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 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.

Marryat also speaks of the muddy shore, over which voyagers had often to be carried ashore pickaback or in a horse and cart, as was the way of landing at Buenos Ayres till not so long ago. But he saw the construction of its pier, one of the earliest pleasure piers in England, that made a great difference to Ryde; and for a time it shot up into more note and fashion as a seaside resort than it enjoys now among so many rivals. A hint of that palmy time is given by some dignified old mansions about the town, which, during the last half century or so, has looked for quantity as much as quality in its visitors.

At the present day, the bed of mud has been overlaid by a coat of sand, taken advantage of for bathing facilities still too dependent on the tide, ebbing out beyond an unfinished pier that serves as a swimming bath at certain hours. By means of groynes, the sand is now being coaxed to gather less thinly on the shore, where a battery of bathing machines stands in position. Else Ryde is no very good bathing place; nor, exposed to cold winds, does it invite invalids like the other side of the Island. Its interests have been rather in yachting and boating; and its frequenters those who relish a breezy marine flavour in life. August, gay with regattas, is the great time for this Solent shore. The broad pier, 2000 feet long, sets the tide at defiance, carrying out both a railway and a tramway to meet the steamers that land holiday crowds as well as passengers for all parts of the Island. For the amusement of youthful visitors a canoeing lake has been made in the gardens, behind the sea-wall running eastwards, with its fine view of Spithead and the chequered forts islanded in the Solent.

It was off this Esplanade that in 1782 went down the Royal George, one of our finest men-of-war, upset by a land breeze when heeled over safely enough, as was supposed, in calm weather. The story goes that a pig-headed officer of the watch would not attend to the carpenter’s report that she was filling; then naval discipline cost the loss of seven hundred lives. Great numbers of bodies came ashore at Ryde, to be buried under what is now a trim promenade. Others found a resting-place in Portsea Churchyard, where a monument to their memory stands under the noble tower of the new Church, so well seen from the railway as it enters Portsmouth. The catastrophe is best remembered by Cowper’s epitaph, “Toll for the Brave!” and by the narrative in Marryat’s Poor Jack. Less well known are Sir Henry Englefield’s lines, written when the graves could still be seen near the shore.

Another event in Ryde’s history was the landing here of the Empress of the French after Sedan. Her escape from Paris had been conducted by Dr Evans, the American dentist; then from Deauville, Sir John Burgoyne brought her across in his yacht through such stormy weather, that it had almost been forced to put back into some French port. At sunrise, a Ryde hotel close to the pier turned away two travel-worn ladies accompanied by a gentleman, who found refuge in the York Hotel. So the unfortunate Empress, with her small suite, could at last rest in peace. The first thing she did, Dr Evans tells us, was to seek comfort in a Bible that, by chance as she supposed, lay in the small top room given to this incognita. Charles X. on his final exile, had also made for the Isle of Wight, arriving off Cowes, but he does not seem to have landed there.

On the approach by sea, Ryde presents an attractive aspect, displayed as it is upon a hillside, with its steeply sloping streets, its conspicuous spires, and its fringe of handsome villas embowered in rich woods that enclose the town on either side. The most prominent landmark is the far-seen steeple of the parish Church in the upper part of the town, built after designs of Sir G. G. Scott, and ornamented with a fine show of modern art. Beside this stands the Town Hall, beyond which another church combines a Strawberry Hill Gothic effect, with a light colouring that at first sight suggests Oriental associations: it might do for a chapel to the Brighton Pavilion. Ryde has its fair allowance of churches and chapels of all denominations; but we need not look here for ancient dignity or picturesqueness, even the parish churches of such modern resorts as

Ryde or Ventnor having been originally chapels of ease to some now obscure metropolis inland. Georgian solidity or Early Victorian stucco are the highest notes of antiquity in this smart and cheerful town, which at the last census, taking in its outskirts, counted 18,000 inhabitants.

Church architecture, it may be said, is not the strongest point of the Island; though several of its churches have interesting remnants of Norman work; and I have heard of one native claiming for his parish steeple an unrecorded antiquity of more than 1600 years, in proof of which he showed the figures 1620 still legible on the fabric. One of the most notable ecclesiastical antiquities, Quarr Abbey, lies a pleasant couple of miles’ walk westward from Ryde. The way is by the adjoining parish of Binstead, with its modern Church preserving some fragments of the old one, originally built by the Abbot of Quarr, “because he would not have all his tenants and the inhabitants of Binstead come to trouble the Abbey Church.” A gravelled path and a lovers’ lane through a series of oak copses, giving peeps of the mainland coast, bring one in view of Quarr Abbey, whose ivied ruins are now to be restored. The name Quarr or Quarraria is said to come from the Binstead quarries of Upper Eocene limestone, that figures largely in Winchester Cathedral. The abbey was founded in the middle of the twelfth century by Baldwin de Redvers, in fulfilment of a vow made during his banishment for taking Maud’s part against Stephen, after which his head was lifted up again, so that he became Lord of the Island and Earl of Devon. He was the first to be buried here, as later were other persons of note, among them the Lady Cicely, second daughter of Edward IV., who had married a gentleman of the Island. Among the numerous traditions attached to the abbey, there is one that connects a wood called Eleanor’s Grove with the queen of Henry II., said to have been imprisoned here.

This was the second Cistercian house established in England, which before long absorbed so much of the Island, that the Abbot of Quarr became a petty prince. “Happy was that gentleman that could get his son to attend upon him,” says Oglander: such offices as treasurer, steward, chief butler, and rent-gatherer of the abbey being sought by the cadets of the chief families. But after the Dissolution it soon fell into decay, monuments and all being sold; and in the beginning of the seventeenth century, Sir John Oglander found that the very site of the church had already been forgotten by old men, even by one who remembered the days of its glory. At this time it had been bought for £3000 by Mr Fleming, descendant of the Dutch mason brought over from the Low Country by the founder to carry out the work. “Such,” moralises the knight, “is the inconstancy of Fortune, which, with the aid of her servant Time, pulleth down great things and setteth up poor things.”

Since then, the outlines have been more carefully uncovered, or traced, including part of a wall with which, by license of Edward III., this abbey was fortified against the attacks of sea-rovers, and of the French invaders who often assailed the Island. Among the old monuments recorded by Oglander was one to a “great Monsieur of France” slain here in Richard II.’s reign. The structure, of which some interesting fragments remain, was in part adapted as farm buildings, the refectory turned into a barn. But Quarr has now been bought by the community of French Benedictines that some years ago crossed the Channel to Appuldurcombe on the southern downs of the Island; and it is understood that they propose to restore the abbey as a congenial home. A swarm of nuns of the same Order has lately settled at Ryde, after a temporary residence at Northwood, near Cowes. Carisbrooke houses other foreign religieux, who have also a school at Ventnor. Thus the whirligig of time brings about its revenges, heretic England giving sanctuary to the churchmen of Catholic France.

From Quarr Abbey, one can stroll on to Fishbourne at the mouth of a creek called the Wootton River, which, a mile or so up, at Wootton Bridge is crossed by the road from Ryde to Cowes, passing presently behind the grounds of Osborne. Wootton is another of the oldest Wight churches, still preserving some features of the time when it was built by one of the Lisle family (De l’Ile) who took their name from this Island, and gave it to Dame Alice Lisle, the victim of Judge Jeffrey’s bloody assize. Holding on up the wooded bottom of Wootton River, one reaches the village of Haven Street, from which an hour’s walk leads back to the southern outskirts of Ryde, where all but the name of St John’s Park is now overspread by brick and stone. The way by road gives a fair notion of the Island scenery on this side; and might be very pleasantly extended by lanes and field-paths, copses and commons, seaming and roughening the three mile belt between the sea and the Chalk Downs to the south.

But the many rambles that may be taken here-abouts are the business of guide-books; and the high-roads leading out of Ryde need not be pointed out to its crews of coach excursionists, and to passengers on the motor omnibuses that start here for different parts of the Island, some faring as far as Shanklin and Blackgang Chine. For the present let us leave roads and railways, to stroll along the shore to Seaview, which, at the north-eastern corner, makes a sort of chapel of ease to Ryde, as Paignton to Torquay or Westgate to Margate.

This gives another very pleasant hour’s walk, to be taken along the sea-wall that continues Ryde’s Esplanade. On the land side the way is much shut in by park woods and castellated villas, but it has an open view over the Solent, across which at night gleam the myriad lights of Portsmouth and Southsea; daylight shows this strait enlivened by all kinds of shipping, and often glorified by the spectacle of a British fleet, as sometimes by international naval encounters in peace and courtesy. Our modern ships of war may make a more impressive display, yet no longer such a picturesque one as when a century ago one visitor could tell how he saw the whole Channel filled by a convoy, several hundreds strong, so that “the blue waters in the distance were almost hidden by the snow-white cloud of sails.” The pictorial place of these sails, indeed, is often taken by the racing yachts, which run all to sail; and “a sail is one of the most beautiful things which man ever invented!” So exclaims Mr George A. B. Dewar, whose “Pageant of the Sea” papers in the Saturday Review give us Turneresque pictures of this landlocked waterway:—

More than half-way on our path starts up Puckpool or Spring Vale, a row of seaside lodgings nestling under the protection of a fort that makes a link in Portsmouth’s fortified enceinte. Here the shallow shore spreads at low water a wide stretch of sand, so firm that horses as well as children can disport themselves upon it; and it seems as if the nearest fort could almost be reached on wheels. The path holds on by a strip of meadowland; and thus we come to Seaview, that has overlaid the old name of Nettlestone Point.

Seaview, indeed, was first Seagrove before it became a flourishing family bathing-place, with the unusual setting of woods so close down to the water’s edge that one may lie in a boat and hear the nightingale almost overhead; but these groves tantalise the landlubber by a crop of forbidding notices to trespassers. It has a chain pier of its own, and a regular service of steamboats from Southsea, that run on to Bembridge. This pier, with the hotel behind, splits the place into two separate sections, marked by their architecture as belonging to different strata of pleasure-seeking. The part nearer Ryde is the true old Seaview of wandering rows, bow-windowed lodging-houses, and modest refreshment rooms. On the east side of the bay has sprung up a newer, smarter, redder bit of esplanade, making a pretty contrast to its dark green background. A private road leads to this end, which, else, at high tide is cut off, so that the butcher or greengrocer may be seen delivering his wares by boat in quite Venetian manner. There are sands for children, and rocks for scrambling, and a shallow beach for launching canoes on these safe waters, where the red sails of the Bembridge Yacht Club make dots of colour, as do the tents here taking the place of bathing-machines. Another peculiar feature is the diving-boards anchored out at sea, since the tide, creeping up to the Esplanade garden gates, woos paddlers rather than swimmers. Seaview, in short, holds itself something out of the common in the way of bathing-places, dealing with strangers rather in the wholesale way of house-letting than the retail trade of apartments.

Beyond the broken point, where one seems to catch Nature in her workshop, kneading clay into firmer forms, a rough walk along the shore of Priory Bay leads on to St Helen’s, reached inland by the road through Nettlestone Green. Once clear of houses, we plunge among the rank greenery of the Island, too much monopolised here by the grounds of the Priory, which preserves the name of a colony of monks swarmed over from France to St Helen’s in early Plantagenet days. This was one of the properties bought by Emmanuel Badd, who, teste Sir John Oglander, began life as a poor shoemaker’s apprentice at Newport, “but by God’s blessinge and ye loss of 5 wyfes, he grewe very ritch,” rose to be High Sheriff of Hants, and was buried under an epitaph in Jacobean taste, ending

But at St Helen’s we have rounded the corner of the Island, which we may now survey from another line of operations.