Southampton

“ The loud, stentorian voices of the officers of the magnificent palace steamer L’Orient, of the Peninsular and Oriental Line, sounded all along the Southampton docks, up the streets to the old gates, and even penetrated into some of the business houses of the quaint old English town.
The shout, so commonplace to the citizens of Southampton, was one of serious import to those gathered on the deck of the steamer.
Parting is never pleasant, and when the journey is a long one, and it is known the absence is for years, the last words are always tearful. ”

“ Southampton, the ancient seaport at which travellers to Europe by the steamships of the North German Lloyd line first set foot on British soil, is a place of considerable interest at any time, but was especially attractive to us after a cold and uncomfortable voyage across the Atlantic. The day of our arrival was fine, with blue sky and genial sunshine, the water of the Solent, between the Isle of Wight and the mainland, was free from the ocean swell, and Southampton Water was quieter still, so we landed with thankful hearts and rising spirits. ”

“ At an early hour on the morning of the third day after the Prince of Spain’s public entry into Southampton, a remarkably handsome young gallant—tall, graceful in figure and deportment, and very becomingly attired in a doublet of green velvet, slashed with white silk, and wearing a small velvet beret of the some colour, adorned with a white plume, on his head—issued from the south gate of Winchester, and passing through the grove of stately elms, colonised by rooks, then environing this side of the ancient city, struck across the charming valley watered by the Itchen. ”

“ The place where the conversation, of which a fragment has just been given, occurred, was a broad gravelled path, the favourite promenade of such of the worthy townspeople of Southampton as prefer the beauties of nature to the attractions of the shops in the High-street. On one side was the broad water glistening in the bright, cheerful October sun, on the other a large strip of greensward fringed on the farther edge by a row of shining, white-faced lodging-houses and hotels. ”

“ The broad and tranquil waters of the Southampton and Itchen rivers—bounded in the far distance by the New Forest, with its wavy masses 379 of varying light and shade, and on the left by the leafy woods, from out of which I often think the gray ruins of the old abbey must in these days look grimly and spectre-like forth upon the teeming, restless life which mocks its hoary solitude—were at the full of a spring tide. ”

“ There are some splendid tailors' shops in the High Street of Southampton, in the fine plate-glass windows of which hung gorgeous waistcoats of all sorts, of silk and velvet, and gold and crimson, and pictures of the last new fashions in which those wonderful gentlemen with quizzing glasses, and holding on to little boys with the exceeding large eyes and curly hair, ogle ladies in riding habits prancing by the Statue of Achilles at Apsley House. ”

“ The modern aspect of Southampton's streets is that of the bustle and activity of a midland town, and the narrow pavements of Below and Above Bar have that metropolitan air which a crowd of well-dressed people intent on business or pleasure gives to the better class provincial city. ”

“ What that departure of the Pilgrims from England meant to those left behind on the shore at Southampton can hardly be conceived by those who, in our day, at some magnificent steamship pier, amid the strains of music and a shower of flowers, now and anon wave a farewell to their friends, perhaps bound on a pleasure tour in some leviathan of the ocean, of twenty thousand or more tons burden, and fitted up in more regal splendor than the most gorgeous palaces of the age of the Pilgrims. ”

“ Southampton is a very pretty town, and has not the dinginess to which I have been accustomed in many English towns. The High Street reminds me very much of American streets in its general effect; the houses being mostly stuccoed white or light, and cheerful in aspect, though doubtless they are centuries old at heart. The old gateway, which I presume I have mentioned in describing my former visit to Southampton, stands across High Street, about in the centre of the town, and is almost the only token of antiquity that presents itself to the eye. ”

“ The country at Southampton was entirely level, and the town situated immediately on the Atlantic, within sight of its foaming surf, and sound of its ceaseless roar—while Hempstead Harbour was located at the head of a beautiful bay running in from the Long Island Sound, and surrounded with high hills, covered with forest trees and evergreens. It was truly a place to charm the eye, and enrich the imagination; and thus it was, that while my first love was for the grand and magnificent ocean, my second was for the more fascinating and picturesque beauty of nature’s scenery ”

“ The harbour of Southampton was crowded with galleys, in which cunning tailors sat day and night cutting the bales of material bought into garments, so as to save the export dues on cloth. [121] In the time of Richard the Second a Genoese merchant who had leased the castle as a storehouse for his wares proposed to the King to make of Southampton the greatest trading port of the west, and he might well have carried out his promise if the London merchants had not prudently sent a messenger to murder him at his own door. ”

“ Since the days when Norman William defeated Saxon Harold on the bloody field of Senlac the history of Southampton becomes much more authentic and clearly defined. Indeed, in the years immediately following the Norman Conquest its importance, from its nearness to the coast of France and of Normandy and its splendidly protected harbour, was more than ever appreciated, and it soon became a favourite port of embarkation for the Norman kings on their way from England to their French duchy. ”

“ Is now transported, gentles, to Southampton:
There is the playhouse now, there must you sit:
And thence to France shall we convey you safe,
And bring you back, charming the narrow seas
To give you gentle pass; for, if we may,
We'll not offend one stomach with our play. ⁠40
But, till the king come forth and not till then,
Unto Southampton do we shift our scene. Exit. ”

“ I arrived at Southampton by the night-coach—the railway was but just begun, I remember—and was informed that the best mode of reaching Beaulieu—Bewley, they pronounced it—was by crossing the Southampton river to the village of Hythe, which was but a few miles distance from Beaulieu. As soon as I had breakfasted, I hastened to the quay, and was soon speeding across the tranquil waters in one of the sharp-stemmed wherries which plied constantly between the shores. ”

“ Such was Southampton in the middle of the sixteenth century. It was during the reign of Henry VIII. that its power and importance as a seaport culminated. At the period of which we treat it had begun to decline, though the vast wealth previously acquired by its merchants helped for a while to sustain it. But its trade continued sensibly to diminish in Elizabeth’s time, while its rival, Portsmouth, grew in consequence. However, a great future was in store for Southampton. The present century has witnessed its revival and restoration to far more than its mediæval prosperity. ”

“ Southampton suffered great misfortunes owing to changing conditions. During the latter part of the fifteenth century the town enjoyed great prosperity as the sole English port to be visited by the Flanders galleys of Venice and the great carracks of Genoa, bringing valuable cargoes of eastern goods, and departing with their holds full of English wool. As time went on this traffic almost entirely ceased, and Southampton, unlike London, failed to benefit by the growth of the North Sea trade. ”

“ Southampton’s Almshouse, near Monmouth street. The ground upon which this house stands, together with a piece of ground adjoining, were granted by lease to the parish of St. Giles’s in the Fields, by the Earl of Southampton, in the year 1656, for the use of the poor, for the term of five hundred years. And towards the support of twenty poor inhabitants, Henry Carter, in the year 1674, gave the sum of 50l. the profits whereof to be destributed among them, out of which, and the produce of the ground which is now built upon, each of the poor women have an allowance of 2l. ”

“ Southampton's second daughter, Rachel, wife of William, lord Russell, and mother of Wriothesley Russell, second duke of Bedford, finally inherited the greater part of Southampton's property in London, the Bloomsbury estate falling to her on the death of her elder sister, the Countess of Gainsborough, in 1680. ”

“ For all that it is amusing to linger there, if only to solve the problems that time has contrived for us. Among these not the least is that of the first site of the town. Not one of the churches in Southampton is of any great beauty or interest, but it is astonishing to find that the mother church is not in the town at all, but at least half a mile outside it upon the north. Leland, as I have already said, was told, when he was in Southampton in 1546, that the first town did not occupy the site of that we see but was further to the north, where St Mary's stands. ”

“ Southampton has left in his correspondence ample proofs of his literary learning and taste, and, like the hero of the sonnets, was ‘as fair in knowledge as in hue.’ The opening sequence of seventeen sonnets, in which a youth of rank and wealth is admonished to marry and beget a son so that ‘his fair house’ may not fall into decay, can only have been addressed to a young peer like Southampton, who was as yet unmarried, had vast possessions, and was the sole male representative of his family. ”

“ Southampton is a pleasant place, with plenty of sunshine and fresh air. The dwellings are not as compact as in most English cities; but the parks and lawns, with their flowers, shrubs, and trees, give a fresh rural appearance that I greatly admire. ”

“ Nothing can exceed the beauty of St. Cross as it is approached from the Southampton road. This noble gateway is seen through great elms and walnut trees, and the long lines of quaint high chimneys, combining with the church and foliage, are astonishingly picturesque. The river Itchen sometimes is well in view along the road, and sometimes it is lost{108} in the trees. The hospital itself, with the brethren in their black gowns and silver crosses, gives, perhaps, a more vivid picture of ancient England, and that in its best features, than any other scene that is left us. ”

“ Southampton is so very modern in the prosperity which has made it the rival of Liverpool as the chief port of entry from our country, that we ought rather to have devoted ourselves to its docks than its walls, and we did honestly try for them. ”

“ Beware of the insipid Vanities and idle Dissipations of the Metropolis of England; Beware of the unmeaning Luxuries of Bath and of the stinking fish of Southampton.”
“Alas! (exclaimed I) how am I to avoid those evils I shall never be exposed to? What probability is there of my ever tasting the Dissipations of London, the Luxuries of Bath, or the stinking Fish of Southampton? ”

“ On 17 Nov. 1595 he distinguished himself in the lists set up in the queen's presence in honour of the thirty-seventh anniversary of her accession, and was likened by George Peel, in his account of the scene in his ‘Anglorum Feriæ,’ to Bevis of Southampton, the ancient type of chivalry.
Literature was from early manhood a chief interest of Southampton's life, and before he was of age he achieved wide reputation as a patron of the poets. ”

“ Southampton was a patron worth cultivating. Both his parents came of the New Nobility, and enjoyed vast wealth. His father’s father was Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, and when the monasteries were dissolved, although he was faithful to the old religion, he was granted rich estates in Hampshire, including the abbeys of Titchfield and Beaulieu in the New Forest. He was created Earl of Southampton early in Edward VI’s reign, and, dying shortly afterwards, was succeeded by his only son, the father of Shakespeare’s friend. The second earl loved magnificence in his household. ”

“ The harbor is a fine one, the channel being deep and straight, and affording good anchorage. In exploring the antiquities of Southampton the visitor will be attracted by an ancient house of the Plantagenet period located on St. Michael's Square, said to have been occupied by Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn, and the remains of the town-walls. ”

“ From them it passed to the Earl of Warwick, and from him by exchange to Southampton, who named it Southampton House; eventually it passed with ‘the manor or grange of Bloomsbury,’ which Wriothesley acquired about 1542, into the Bedford family [see under Wriothesley, Thomas, fourth Earl of Southampton] . The fate of the earls of Southampton furnished Sir Henry Spelman with an illustration for his ‘History of Sacrilege.’
It is difficult to trace in Southampton's career any motive beyond that of self-aggrandisement. ”

“ Southampton's fall removed an obstacle from Somerset's path, but the inference that it was due to the Protector's animosity is hardly warranted. ‘Your Grace,’ wrote the chancellor's ally Gardiner, ‘showed so much favour to him that all the world commended your gentleness,’ and a few weeks later the French ambassador observed Southampton and Somerset in friendly and confidential conversation (Corr. Pol. de Odet de Selve, p. 147) . He was soon at liberty, the fine imposed appears to have been remitted, and in 1548, if not earlier, he was re-admitted to the council board. ”