NEWPORT
Before holding on by road, rail, or boat along the coast, let us take a course through the centre of the Island, on which we can pay due respect to its capital. From Ryde, Cowes, and Freshwater run railways that meet at Newport, where the Medina begins to be navigable, and thence go off branches to Ventnor and Sandown. This junction, then, makes the radiating point of the Isle of Wight’s communications; and all its main roads converge at Newport, which, though not quite so large as Ryde, and not so well recruited by strangers, is a flourishing place of over 10,000 people.
One sees at once that this is no ville de plaisance, but the home of all sorts and conditions of men, taking toll on the country round by varied industry. Roman origin has been claimed for it on hint of the straight streets and crossings that give it a more regular aspect than most country towns, shading off indeed on the skirts into wandering lanes and rising outgrowths of the “Mount Pleasant” order. A peculiar feature is the little Quay quarter, where the Lugley stream from Carisbrooke comes in to make the Medina navigable for small vessels freighted with timber, coals, malt, wheat, and so forth. But the tidal river below Newport adorns the landscape only at high water, being too often a broad ribbon of slime creeping between low banks, not beautified by the big cement works lower down, that get their raw material in mud as well as chalk. More picturesque are the Chalk Downs, on the other side embracing the town with their green shoulders and quarried faces.
The central cross-way is marked by a memorial to Queen Victoria. Close by, too narrowly shut up in its square, stands St Thomas’s Church, whose stately tower and high roof pitch makes the boss of Newport from all points of view. This is little more than half a century old, taking the place of the ancient shrine dedicated to the memory of St Thomas à Becket, which was rather unwarrantably pulled down, that “holy blissful martyr’s” dedication being at the same time usurped by Thomas the Apostle, a saint more congenial to our age. Some of its old treasures are preserved in the present structure, notably the Charles I. pulpit, carved with personifications of Justice and Mercy, the Three Graces, the Four Cardinal Virtues, and the Seven Liberal Arts, among which a goat marks the name of the artist, Thomas Caper. Another antiquity is the monument to Sir Edward Horsey, Captain of the Island, 1565-82, showing his canopied effigy in armour with an epitaph attributing to him, after the manner of such, more virtues than he gets credit for in history. The
most beautiful monument is a modern one by Baron Marochetti, to commemorate Princess Elizabeth, Charles I.’s deformed and sickly daughter, buried in the old church 1650; but her tomb had been forgotten till the accidental discovery of the coffin in 1793. She is represented as found dead by her attendants, according to tradition, with her face resting on the pages of an open Bible, the gift of her father; and a happy touch of symbolism shows the iron bars of her life broken by death. Along with this monument, Queen Victoria contributed two memorial windows and a medallion of the Prince Consort by the same sculptor.
There is no room for a churchyard in St Thomas’s Square; but across South Street will be found the old cemetery, close packed with graves. One, seen from the path leading along it, hints at a story too common a century ago, an ugly obelisk to the memory of Valentine Gray, “the little sweep,” erected by public subscription “in testimony of the general feeling for suffering innocence.” Here is buried John Hamilton Reynolds, Keats’ friend, and Hood’s brother-in-law, who himself in youth bid fair to earn poetic fame. He is understood to be part author of Hood’s Odes to Great People; and he was to have collaborated with Keats in a volume of Italian tales, not to speak of work of his own like “a runaway ring at Wordsworth’s Peter Bell”; but after penning stanzas not unsuccessfully, he had the singular fate of taking to engrossing as a solicitor. He seems to have grown soured or sottish in his later life, which he ended obscurely as an official of the Newport County Court.
Of the few old buildings left in Newport, the most remarkable is the Jacobean Grammar School at the corner of Lugley Street and the road going down to cross Towngate bridge for Parkhurst and West Cowes. The old portion, for a later addition has been made, is interesting not only in itself, but as understood to have housed Charles I. during his last abortive negotiations with the Parliament, at the end of which the king was hurried away to his doom. Here, at that day, it was usual to receive captains and other great men coming into the Island, with an oration prepared by the schoolmaster and recited by a promising pupil; but one fears that on his later appearances at Newport poor Charles was somewhat scrimply treated in the way of loyal addresses.
Visitors to Newport nowadays come mainly for the sake of Carisbrooke Castle, which is perhaps the chief attraction of the Island, drawing thousands of excursionists on a holiday occasion. Carisbrooke, at one time overshadowing the humble beginnings of Newport, is now almost one of its suburbs, the distance being only a mile or so. From the end of High Street, the way is by the Mall, a dignified parade that suggests Bath or Clifton. The road divides at a memorial cross to Sir John Simeon, Tennyson’s friend and neighbour at Swainston, notable as the first Catholic to sit in a modern parliament, though he belonged to a family whose theological associations were expressed by the Simeon Trust for stocking pulpits with Evangelical divines. Either fork leads to Carisbrooke, that to the right being the highway for the village, and the other going more directly to the castle, under a height on which is the cemetery.