Afterwards, I stood on the rustic bridge where Tennyson often stood to watch the sea, seen far away through the trees. I sat in the bower where he wrote "Enoch Arden," and strolled along the lanes which wind over the three hundred acres comprising the estate.
It was with difficulty that I dragged myself away from this restful spot, but I hope that I caught a bit of the inspiration that he found there.
Another day from the top of a coach we saw the beautiful country through which we had been whirled at dusk some days before. We drove to the rocks at the "bottom of the island," called the Needles; we wound through the cluster of cottages forming the village of Freshwater—then on we went through a succession of flowers on the hillside, flowers in the valleys, flowers by the sea, for the Isle of Wight is composed of blossoms and all the variations of green, with ever the blue sea as a background.
We had our tea in the garden of the little inn which nestles under the wall of Carisbrooke Castle. After we had climbed to its tower for the view and had returned to earth again, we continued on to Newport and Ventnor.
If you ever arrive at that part of Ventnor called "Bonchurch," stay there. Whoever named it must have been color-blind.
SHANKLIN, ISLE OF WIGHT
STREET IN BONCHURCH