CHAPTER VI

A STORMY COAST

Writing of her sojourn at Lyme Regis Miss Mitford says:—

“That was my only opportunity of making acquaintance with the mighty ocean in its winter sublimity of tempest and storm; and partly perhaps from the striking and awful nature of the impression [upon the mind of] a lonely, musing, visionary child, the recollection remains indelibly fixed in my memory, fresh and vivid as if of yesterday....

“Once my father took me from my bed at midnight that I might see, from the highest storey of our house, the grandeur and the glory of the tempest; the spray rising to the very tops of the cliffs, pale and ghastly in the lightning, and hear the roar of the sea, the moaning of the wind, the roll of the thunder, and amongst them all the fearful sound of the minute guns, telling of death and danger on that iron-bound coast. Then in the morning I have seen the cold bright wintry sun shining gaily on the dancing sea, still stirred by the last breath of the tempest, and on the floating spars and parted timbers of the wreck....

[Illustration: THE PANELLED CHAMBER]

“My walks,” she writes, “were confined to rambles on the shore with my maid, or still more to my delight with my dear father, the recollection of whose fond indulgence is connected with every pleasure of my childhood.... Sometimes we would go towards Charmouth, with its sweeping bay, passing below church and churchyard, perched high above us, and already undermined by the tide. Another time we bent our steps to the Pinny cliffs [that stretch away] on the western side of the harbour; the beautiful Pinny cliffs, where an old landslip had deposited a farm-house, with its outbuildings, its garden and its orchard, tossed half-way down amongst the rocks, its look of home and of comfort contrasting so strangely with the dark rugged masses above, below and around.

“My father, a dabbler in science, with his hammer and basket was engaged in breaking off fragments of rock, to search for curious spars and fossil remains; I in picking up shells and sea-weed.... What enjoyment it was to feel the pleasant sea-breeze, and see the sun dancing on the waters, and wander as free as the sea-bird over my head beneath those beetling cliffs! Now for a moment losing sight of the dear papa, and now rejoining him with some delicate shell, or brightly coloured sea-weed, or imperfect _coruna ammoris_, enquiring into the success of his graver labours, and comparing our discoveries and treasures.

“What pleasure too to rest at the well-known cottage, the general termination of our walk, where old Simon the curiosity-monger picked up a mongrel sort of livelihood by selling fossils and petrifactions to one class of visitors, and cakes and fruit and cream to another. His scientific bargains were not without suspicion of a little cheatery, as my companion used laughingly to tell him ... but the fruit and curds were honest, as I can well avouch; and the legends of petrified sea-monsters, with which they were seasoned, bones of the mammoth, and skeletons of the sea-serpent have always been amongst the pleasantest of my seaside recollections.”

Perhaps these “legends” had a tinge of prophecy in them, as it was only fifteen years later that Mary Anning, then a child of eleven years old, discovered in the rocks of Lyme Regis the gigantic fossil bones of the ichthyosaurus—a creature whose very jaw it seems exceeded six feet in length, and whose existence had hitherto been unknown. She also discovered later on the remains of the plesiosaurus.[1]

[Footnote 1: The entire skeletons of these actual creatures are now to be seen in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington.]

Miss Anning kept a curiosity shop in a tiny house which is still to be seen facing the upper gates of the Great House. The King of Saxony, who visited Lyme in 1844, thus describes the place:—

“We had alighted from the carriage,” he writes, “and were proceeding along on foot when we fell in with a shop in which the most remarkable petrifactions and fossil remains—the head of an ichthyosaurus, beautiful ammonites, etc.—were exhibited in the window. We entered and found a little shop and adjoining chamber completely filled with fossil productions of the coast.... I was anxious [before leaving] to write down the address of the place, and the woman who kept the shop with a firm hand wrote her name ‘Mary Anning’ in my pocket-book, and added as she returned the book into my hands: ‘I am well known throughout the whole of Europe.’”

It is said that the King of Saxony paid a second visit to the fossil shop, when he invited Miss Anning to accompany him in his travelling coach and four to the scene of the great landslip at Pinny. On reaching a small farm-house on the hillside they quitted the coach to roam about the fallen rocks. On their return they found an old country woman seated in the stately vehicle. She explained, with some confusion, that she wanted to be able to boast hereafter that she had sat for once in her life in a royal coach! The kindly monarch assured her that he was in no way displeased, and he handed her out of the coach with courtly politeness.

Miss Mitford in one of her letters remarks: “It is singular that the name of Mary Anning crosses me often. One of my friend Mr. Kenyon’s graceful poems is addressed to her, and Charmouth and Lyme are dear to me as being full of my first recollections of the sea. I should like of all things to go there again and make acquaintance with Mary Anning.”

Here are a few stanzas of the poem alluded to:—

“E’en poets shall by thee set store; For wonders feed the poet’s wish; And is their mermaid wondrous more Than thy half-lizard and half-fish?

* * * * *

While Lyme’s dark-headed urchins grow Each in his turn to grey-haired men, Yet, when grown old, this beach they walk, Some pensive breeze their grey locks fanning, Their sons shall love to hear them talk Of many a feat of Mary Anning.”

[Illustration: IN THE DRAWING-ROOM]

Writing of their residence in Lyme Mary says:—

“My dear mother had three or four young relations, misses in their teens, staying with her and was sufficiently occupied in playing the chaperone to the dull gaieties of the place.... Of course I was too young to be admitted to the society, such as it was; but I had even then a dim glimmering perception of its being anything but exhilarating.”

Sometimes the company assembled in the Great House. “One incident that occurred there,” writes Miss Mitford—“a frightful danger—a providential escape—I shall never forget.

“There was to be a ball at the rooms, and a party of sixteen or eighteen persons, dressed for the assembly, were sitting in the dining-room at dessert. The ceiling was ornamented with a rich running pattern of flowers in high relief, the shape of the wreath corresponding pretty exactly with the company arranged round the oval table. Suddenly, without the slightest warning, all that part of the ceiling became detached and fell down in large masses upon the table and the floor. It seems even now all but miraculous how such a catastrophe could occur without danger to life or limb; but the only things damaged were the flowers and feathers of the ladies and the fruits and wines of the dessert. I myself, caught instantly in my father’s arms, by whose side I was standing, had scarcely even time to be frightened, although after the danger was over our fair visitors of course began to scream.”

Towards the end of their year’s residence in Lyme Regis the fortunes of the Mitford family were once more clouded over.

“Nobody told me,” writes Mary, “but I felt, I knew, I had an interior conviction for which I could not have accounted ... that in spite of the company, in spite of the gaiety, something was wrong. It was such a foreshowing as makes the quicksilver in the barometer sink whilst the weather is still bright and clear.

“And at last the change came. My father went again to London and lost—I think, I have always thought so—more money.... Then one by one our visitors departed; and my father, who had returned in haste again, in equal haste left home, after short interviews with landlords, and lawyers, and auctioneers; and I knew—I can’t tell how, but I did know—that everything was to be parted with and everybody paid.

“That same night two or three large chests were carried away through the garden by George and another old servant, and a day or two after my mother and myself, with Mrs. Mosse, the good housekeeper who lived with my grandfather, and the other maid-servant, left Lyme in a hack-chaise.”

After various delays, due partly to the breaking up of a camp between Bridport and Dorchester, the party pursued their journey in “a sort of tilted cart without springs.” “Doubtless,” remarks Mary, “many a fine lady would laugh at such a shift. But it was not as a temporary discomfort that it came upon my poor mother. It was her first touch of poverty. It seemed like the final parting from all the elegances and all the accommodations to which she had been used. I shall never forget her heart-broken look when she took her little girl upon her lap in that jolting caravan, nor how the tears stood in her eyes when we turned into our miserable bedroom when we reached the roadside alehouse where we were to pass the night. The next day we resumed our journey, and reached a dingy, comfortless lodging in one of the suburbs beyond Westminster Bridge.”