Spiers: Journal of my wedding tour 1837

17 July

<<< previous page   next page>>>

MON July 17. We called on Mr Thorp & his family & Mrs Hester Senr. before breakfast, walking also to the end of the pier, which is lengthened considerably since my visit in 1830. The town is also very much increased in size, though Mr Hellyer, the well known librarian there, informed us with regret that in spite of the increase in the number of visitors, he had been compelled to give up his evening amusements of music & loos because it was the fashion for people to be serious & to go to church before breakfast every morning instead. - The shops are some of them very respectable in appearance. After assisting Mr Thorp in his departure for Oxford & dining with Miss Laurance & our cousins, we hired a car & journeyed on towards Shanklin through green lanes & by country roads, alighting at Brading churchyard to see Little Jane’s tomb which Legh Richmond, who was curate here has immortalised by his poem. Some nice little girls showed us 2 of the epitaphs which ‘Little Jane’ used to repeat one of which was ‘Forgive blest shade the tributary tear’ & the other being illegible on the tombstone we had repeated to us by one of the aforesaid little guides, but altho she put her hands behind her in the most approved form of schoolgirls, it was quite inaudible. Passing Sandown Bay & white cliffs we soon reached Shanklin, taking up our abode at the new inn of Daich’s which we preferred because it was the first we came to. We walked down to visit the chine which as I have described in a former tour I shall not notice now. A great number of lodging houses are built here & there are 2 or 3 shops. One of them, as we saw by an advertisement in the window is kept by a lady who deals in mercery, grocery & numberless other toys, but wishes to dispose of it although

<<< previous page   next page>>>