A Sapphic leap in Dorset?

Following on from the recent post about Swinburne and chalk cliffs - see Swinburne, Culver climber - yesterday I read Thomas Hardy's poem A Singer Asleep, his elegy to Swinburne written at Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, on the occasion of Hardy's visit to Swinburne's grave there.

The poem, which celebrates Swinburne as a kindred spirit to the Greek poet Sappho, has a particular verse that refers to Sappho's alleged suicide by jumping off a "white cape", Cape Leukas (now called Cape Lefkada) out of unrequited love for a sailor called Phaon - a yarn especially propagated by Menander's mostly-lost play Leucadia (aka The Lady from Leukas). See Sappho and the Leucadian Leap (Gary Hoffman, Opera today, 18 Sep 2005) for more on this.

His singing-mistress verily was no other
Than she the Lesbian, she the music-mother
Of all the tribe that feel in melodies;
Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steep
Into the rambling world-encircling deep
Which hides her where none sees.

- from A Singer Asleep, Thomas Hardy

This brings me to another "white cape" at the easternmost tip of the Isle of Purbeck, Dorset; see Google Maps and this excellent aerial photo by Phil Brace. The overall formation is, as a 19th century description puts it, a broken promontory "called promiscuously Foreland, Handfast Point, and Old Harry Head". As described, with further good photos, in Dr Ian West's geological account Harry Rocks and Ballard Point, within it there are various structures including "Old Harry" and "Old Harry's Wife"; and the gap between the mainland and the first offshore rock appears on maps as "St Lucas' Leap".

"St Lucas Leap" is a name of considerable antiquity that appears on the 1580s Richards Treswell map of Studland Parish (see top right here) and, if the map is accurate, predates the collapse of the promontory into separate stacks 1. The stated origin stories reek, to me anyway, of folk etymology. The predominant one is that:

It was close by, at St. Lucas's Leap, that a pair of pedigree greyhounds belonging to a certain squire at Studland, while coursing a hare, are said to have leaped clean over the cliff and have been dashed to pieces, the name St. Lucas being afterwards given to the spot where the tragedy occurred to commemorate the name of one of the favourite hounds which perished so suddenly and tragically. It was said that the old gentleman did not long survive the disaster, as he was so greatly attached to the dog and its fortunes."
- Old Swanage or Purbeck Past and Present: A collection of articles, topographical, historical, antiquarian, biographical and anecdotal, WM Hardy, 1910

A second version, repeated in Anthony Mills' 1977 The place-names of Dorset, is that is refers to Richard Lucas, rector of Studland 1536-78.

I was interested, however, in the earliest appearance of the name in Google Books, which is Thomas Hardy's relatively early comic novel The Hand of Ethelberta.  Set partly on the Isle of Purbeck, it features several vivid descriptions of sailing past the promontory: Hardy calls the whole formation "Saint Lucas Leap" in the original 1876 Cornhill Magazine publication and the first book imprint (see the Internet Archive handofethelberta02hard). In later editions, for some reason, he revises it to the real name, "Old Harry Point".  

I think Hardy's original name gives a glimpse into his creative processes, because the novel concerns a widowed poet called Ethelberta Petherwin who is fending off several suitors.  She is a poet and writer that Hardy twice identifies with Sappho:

He lived by teaching music, and, in comparison with starving, thrived; though the wealthy might possibly have said that in comparison with thriving he starved.  During this night he hummed airs in bed, thought he would do for the ballad of the fair poetess what other musicians had done for the ballads of other fair poetesses, and dreamed that she smiled on him as her prototype Sappho smiled on Phaon.
...
‘Well, it is an old and worn argument—that about the inexpedience of tragedy—and much may be said on both sides.  It is not to be denied that the anonymous Sappho’s verses—for it seems that she is really a woman—are clever.’

This makes me strongly suspect that Hardy must have had Sappho's "Leukas leap" in mind when he upgraded "St Lucas Leap" to a full promontory.

1. It's not clear when the collapse of the Old Harry promontory happened. HB Woodward, in 1890, contains the anecdote that

"about one hundred and twenty years ago a man could creep along a narrow path from the mainland to Old Harry"- (page 78, in Swanage (Isle of  Purbeck) Its History, Resources as an Invigorating Health Resort, Botany, and Geology, John Braye, 1890).

But this is unreliable, as it appears to be recycling an 1837 anecdote that refers to an entirely different rock a little westward along the coast, The Pinnacle:

"In one place, nearly half way between Ballard Point and Old Harry, is a rock about 100 ft. high, with mould and grass on the top. It is at the bottom a square of, say, 11 yards; and there are 49 tiers of horizontal flint. I was informed that some very old men recollect that, about seventy years ago, they could creep along a narrow path out to this rock; but, about fifty years ago, it was disjoined, but scarcely any other change has taken place." - On the Strata near Swanwich, in the Isle of Purbeck, James Mitchell, page 591, Magazine of Natural History, Volume 1, 1837.

- Ray

I've come to kill your monstaaah!

I finally watched Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis' 2007 digitally enhanced live-action film adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon epic. I wasn't disappointed.

The epic of Beowulf is a strangely disconnected narrative with its separate Grendel and dragon episodes, but the writers of the screenplay, Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, very neatly weave the Grendel and dragon episodes into one ongoing thread: a demonic bargain (and curse) that first afflicts King Hrothgar, then Beowulf himself. There were other nice touches such as the use of Anglo-Saxon and sub-Anglo-Saxon in the dialogue; self-reference to the process of mythologisation (how real events get massaged in the telling to fit hero-myth format); and, unusually in an epic film, showing the hero in the declining phase of the Campbell Cycle (see Heroes) as the city-founder who has fallen from grace. Admittedly, beyond Ray Winstone's much-ridiculed lapses into London accent, there were moments that were difficult to take seriously, such as the constantly-interposed objects to hide Beowulf's groin during his naked fight with Grendel, and Angelina Jolie's demon with integral (and anachronistic) high heels. But overall Gaiman and Avary have scripted a very neat reinterpretation of the legend.

I previously recommended another film adaptation, The Thirteenth Warrior (see Beowulf meets Ibn Fadlan); this was based on Michael Crichton's novel Eaters of the Dead, a demythologized Beowulf in which the monsters are a relict group of Neanderthals. Another book adaptation especially worth checking out is John Gardner's Grendel, which retells the first episode of Beowulf from the viewpoint of the antagonist, a highly intelligent monster who watches the rise of humans and whose conflict with Beowulf arises ultimately from his bafflement at culture and the power of language and world-view. See chapter 4 of Understanding John Gardner (John Michael Howell, 1993) for background. (This is, by the way, this John Gardner, not this one).

- Ray

Mark Twain: good blogging advice

This is completely lifted from Mark Liberman's post at Language Log - From Mark Twain's autobiography - but it's such good advice that I can't resist quoting it:

Finally, in Florence in 1904, I hit upon the right way to do an Autobiography: start it at no particular time of your life; talk only about the thing which intrests you for the moment; drop it the moment its interest threatens to pale, and turn your talk upon the new and more interesting thing that has intruded itself into your mind meantime.

Also, make the narrative a combined Diary and Autobiography. In this way you have the vivid things of the present to make a contrast with memories of like things in the past, and these contrasts have a charm which is all their own. No talent is required to make a combined Diary and Autobiography interesting.

And so, I have found the right plan. It makes my labor amusement — mere amusement, play, pastime, and wholly effortless. It is the first time in history that the right plan has been hit upon.

- page 220, Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 1, Mark Twain, ed. Harriet E. Smith, Benjamin Griffin, Victor Fischer, Michael B. Frank, Sharon K. Goetz, Leslie Diane Myrick, University of California Press, 2010 - originally "Author's Note" in Mark Twain's autobiography, Mark Twain, Albert Bigelow Paine, 1924

Mark Liberman comments, "This is also the right plan for successful blogging, in my experience".

I couldn't agree more, particularly if you extend the concept to the balance between "personal" (day-to-day authorial experience) and "external" (topic material encountered or uncovered). It's an approach that has kept me interested in JSBlog for four years - despite an initial dread of running out of ideas -  and it's the one used by the weblogs that I read most regularly, as well as pre-weblog diary accounts such as Cecil Torr's Small Talk at Wreyland (a diary of an antiquarian landowner).  A similar format can be very successful in fiction, as with WG Sebald's Rings of Saturn (which combines the narrator's walking tour of East Anglia with meditations on the history of places visited).

- Ray

Sabaton

The Internet can always be relied upon for the serendipity of unexpected sidetracks. While browsing for a historical article, I just ran into a rich lode of mostly unfamiliar terminology:

It is on the south side of the chancel near the altar, and consists of a freestone table, upon which lies extended the figure of Sir Thomas, clothed in the armour of the time. The pauldrons and coudieries are ornamented, and the brassarts and vambraces puffed or ribbed. Taces, to which are appended deep lambeaux of overlapping plate; a large apron of chain-mail and broad-toed sabbatons complete his costume and he is armed with sword and misericorde 1.

- An account of Sir Thomas Grenville's tomb in Bideford church, and also of the long bridge in Bideford, By Rev. Roger Granville, M.A., Rector Of Bideford. Exeter. Transactions of the Diocesan Architectural and Archaeological Society, 1894

Naturally I had to go to Wikipedia's Components of medieval armour, and in the process of going through the list ...

Aventail, Bevor, Gorget, Pixane, Brigandine, Cuirass, Culet, Plackart, Fauld, Hauberk, Codpiece, Lance rest, Loin-guard, Ailette, Besagew, Couter, Gauntlet, Pauldron, Rerebrace, Spaulder, Vambrace, Chausses, Cuisses, Greave, Poleyn, Sabaton, Schynbald, Tasset, Tonnlets, Bases, Gousset, Lamé, Rondel

... I spotted a disambiguation link from sabaton to Sabaton (band), and naturally ended up at YouTube.

Sabaton (official site here) are a Swedish power metal group who specialise, strangely, in English-language songs about pivotal events in historical wars. I feel I shouldn't like them, but the music is highly listenable and weirdly invigorating (the sort of music to play while working out); the nearest description I can find is that it's metal/rock opera about wars, with no particular agenda (some of the songs could be viewed as glamorizing warfare, others are distinctly anti-war).  Primo Victoria (about the D-Day landings) and Attero Dominatus (about the fall of Berlin) are characteristic.

I can't find any account of why, but the band is (I assume) named after the sabaton, as one features on the "S" of its logo.

1. In case of confusion: Sir Thomas is armed with a knife, not a small shelf (though both have the same etymology, misericordia = "act of mercy").
- Ray

The Broken Tryst

I just finished reading The Broken Tryst (Maxwell Gray, 1879).

It's a melodramatic romance, set mostly around the village of Brightdale, telling of the loves of Ethel Arden, nicknamed "Brightie" by her family. A 19-year-old orphan, she was rescued from a shipwreck as a baby, and brought up by her indulgent foster-parents, the elderly Ardens.

Ethel has a gently flirtatious friendship with Will Brackenbury, a nice-but-irresponsible miller's son, which goes sour when he asks to marry her and she replies that she could only marry a man in uniform. In response partly to this, and partly to his father's criticism for high jinks including suspending an old farmer from a tree while scrumping apples, Will quits town and joins the army incognito.

Ethel is hurt, but not much, and aims her sights loosely at Cecil Wymmering, whose family owns the nearby Wymmering Manor; but she snubs him at a party when she meets the world-weary Major Leslie Tempest, 15 years her senior. The two develop a strong mutual attraction - despite, unknown to Ethel, Tempest's intended engagement to a society heiress - and after a picnic, they agree to meet the next day in a clifftop dell. Ethel goes home to find a mysterious visitor called Mr Richards, evidently known and disliked by her foster-parents, who gives her a gift of a gold bracelet.

The next day Ethel goes to the dell, but Tempest doesn't turn up (the "broken tryst" of the title). Unknown to her, the previous night Tempest had a near-fatal fight with the stranger, and both have left town. It's later explained that the two are enemies over an earlier disagreement over gambling. Tempest sends a short and formal note of apology for breaking their appointment. Ethel is deeply upset, and has no backup (Cecil is engaged to someone else). She throws herself into study, and time passes. She nearly dies of a fever, and on her recovery goes to stay with London relatives of the Ardens, touring Europe with them, and starting to enjoy life again.

Meanwhile, Will Brackenbury has returned to Brightdale, having earned an honourable discharge for saving his colonel, Lord Lyndon, in battle. After initial resistance, his father and he make their peace. At the time of his arrival, a man has been found dead after an accidental fall near Brightdale; it is "Mr Richards", revealed to be Richard Arden, the elderly Ardens' son and Ethel's dissolute father. His earlier visit to the Ardens had been to claim Ethel as his daughter, a scheme he only gave up when the Ardens gave him their money saved as Ethel's inheritance. Will is sent to London to fetch Ethel home for the funeral.

Will finds Ethel at a vulnerable point, just shaken by seeing Major Tempest with another woman at a concert, but she comes home with Will; both are favourably impressed by the other's new-found maturity. Ethel arrives just in time for Richard Arden's funeral, and Will explains to her the family history; she is upset, but delighted to find that she is her foster-parents' grandchild. Over time, Ethel and Will become closer, and the two marry, though with considerable misgivings on her part because she's still thinking of Tempest.

After their first child is born, Will's old commanding officer, Lord Lyndon, comes to visit Brightdale to thank the young soldier who saved his life. Ethel is horrified to find that Lord Lyndon is Leslie Tempest (Will knows about Tempest, but not that his commanding officer was the same person). Tempest has come to ask Ethel to marry him, but he does the decent thing and takes his leave. Ethel's upset after he has gone, however, gives all away, and the incident drives a further wedge between between Will and Ethel.

On rather frosty terms, they continue for a few years, Will becoming a gentleman farmer and acquiring a manor house in idyllic surroundings, until finally they see a newspaper story telling that Tempest has died in action. Ethel is finally able to cry and release her pent-up disappointments, and the two are reconciled to live happily ever after.

Location / chronology questions

I found The Broken Tryst very readable; as a single-volume novel, it tells the story quite tersely, and it's virtually free of the highly purple landscape/sunset descriptions of MG's later novels. It's not explicitly set in the Isle of Wight, but as I wrote earlier - see Brightdale - an added interest is that its location there is highly identifiable.  Brightdale is Brighstone; the route over the down to Wymmering Hall locates it as Westover Manor, Calbourne (though the architectural details differ from the reality); and the landscape description of the manor where Will and Ethel finally make their home matches Mottistone Manor.

Despite the whole family complications and interlocking past history being a bit contrived, the book worked for me. However, I did get distracted by needing to Google frequent puzzles about fixtures and dates, and I agree partially with the Belfast News-Letter reviewer's comment at the time:

As for the author's chronology, all we can say is that it baffles us completely. We should like it to be explained to us what Spanish sea fight is recollected by the lieutenant, and also in what Eastern campaign young Brackenbury gains two medals and a clasp.

Actually the chronology is reasonably consistent. The general setting appears to be late 1860s: Ethel's visit to St James's Hall to hear "Nilsson" sing must refer to Christina Nilsson, and most likely to a celebrated concert in 1869 marking the move of the Philharmonic Society to that venue. Tempest's having a "pile of photographs" places it after after affordable paper prints came in (see Google Books) and Lieutenant Arden's prized roses, the Marshal Niel and Cloth of Gold, would have been fairly new varieties (this 1913 Biltmore Rose Catalogue dates the Marechal Niel's introduction to 1864). As to Will's "Eastern campaign", the timeline would fit the 1868 Expedition to Abyssinia, which was launched from India.

None of this fits Lieutenant Arden's rant about an English sea-battle "exactly this day twenty years by my log-book" with "a Spanish squadron" - unless he means that he was 20 years old. There are a few such naval engagements in the 1796-1808 Anglo-Spanish War, and the timeline would work if we assume him to be in his mid-80s. On the other hand, some of the specifics are plain authorial invention: the "late affray with the Neilghoorkees, at Bombadore", in which Tempest dies, is fictitious, and I'd bet money it was inspired by the title of Major William Murray's 1834 An account of the Neilgherries, or, Blue mountains of Coimbatore, in Southern India.

- Ray

Churches of Exeter

Bedford Circus after the Blitz, Albert Charles Bown.

Churches of Exeter, by Christine Trigger, is now in stock. From the preface:

This seventh book in the series Postcards from Exeter contains over fifty images of churches and chapels.  it includes districts that were once places outside Exeter that are now incorporated within the city boundaries, such as Alphington, Exwick, Pinhoe, Heavitree, Countess Wear and Topsham.

The book records ancient places of worship long vanished for various reasons: destroyed by enemy action in World War II, demolished due to neglect or rebuilding schemes, or have been converted to different uses.

Some old postcards may bring nostalgic memories to older Exonians - St. Lawrence, High Street, the St. Kerrian's church tower, North Street, St. John's in Fore Street and the Methodist churches at The Mint and Mount Pleasant.

Researching family history has become a popular hobby and postcards of buildings where ancestors were baptised, married or buried can give an added dimension when compiling a family tree.

All the postcards in this book have been selected from the Exeter postcard collection owned by local historian Christine Trigger who has also written the text.

Churches of Exeter costs £7.99 from Joel Segal Books, or by mail order from Precious Moments (www.preciousmomentsexeter.co.uk).

Swinburne, Culver climber

Following on from The Alabaster Coast previously, it'd be an omission to write about anything involving chalk cliffs and the poet Algernon Swinburne without exploring the factoid that he was the first to climb Culver Cliff. (some 500 feet up the chalk cliff face from beach level). I say "factoid" because although it's near-universally and uncritically repeated, the story lacks any reasonable standard of proof: the sole primary source for this exploit is a letter written years later by Swinburne himself.

Swinburne tells how at 17, after having been told by his family that he wouldn't be allowed to join the army, he set out to prove himself not a coward.

It was about the middle of the Christmas holidays, and I went out for a good hard tramp by the sea till I found myself at the foot of Culver Cliff; and then all at once it came upon me that it was all very well to fancy or dream of 'deadly danger' and forlorn hopes and cavalry charges, when I had never run any greater risk than a football 'rooge'; but that here was a chance of testing my nerve in face of death which could not be surpassed. So I climbed a rock under the highest point, and stripped, and climbed down again, and just took a souse into the sea to steady and strengthen my nerve, which I knew the sharp chill would, and climbed up again, thinking how easy it would be to climb" the whole face of the cliff naked—or at least how much more sure one would feel of being able to do it—if one did not mind mere scratches or bruises; but to that prehistoric sort of proceeding there were obviously other objections than the atmosphere of midwinter. So I dressed and went straight at it. It wasn't so hard as it looked, most of the way, for a light weight with a sure foot and a good steady head; but as I got near the top I remember thinking I should not like to have to climb down again. In a minute or two more I found that I must, as the top part (or top story) of the precipice came jutting out aslant above me for some feet. Even a real sea-gull1 could not have worked its way up without using or spreading its wings. So of course I felt I must not stop to think for one second, and began climbing down, hand under hand, as fast and as steadily as I could, till I reached the bottom, and (equally of course) began to look out for another possible point of ascent at the same height. As I began again I must own I felt like setting my teeth and swearing I would not come down again alive —if I did return to the foot of the cliff again it should be in a fragmentary condition, and there would not be much of me to pick up. I was most of the way up again when I heard a sudden sound as of loud music, reminding me instantly of 'the anthem' from the Eton Chapel organ, a little below me to the left. I knew it would be almost certain death to look down, and next minute there was no need: I glanced aside, and saw the opening of a great hollow in the upper cliff, out of which came swarming a perfect flock of 'the others,' [his idiolect for seagulls] who evidently had never seen a wingless brother so near the family quarters before. They rose all about me in a heaving cloud—at least, I really don't think the phrase exaggerates the density of their 'congregated wings'—and then scattered. It did flash across me for a minute how nasty it would be if they flew at me and went for my indefensible eyes; but, of course, they never thought of anything so unnatural and unfraternal. I was a little higher, quite near the top or well within hail of it, when I thought how queer it would be if my very scanty foothold gave way; and at that very minute it did (I assure you on my word of honour that this is the exact truth, strange as it sounds and is), and I swung in the air by my hands from a ledge on the cliff which just gave room for the fingers to cling and hold on. There was a projection of rock to the left at which I flung out my feet sideways and just reached it; this enabled me to get breath and crawl at full speed (so to say) up the remaining bit of cliff. At the top I had not strength enough left to turn or stir; I lay on my right side helpless, and just had time to think what a sell (and what an inevitable one) it would be if I were to roll back over the edge after all, when I became unconscious—as suddenly and utterly and painlessly as I did many years afterwards when I was 'picked up at sea' by a Norman fishing boat upwards of three miles (they told me) off the coast of Etretat, and could just clutch hold of the oar they held out; 'but that is not in this story—which I only hope is not too long for the reader.' On returning to conscious life I found a sheep's nose just over mine, and the poor good fellow creature's eyes gazing into my face with a look of such kindly pity and sympathy as well as surprise and perplexity that I never ought to have eaten a mutton-chop again.

- Algernon Charles Swinburne, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Mrs. Disney Leith, Putnam, 1917

I don't dismiss it entirely. As can be seen in this Flickr image by Ian Johnston - Culver Cliff - Spring Low tide - Close up and personal (5) - on the Sandown Bay side Culver is steep but not vertical, and its crumbly chalk somewhat stabilised by vegetation. But I wouldn't care to try it.  Swinburne doesn't say where this (alleged) climb took place, but the "great hollow in the upper cliff" sounds extremely like Hermit's Hole, a feature repeatedly mentioned in historical Isle of Wight travelogues.  It was accessed by a notch in the clifftop:

At the eastern part of these Cliffs, about a hundred feet below the summit, is a natural cave fourteen feet deep in the rock ; the width of it being ten feet, and the height six feet. The prospect from this cave, varies but little from that of the Cliff above it, which is given in the plate entitled Path to Hermit's Hole. This describes the path by which alone it is possible to get at the cave; and commands the whole sweep of Sandown Bay, with Shanklin, Horseledge, and Dunnose, in the distance.

The path to Hermit's Hole, is fit only to be explored by those who are in the habit of climbing these tremendous Cliffs; for, besides the narrowness of the path, which in many places is not more than a foot wide, a dreadful precipice of five hundred feet beneath, presents to the eye a fearful prospect, which may so bewilder the imagination of the person who ventures to tread these dangerous passes, that he may miss one necessary step, and then no return of recollection can save him from destruction. Nor is this the only danger that awaits him : the Cliff affords no other footing than small projections of its tender substance, and these will frequently give way under the pressure of the unskilful traveller.

- image and text from A tour to the Isle of Wight: illustrated with eighty views, drawn and engraved in aqua tinta, Volume 2, Charles Tomkins, pub. G Kearsley, 1796

Hermit's Hole was, according to Helge Kökeritz's 1940 The place-names of the Isle of Wight, Issue 6, called Harmwood Hole in 1759 - it mutated to Hermit's Hole on the map in Richard Worsley's 1781 History of the Isle of Wight. It becomes a fixture of Isle of Wight handbooks for over a century, often with embellishments. The account in The Gentleman's Magazine for January 1816 (page 25) tells how the cavern is a refuge for sheep, and the path so narrow that if you meet an oncoming one you have to fall flat and let it run over you. A later account tells a more fanciful version:

Those who utilise this narrow path should remember that sheep often stray down it. The boatmen tell us that this fact bears with it an unexpected danger, for the sheep, frightened by the sound of footsteps, will rash up the path and would readily thrust a man over the edge into the sea. They say that the course which they invariably adopt is to open the legs wide and to allow the sheep to get past in that way.

- The zones of the white chalk of the English coast, Dr Arthur W Rowe, Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, Volume 20, 1908

Folksy stories apart, I found in the British Library 19th Century Newspapers archive two instances of deaths at this location. One was accidental: The Hampshire Advertiser for June 13, 1874 reported on HORRID DEATH OF A FERN GATHERER, when an old man, Isaac 'Matt' Cooper, who collected ferns and gulls' eggs and had made a temporary home in the cave, was found dead at the cliff foot. The other was suicide: the Isle of Wight Observer for March 02, 1878 tells of the death of a servant girl, Louisa Staite, who left her outer clothes on the path to Hermit's Hole and presumably threw herself from the cliff.

Hermit's Hole disappears from the guidebooks at the beginning of the 20th century. A look at Old Maps shows its location to have been about here - it persists on OS maps until 1973 - which agrees with the view in A tour to the Isle of Wight . However, nowadays there's no sign even of the notch in the cliff leading down to it - see the high-res aerial shot by Ashley Middleton - so we can assume it has been long since lost to erosion. It's probably just as well: it sounds a health and safety nightmare, and I have a bit of a weakness for scary paths.

Culver Down is, incidentally, the eastern outcrop of the Isle of Wight's chalk 'backbone' running east-west. Unlike the western outcrop that terminates in The Needles, the headland is not, contrary to appearances from either end, a single point but a pair of concave faces with a frightening overhang.  As shown in A Druid Thurible's Whitecliff post and page 66 of Wight Hazards, these are only visible from sea or air.

Of further related interest to this and the previous post: England and France aren't the only places with such scenery. I'd never made the connection before, but the illustration of the cliff above Hermit's Hole reminded me of Caspar David Friedrich's painting Chalk Cliffs on Rügen. The location is now what is the Jasmund National Park on the Baltic island of Rügen, where the chalk cliffs of the Stubbenkammer promontory, with a capping of mature beechwood, create a scenery with its own take on the familiar-yet-strange - in this case, a bleakness compared to the cosiness of the English and French landscapes with the same geology. These cliffs too are in a constant process of erosion, as evidenced by the collapse of the features called the Wissower Klinken early in 2005.

Addendum: for another lost Isle of Wight cave, see Micah Morey's Cave.

- Ray

The Alabaster Coast

I knew about this area, but I'd never fully Googled it until today: in Normandy, to the east of Le Havre, there's an 80-mile stretch of coastline called La Côte d'Albâtre (the Albaster Coast), which is the coastal margin of the chalk plateau called Pays de Caux.  The Alabaster Coast is where the familar chalk of English geology continues on the other side of the Channel, and the result is a strikingly similar coast (both in scenery and pattern of settlement) to that of parts of southern England I especially like. I find it fascinating and even a little disturbing: there's a strange 'parallel world' sensation in seeing a landscape so familiar in its features, yet completely unknown.

See Normandy's White Cliffs (Thirza Valloi, France Today, May 20, 2010) for a general description, then check out the cliffs of Étretat (with their natural arches so like Durdle Door in Dorset); the village of Les Petites-Dalles (so like Beer or Freshwater); and the striking coastline at Varengeville-sur-Mer with its scary example of a "valleuse" - another picture here - one of its deeply-cut coastal ravines highly akin to the chines of the Isle of Wight, Dorset and East Devon.

The Alabaster Coast's scenery and handiness for Paris attracted a number of French Impressionist artists such as Renoir, Monet and Courbet, but its semi-Englishness had made it a popular destination for 19th century English visitors even before that, as decribed in Brits Abroad (Julian Barnes, The Guardian, 18 October 2008). Barnes mentions the bizarre encounter between Guy de Maupassant and Algernon Swinburne, when the former had been involved (probably peripherally) in saving the latter from drowning at Étretat. Barnes adds that the now-famous story - The Englishman of Etretat - involving insane paintings, a flayed hand, a monkey, and a violent servant driven from the house at revolver-point, was most likely embroidered by de Maupassant:

Maupassant had had seven years to work up the story, and that it was being both told, and written down, by a fiction writer. At other times he ended the story differently.

Maupassant grew up in the area, and some of his stories and novels feature the landscape, such as the 1882 Le Saut du Berger (The Shepherd's Leap), which tells of a repressed priest who pushes a shepherd's hut over a cliff because he is infuriated by seeing a young couple embracing inside.

From Dieppe to Le Havre the coast presents an uninterrupted cliff, about a hundred metres high and straight as a wall. Here and there that great line of white rocks drops sharply and a little, narrow valley, with steep slopes, shaved turf and maritime rushes, comes down from the cultivated plateau towards a beach of shingle where it ends with a ravine like the bed of a torrent. Nature has made these valleys; the rains of storms have ended with them in the shape of these ravines, trimming what was left of the cliff, excavating down to the sea, the bed of waters which acts as a passage for mankind. Sometimes, a village is snuggled into these valleys, where the wind of the open sea is devoured.
- Le saut du berger 1882

- Ray

Brightdale

Just acquired: Maxwell Gray's first novel, The Broken Tryst (this is the little-known single-volume 1879 novel that appeared, and vanished without trace, years before her career was made by her 1886 bestseller The Silence of Dean Maitland).  The book, otherwise very scarce on the antiquarian circuit, is a British Library paperback, one available print-on-demand under its new digitisation scheme.

I haven't read much of it yet, though I know from reviews that it's a romance about a young woman whose affections are torn between a soldier (a miller's son driven to enlist by her flirtation) and his older dashing commander. But for the moment I'll just note that she's starting as she continued in later works, in terms of erudition, detailed landscape description, and precisely identifiable location. The opening paragraphs:

The Broken Tryst

Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain,
Where health and plenty cheer'd the labouring swain,
Where smiling Spring its earliest visit paid,
And parting Summer's lingering blooms delay'd!

There is a little village on the south coast called Brightdale.

It is a sweet little quiet place, full of thatched cottages bosomed in luxurious myrtles and surrounded by fragrant old-fashioned gardens. It is sheltered on one side by breezy downs, over which the clouds float lazily, and the winds sweep freely; and on the other side the land slopes for a pleasant mile down to the sea, where it breaks off in loose cliffs of red sand, cut through by a deep gorge, worn by a small but rapid stream that turns a mill just below the village.

"Brightdale" is highly recognisable as Brighstone, a still-picturesque village near the south-west coast of the Isle of Wight (see also Google Maps); the gorge is Grange Chine.  Coincidentally, it was Brighstone Library who a while back kindly sent me the biography and photo of MG from Charles John Arnell's 1933 Poets of the Wight.

The verses come from the beginning of Oliver Goldsmith's The Deserted Village.  By coincidence, I was just looking at this article about possible inspirations for the poem: Angela Williams sent me a link to Abandoned Communities, Stephen Fisk's interesting (if somewhat depressing) site looking at depopulated locations in Britain (it includes literary and artistic responses). Of Devon interest: Hallsands is well-known.

- Ray

Old Park - and a stormy friendship

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I was just looking at the website for Haddon Lake House, a self-build/restoration project in the St Lawrence Undercliff, Isle of Wight. How to make a planning application with style: write a scholarly-researched monograph on the site's geology and history,  The landscape of Old Park. It's interesting reading, in part for its observation about the appeal of the Undercliff to Victorians: that it combined elements of the the now-quaint classification of the "picturesque" (pretty scenery) and the "sublime" (scary scenery).  (You can see in the above image: the picturesque was the coastal plain, the sublime the line of sheer cliff that separates it from the farmland to the north). It also fills in some missing pieces of a story I explored earlier - see The writer, the cancer-merchant, his eccentric wife, and the faux castle - about the interlocking lives and fortunes of the wealthy late 19th century inhabitants of the area.

The large estate of Old Park is now divided - for instance, the house is now Old Park Hotel, and the walled garden area and orchid house redeveloped. However, in 1881 it all belonged to William Spindler, a wealthy German industrialist who had moved to the Undercliff for the benefit of his health. He extensively developed the house and estate, originally developed from a farm property by a Thomas Haddon in the early 1880s, and was seized with a renovating fever for the whole area. Irritated that Ventnor didn't see eye to eye with his plans there ...

If the inhabitants of Ventnor refuse to satisfy modern requirements,’ he growled in 1877. ‘There is no doubt that another town ‘Undercliff’ will spring up.
- Old Park Hotel website

... he focused on the Undercliff.  Along with various philanthropic ventures such as laying on piped water for the nearby Whitwell, he envised the creation of a garden village in the Undercliff.  It got as far as extensive landscaping and tree-planting - which appears to have been a positive contribution to the stability of the landslip terrain - and the creation of an esplanade and seawall at Binnel Bay.  With underlying clay, it was extremely unpromising terrain for the latter, and nothing of it remains except a few blocks of masonry nicknamed "Spindler's Folly": see page 46 of Peter Bruce's Wight Hazards.  After an energetic seven years, Spindler died in 1889.

The lives of the Spindler family - William, his wife, and his artist son Walter - became heavily entwined with that of another wealthy ex-pat living in the Undercliff, the American entrepreneur John Morgan Richards (see The Life of John Oliver Hobbes, pp 24-). Richards rented Old Park from the Spindlers, and from childhood Walter Spindler and Richards' daughter  Pearl (later the novelist Pearl Craigie aka John Oliver Hobbes) were friends - though Walter hoped for more.  The friendship was complicated; according to Stanley Weintraub's 1979 The London Yankees: portraits of American writers and artists in England, 1894-1914, Spindler was "hopelessly in love with her", but their relationship was marked by quarrels and long silences, and despite rumours of an engagement in The Bookman in 1897, it appears she juggled him as an option between other male friends (see pp 167-8, Air-bird in the water: the life and works of Pearl Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes), Mildred Davis Harding).  Spindler illustrated her books, painted her portrait, and decorated for her the villa now known as Craigie Lodge; possibly her clearest response was her poetic dedication to him at the end of her book A Bundle of Life:

TO
WALTER SPINDLER

AH, not for me—to learn the truth by dreaming,
To hear the cries of earth in melody,
To know 'tis night but when the stars are gleaming,—
Ah, not for me.

Music of form and colour's mystery,
The joy of fashioning in fairest seeming
Life's dullest clay and Winter's barest tree ;

To count the years as moments—only deeming
That truly Time which makes thy Art to thee
The one thing needful and the all-redeeming,—
Ah, not for me !

September 23, 1893
_ page 155, A Bundle of Life, JS Tait, New York

It's hard to say what exactly the poem means, but - written to an artist, saying art is not enough in life -  it seems to be a kiss-off. Almost certainly her position as a divorcee-turned-devout-Catholic strongly contributed to her relationship problems. The situation was resolved by her early death from heart disease in 1906.  Walter Spindler died in 1940. Neither his art nor Pearl Craigie's novels are much remembered.

Addendum: see Spindler's List (24th April 2014) for a fuller account of William Spindler's life and work.

- Ray