Harriet Parr in Shanklin

I've just been reading about another now-unsung Victorian female novelist, Harriet Parr (1828-1900), who wrote under the pseudonym Holme Lee. Although Yorkshire-born, she spent the latter half of her life in Shanklin, Isle of Wight, which appears in some of her works.

As the Wikipedia entry says, she was very prolific, producing a novel a year from around 1853-1883, as well as some religious and children's works, and writing (as an associate of Charles Dickens - see Dickens Journals Online) for the periodicals Household Words and All the Year Round. Her novels are not really in my spectrum. Writing for the rather anodyne circulating library market, they tended to be romantic family sagas of less intensity of plot and description that Maxwell Gray's (John Sutherland's Stanford companion to Victorian fiction characterises them as concerning "depictions of shy maidens and their decent love problems"). However, some are of distinct regional interest for their descriptions of Shanklin.

I first ran into this regional detail in a New Zealand newspaper:

One book especially ("For Richer for Poorer") brought out some of the most charming traits of the authoress; writing of the village of Shanklin, she delineates her characters with a wonderful delicacy of feeling—e.g., the disappointed curate, Harry Lamplugh (the Rev. C[harles] Hole.), then residing only a few yards from her. Again, she describes Mrs Jenkins, of the Old Library, and the little Jenkinses, the window of the room of the baker's house (Vine cottage) from which the village gossips could see all who came or went through the village street.
- Harriet Parr, Southland Times, Issue 14662, 6 June 1900, page 4

 For Richer, for Poor is findable through the Hathi Trust (cat ref 011405669). It fictionalises Shanklin as "Whitburn", and there's a particularly detailed introductory description in chapter XIX ("Whitburn-on-Sea"). A sample, which gives a detailed description of Shanklin Old Village:

Shanklin Old Village, Pictures in Colour of the Isle of Wight, Jarrold & Sons, 1910

From the same high ground, they had their first glimpse of Whitburn village. It followed the course of the brook, between two slopes of down, where the water had worn a deep chine to the shore. It appeared from the distance a pretty paradise in a hollow, with a church-spire and red-tiled roofs amongst green trees—for there were trees all about the houses, and gardens with hedges of tamarisk down to the sea. The travellers approached it from the north-east, by a long winding road, and came first to the church and the ancient manor-house, now turned into a farmstead; then to the placid parsonage and a cluster of humble straw-thatched cottages, much more than half-buried in ivy-bushes; and, at a double bend of the road, where it began to climb the opposite hill, to the village proper. Here, on an elevated lawn, stood the chief hotel and a lowlier house-of-call nearly facing it, both thatched, like the cottages, as to their roofs, and as to their walls trellised with roses and myrtles, jessamine and virginian creeper. A splendid passion-flower festooned the front of the library and bazaar which had choice apartments to let up-stairs; and a thick-clustered vine was trained over the orthodox baker-and-grocer’s dwelling, the side window of whose parlour looked up the street, past the butcher’s open stall and a long interval of luxuriant hedge, to a few picturesque detached lodging-houses recently built upon the heights. Within view of this window (a rare look-out for village gossips) two roads struck off in opposite directions—one leading to the cliff, the shore, and the garden-gates of the modern lodgings, the other to tangled lanes and woods and fields, and the convenient old house which the curate had chosen for his new home.

Mary’s quick observant eyes made notes of a few gay figures pacing the green lawn of the hotel; of a group of loud-talking, amphibious men in the forecourt of the “Crab and Lobster;” of a quaint old philosopher, taking in the cheap novels and newspapers which garnished a rack outside the library door; of a couple of women with baskets exchanging news on the steps of the baker-and-grocer’s shop, where the errand-boy was putting up the shutters. Then the jaded horses slackened their pace to breast the hill, and quickened it again as the driver turned them off the main road into the rough track across the goose-green, which developed into a shady lane at the further side.
- pp 266-268, Volume 1, For Richer, for Poorer, by Holme Lee [pseud.] v.1.Lee, Holme, 1828-1900, Hathi Trust, Cat. 011405669.

Shanklin Chine is, of course, mentioned, and one character is a Mrs Ducie who lives in the Chine Cottage. There are references to Shanklin in other Harriet Parr works, Against Wind and Tide (1859, Internet Archive againstwindandt00parrgoog) is a romantic saga set in "Chinelyn" - a thinly-disguised Shanklin - and which has its central location a manor house strongly based on Shanklin Manor ...

To the north-east of the church stands the Manor House,familiar to the readers of Holme Lee's "Against "Wind and Tide,"square built, with high peaked roof, heavy cornice, and long easements of the early part of the last century.
- p 47, A guide to the Undercliff of the Isle of Wight, Shanklin and Blackgang, Edmund Venables, 1876

... which still exists, converted into upmarket holiday apartments. 

Her series of autobiographical essays In the Silver Age: Essays, "that Is, Dispersed Meditations" (1864) - which the ODNB entry describes as "depressing" - also has descriptions of the Shanklin area. Parr describes as it as "the philosophy of a working-woman's life", the result of gentle pressure from advisers to write something other than novels. They're less interesting than you'd think; the big problem is she gives (presumably out of concerns for privacy) no specifics of names and places when you want them - for instance, the name of the "great house" she visited in the Undercliff.

Volume 1 leads with three linked essays, Through the Woods (a detailed description of the author's April walk down the lane from her house to the head of Shanklin Chine and up past the Manor House); Through the Landslip—Over the Downs; and By the Sea-Shore (which takes us down Shanklin Chine to the beach). Further sections include Village Life—Quiet Life (musings on her quite life in Shanklin); Old Familiar Faces—Old Familiar Places (a return to her native York); From Day to Day (more of her Shanklin Life); and Summer Holidays (a visit to France). Volume 2 is an continuing mix of Continental travelogue and increasingly wistful mid-life musings (she was actually only 36, but according to Lord Ernle's account below, seems to have gone prematurely grey).

See the Hathi Trust (Cat. 011612168) for links to both volumes.

The frontispices have pleasant engravings of Isle of Wight scenes: Volume 1 has "The Lane", which appears to be what's now Manor Road, the route from the author's house across the manor grounds toward St Blasius Old Parish Church (the one whose right of way she disputed); Volume 2 is the view from Nansen Hill across Luccombe to Culver (compare Google Maps).

"The Lane"

image for the essay "A Bit of Sunshine"

You can access many more Harriet Parr works through the Internet Archive (search creator:"Harriet Parr" and creator:"Holme Lee"). A quick Google shows that some of the others mention the Isle of Wight in passing.

There are few descriptions of Harriet Parr herself. The Isle of Wight County Press obituary for February 24, 1900 says she was "of a most retiring nature and shunned publicity for herself in any form" and Allingham wrote of meeting her at a social gathering:

To Mrs. Barnard's, South Eaton Place. Madame Sainton-Dolby, Miss Ingelow. Little Miss Parr, who writes novels as ' Holme Lee,' looked nice in a high dress of lavender silk, like a quiet little old-maidish governess. Miss Thackeray accosted her, and so did I; we spoke of the Isle of Wight, New Forest, etc. 'London fatigues me,' she said: 'going to Dulwich to-morrow.' As we drove home Miss Thackeray exclaimed of one of the guests; 'Horrid woman!' she said to me, "I have been much pleased with some of your efforts," and, "You must have felt leaving that  nice house in Palace Gardens!" but little Holme Lee's a duck.'
- p179, William Allingham, a diary (1907, Internet Archive williamallingham00alli)

Lord Enle (Rowland Edmund Prothero, 1st Baron Ernle) met her in his early teens:

Hurrying home, I rushed out into the garden to tell my mother of my discovery, and found her sitting with Harriet Parr, a well-known novelist, who had come to stay at Whippingham. My mother's excitement exceeded my own. The volume might be Reynolds's own copy and contain manuscript notes! As soon as her horse could be brought round, she explained to her guest the urgency of the occasion, and, committing Miss Parr to my care as host, rode off to Newport. Within the hour she was back, waving the book in triumph. Meanwhile, as soon as I had recovered from my awe of a live authoress, Miss Parr and I had become friends. She had made her pen-name of Holme Lee famous, and was a "best-seller" both in England and America. She was, as I remember her, a frail-looking little woman, with crinkly grey hair, delicate features, and mittened blue-veined hands. Her domestic novels, written in a style as simple and unaffected as herself, were of the sentimental type. The whole incident is dated for me by her gift of her novel, Sylvan Holt's Daughter, with the inscription, “To my kind host of July 1864”.
- Whippingham to Westminster: The Reminiscences of Lord Ernle (Rowland Prothero), John Murray, 1938

According to the ODNB, there is/was an 1848 oil portrait of her painted by George Lance: older editions say it belonged "to her brother, Mr. George Parr, of 31 Canonbury Park" but the current location, assuming it to even by extant, is just described as "formerly priv. coll.".

W Gordon Gorman's 1910 Converts to Rome : a biographical list of the more notable converts to the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom during the last sixty years lists her as a Catholic convert (p 211) - though with no date or source, and the errors of calling her "Mrs Parr" and "Holm Lee".

Accounts variously give her Shanklin address as"Fern Bank" (Venables, A Guide to the Undercliff, 1867), "Whitwell House" (White's gazetteer, 1878), "Whitwell Mead" (various including ...)

Miss Harriet Parr, formerly very well known as a writer of the old-fashioned three-volumed novel type, lived for years at Whitwell Mead, a house on the bridle road from Shanklin to Godshill
-  page 145, Wanderings in the Isle of Wight, Ethel C Hargrove, 1913

... "Whittle Mead" (IWCP obituary, February 24, 1900) and "Whittle Meade" (IWCP, executor's sale, Saturday, May 5, 1900). I haven't yet been able to identify the precise location; it's probably somewhere near the present-day Fernbank hotel, near St Blasius Rectory.

In the 1870s onward, she got into a long-running dispute over a right-of-way issue concerning what's now Manor Road, which confirms this location.

SHANKLIN - FOOTWAY STOPPED
At the last meeting of the Isle of Wight County Commissioners the Clark read some communications with respect to the locking the gate of a private road by the lord of the manor, Mr. F. White-Popham.This road he declared a private  road, and that he should defend it against any who might think proper to dispute it.
...
The Clark also read a letter from a Miss Parr, lessee of a house in the manor of Shanklin, who likewise complained of the road being closed, mention of the road as a short cut to the church having induced her to take the lease of her house.
- County Petty Sessions, Isle of Wight Observer (Ryde, England), Saturday, June 19, 1875; pg. 6; Issue 1179. 19th Century British Library Newspapers: Part II.

It was still ongoing in 1887...

"The lady doth protest too much" must, I should imagine, have been the comment of
many of your readers after perusing the letter of Miss Harriet Parr, in your last week's issue, on the Shanklin footpath question. Zeal in behalf of a supposed public right cannot be accepted as an excuse for misrepresentation. I believe I am correct in stating that the question which this lady has re-opened was fully discussed and settled locally many
years ago, and if Miss Parr is not satisfied with that settlement, the Courts are open to her.
- Occasional Jottings, Isle of Wight County Press, Saturday, November 19, 1887, page 5 (reproduced as fair usage, Isle of Wight County Press Archive archive.iwcp.co.uk).

... and in 1889:

MISS PARR AND THE BOARD
The clerk said he had received some communications from Miss Parr respecting an alleged right of way near the Manor House, Shanklin.---Mr G. Way: Is it the same question that has arisen before?---The Clerk said he believed that it was, but as far as he could understand, the lady said she had got some fresh evidence.---Mr J.O. Brook suggested that the surveyor should report---The Chairman said he did not know what there was to report upon.
...
The Clerk said he could not understand Miss Parr's letter without going on the spot.---Mr G. Way: Are there any complaints from the public generally?---The Clerk: No.---Mr G. Way thought they were not called upon as a Board to enter into the grievance of one individual.---The Clerk was instructed to reply to Miss Parr that no sufficient reason had been shown for reopening the question.
- Isle of Wight Highway Commissioners, Isle of Wight County Press, Saturday, March 23, 1889, page 3 (reproduced as fair usage, Isle of Wight County Press Archive archive.iwcp.co.uk).

Harriet Parr died on 18th February 1900. Her grave (also that of her sister Frances "Fanny" Parr, to whom In the Silver Age is dedicated) is in the churchyard of St Blasius, Shanklin (see the graveyard plan).

- Ray