Chichester is conservative in all things, and social affairs, said a public-house habitué, are entirely dominated by the cathedral clique. He may have been a bad authority, this doddering old septuagenarian, mouthing his pint of beer, but he entertained us during the half-hour of a passing shower with many plain-spoken opinions about many things, including subjects as wide apart as clericalism and submarines.
Our route from Chichester was to Portsmouth and Southsea, neither of which interested us to any extent. The former is warlike in every turn of its crooked streets and the latter is full of retired colonels and majors, who keep always to the middle of the footpath across Southsea Common, and will not turn the least bit to one side, for courtesy or any other reason. Too much curry on their rice or port after dinner probably accounts for it.
We stopped at the George at Portsmouth. It offers no accommodation for automobiles, but a garage is near by. The halo of sentiment and romance hung over the more or less dingy old hotel, dingy but clean, and possessed of a parlour filled with a collection of old furniture which would make the connoisseur want to carry it all away with him.
This was the terminus of old-time travel from London to Portsmouth. The Portsmouth road, in coaching days as in automobile days, ran through England's fairest counties down to her emporium of ships. Its beginnings go back to the foundations of England's naval power.
Edward IV. made Portsmouth a strong place of defence, but the road from town only became well travelled in later centuries.
Along the old Portsmouth road were, and are still, any number of nautically named inns. At Liphook is the Anchor—where Pepys put up when on his way to England's chief naval town—and the Ship; there is another Anchor at Ripley; at Petersfield stands the Dolphin, and near Guildford is the Jovial Sailor. All these, and other signs of a like nature, suffice to tell the observant wayfarer that he is on the road which hordes of seamen have trod on their way to and from London, and that it was formerly deemed well worth while to hang out invitations to them.
In 1703 Prince George of Denmark made nine miles in six hours on this road, an indication that the good roads movement had not begun. In 1751 Doctor Burton suggested that all the animals in Sussex, including the women, were long-legged because of "the difficulty of pulling their feet out of the mud which covers the roads hereabouts."
A hundred or more years ago Nelson came by post by this road to Portsmouth to hoist his flag upon the Victory. He arrived at the George, the same which was sheltering our humble selves, at six in the morning, as the records tell, having travelled all night. The rest is history, but the old Victory still swings at her moorings in Portsmouth harbour, a shrine before which all lovers of the sea and its tales may worship. Portsmouth is the great storehouse of Britain's battleships, and the Solent from Spithead to Stokes Bay is a vast pool where float all manner of warlike craft.
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| Ryde Newhaven Isle of Wight | Royal Yacht Squadron Folkestone Arundel Castle |
The Isle of Wight was the immediate attraction for us at Portsmouth. One makes the passage by boat in thirty minutes, and when one gets there he finds leafy lanes and well-kept roads that will put many mainland counties to shame. The writer does not know the length of the roadways of the Isle of Wight, but there are enough to give one a good three days of excursions and promenades.