Thos. D. Murphy

Of the hundreds of hotels whose hospitality we enjoyed—or endured—in Britain, no other was so barbarously gorgeous as the Royal Bath at Bournemouth. The furnishings were rich, though verging to some extent on the gaudy, and the whole place had an air of oriental splendor about it made the more realistic by “fairy grottoes” and gilded pagodas on the grounds. It is a rather low building of great extent, with wide, thickly carpeted halls in which bronze and plaster statuettes and suits of old plate armor are displayed. At the head of the stairs a tablet enumerates a few of the patrons of quality—an imposing list indeed—which we may partly transcribe here. The large gilt letters solemnly assure us that “This Hotel has been patronised by H. R. H. the PRINCE OF WALES, H. R. H. the DUCHESS OF ALBANY, and other Members of the ROYAL FAMILY: H. I. H. the EMPRESS EUGENIE, H. M. the KING OF THE BELGIANS, H. R. H. CROWN PRINCE OF SWEDEN and NORWAY, H. R. H. the CROWN PRINCESS OF DENMARK, H. R. H. PRINCE ALBRECHT OF PRUSSIA, Regent of Brunswick; the Leading Statesmen, and the most Eminent and Distinguished Personages visiting Bournemouth.” Verily a list of notables that might well overawe a common American citizen.

But after all, the pretensions of the Royal Bath are not altogether unwarranted, for its foundation, in 1838, marked the beginning of Bournemouth itself. It is since then that this handsome watering-place—it has no superior in the Kingdom—has come into existence. In few other modern resort towns has the original idea been so well carried out. The pine trees planted by the early promoters now form a grove through which runs the magnificent promenade along the sea. The citizens are mainly of the wealthier class and there are many fine private residences. There are, of course, the usual adjuncts of the watering-place, such as the amusement pier, promenades, public gardens and palatial hotels. The climate, which is as salubrious as that of Torquay, brings to the town many people seeking health. Bournemouth, of course, has little of history or tradition. In the churchyard surrounding its imposing modern church is buried Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her parents, William and Mary Godwin.

I have not intended to intimate that the Royal Bath, with all its splendor, is anything but comfortable and first-class. Our tall casement windows opened directly on the sea, and the high ceilings of our room were decorated with plaster bosses and stencilled festoons of roses. The view at sunset over the terrace, down the sandy beach and sweeping over the sail-flecked waters, was at once restful and inspiring. The crowd thronging the promenades was in a gay, careless mood; children played in the sand in unrestrained joy, while the many colored lights on the pier and the lanterns of the boats gave a touch of brilliancy to the scene. It all seemed to strangely contrast with the spirit of the England we were most familiar with, for Bournemouth belongs to another day and generation than the England of our pilgrimage.

The Isle of Purbeck is no island at all—even as the “Isles,” Athelney and Avilion, in no wise fulfill the geographical requirements of islands. It is a small peninsula of Southern Dorset, and at its very center stands one of the most remarkable of the English castles. Thither we go, following the coast from Bournemouth through the somber little town of Wareham; from thence southward over heather-mottled hills, and ere long we catch sight of the gigantic mound upon which are the straggling fragments of Corfe Castle. Before the castle gate stands Corfe village, a group of plain cottages, seemingly as ancient as the ruin overlooking them. All are mellowed by the touch of time; there is naught to mar the harmony of the dull silver grays and moss greens of the cottages, the solid old church or of the ruins which tower in sharp outline against a pale, blue sky.

The entrance to the castle court is well above the roofs of the cottages and is severed from the village by a deep fosse crossed by a high-arched stone bridge. The gate is flanked by two huge round towers, but from the inside one sees the castle proper, perched on the summit of the mound, its very foundation stones high above the gate towers. Standing among the stupendous ruins we realize the amazing strength the castle possessed, both in construction and position. Huge fragments of walls and towers rise above us like thunder-riven cliffs, their bald outlines softened in places by the clinging ivy. Here and there masses of fallen masonry are lying about like boulders, so solidly does the mass cling together. So ruinous are the walls that it is difficult to identify the different apartments, and even the antiquarians have trouble in restoring the original plan of the castle. The keep itself, generally intact, is shattered, one fragment, almost the entire height of the structure, standing curiously like a huge chimney. Clearly enough, an explosive was the agent of destruction here—Corfe Castle was razed with gunpowder by express order of Cromwell’s Parliament.

CORFE VILLAGE AND CASTLE.

From the wall on the highest point of the mound, one has a wide prospect. It was a clear lucent day and when we climbed a broken tower the whole peninsula of Purbeck spread beneath us like a map. It is now bleak and sterile, spotted with gorse and heather and broken in places with chalk cliffs. Yet when the castle was built the region was covered with a stately forest, of which no trace now remains. Far to the north we see the Wareham road winding away like a serpent, while a stony trail cuts squarely across the moor to the west. When we prepare to take our leave, we ask the custodian concerning the road to Lulworth, and he points out the uninviting byway through the fields. We had planned to return to Wareham, but this route, he assures us, is shorter and “very good,”—strange ideas of good roads had the old man if he could so describe the ten miles through the moors to Lulworth, quite as bad as any of equal distance we found in ten thousand miles.

But before we go shall we ask the story of Corfe? The tales of the abbeys and castles are much alike and their end nearly always the same—dismantled by Henry, destroyed by Cromwell. Still, Corfe is very old; its records go back to Saxon times. How weird it is to think that in front of the towers that grimly guard the entrance King Edward the Martyr was stabbed by order of his stepmother, Elfrida, as he paused to quaff a goblet of wine. It happened more than a thousand years ago, and from that time until Cromwell’s gunpowder sent walls and towers tottering to destruction, the sequestered castle was the scene of intermittent turmoil and bloodshed. Sir Christopher Hatton built the more modern portions during the reign of Elizabeth, but Corfe brought him only trouble. In 1633 it passed from the possession of his descendant to Sir John Bankes, a loyal supporter of King Charles, and while he was active in court and field, his energetic wife held the castle against all comers. One siege she repulsed and the surrender in 1646 was brought about only by treachery. Brave Lady Bankes! The story of her gallant defense will not be forgotten while a single fragment of the old fortress remains on its bleak, wind-swept hill.

But they have told us that Lulworth and its cove are worth seeing and we are soon away over the moorland road. A strenuous ten miles it is, rough, stony, steep, with numerous gates to open and close between the fields, and in places the road is so overgrown with grass and heather as to be hardly discernible. But from the uplands which it traverses one may see the ocean on the left and to the right a long array of rolling hills and winding valleys, all in the purple glow of full-blown heather, with here and there a lonely cottage or group of trees. We begin a long descent, following the edge of the hill toward the sea, and a sharp turn leads down a short steep grade into Lulworth.

The village some years ago had merely a few thatched cottages nestling beneath the high hills to the landward, but of late Lulworth has assumed airs as a trippers’ resort in the summertime, and the red-tiled villas rather spoil its old-world effect. Lulworth would be of no more note than other villages scattered along the south coast were it not for its peculiar cove, an almost circular, basinlike depression a few hundred yards in diameter; the sea enters it through a narrow opening in the cliffs. We were able to take the car down to the very margin of the water. An angular, red-whiskered fisherman approached us and in broad South Country speech offered to row us across the cove. We acquiesced in deference to his story of slack times and hard luck. The water of the cove has a depth of sixty feet near the center and in old days offered shelter to smugglers’ smacks. From the high cliffs on the opposite side we had a magnificent view of the rough coast line, a medley of gray, green and white, stretching along the foam-flecked sea.

We soon regain the main road and pass Lulworth Castle but a little way from the village—a massive, rectangular structure with circular, crenelated towers at each corner. It is not of great antiquity, having been built during the reign of Elizabeth, who is reputed to have visited it, and King James came here to escape the plague in London.

Our route carries us back to Wareham, a sleepy, shrunken town with little to suggest its strenuous history. Indeed, one writer declares that no town in England has undergone more calamities in the shape of sieges and conflagrations from the early wars with the Danes down to the capture of the place by Cromwell’s forces. It is pleasantly situated on a strip of meadowland between two small rivers, and today has about two thousand people. Its wall, built more than a thousand years ago, may still be traced throughout its entire course and proves Wareham once of much greater extent than at present.

Wimborne Minster takes its name from the church whose square towers with odd minaretlike pinnacles loom over the town as we approach it from the south. And rightly should the name of the minster predominate, for it is the redeeming feature of the commonplace Dorset town. But it is quite enough—few English churches have a greater store of curious relics. The chained library of about two hundred and fifty huge volumes, each held to its shelf by a heavy, rusty chain, is unique; but as one reads the ponderous titles of the books he wonders that such precaution should have been deemed necessary. Still, there were no “six best sellers” in the day when this library was established, and even heavy theological treatises in Latin and Greek may have been in demand.

Not less curious is the orrery clock, five hundred years old, which illustrates the astronomical ideas of its time in compelling the sun to make a circuit of the dial every day, while the moon occupies a month. The sense of humor that mixes itself with the solemnity of so many English churches finds expression here in an odd, gnomelike automaton on the western tower that goes through strange contortions every quarter hour. One cannot but wonder just what is in the huge chest—unopened for centuries—hewn from a single log and fastened with great bunglesome locks; but most likely it contains records and documents pertaining to the church. But all these marvels are nothing to those which Wimborne Minster once possessed but which have disappeared; a piece of the true cross and one of the manger in which the Lord was born; some of the earth from the Bethlehem stable and a few hairs from Christ’s head; a thigh bone of St. Agatha; a few of St. Philip’s teeth; a joint of St. Cecelia; the hair shirt of St. Thomas a’ Becket and a small phial of his blood. Verily Wimborne Minster was well supplied with the stock in trade of the early church.

But the minster has associations of a less mythical nature. In the chancel is the grave of Aethelred, King of the West Saxons, brother of Alfred the Great, who was slain in 871. A fine brass is set in the slab over the grave, but this is doubtless of more recent date. There are tombs of several crusaders, though the effigies have been sadly mutilated. But the most curious tomb is a gilded coffin set in a niche in the wall, a little below the level of the floor. On the coffin is the date 1693, which the occupant at one time fixed as the date for his demise, but this did not occur until ten years later. He expressed a wish to be buried “neither under the ground nor above it; neither in the church nor out of it” and left an annuity of five pounds to keep his coffin touched up yearly—all of which was faithfully carried out, for thus did the church once lend itself to clownish eccentricity.

Wimborne Minster delights in its relics, its traditions, and its medieval customs. The verger told us of one of the latter that is perhaps founded on more of common sense than many of the old-time practices, and which, with that continuity of custom that confronts one everywhere in England, still prevails. The vestrymen pass through the church at times during the services and prod the sleeping brethren with long black rods—not a bad idea, after all, though one that could hardly be inaugurated without precedent.

So much of our glimpse of Wimborne Minster; it is late and we are bound for Southampton, forty or more miles away as we propose to go. The road to Ringwood and from thence to Lymington leads through an open, heathlike country—stretches of rank-growing ferns interspersed with the vivid purple of the heather. A little beyond Ringwood we enter New Forest, though in this section little of the forest—as one thinks of the word now—is to be seen. There are occasional groups of trees, but the prevailing feature of the landscape is the fern-clad heath. A cheerless road it is, but open, finely surfaced and nearly level, with nothing to hinder the mad rush of our motor.

At Lymington we hail a citizen and inquire in our best French accent for the road to Beaulieu. He studies awhile and shakes his head. Then we seek a never-failing source of information—a garage man—but to our astonishment he is puzzled.

“Boloo, Boloo; never heard of it.”

“What, the old abbey? It can’t be far from here.”

“O, you mean Bewley, to be sure—eight miles straight away; you can’t miss it.”

We hasten on over the moors and through a stretch of woodland into a wooded valley, where we come to a village more pleasing than any we have yet seen in Dorset—a village of thatched cottages and flower gardens fitting well into the charming surroundings. The river, held in leash by a weir, lies in broad, silvery reaches, fringed with willows, and groups of pond lilies dot its surface. Beaulieu, aside from its abbey, might be a shrine for the motorist, for here is the estate of Lord Montague, an enthusiast for the wind-shod steed, who has exchanged his ancestral stables for motors, and, to cap it all, is owner and editor of “The Car.”

There is not much left of the abbey. Henry VIII., with characteristic thrift, floated the stone down the river to build Hurst Castle. The refectory, now restored and used as a parish church, is the most perfect remnant of the once magnificent establishment, whose church almost equalled the huge dimensions of Winchester Cathedral. The late lord did much to restore the ruins, which are now surrounded by lawns and shrubbery. The monks of Beaulieu had wide fame for good cheer—they kept great vineyards and their wines were counted the best in England. The vineyards throve long after the Dissolution, but the last vine, several hundred years old, disappeared about two centuries ago. Just across the river there is a substantial, comfortable hotel belonging to Lord Montague, which is much frequented by fishermen.

An hour’s run over level but winding roads brought us to the Great Western Hotel in Southampton. It was a needless trip, after all, for the Isle of Wight is best reached from Lymington, whither we returned in the morning.

At Lymington the motor was loaded into a tiny boat, nearly filling it from stem to stern, and towed by the little channel steamer across the Solent to Yarmouth. The captain, who commands a crew of four men, invited us into the pilot house and gave us his field glasses, entertaining us with a tale of hard luck, long hours, small pay and still smaller appreciation of his service on part of the railway company, which owns the steamers. He was a typical English salt, bluff and bronzed, with a dialect that was refreshing to hear. We did not forget him, either, and found him anxiously looking for us next day when we were ready to return to the mainland.

Here we are on the sunniest, calmest of summer days in the isle whose greatest charm for us is, perhaps, in the fact that Tennyson spent most of his active life here and did much of his best work in his island home. But this is far from the only attraction of the romantic island, so small that a circuit of sixty-five miles takes one over the coast roads. The eastern and half the northern coast is dotted with increasingly popular resort towns, of which Cowes, of yachting fame, is the best known, and thither we direct our course.

It is open day at Osborne House and the short excursion by steamer from Southampton appeals to English people as few other holiday trips. And it is not strange when one reflects that no other place was in such a strict sense the home of Queen Victoria as Osborne House, or has so many memories of her life. The rather ineffective Italian villa was designed and built by herself and the Prince Consort and here were passed the happy years of the early married life of the royal couple. It was the queen’s private property and descended to King Edward, who presented it to the nation. As it stands now, it may be said to be a memorial to the queen. Here are the family portraits and the marvelous presents given to Victoria on the occasions of her golden and diamond jubilees; some were from other rulers, but the most wonderful came from Indian potentates and the colonies. These defy all description. The queen died here in 1901, and altogether Osborne House is full of the deepest significance to the average British subject. The crowds that thronged the palace grounds on the day of our visit, we were told, were quite representative of the open days of the summer season.

Newport, the capital and metropolis of the island, is a modern-looking town, whose greatest interest is Carisbrooke Castle, the stronghold of the ancient governors. It stands on an eminence overlooking the town and charming indeed was the prospect that greeted us from the walls on that shimmering summer afternoon. The town, with its red-brick, slate-roofed buildings, lay just below us; about it were the tiny fields, with the green meadowlands, the ripening grain, great trees and snug cottages. One may walk on the battlements—in part modern replacements—entirely around the castle walls, and thus view the ruin from every angle.

Carisbrooke’s chief memory is of Charles I., who came here as a guest only to be detained as a prisoner. The room he occupied has disappeared, but the window in its outer wall, through which he twice essayed to escape, may yet be seen. It was during his captivity here that he first lost hope; his hair turned gray and his trim, jaunty cavalier air forsook him. Finally, on the last night of November, 1648, he was seized by two companies of Roundhead horse and carried to Yarmouth and from thence to Windsor Castle. This was the beginning of the end. After the King’s execution, the Princess Elizabeth and the young duke of Gloucester were sent here by order of Parliament. The princess soon died and is buried in Newport Church, where a marble effigy marks the tomb. Aside from the melancholy history of King Charles, the annals of Carisbrooke have few events of importance. Its decay and resulting ruin were due to ages of neglect.

Beginning at Ryde, four miles north of Newport, we followed the coast, passing a succession of resort towns. Ryde is situated on a hillside sloping toward the sea, and its water front with drives and gardens, is one of the most charming we know of. The road from Ryde to Ventnor is crooked, narrow, and highly dangerous in places. At times it runs through closely bordering forests; again along the edge of an almost precipitous incline; then it climbs a long, terribly steep hill, but is never more than a few hundred yards from the coast.

The Royal Hotel at Ventnor comes up to its pretensions but poorly. We were surprised to find the last three parties registered in the visitors’ book coming from France, Germany and Sweden respectively, while our own added a fourth foreign registry in succession. The number of foreign guests at this hotel seemed to indicate that Ventnor is more popular with continental people than the average English resort town, for as a rule we found very few European guests. Ventnor is situated on a precipitous hill-slope, quite sheltered from the north and east. The houses run up the hill in terraces and the ledge of rock along the beach is barely wide enough for the promenade. The climate is mild and few spots in England are more favored by invalids. It was this that brought poor John Keats in 1817, and he composed “Lamia” during his stay. Here was a favorite resort of Tennyson before he settled in Freshwater, and Longfellow’s visit in 1868 is commemorated by an inscription which he composed for the fountain near the hotel in Shanklin, the old town nearly contiguous to Ventnor. Shanklin contains many bits of the picturesque old-time island—touches of antiquity quite wanting in Ventnor.

The following day was one to be remembered; a day as near perfection as one may have in England—the sky pale blue, cloudless and serene, toning to lucent gray near the horizon, and the air fresh and invigorating. Our road closely followed the coast with an almost continual view of the sea. The ocean lay darkly under the rocks, rippled over stretches of silvery beach, or glittered under the long headlands, whose white chalk cliffs were almost dazzling in the sunlight. There were flower-embowered cottages along the road, but no villages for many miles. We gave two hours to the twenty miles to Freshwater and enjoyed the beauty to our hearts’ content—but no! to do that one must linger until darkness shuts out the view.

Freshwater became famous through its association with Tennyson, and the poet by coming here destroyed to a certain extent the very retirement and quiet that he sought, for the tourists followed him, much to his disgust. Yet he used to go about in a great slouching hat and military cloak that advertised his presence to everyone—an inconsistency that even his little grandchild is said to have noticed, and that she queried in her childish innocence, “If you don’t like people to look at you, Grandpa, why do you wear that queer hat and cloak?” But in any event, the trippers, though often snubbed for their pains, flocked to Freshwater. They still come to the old home of the poet, and the present Lord Tennyson is said to welcome them even less than did his father.

We stopped at a post card shop just opposite the rear entrance to Farringford—a rustic gate opening into a narrow roadway between tall trees—and they told us that the ban on visitors was absolute. But one might see the house from the road. The unprecedented snow of the preceding winter had almost destroyed the tree so beloved of the poet—the

which hid the front of the house. Besides, the owner was now at Aldworth and the gardener might not be so averse to visitors—but we ignore the hint and content ourselves with a visit to Freshwater Church. Lady Tennyson is buried in the churchyard, her grave marked by a white marble cross. Inside there are tablets inscribed to the poet and his wife, who were regular attendants at the church, and a marble statue to the memory of Lionel, the son who died on shipboard in the Red Sea when returning from India. The village of Freshwater is full of picturesque cottages, and there are many more pretentious modern villas which indicate that the blight of a popular watering place threatens it. High on the hill, over the town and sea, towers the Tennyson memorial, a great Celtic cross, forty feet in height, reared by the poet’s admirers in England and America.

There is little to see at Yarmouth, where we wait an hour or more for the boat. In the church is buried Admiral Holmes, the man who took the village of New Amsterdam from the Dutch and called it New York, and a marble statue, representing the great seaman standing by a cannon, commemorates this and other achievements. An English writer tells this curious story of the monument:

“Even a poor judge of such things can see at a glance that this is no ordinary piece of work. It is said that the unfinished statue was intended to represent Louis XIV. and was being conveyed by the sculptor in a French ship to Paris in order that the artist might model the head from the living subject. Holmes captured the vessel and conceived the brilliant idea of compelling the artist to complete the work with his (the admiral’s) likeness instead of that of le Grand Monarque. The old fellow seems to wear a grim smile as he thinks of the joke, but as the head is undoubtedly of inferior workmanship to the body, the artist may have felt that he had his revenge.”

The admiral was a native of Yarmouth and a part of his mansion is incorporated into the Pier Hotel. It still retains the old staircase and much antique paneling; and a tablet on the wall recites that Charles II. was a guest here in 1671 on a visit to Holmes.

We were soon aboard the little steamer, and despite marine rules and regulations, on the bridge with our friend the captain. We noticed that he was going far out of the usual course, directly toward the wreck of the Gladiator. For the warship Gladiator lay on her side a few furlongs off the coast west of Yarmouth, whither she had staggered and fallen when mortally wounded in a collision with the American liner, St. Paul, a few months before. Salvage crews were working to raise her and we naturally expressed interest in the sight. Our ancient mariner heard it and as he steered toward the wreck muttered something about getting “out of the way of the current,” but added, “They may think I did it to give you a good view of the Gladiator!”—and we are still wondering if that was the reason for his detour. Far down the Solent he pointed out the Needles, Swinburne’s “loose-linked rivets of rock,” and he told us of the wild storms and shifting bars that confound the navigators in this locality. Ere long he had to attend closely to business, for the channel to Lymington is narrow and tortuous, being navigable only at high tide. A large coaling steamer partly obstructed our way and called forth a series of marine objurgations from our friend, but he quickly swung to the pier and the motor soon scrambled out of her little craft up the steep bank to terra firma.

We find that our jaunt in the Isle of Wight has covered only seventy miles and occupied just a day; still, thanks to our trusty car, we have seen about all the points of interest that the average tourist would care to see and which it would have required several days to visit in the ordinary manner of travel.