LYME REGIS
Dr. Mitford had been gradually establishing a practice in Reading,
where a remarkable cure he had effected was already making his name
known, when, as his daughter tells us, he resolved to remove to Lyme,
“feeling with characteristic sanguineness that in a fresh place success
would be certain.”
Some of our readers will no doubt have visited Lyme Regis—that quaint
little seaport situated on the steep slope of a hill, whose main street
seems, as Jane Austen has remarked, “to be almost hurrying into the
water.” They will remember its harbour formed by the curved stone piers
of the old Cobb, from which can be seen the pretty bay with its sandy
beach bordered by the Parade, or “Walk” as it used to be called, which
runs at the foot of a grassy hillside. At the town end of this “Walk”
are to be seen some thatched cottages nestling under the shelter of the
hill, and beyond them on a small promontory, jutting out into the sea,
the old Assembly Rooms. A few miles east-ward lies the sunny little
bay of Charmouth, with a grand chain of hills beyond it, rising from
the water’s edge and terminating in the far distance in the Bill of
Portland.
Lyme Regis lies in the borderland of Dorset and Devonshire, “but the
character of the scenery,” writes Miss Mitford, “the boldness of the
coast, and the rich woodiness of the inland views belong entirely to
Devonshire—beautiful Devonshire.
“Our habitation,” she continues, “although situated not merely in
the town but in the principal street, had nothing in common with the
small and undistinguished houses on either side. It was a very large,
long-fronted stone mansion, terminated at either end by massive iron
gates, the pillars of which were surmounted by spread eagles. An old
stone porch, with benches on either side, projected from the centre,
covered, as was the whole front of the house, with tall, spreading,
wide-leafed myrtle, abounding in blossom, with moss-roses, jessamine
and passion-flowers.”
[Illustration: THE “WALK” BY THE SEA]
This old porch had its special historical association, for here William
Pitt as a child used to play at marbles when his father the great Lord
Chatham rented the Great House. Unhappily the porch has been altered
and injured since we visited Lyme some years ago. Other changes
have also been made at various periods, notably a storey added in the
northern or upper end of the building; but in spite of these changes
the Great House, as it is always called, still dominates the little
town like a feudal castle of old amongst its vassals, its massive walls
manfully resisting modern innovations.
The illustration represents the house as it appeared in Miss Mitford’s
day.
The southern portion of the building is of the most ancient date. Its
walls are of great thickness. The Great House is full of traditions of
past history, and its gloomy vaults and passages below ground must have
witnessed many a tragic scene at the time of the Monmouth Rebellion.
Here it was that Judge Jeffreys took up his quarters for a time when
he came to stamp out the Rebellion and to wreak the vengeance of James
II upon the unhappy followers of his rival. The owner of the house
in those days was a man named Jones—the squire of Lyme—who aided and
abetted Jeffreys in all his awful tyranny, spying upon the inhabitants
and reporting every idle word that might serve to incriminate them.
The memory of Jones is loathed to this day, and tradition declares the
house to be haunted by his ghost.
Happily the little girl, who came to live in this weird old mansion,
knew nothing of its tragic history, and could laugh and play with
childish mirth above its sombre vaults. In her _Recollections_, Mary
Mitford speaks of the “large, lofty rooms of the building, of its
noble oaken staircases, its marble hall, and its long galleries,” and
mentions “the book room,” where her grandfather Dr. Russell’s fine
library was arranged. “Behind the building,” she says, “which extended
round a paved quadrangle, was the drawing-room, a splendid apartment
looking upon a little lawn surrounded by choice evergreens,” beyond
which lay the spacious gardens.
The drawing-room still bears traces of its former dignity in its
lofty ceiling and handsome dentil cornice, and also in its three tall
recessed windows, whose side panels end in fine curled scrolls.
[Illustration: THE GREAT HOUSE]
“My own nurseries,” she says, “were spacious and airy, but the place
which I most affected was a dark panelled chamber on the first floor,
to which I descended through a private door by half a dozen stairs, so
steep that, still a very small and puny child between eight and a half
and nine and a half, and unable to run down them in the common way, I
used to jump from one step to the other.”
We have entered this small panelled room, which is lighted by a narrow
leaded window, and as we looked upon the steps leading down from the
upper room we fancied we saw the tiny figure jumping from step to step.
“This chamber,” continues Miss Mitford, “was filled with such
fossils as were then known ... some the cherished products of my own
discoveries, and some broken for me by my father’s little hammer from
portions of the rocks that lay beneath the cliffs, under which almost
every day we used to wander hand-in-hand.”
Beyond “the little lawn, surrounded by choice evergreens,” there was
“an old-fashioned greenhouse and a filbert-tree walk, from which again
three detached gardens sloped abruptly down to one of the clear,
dancing rivulets of that western country.” These three gardens are
still to be seen. A part of them is well cultivated, and abounds
in smooth lawns, majestic trees and flowers of all kinds; but that
part which belongs to the older portion of the mansion, deserted for
many years, is left wild and untended. It is, however, pathetically
beautiful in its mixture of garden flowers and showy weeds. The high
box-edgings to the borders prove that great care was once taken of the
place, and the tall rose bushes which still abound stretch out their
long branches of pink and white blossoms as if to hide what is mean and
unsightly.
“In the steep declivity of the central garden,” writes Mary, “which I
was permitted to call mine, was a grotto overarching a cool, sparkling
spring, never overflowing its small sandy basin, which yet was always
full.” “Years many and long,” she adds, “have passed since I sat beside
that tiny fountain, and yet never have I forgotten the pleasure which I
derived from watching its clear crystal wave.”
“The slopes on either side of the grotto,” she says, “were carpeted
with strawberries and dotted with fruit trees. One drooping medlar,
beneath whose pendent branches I have often hidden, I remember well.”
This spring is known in that country-side by the name of the “Lepers’
Well.” It is reached by a steep flight of rugged stone steps from the
terrace above, and is still surrounded by old gnarled fruit trees,
though the medlar seems to have disappeared. Beyond a low hedge at the
foot of the grounds flows the little river Lym, clear and sparkling as
ever.
Lyme is full of traditions, and this little river, at one spot, bears
the name of “Jordan,” so called by a colony of Baptists who took
refuge in the neighbourhood during the seventeenth century. It was in
“Jordan” that they immersed their converts, and the old Biblical names
given by them to the adjoining fields of Jericho and Paradise still
linger in that district.
“I used to disdain the [Devonshire] streamlets,” writes Mary, “with
such scorn as a small damsel fresh from the Thames and the Kennett
thinks herself privileged to display. ‘They call that a river here,
papa! Can’t you jump me over it?’ quoth I in my sauciness. About a
month ago I heard a young lady from New York talking in some such
strain of Father Thames. ‘It’s a pretty little stream,’ said she,
‘but to call it a river!’ And I half expected to hear a complete
reproduction of my own impertinence, and a request to be jumped from
one end to the other of Caversham Bridge!”
[Illustration]