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HUNTING FOR SNARKES AT LYME REGIS
from Fanny Caroline Lefroy (1879)
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Was this a niece, or her daughter? They all, or many of them, aspired to write, and did write well, even if it was only about the beloved Jane Austen.
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"Yes, we must go somewhere during these cruel north-easterly winds. We must leave the flowers that will blow in spite of them, the tulips, the polyanthuses, the crimson-and-white daisies that fill our suburban garden with beauty we cannot enjoy. We must leave the golden leaves that so reluctantly come forth to the bitter air, and, as the now famous Jane Austen used playfully to say, mindful no doubt of its evil character, "this north-eastern being equally against our skin and conscience," we must seek a shelter from its cutting breath. Let us go to Lyme Regis, a place that she has immortalised, and there, if the guide-books are to be trusted, we may walk on the sands and parade, or sit and bask in the sunshine, if haply we can get any, even in the midst of the Blackthorn winter, with impunity. There also we may have the amusement of testing her proverbial accuracy, and of tracing the steps of that party, and ascertaining the precise spot of that accident which has made the Cobb more famous than any wonders of its construction. Hunting for snarkes is a very pleasant occupation if you do but make believe strong enough, and Jane Austen's creatures shall be realities to us as long as we stay at Lyme Regis.
"We happened also to know that when Mr. Tennyson went there, and his friends wanted to show him the precise spot where the Duke of Monmouth landed, he exclaimed with an indignation equally creditable to his own genius and to hers, "Don't talk to me of the Duke of Monmouth. Show me that precise spot where Louise Musgrave fell."
"Everyone must surely perceive that to ascertain that precise spot and satisfy his most laudable curiosity was an object worthy of our best endeavours and of our highest ambition. To Lyme Regis therefore, one very cold day in the middle of last May, we went, and I may as well say at once that we found it as to warmth entirely satisfactory. The hill which rises behind the town quite shelters it from north wind, and as it curves to the east and joins the pretty line of cliffs which sweeps almost round to Portland Island, it scarcely feels even the north-easterns. Indeed, the parade is only open to winds that blow from the south, south-east, or south-west, especially south-east, and this fact was our first proof of Jane Austen's accuracy, for she speaks of the bloom in Anne Elliot's face being produced by the "fine south-easterly wind" she had been meeting."
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So they visited Lyme Regis, with a journey that sounds as dangerous as it seemed arduous, to lodgings she says were unique to the place.
" ... Then there were two ground floors, one in its proper place, containing kitchen entrance and dining-room, and the other at the top of the house, containing the bedrooms and back door, which latter opened on to the green hill behind. ... Nothing could fit better, and we counted the bedrooms and arranged the party, and settled which was the chamber to which Louise Musgrave was carried, when the word "carried" struck us all dumb. That dreadful staircase; could any man, even though a sailor, have carried any young lady up that dark and crooked ladder?—and not only dark and crooked, but with a projecting beam in the darkest corner, from which one could scarcely save one's own head. She might, indeed, have been carried up the steps on the outside of the house and so in at the back door, as our boxes had been, there being no other way of getting them into our rooms; but we dared not suppose so unusual a mode of entrance, and were reluctantly obliged to give up the idea."
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"Our first step was to go to the library to get 'Persuasion'—that is, if we could, about which we had some doubt; for some few years ago, when in Bath, being anxious to amuse ourselves with verifying all the places and streets, etc., mentioned in it and in 'Northanger Abbey,' we turned into a library close to Milsom Street, and asked for the volume, we were told not only that they had not got it, but had never even heard of Jane Austen! And what was still worse, and hurt our feelings more, was that when we sought the inn which her genius has made so memorable, though we indeed found it, lo and behold! it was no longer the White Hart, it had sunk into the Queen, or the Royal Hotel, or something equally commonplace. It was some consolation to discover the displaced old sign, the veritable gold-collared white hart standing in an obscure corner not very far off. Lyme, however, proved more grateful. The library not only contained the volume, but someone had added to its title, "A Story of the Cobb." By its help we could trace the movements of the whole party through those two eventful days. ... "
"We could not pass the assembly-rooms without remembering that she had danced in them, for at the time of her visit to Lyme she was only twenty-eight; young and pretty enough still to attract the admiring eyes of strangers, and to secure her more partners than she in her moderation wanted. Where she and her father and mother lodged in Lyme is not known; they were there in the September of 1804. Either just before or after this they were at Teignmouth, where they had lodgings in a house called "Great Bella Vista," which is still standing, and bears the same fantastic name. It is rather remarkable that there should be no allusion in any of her works to this latter place, unless it be in 'Sense and Sensibility,' which, though written before 1804, was not published until afterwards. Her description of the situation of Barten Cottage is that of one who had seen the country "four miles north of Exeter," as no doubt in passing from Bath to Teignmouth, or from Teignmouth to Bath, she had done, and it might have been retouched when preparing the MS. for publication. Of this visit to Devonshire there is no mention in the Life written by her nephew a few years ago.
"Of course everyone knows the Cobb. It was first constructed two years after the accession of Edward III., and then consisted only of wooden piles incapable of long resisting the force of the storms which swept over them. Of wood, however, it continued to be remade as often as destroyed, until the time of James I., when somebody had the genius to build it of stone. ... "
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They discovered there had been more than one severe storm, sweeping away much described by Jane Austen.
" ... Nothing, therefore, remains to Lyme of any historical interest. The railways have brought other and prettier places within easier reach, and any revival of her importance and prosperity does not seem probable. She ought to be dear, however, to the hearts of all geologists, for out of her blue lias cliffs came the first of the ichthyosauri and the plesiosauri found in this country, and still when her rocks are blasted or there is a fresh landslip some pre-Adamite reliques may be found. Once they might have been picked up amongst the shingle; but the pickers-up have been so numerous there are none left worth stooping for. However, I should like to say a word to recommend that particular corner of Devonshire to the notice of artists. I say Devonshire, because Lyme is only one mile from that county, and its greatest beauties lie over the boundary. I think anyone who would take Jane Austen's advice and go to Pinhay would find himself abundantly rewarded, and that he might work there for days without exhausting its beauties."
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"The cliffs from Lyme to Sidmouth offer also a most remarkable variety of tint. At Lyme, as has been before mentioned, they are mainly of blue lias, at Seaton they are of chalk and red marl, at Beer they are of chalk alone, at Sidmouth they are of chalk and red sandstone. Beautiful as are the greys and purples that the blue lias changes into, they offer a much smaller variety of colour than do the red sandstone of Sidmouth. These range from yellow and light red to the deepest ensanguined browns, and their gorgeous hues are often reflected in the waves which break and curdle into rose-coloured tints as they ebb and flow. Then the greys that form their shadows are so exquisite, the blue mists that gather in their hollows, the white clouds which crown their heads or hang about their peaks, are so beautiful, that they surely deserve that some artist should paint their loveliness. The Peak Hills also are splendid. Standing halfway up one you have a foreground of green turf with the red hill rising up to the clouds on your right, from which you are separated by a deep chasm of some three hundred feet, at the bottom of which is the sea. In front rises the other and higher Peak Hill, yellow and red, and grey and purple, with here and there a streak of green turf or a patch of scrub—and beyond that a long line of cliffs, of which the very palest and most distant are almost at Torquay. One or two detached rocks stand out of the base, over which the waves break, and around which the sea-gulls are perpetually flying. All this forms a picture, truly of all the tints of the rainbow never to be forgotten. But enough of the rocks. Let me say a word of sweeter and tenderer beauties.
"I should like to send every one with a sore heart or a weary brain to drive about the lanes of Devonshire in the early summer. There is not a bank which is not a feast of beauty—beauty, not awful like that of the cliffs, not melancholy like that of the moaning sea, but like that of childhood, loving and pure as if it were fresh from heaven. There are, no doubt, in many places rare ferns and rare plants, but it is not they that make the charm. No. It is the thousands of primroses, the fields and beds of blue hyacinths, the masses of red campion, all growing together in every hedgerow and upon every bank; in the midst of clusters of shining harts-tongues, and clumps of asplenium, mingled with the beautiful cut-leaved ivy and the yellow green spurge, and everywhere sprinkled over with the silver stars of the elegant little white stitchwort. It is these common things growing in such wonderful profusion that make a beauty that steals into your heart and soothes and comforts it like a word of love—a beauty which, like the songs of the birds, fills you with an emotion you cannot clothe in words—redolent of the tenderness which makes the sparrows its care and bids us behold "the lilies of the field.""
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September 14, 2021 - September 14, 2021.
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