Isle of Wight. A. R. Hope Moncrieff
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 since then has Ryde become the goodly town we now see, yet it is no mushroom resort, but old enough to have been burned by French assailants under Richard II. The sheltered anchorage behind the Isle of Wight was once too well known to wind-bound travellers, who might have to fret here for weeks or months, as Leigh Hunt, on his voyage to Italy, spent half a year at Plymouth. So Fielding, sailing to die at Lisbon, was detained at Ryde, which seems then to have been little more than a hamlet. No tea could be got there; it had a butcher, but he was not “killing”; and though the inn at which the travellers put up could supply a long bill, its other accommodations were such that they preferred to take their dinner in the barn. The landing of a helpless invalid proved a trying adventure where, “between the sea and the shore, there was at low water an impassable gulf, if I may so call it, of deep mud, which could neither be traversed by walking nor swimming, so that for near one half of the twenty-four hours, Ryde was inaccessible by friend or foe.” In spite of such disadvantages, the dying novelist has nothing but good to say of it, once he had got over its moat of mud.
This pleasant village is situated on a gentle ascent from the water, whence it affords that charming prospect I have above described. Its soil is a gravel, which, assisted with its declivity, preserves it always so dry, that immediately after the most violent rain, a fine lady may walk without wetting her silken shoes. The fertility of the place is apparent from its extraordinary verdure, and it is so shaded with large and flourishing elms, that its narrow lanes are a
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