Isle of Wight. A. R. Hope Moncrieff
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.
The island-valley of Avilion,
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor any wind blows loudly, but it lies
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crowned with summer sea.
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.
RYDE
We need not cast about for the spot at which