Calbourne one understands to be the “Malbourne” of a novel that made some noise, The Silence of Dean Maitland, where this countryside and its people are gauzily veiled under such names as “Oldport” with its “Burton’s Hotel,” and the “Swaynestone” lords of the manor; while other scenes of this moving story seem better masked as “Chalkbourne” and “Belminster.” One rather wonders that novelists think it needful to affect such a thin disguise. In another good story of the Isle of Wight, Mrs Oliphant’s Old Mr Tredgold, we find the same trick of nomenclature used rather more carelessly, when “Steephill” stands inland from “Sliplin,” and the “Bunbridge cliffs” once betray themselves as Bembridge by a slip of the author’s pen, or of the printer’s eye. We plodding writers of fact are fain to grudge our fanciful brethren such half measures in reality. We would not drive them back upon “the pleasant town of A——” or “the ancient city of B——,” all the letters of the alphabet having long ago been used up in this service; but they might be at a little pain of invention to christen their “St Oggs” and “Claverings”; or at least let them be consistent, and not dump down Portsmouth by its honest name, as that first mentioned novelist does, among her ineffectual aliases.
Ground so well trodden by honeymooning couples seems to offer a fit stage for fiction; and the Isle of Wight, if it sometimes finds itself called out of its proper names, has less cause to complain of want of appreciation among the novelists who deal with it. Jane Austen only sights it from the walls of Portsmouth, but her interest was in human rather than natural features; and she at least compliments it with its local title “the Island.” Mr Meredith coasts or touches its shores here and there, taking such snapshots as:—“The Solent ran up green waves before a full-blowing South-wester. Gay little yachts bounded out like foam, and flashed their sails, light as sea nymphs. A cloud of deep summer blue topped the flying mountains of cloud.” Mr Zangwill pushes inland, and writes this testimonial:—“A maze of loveliness, abounding in tempting perspectives. Every leafy avenue is rich in promise; such nestling farmhouses, such peeping spires, such quaint red tiled cottages, such picturesque old-fashioned mullioned windows, such delicious wafts of perfume from the gardens and orchards, such bits of beautiful old England as are perhaps nowhere else so profusely scattered!” But another popular novelist, who shall here be nameless, playing Advocatus Diaboli through the mouth of one of his characters in a perverse humour, puts the seamy side thus:—“That the Isle of Wight was only a trumpery toyshop, that its ‘scenery’ was fitly adorned with bazaars for the sale of sham jewellery, that its amusements were on a par with those of Rosherville Gardens; that its rocks were made of mud and its sea of powdered lime.”
This does not exhaust the catalogue of stories which have their scene here. Professor Church’s Count of the Saxon Shore and Mr F. Cowper’s Captain of the Wight come rather into the category of boys’ books, the latter being specially well stuffed with swashing blows and strong “language of the period.” Mr Headon Hill’s Spies of the Wight gives a lurid peep into the machinations of a foreign power against our coast defences, and the tricks of a Fosco-like villain foiled by one of those Sherlock Holmes intellects that find it so easy to discover what has been invented for discovery. We are now approaching the most fashionable resort in the Island, and there perhaps may come across some of those scandals and sins of society that give a popular relish to so much of our circulating literature. Meanwhile, since there is nothing like seeing ourselves as others see us, for a careful picture of Isle of Wight life, let us turn to a French story-teller whose modesty might prefer his name to be withheld.
A collection of novelettes entitled Amours Anglais, one of which centres in the Island, is put forth by this writer as an essay in a new school of romance. His preface, dated from “Margate, Isle of Thanet,” lets us understand how after long years of sojourn in England he has observed John Bull as closely and profoundly as is possible for a stranger to do, and that he proposes to present English life to his countrymen, stripped of the ridiculous exterior with which it is charged by their caricaturing spirit. This sympathising stranger knows the British soul to be not less interesting and more wholesome than the gloomy and flabby Russian sentiment that has had such a vogue in French fiction. To the facts of Outre-Manche, then, he will apply his native “psychologic methods,” writing as a Frenchman what he has felt as an Englishman. His aim is “to create an international genre of romance, marrying our taste to the humour and the morality of our neighbours. Have I succeeded? The public will judge.” So, with the best intentions, our entente cordialiste appeals to his French readers. Let the English public now judge.
The heroine of this story is Lilian North, nearly out of her teens, whose home is a cottage wreathed with ivy and honeysuckle in the outskirts of Newport. Her father, who “says the service in the chapel” across the road, is “in orders,” not indeed Anglican orders, he being a fanatical Baptist who holds that “one is surer of going to hell with the Archbishop of Canterbury than with the Pope of Rome himself.” Her mother is dead. She has a married sister not far off at Plymouth—in which, for once, the author makes a slip, as he evidently means Portsmouth. Poor Lilian sees almost no society, except Jedediah, “papa’s disciple,” a sort of apprentice minister who “is to read the service when papa dies.” This young colleague and successor loves Lilian, with her father’s approval; but she loves him not, as how should she when he has red eyes, hair of no particular colour, and can talk about nothing but going to heaven!
Jedediah looks like turning out the hypocritical villain of the piece. Lilian likes him less than ever when the hero appears in the person of Harry Gordon, a young city clerk who has come courting Miss Arabella Jones, elder daughter of the Baptist minister at Newport. Mr Jones has the advantage of his colleague in being a rich man who “preaches only for his amusement”; and his daughters lead a rackety life that must have scandalised the connection, especially in the Ryde yachting season, when they are always at some party of pleasure, “sometimes in a boat, sometimes on horseback, sometimes in char-à-bancs, never knowing in the morning where they shall lunch in the afternoon, nor where and with whom they shall dance in the evening”; and when they visit Newport it is with a train of ever fresh cavaliers.
At a picnic in the ruins of Carisbrooke, Lilian makes the acquaintance of Harry Gordon, whom her friend Arabella Jones professes to disdain as a shy awkward boy. But Lilian takes to him, and Harry begins to pay more attention to her than to the proud Miss Jones. At a game of blindman’s buff among the ruins, the blindfolded hero is more deliberate than need be in pawing over Lilian’s face and figure before giving her name. Cupid catches them both.
Another day there was a party to Freshwater, where the sea is always méchant, even in fine weather. The ladies having ventured out in a boat, found themselves in such danger that they were glad to get on shore. Then Arabella put her backward swain to the test with the question—“if we had gone down, which of us would you have saved first?” Harry did not answer, but his looks were on Lilian, to the spiteful displeasure of Miss Jones. So, in talking of a ball about to be given by the wealthy Baptist pastor of Ryde, she scornfully bid Lilian come to it only if properly dressed—“none of your shabby dyed frocks and halfpenny flowers!”
Lilian’s cheeks glowed with shame under this insult, and she took the first opportunity of stealing away to weep all alone by moonlight. But Harry, indignantly sympathetic, had followed her, guided by her sobs. In vain she bid him return to his Arabella. Arabella indeed! He had never much cared for Miss Jones, whom he now detested after such an exhibition of ill-natured rudeness. As they strolled on the Freshwater esplanade, Lilian’s foot slipped; and Harry, holding-her up, took the opportunity to clasp the heroine in his arms. They went back an engaged couple—cela va sans dire.
The courtship had to be done on the sly; yet the young couple must have attracted suspicion in any more censorious neighbourhood, such as that not far away, which we hear of, on good authority, as bubbling over with “gossip, scandal, and spite.” Every day Harry rode from Ryde to Newport, met at her garden-gate by Lilian, to keep company with all the freedom of a British maiden and of an innocent heart. “I gave sugar to his horse, which was called Fly; we picked flowers, and ran races against each other.” Only the jealous Jedediah guessed what was going on. When Harry entered the house, he feigned great attention to the religious exhortations of the father, but could not make way in his good-will, while Jedediah scowled at every sight of his rival, whose ring Lilian wore “hidden under my mitten,” yet not perhaps from that green-spectacled monster.