office kept a sharp eye both on foreign enemies and on his private interests, doing a bit of piracy for his own hand, if all stories be true; then Sir George Carey, who had the anxious task of defence against the Spanish Armada. When that peril went to pieces, the Island at last began to enjoy a period of secure prosperity, testified to by the fact that most of its old houses, mansion or cottage, appear to date from Elizabeth or James. Yet so late as 1627, soon after the captaincy of Lord Southampton, Shakespeare’s patron, it got a scare from a Dutch fleet, taken for Spaniards.
New confusion came with the Civil War, in which the Wight people were mostly on the parliament’s side, while the leading gentry stood for the king. The best-known episode of the Island’s history is Charles I.’s imprisonment at Carisbrooke, which may be passed over here to be dealt with more fully in loco. The Isle of Wight might well back up the parliament; as then and till the Reform Bill it sent six members, an over-representation now reduced to one, and formerly, indeed, apt to be qualified by official interference with freedom of election.
In Charles II.’s “golden age of the coward, the bigot and the slave,” the governorship of the Island was given to Lord Colepeper, who made himself obnoxious here, and got a wider field of domination in Virginia, where also he seems to have been unbeloved. His huge colonial grants passed by marriage of his daughter to Lord Fairfax, whose eldest son settled on his American property, said to extend over five million acres, giving up the English estates to his younger brother. This was clearly hint for Thackeray’s story of the Virginian Warringtons. Only the other day the heir of this family, America’s sole peer, became naturalised afresh in England, after his title had been laid up in lavender, or tobacco, for several generations. Another personage in The Virginians, General Webb, held the governorship of the Island for a few years. But now the Captains, or Governors as they came to be styled, had little to do which could not be done by deputy, while the post was worth holding by men of high rank, as by the Dukes of Bolton and Montague under George II., when its salary was £1500 a year.
Under them the Island was happy enough to have little history, though it had again to be on its guard when Dutch admirals talked of sweeping the English ships from the Channel. It saw William’s fleet sail by on the way to Torbay; and two years later it seemed about to have from its southern cliffs the spectacle of a hundred French sail engaging the English and Dutch squadrons; but the scene of that encounter was shifted to Beachy Head, where it ended in a manner not much dwelt upon in our naval annals. Then the long struggle with Napoleon once more turned this outpost of England into a camp. In the peaceful days that followed, the governorship became a mere ceremonial function. The title, held by Prince Henry of Battenberg, was passed on to his widow, the youngest daughter of Queen Victoria, whose death at Osborne makes the last date in this Island chronicle.
An insulated people naturally formed a race apart, speaking a marked dialect, and cherishing a strong local feeling. Their situation, and the once pressing need to stand on defence by land and sea, bred a sturdy race, whose vigour in old days was apt to run to such enterprising ways of life as piracy, wrecking, and smuggling; but all that may be forgotten like scandal about Queen Elizabeth. One evil of the islanders keeping so much to themselves has been a stagnation of population, that through intermarriage made for degeneracy. Sir John Oglander, the Stuart worthy whose jottings on his contemporaries prove so amusing, says that the Island once bore the reproach of not producing a good horse, a wise man, or a pretty woman; but he hastens to add Tempora mutant; and on the last head, the stranger can judge the calumny for himself. Hassell, an eighteenth century tourist, remarks for his part on the beauty and even elegance of the farmers’ daughters at Newport market, while of the fathers he hints at grog-blossoms as a too common feature. The lately published memoirs of Captain Elers treat the former point as matter of notoriety. A certain boisterous pertness noted in the male youth of the Island has been referred by sociologists to an absence of birch in its flora. All ages have been noted for a clannishness that was once disposed to look askance on such “overners” or “overers” as found their way into the Wight, whose own stock we see to have sprung from immigrants of different breeds. But here, as elsewhere, schools, newspapers, and facilities of travel are fast rubbing down the prejudices of parish patriotism.
The upper class, indeed, is now largely made up of well-to-do strangers drawn to the Island by its various amenities; while the sons of the soil have laid aside suspicious dislike of the outsiders whom they know as profitable guests. From pictorial cards, valentines, and such vulgar documents, they appear to bear the nickname of Isle of Wight “Calves,” which may be taken as a sub-species of the “Hampshire Hogs,” who suffer such neighbourly satire as is shown in by-words like “Norfolk Dumplings,” “Lincolnshire Yellow-bellies,” or “Wiltshire Moonrakers.” Some strangers, however, at the height of the season, have been more inclined to find for the natives a zoological similitude in the order of Raptores. “I do not mean,” as a precise old gentleman once explained to me of his landlady, “that she has feathers and claws like a bird; but I assert that, in character and in disposition, she resembles a vulture.” It is often, indeed, made evident to the meanest capacity that the Island hosts belong to a long-billed family; but they perhaps as often as not may be classed as overners, or referred to the hydra-like form of polyzoic organism popularly known as a Company, Limited.
The soil is well cultivated, and many of the farms look thriving, though the rank hedges and the flowers that colour some of the pastures, spread a more pleasing view for an idle stranger than for a practical cultivator. The Downs support flocks as well as golf clubs; the breed of Island sheep was highly esteemed of old, where the climate makes for early lambing. When some parts were overrun with “conies,” Sir E. Horsey had the name of bringing in hares, which he paid for at the rate of a lamb a-piece; but foxes and badgers have not crossed the Solent.
The coast folk carry on amphibious business, from oyster beds to ship-chandling. Ship-building at Cowes, and cement-making on the Medina, are the only large industries I know of. The chief trade seems to be in tourists, who are taxed, tolled, and touted for at every turn by the purveyors of entertainment for man and beast, the managers of excursions, and the enclosers of natural curiosities. Visitors come from far and near, the Island making a holiday resort for the townsfolk of Portsmouth and Southampton, while among foreign tourists, it seems to have a special attraction for Germans; and some of the American travellers who “do” Europe in three weeks are known to spend as much as several hours in scampering across to Ventnor.
A good many visitors, however, come for a considerable time, delicate or luxurious folk, lucky enough to be able to take advantage of a milder climate in our uncertain winter or still more treacherous spring. One must not indeed expect too much of any British climate. About Torquay, the chief rival of Ventnor as a sheltered resort, a well-known novelist, after living there through many winters, says bluntly that it is a little less cold than the rest of England. Such places are apt to bid for patronage by statistics of sunshine, temperature, and so forth, which may prove bamboozling, not to say deceptive, when it is difficult to tabulate the occurrence of trying extremes under the changes and chances of our fickle sky. The best test of climate is its general effect on vegetation; and it may be said with truth that the Isle of Wight, on the whole, is two or three weeks ahead of inland districts of our country. But it cannot claim to be such a halcyon spot as the dream-world of another poet, who knew it well in all weathers.
There is snow here, sometimes, and rain pretty often; while wind makes for the islanders as touchy a point as the title “Lady of Snows” for Canada; but in fact, being an island, this nook must take the consequences of such a situation, swept by breezes from all quarters, especially from the south-west. The north and east sides of course are more exposed to bracing winds, and their resorts, from Cowes to Sandown, come into favour rather in the summer season, that fills the sails of yachts and pleasure-boats, as well as greases the wheels of coaches cruising upon land excursions. The “Back of the Island” is more stormed upon by Atlantic gales, while one half of it, the famous Undercliff, is so snugly shut in to the north, as to make a winter garden of myrtles, fuchsias, arbutus, and still rarer evergreenery. Here, perhaps, it was that a Miss Malaprop complained of this Island as not “embracing” enough, and got advice to try then the Isle of Man.
As to the best time for a visit, that depends partly on which aspect of the Island is to be sought, not to say on circumstances and opportunity; but to my mind it wears its fairest face in its dullest season, when its hotel-keepers see cause to take their own holiday. Then, in early summer, flocks of sheep-like tourists miss seeing at their freshest and richest the clumps of umbrageous foliage, the hedgerows and copses sweet with gay blossoms, the turfy slopes spangled with wild flowers, the glowing meadows, the blooming cottage plots, the “weeds of glorious feature,” and in short, all the charms that make this one of “the gardens of England,” in which, exclaims Oliver Wendell Holmes, “everything grows with such a lavish extravagance of greenery that it seems as if it must bankrupt the soil before autumn.” It is better visited in spring, which comes so early up this way, that Easter as well as Whitsuntide holiday-makers may catch the first flush of one of those nooks described by Dr Bromfield in his Flora Vectensis—“a blooming wilderness of primroses, wood-anemones, violets, and a hundred other lovely and fragrant things, overtopped by the taller and purple-stained wood-spurge, early purple orchis, and the pointed hoods of the spotted-leaved wake-robin; the daisy-besprinkled track leading us upward, skirted by mossy fern-clad banks on one hand, and by shelving thickets on the other, profusely overshadowed by ivy-arched oak and ash, the graceful birch, and varnished holly.” Then still sooner may be looked for the spangling of the sheltered Undercliff, where, as Miss Sewell describes: “The ground is tossed about in every direction, and huge rocks lie scattered upon it. But thorns and chestnuts and ash-trees have sprung up amongst them upon the greensward; ivy has climbed up the ledges of the jagged cliffs; primroses cluster upon the banks; cowslips glitter on the turf; and masses of hyacinths may be seen in glades, half hidden by the foliage of the thick trees, through which the jutting masses of grey rock peep out upon the open sea, sparkling with silver and blue some hundreds of feet beneath them.”
Old books frequently dwell on what was once a drawback, the difficulty of getting to the Island—the getting away from which is more apparent to one class of his present Majesty’s subjects, housed here at Parkhurst, much against their will. Piers and steamboats have now made it as accessible as the Isle of Thanet, and more often visited than the Isle of Dogs. There are half-a-dozen routes from London, through the three opposite ports of Portsmouth, Southampton, and Lymington, not to speak of Southsea and Stokes Bay. The Portsmouth route comes into closest touch with the Island’s own railways, made up of several local enterprises, amalgamated into the two systems styled the Isle of Wight Railway, and the Isle of Wight Central Railway. Of these lines the Rev. Mr Chadband would be bound to say that they are perhaps the worst, the dearest, and the most provoking in the country; to which their shareholders could reply only by a groan worthy of Mr Stiggins, while a want of mutual connection and convenience may be referred to relations like those of Messrs Jorkins and Spenlow. From their exactions it is the hasty stranger that suffers most, the inhabitants being better versed in devices of season-tickets, parliamentary fares, and other mitigations of a tariff, by which, for example, it costs sixpence to go from one end of Ryde Pier to the other, and half-a-crown or so for the dozen miles’ trip across the Island.
But if the visitor grudge such charges, he will find plenty of competition in the excursion coaches that gape for him as soon as he gets off Ryde Pier, or the motor ’buses that hence ply in several directions. For his own wheel there are excellent roads, as well as others; and to see the best of the Island, he does well if he can avail himself of that oldest and cheapest conveyance known to merry hearts as “Shanks’ mare.” It is on this footing, chiefly, that I have wandered about the Isle of Wight, through which I am now to conduct the gentle reader on a rambling and gossiping tour in his own arm-chair.
We need not cast about for the spot at which to make our landing on the shores of Wight. Lying opposite Portsmouth, with a crossing of half-an-hour or so, Ryde is the chief gateway of the Island and knot of its railways to every part, Cowes being more in touch with Southampton, and Yarmouth at the west end coming closest to the mainland port of Lymington. With its suburbs and dependencies, Ryde is considerably the largest place, having outgrown Newport, the titular capital, by a population largely made up of retired veterans, families of officers on service, and other select society such as one finds thickly settled at Southsea, across the Solent. So much one can guess from the look of the brick villas that spread over the swelling heights of Ryde’s background, and of the smart shops in and about its Union Street, while an unusual proportion of hotels and refreshment rooms hint at influx of transient visitors both from the classes and the masses.
A century ago, this could be described in a local guide-book as a “place of some consequence.” Only