CHAPTER V

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]