Literary Passion · Lyme Regis, Dorset
The Cobb, Lyme Regis (Persuasion & the French Lieutenant's Woman)
One stone pier, two of literature's charged moments: Louisa Musgrove's reckless leap into Captain Wentworth's arms in 'Persuasion', and Fowles's hooded Sarah Woodruff staring out to sea — the most smouldering opening image in post-war English fiction.
The story
Austen visited Lyme in 1803 and 1804 and gave the Cobb — the town's great curving harbour wall — the most physical scene she ever wrote. In Persuasion, the impulsive Louisa Musgrove demands to be "jumped down" the steps by Captain Wentworth, does it once, runs back for more, leaps before he is ready and is "taken up lifeless". The jagged steps called Granny's Teeth are the romantic candidate for the spot, though Austen probably imagined a different flight; Tennyson, visiting in 1867, cared only to see where Louisa fell. The same wall opens John Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman (1969), later filmed in 1981; Fowles lived in Lyme.
More stories at this spot
- Austen's own Lyme holidays, 1803–04
Sources
- Wikipedia
- Jane Austen's House
- Susannah Fullerton
- JASNA, Persuasions On-Line
- Love Lyme Regis
- Partisan Review archive, Boston University
Nearby on the map
Britain's largest chalk hill-figure, a 180ft naked club-wielder whose 35ft phallus made him a fertility icon; folklore holds that a couple who conceive on the figure will be blessed with children. Optically Stimulated Luminescence testing dated him to AD 700–1100; per NT senior archaeologist Martin Papworth, 'he was created very early on, perhaps in the late Saxon period, but then became grassed over and was forgotten.'
Documented + folkloreScandal & SocietyTiger Bay (Cardiff's dockland demi-monde)Cardiff, Cardiff · WalesCardiff's legendary dockland — one of Britain's first truly multicultural quarters, notorious in its coal-boom heyday for sailors' taverns, dance halls and commercial affection, and beloved by those who lived there as a warm, tight community the papers never bothered to understand. Shirley Bassey is its most famous daughter.
Documented historyHot spotFolk Rite & FertilityCaru yn y Gwely — Bundling & the Love SpoonSt Fagans, Cardiff (museum); custom pan-North-Wales, Denbighshire/Gwynedd (custom); Cardiff (collection) · WalesCourting couples were sent to bed together — clothed, a bolster between them — while the suitor whittled a spoon to prove he was husband material.
Documented historySpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.