YARMOUTH
Among its other misfortunes this little Yarmouth has had that of being over-crowed by the bloated renown of Great Yarmouth, which trumpets forth many high notes of interest, from its cathedral-like church and its ancient “Rows,” to its herring fleet and its Cockney paradises. The author of David Copperfield himself might not find much to say about the Isle of Wight Yarmouth, which yet, by its past dignity, seems to demand a chapter, where it must play at least the part of text like that blessed word Mesopotamia. If we writers might never fill a few pages without having anything particular to say, what would become of the circulating libraries? So let us see what may be said under the head of Yarmouth, taken with a stretch of country beyond which deserves to be better known than it is to the Island visitors.
This little town or big village is best known to strangers by the pier of the shortest crossing from Lymington, not indeed the most convenient one, as there is a gap between the landing and the station, and trains of the Freshwater line seem to run in no close connection with the steamers, or make only a mocking show of connection that adds insult to injury. So one may find oneself stranded here for an hour or two, unless he can go straight on by coach to Freshwater Bay or to Totland Bay, to which also some of the steamers run in the season. But weak-stomached voyagers hail the half-hour’s passage as being mostly in the winding mud flats of the Lymington River, with an open prospect towards the Needles, and the low walls of Hurst Castle at the point of its long spit. Hereabouts is the proposed line of a Solent Tunnel which as yet remains in the air, but as fait accompli might lift poor Yarmouth’s head, or Totland Bay’s, to the height of proud Ryde.
Simple as it stands now, Yarmouth is one of the Island’s three ancient boroughs, old enough to have been more than once burned by French excursionists in the bad old days, and a place of comparatively more importance a century ago, when fleets of sails might be wind-bound here for weeks. As bulwark against French and other attacks, a castle was built at the mouth of the Yar, whose remains are now enclosed in the grounds of the Pier Hotel, itself still recalling its state when it was the mansion of Sir Robert Holmes, and entertained Charles II. Else, Yarmouth has not much to boast in the way of architecture, unless some quaint old houses, refreshing after the modernity of Totland Bay. The Church, dating from James I., shows a collection of Holmes’ monuments, chief among them a fine statue of Sir Robert Holmes, which had a curious history: it is
said to have been meant for Louis XIV., but being captured at sea along with the sculptor, he was forced to fit it with a head of Sir Robert. This local worthy, Governor of the Island under Charles II., and a benefactor to the town by embanking its marshy estuary, had a wider renown as one of our early Nelsons; he is repeatedly mentioned in Pepys’ Diary, and his epitaph tells in sounding Latin how, among other exploits, he more than once beat the Dutch, not always beaten at sea by Charles’ sailors, how he took from them the colony of Nova Belgia, now better known as New York, and how he captured a cargo of Guinea gold that was coined into a word of much credit in our language.
The Island boasts at least one other sailor as having earned a place in our story. There was a poor tailor’s apprentice of Bonchurch who, according to the legend, ran away to the king’s navy, proved himself in his first fight worth more than nine men, and rose to be Admiral Sir Thomas Hopson, knighted by Queen Anne for breaking the boom at Vigo. These rough coasts have all along nursed a breed of stout sea-dogs, not always so well employed as in fighting the battles of their country. A century ago Yarmouth, and indeed all this corner, seems to have been a nest of amphibian waiters on the tides of fortune, passing as fishermen plain, but often coloured as smugglers, and proving excellent food for powder when they could be pressed into the navy blue.
Such proof spirits made boon companions for the eccentric painter George Morland, when in 1799 he fled from London to escape bailiffs. He had thus nearly jumped from the frying-pan into the fire, since at Yarmouth he and his brother were arrested by a party of the Dorset militia on suspicion of being spies for the French—why else should strangers be sketching the coast? At Shanklin, the same suspicion fell upon another artist, whom the fishermen began to pelt from his easel, but he, being a very fat man, cleared himself by patting his paunch, and exclaiming, “Does this look like anything French?” There was a spy-fever all over the Island at that time. In Morland’s case, amid the hoots of a patriotic populace, the military Dogberries marched off their prisoners to Newport, where they were discharged by the magistrates only on condition of making no more sketches. In spite of such prohibition, some of Morland’s best work represents the Freshwater cliffs and the fishing folk of this coast.