At the south-western corner of the Island comes a cleft in the Central Downs, through which the little Yar flows across the narrowed end from Freshwater Gate, or Gap, whose name seems to denote the peculiar fact of a river having its source by the seashore, so near that in rough weather salt water is said to be washed into the stream. Through that hollow the spray of the waves can from north and south meet across the three miles of land; and unless something be done to protect such a weak spot, it appears that before long this promontory may be cut off from the Island, as itself was from the mainland by rushing Solent tides. The War Office, as one of the chief occupiers, is understood to have been more than indifferent about the sea getting its way in making the nest of forts here a miniature of the whole kingdom—

In Charles I’s. reign it was indeed proposed to insulate this corner artificially as a citadel of defence. Private owners and tenants, for their part, are inclined to plans for forming some kind of breakwater, where the tiny esplanade of Freshwater is battered by every gale. Local authorities have been calling on the Hercules aid of a Royal Commission; and as a beginning of defence, the Board of Trade has forbidden Freshwater Bay being used by reckless neighbours for a quarry of shingle.

Into the nook beyond, crossed each way in an hour’s walk, is packed some of the finest scenery of the Island—the finest of all, some will say, who find the rich charms of the Undercliff more cloying. On the south side the Downs raise their steep wall of chalk to drop into the sea at the Needles point, round which the inner coast shows a more varied line of cliff. Between lies a huddle of very pleasant rurality, bowery lanes, hedgerow paths, thatched cottages, and thick-set hamlets, that in the very breath of the sea recall the most characteristic aspects of the green heart of England. Even the new Church has a thatched roof. But this corner, while more out of the way and the taste of trippers, is a good deal given up to Mars, whose temples here are forts and public-houses. Also it is swept by a bombardment of golf balls, which has caused punsters to suggest that this end of the Island as well as the eastern deserves the name of Foreland.

Freshwater itself is a modestly diffused village, which copies modern military tactics in taking very open order against the assaults of time. The main body of the place stands loosely ranked some way back from the shore, to which it throws out an advanced work held against wind and waves by hotels and a picket of bathing-machines; then a chain of rearward outposts connects it with the railway station a mile or so inland. Here the rebuilt Church, with its trappings of antiquity, makes a rallying point for hamlets in the rear, bearing such by-names as School Green, Pound Green, Sheepwash Green and Norton, beyond which the forts on the north side, among their bivouacs of camp followers, are mixed up with lines of new building, in summer garrisoned by holiday-makers on the bathing beaches of Totland Bay and Colwell Bay.

The road from the station to the esplanade passes by a mansion hidden in “a carelessly ordered garden” among thick trees, “close to the ridge of a noble down,” where

The house is more closely sheltered by fine growths like the Wellingtonia planted by Garibaldi, the great cedar, “sighing for Lebanon,” and the grand ilex, also made evergreen by one who was a “lover of trees.” For this is Farringford, famous as the home of Tennyson for more than half his life, and the sojourn of so many contemporary celebrities, guests at his house or at his neighbour Mr Cameron’s, a retired Indian official, whose wife became so notable

by her influence over “Alfred,” by her unconventionally generous impulses, and by her skill in the then young art of photography. Later on the Camerons disappear from their renowned friend’s story, going to die in Ceylon; but all along flit across the page names of renown in both continents, Maurice, Jowett, Sir Henry Taylor, G. F. Watts, Browning, Longfellow, Lowell, O. W. Holmes, and others drawn by the same magnet to this shore.

The mellifluous poet, so dear to his intimates, failed to make himself universally popular in the Island, whose inhabitants were not all able to appreciate him. There is the amusing case of a fly-driver who could not understand the squire of Farringford’s greatness. “Why, they only keep one man, and he doesn’t sleep in the house!” But that some residents could value their illustrious neighbour is shown by another story of a visitor arriving when the house was in a confusion of unpacking, and being kept waiting in the hall till he was recognised as the Prince Consort.

It is pretty well understood that he who figures too much as an alabaster saint in his official biography, had an earthier side to his nature. His gloomy moods and sensitive shyness sometimes broke out in fits of ill-humour, such as caused Mrs Cameron to remonstrate with him on behalf of a friend of hers found trespassing on his domain, who had come expecting to “see a lion, not a bear.” While he shrank in almost morbid horror from peeping pilgrims, he pointed himself out to their gaze by a picturesque “get up,” as to which one of his favoured grandchildren is said to have bluntly asked him, “If you don’t like people to look at you, why do you wear that queer hat and cloak?” I have a story to tell which has not yet, I think, been in print, but was vouched for by one of those concerned. As the Poet-laureate, with his friends Palgrave and Woolner, the sculptor, were walking through a village, irreverent urchins, having no fear of he-or she-bears, ran after them with the cry “Old Jew!”—“Poor Palgrave’s nose!” Tennyson whispered to Woolner, while Palgrave, for his part, presently took the opportunity of an aside to their companion, “That’s what Tennyson gets by dressing himself up in such a way!”

Another story of Tennyson’s manners reached me in two pieces, at a long interval, each dovetailing into each other. I knew a kind and gentle lady who venerated all genius, and especially his who was the flower of Victorian literature. Many years ago she told me, how being invited to see the University boat-race from George Macdonald’s house at Hammersmith, she found herself beside an unknown gentleman of her own mature age, to whom she remarked that it would be well if a window could be opened. He turned his back on her without a word and walked out of the room, which he would not enter again. To her dismay, my friend heard that this was the Poet-laureate, who did not like to be spoken to. She went to her grave hardly able to forgive herself for having unwittingly hurt such a man. Many years afterwards, on his coming to be buried at Westminster, another friend told me how in her girlhood, she was at George Macdonald’s boat-race party, when Tennyson was so offended at being spoken to by an old lady, that he shut himself up in a separate room, to which she was sent with some food for him, in the hope that a mere child might be a David to the mood of Saul; and that he spoke very crossly to her because she had forgotten to bring the mustard.

Why tell such tales? it may be asked by those who remember how Tennyson looked forward with horror to his weaknesses being exposed to the public eye. Because a great man’s life cannot be kept private; and no picture of him is of value with all the warts painted out. Those who knew the poet agree that he had rough ways and some coarse tastes singularly in contrast with the “saccharinity ineffable” which certain tart critics of another generation distaste in his verse. Those who knew him best are most emphatic as to the essential nobility of character that for them veiled all short-comings. The main interest of his life, as a human document, is that a man who had such faults should by force of genius have been able to transmute them into lessons of purity, courtesy, and charity, that will shine all the brighter as rays of a soul not “faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null.” And there will be an end to all fruitful biography, if the “good taste” so much admired by this generation is to overlay truth. Who would read the memoirs of a former age if they represented Samuel Johnson as a model of polite elegance, Goldsmith of practical common sense, and Wilkes of untarnished public spirit. So, without wanting in honest admiration for the greatest poet of my time, I protest against the conspiracy of silence by which he has been raised to a House of Lords among the immortals, his old cloak and hat forgotten in ermine and coronet, and his strong tobacco and full-bodied port glorified as nectar and ambrosia.

But if there were some to find the poet no more than a man, and others to regret that he let his world-wide fame be obfuscated in such a title as is sold to a prosperous brewer or money-broker, all tongues are at one in praise of the gentle lady still remembered as a devoted wife, as a friendly neighbour, and as an open-handed mistress of the manor. To William Allingham, Tennyson reported the character given of them by an ex-servant: “She is an angel—but he, why he’s only a public writer!” Many a tear was shed when, after long suffering, Lady Tennyson came to rest in the churchyard of Freshwater, her husband lying apart among our renowned dead. Within the Church are memorials of their second son Lionel, whose promising career was cut short by fever in the far East, and he found a hasty grave on a sun-blighted island of the Red Sea.

The bard whose “lucky rhymes to him were scrip and share” indeed, while more than one of his publishers dropped off “flaccid and drained,” was able later on to build himself a retreat on the Sussex wilds of Blackdown, in a sense even further “from noise and smoke of town.” But he still spent part of the year at Farringford; and much of his poetry is coloured by the Isle of Wight scenery, notably Maud, that “pet bantling” of his to which early critics were so unkind. Enoch Arden, too, might be thought to have hailed from this shore, but that hazel nuts do not flourish in the Island, unless in the half fossilized form of “Noah’s nuts” found in Compton Chine; also, on critical consideration, there appears no long street climbing out of Freshwater, whose “mouldered church,” moreover, has been quite masked by rebuilding—but these are poetical properties readily inserted into any picture, such as one that could be taken from a hundred villages on our coast—

Often from these downs, the poet must have watched—

From his own window, he could catch—

And often his steps were turned to that finest scene within an hour’s stroll—

On such points of vantage, he was inspired with loyalty and patriotism very different from the feelings of his predecessor in the laureateship, who “uttered nothing base,” but who was certainly disposed to frown, when, from the Island cliffs, he saw a British fleet sailing forth against the soon clouded dawn of liberty in France.

Tennyson naturally had a dread of new building about Freshwater; and some other landowners here seem to share the same exclusive spirit, which may account for the neighbourhood not being more “developed” as a resort, while its warmest admirers lament how much it has grown since the Laureate settled here. It has no want of attractions, not always accessible on the steep face of chalk, scarred and pitted by works of time like Freshwater Arch and Freshwater Cave near the little bay, beyond which come honeycombings known by such names as “Neptune’s Caves” and “Bar Cave”—“Frenchman’s Hole,” from an escaped prisoner said to have starved here—Lord Holmes’ “Parlour,” “Kitchen,” and “Cellar,” where that governor was in the way

of entertaining his friends—“Roe’s Hall”—“Preston’s Bower”—the “Wedge Rock,” a triangular mass wedged in between the cliff and an isolated pyramid some 50 feet high—the “Arched Cavern” in Scratchell’s Bay, and the “Needles Cave,” into which small boats can peep before rounding the jagged corner. It is said that Professor Tyndall used to keep himself in climbing practice by scrambling on these treacherous rocks; and if this be true, I so far question the wisdom of that pundit. The harrying of airy nests makes a better excuse for such riskful gymnastics. The fissured cliff line is tenanted by sea-fowl, which the report of a gun brings out in screaming and hovering crowds, conspicuous among them the black and white cormorants nicknamed “Isle of Wight parsons.”

These sights are to be visited by boat, if a stranger have stomach for the adventure. On foot one can mount the back of the cliff known at first as the Nodes, then as the Mainbench, or in general as the High Downs. At the highest point of the Nodes, nearly 500 feet, the old beacon has been replaced by an Iona Cross in memory of Tennyson, with whom this was a favourite walk in the wildest weather. A grand walk it is upon a crest of greensward so smooth that bicycles find a track here among the flying golf balls. In dry weather this smooth turf is slippery, as one might find too late on its treacherous edges. Further on, the straight way is barred by a fort, where, between Scratchell’s Bay and Alum Bay, the ridge narrows and drops to the spur pointed by those insular masses known as the “Needles,” that, seen at a hazy distance, rise out of the sea like three castles.

The name of this famous point has been connected with the German Nieder Fels; but there seems no need of going further than a homely simile that would come to mind and mouth of sailors who, in another language, have threaded the same suggestion on the southernmost rocks of Africa. Of the three sharp-backed islets that stand out here braving the winds and waves, the innermost is known to have risen 120 feet higher in a tall pillar called “Lot’s Wife,” which fell in 1784. Since Turner painted them, unless they loomed for him through a haze of imagination, the Needles have dwindled in size. Naturally of course they are worn away by every gale, like their kinsmen “Old Harry and his Wife” on the Dorset coast, one of which isolated masses has been washed down to a stump within the last few years, the same end as threatens the “Parson and Clerk” off the red sandstone cliffs of Devon; and in the far north the more robustly gigantic “Old Man of Hoy” has now but one leg to stand on.

Bitten at as they are by old Edax Rerum, the Needles have still a bulk which, dwarfed against the cliffs behind, might not be guessed till one’s eyes are fixed upon the lighthouse on the outermost rock, or upon human figures displayed against them, to give their due proportion. Thomas Webster, the geologist, saw them about a century ago under most picturesque conditions, when the fifty-gun frigate Pomone had stuck fast upon the outer edge, and lay captive there, to be broken up by the next gale, the waves already spouting through her ports and hatchways, while all around swarmed a fleet of smaller vessels engaged in salving the wreck, or bringing idle spectators to such a singular scene: he was surprised to find the frigate’s hull overtopped by more than three-fourths of the rock.

On the north side of the Needles opens Alum Bay, where German visitors will not fail to exclaim WunderschÖn! and Americans to admire the works of nature as “elegant!” This famous geological transformation scene is formed by the Eocene strata turning up beside the chalk, as at the east end of the Island, but here with more striking effect, so as to be a spectacle for the most unlearned eye as well as a lesson of extraordinary value for those who can read it, through the manner in which the beds have been heaved, contorted and thrown into a vertical position of display. The chalk on one side with its tender tints is faced on the other by variegated bands of clay, marl, and sand, the hues of which, after heavy rain especially, are vivid far beyond our common experience of the “brown old earth,” in some lights presenting the rainbow of colour described by Englefield, to be so often quoted: “deep purplish-red, dusky blue, bright ochreous-yellow, grey approaching nearly to white, and absolute black, succeed each other, as sharply defined as the stripes in silk; and after rain the sun, which, from about noon till his setting in summer, illuminates them more and more, gives a brilliancy to some of these nearly as resplendent as the high lights on real silk.”

His geological ally Webster renders an almost as high-coloured account in more matter-of-fact style. The Alum Bay cliffs, he says,

... consist, generally, of a vast number of alternations of layers of very pure clay, and pure sand, with ferruginous sand and shale. Of these beds some are several feet, whilst others are not an eighth of an inch in thickness. Next to the chalk, is a vertical bed of chalk marl; then one of clay of a deep red colour, or sometimes mottled red and white. This is succeeded by a very thick bed of dark blue clay with green earth, containing nodules of marl or argillaceous limestone with fossil shells. Then follows a vast succession of alternating beds of sand of various colours, white, bright yellow, green, red and grey; plastic clay, white, black, grey and red; ferruginous sandstone and shale, together with several beds of a species of coal, or lignite, the vegetable origin of which is evident. The number and variety of these vertical layers is quite endless, and I can compare them to nothing better than the stripes on the leaves of a tulip. On cutting down pieces of the cliffs, it is astonishing to see the extreme brightness of the colours, and the delicacy and thinness of the several layers of white and red sand, shale and white sand, yellow clay and white or red sand, and indeed almost every imaginable combination of these materials. These cliffs, although so highly coloured that they could scarcely come within the limits of picturesque beauty, were not, however, without their share of harmony. The tints suited each other admirably; and their whole appearance, though almost beyond the reach of art to imitate, was extremely pleasing to the eye. Their forms, divested of colour, when viewed near, and from the beach, were often of the most sublime class; resembling the weather-worn peaks of Alpine heights. This circumstance they derive from the same source as those primitive mountains; for the strata being vertical, the rains and snow water enter between them, and wear deep channels, leaving the more solid parts sharp and pointed.