Shanklin in 1880
The little village of Shanklin, which is unknown to 99 out of a thousand Parisians, is fast becoming the Deauville of the Isle of Wight, but a Deauville only in the picturesqueness of its villas, without the sand and maritime atmosphere of the actual Deauville. Here the sea breaks into foam at the foot of the cliffs and the country is deliciously green. In 1846 the geographers described Shanklin as just a poor scattered hamlet. Today it has a population of 4,000 souls. The smoothness of its pebbleless beach, and the beauty of its situation explain the popularity of this pretty place, which is only half an hour's railway journey from Ryde, and four hours from London. In fact Shanklin is the classical village of English romance with its dainty cottages dotted amongst the trees, and covered with climbing rose vines. The closely mown grass plots, soft as felt, green and pleasant, separate the road from the smiling cottages. Through the bars of the gates or over the hedges alive with creepers, you may see the young athletes in their white suits, the small cap fixed on the back of a fair head, shod in shoes with India rubber soles, playing tennis with young girls armed with their rackets. Behind the small panes of the windows decorated with flowers one may picture bright comfortable rooms as bright as the inside of a travelling case, where respectable people are drinking an incalculable number of cups of tea, and down there through the trees is the line of the sea whose deep blue or sombre grey show up, according to the brightness of dullness of the day, against the paler blue or less tender grey of the sky.
The life of a seaside town is on the beach. Let us go there then, although we have been here only two hours, and the evening is falling. If there should be a casino we will enter it. Our expectations as idling badly informed Parisians are unfulfilled. There is no casino. The esplanade, as they call it here, properly speaking the beach, is paced in a melancholy fashion by shadows who pronounce an occasional phrase between half-closed teeth, and the only meeting-place is a kind of greasy terrace, about one hundred yards from this beach on the side of the cliff, where a local band is playing popular dance-music with a goodly blowing of brass instruments. Beneath the soft light of the summer moon, which counteracts the more glaring lights of many gas jets, a crowd of mothers and young people wander solemnly about, whilst the notes of the music float on the light breeze blowing from the sea. The musicians carry on their shoulders, either the right or left according to the instrument they play, a kind of metal epaulette at the extremity of which is hung a small lantern, which lights indifferently the score before them. With faces as serious as those of officiating priests, they execute pieces of light opera in vogue with us two years ago. One after another and in a strange medley the themes of the 'Cloches de Corneville' file nosily past. At one time it is the air dear to all milliners, 'I have been three times round the world', at another, 'Go, little cabin boy', which the bargemen of Bougival are so fond of. The remembrance of easy going Paris which these strains call up, contrast strangely with the homely appearance of those now listening to them. Even the breaks and inaccuracies of time in the music take from these phrases their perfect adaptability to the temperament of the little ladies who gain their livelihood in the vicinity of the Folies-Bergere. It is still Paris, but Paris translated, Paris with an English accent, and the sudden booming forth of the inevitable 'God save the Queen' obliges us to remember that we are, though very near, in quite another world.
Sunday morning to church. There are already four churches in Shanklin. In two years there will be eight. The one we attend is the largest, and belongs to the Established church. The service from eleven o'clock to half-past twelve is a long one, but the impression is original enough to make this long service pass quickly. To a guttural droning the entire congregation accompanies the psalms. Not a whisper, not a smile, nothing of that mundane character, half-decorous, half-sceptical, to be found in a similar ceremony in a seaside town in France. If belief is not sincere in every heart (and how can that be known), it is at least sincere in outward appearance. My companion and I are without books, arms crossed. I find my elbow gently touched, a young lady offers me her prayer book, pointing out with the end of her gloved finger the verse they are singing. My companion's neighbour is even kinder, she shares her book with him, and they follow the service together. She is pretty and nicely dressed. Her little boy fidgets and will not be good. With one hand she signs to him to keep still, with the other she still continues to hold the book in front of her neighbour, and sings the responses, all this without the least shade of coquetry. In the simplicity of her faith it never for one moment occurs to her that her action may be wrongly understood. The difference between our nation and this is here strikingly brought out. In our country, with the exception only of the devotee, religion is often something apart from our actual life. One may have a religion or not according to the fashion of the circle in which one moves. Here religion is a living thing to each individual member of the church. Irony, that blade without a handle, which wounds both him who wields it, and him whom it stabs, is unknown to these descendants of the Puritans. They do not scrutinise others, nor do they feel that they are observed. Absorbed in their personal feelings, they seem to speak directly to their God, and as if they alone with Him. At the same time, since the sense of personal comfort, that dogma of English life, must claim its rights even in the Lord's house, kneelers, nicely upholstered, and of exactly the right slope, are found here, so that the act of kneeling may not become a painful one, and untiring, monotonous, harsh the chanting continues, broken only by a written sermon delivered from the pulpit by the minister. He pronounces his words in a tone of uniform accentuation. He is immovable, and as if rooted to the pulpit. A machine could not be more mechanical, and yet in this large assembly there are nothing but bright-coloured materials, green, red and lilac ribbons, strangely twisted shapes in hats. The sunlight glints through the colourless glass windows. It heightens still more the colours of these materials, the ribbons of these hats. But who pays heed to it all, if it be not my friend and I, and how we should astonish these good Protestants, who have given us the use of their books, did we lend them our thoughts to read.
Bathing is out of the question on Sunday. About nine o'clock in the morning all the bathing machines are drawn up under the cliff. Even the sea, quite bare and despoiled of the pleasure boats which enliven it on weekdays, seems to be obeying the common law of not working. With a grave air and in top hats the commoners pass along the streets where all the shops are closed. At a public-house we ask for some ale. After some hesitation the boy brings it to us. Then when he hands us the bill he points out to us that the ale has not been charged for. 'We are forbidden to sell it on Sunday', he adds without a smile. This tavern hypocrisy amuses us for a moment, then we go down on to the almost deserted beach to the foot of that cliff where on our first evening here we heard the band strike up the 'Valse des roses', and keeping to the beach we reached the chine.
The chine or ravine, from an old Saxon word 'cinan', to yawn, as the guides tell us, is the glory of Shanklin. Longfellow wrote six lines which are graven on the rock itself in praise of the brook which runs through the cleft at its entrance.
The chine is a gorge of about 500 feet in length, and 300 feet at its extreme end. The sea breaks below it, but here there is only a wonderful luxuriant vegetation pre-served by the abundant moisture. Enormous ferns climb over the rocks dripping with water. Clusters of trees abound on all sides. Seen from above it is like a green chasm. A pathway as carefully kept as that of a garden leads the traveller to the foot of the ravine, then ascends the bay of Sandown, and all around is the restless heaving sea. Seats have been placed all along the path, so that one may sit and read or talk in this delightful solitude of freshness and verdure. Outside the blinding sun beats down upon the sand. Here its rays tremble along the leaves, and in the thread of water which falls in a cascade at the mouth of the chine. This sun is so bright, so delightful, and so English, so gratifying and just in the right position to dry the grassy seats. Here is the place in which to read some poet as fascinating as is this ravine, beautiful and wild. The neighbourhood of Tennyson, whose country house is in the island, tempts us to choose his works, and amongst them that story of 'The Princess', where may be found those touching lines on a young girl who is looking at a beautiful landscape, shedding tears without cause, idle tears as the poet says, 'Tears, idle tears-dear as remembered kisses after death - and sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned, on lips that are for others...'
Taken from Days in the Isle of Wight, by Paul Bourget, translated by M C Warrilow.