Just how famous is Lyme Regis and the infamous Cobb where Miss Musgrove takes her tumble? What exactly were bathing machines? And what does the term “Cobb” mean anyway? Learn the answers to these questions and more in this episode of My Cousin Jane.
Welcome back to My Cousin Jane. Today we’re going to be talking about Persuasion Chapter 11, but not like your English lit teacher might talk about it, but like the special bonus features of your favorite movie, the behind-the-scenes view.
Lyme Regis
As Chapter 11 opens, we are discussing taking a road trip to Lyme Regis, a charming coastal town in southwestern England.
The Regis part of Lyme Regis’ name was added after Lyme was granted a royal charter in the late 1200s by King Edward I. These charters were used for a bunch of different things, but in this case, it essentially granted Lyme the right to self-govern, as much as one could self-govern within the broader laws and dictates of the kingdom at the time.
You’ll find a lot of things in the UK with the name Regis attached to them, or sometimes the name King’s attached to them, or Queen’s. Both terms generally mean “this place has some special connection to the crown,” though sometimes what that connection was is lost to antiquity. Nobody’s sure why it’s called Regis or King’s or whatever. Maybe the king drove through it once, maybe he stayed there when he was sick, but for whatever reason that part of the town has decided to adopt that name and it’s persisted over time.
We know that Jane Austen visited Lyme Regis at least twice during her life, staying there in 1803 and again in 1804, and you can tell she was pretty taken with the place from her description of it in Persuasion, which was written about 10 years or so later. I sometimes wonder if her descriptions of Lyme weren’t taken straight from her journal.
If you go to Lyme today, it is a charming coastal town. There is a Jane Austen walk and garden, which is pretty.
Let’s listen to how Jane Austen describes Lyme in her own words. This is a bit of a longer clip, but it’s interesting how she describes it. As always, our audio recordings come from the talented Karen Savage over at LibriVox.org.
and, as there is nothing to admire in the buildings themselves, the remarkable situation of the town, the principal street almost hurrying into the water, the walk to the Cobb, skirting round the pleasant little bay, which, in the season, is animated with bathing machines and company; the Cobb itself, its old wonders and new improvements, with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of the town, are what the stranger’s eye will seek; and a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better. The scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more, its sweet, retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among the sands, make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation; the woody varieties of the cheerful village of Up Lyme; and, above all, Pinny, with its green chasms between romantic rocks, where the scattered forest trees and orchards of luxuriant growth, declare that many a generation must have passed away since the first partial falling of the cliff prepared the ground for such a state, where a scene so wonderful and so lovely is exhibited, as may more than equal any of the resembling scenes of the far-famed Isle of Wight: these places must be visited, and visited again, to make the worth of Lyme understood. Persuasion, Chapter 11
Clearly the takeaway here is that Lyme is beautiful, and if you don’t think it’s beautiful, there’s something wrong with you.
A couple of interesting notes from this description. First, I think the principal street that Austen refers to is probably Broad Street, which is still the main street in Lyme, and was the main street as far back as the earliest map of Lyme I could find, or at least the earliest street map, which was drawn up in 1888. If you’re listening and you have an older street map of Lyme Regis, I’d love to see it.
Interestingly, Cobb Road, which is another big road, nearly as wide as Broad Street is in some areas, and also runs, as it were, into the sea, on the 1888 map was called New Street. On a map from 1905, it was called Cobb Road. That makes me believe that that street may in fact not have existed in Austen’s time, or at least was still pretty new.
Broad Street, by the way, despite its name and despite being the main road through Lyme, is narrow, and it’s only one lane in parts. It’s one lane in the British sense of a single lane road, which is a lot narrower than what you might find on a single lane road in the United States, and it is pretty terrifying to drive a minivan along that road, and even more terrifying trying to park.
Bathing Machines
The other thing she mentions is the bathing machines. Bathing machines were like little wagons, or like little huts on wheels, like tiny houses you might see today. When you went to the beach, you would go into a bathing machine that was sitting on the beach and you would change into your swimming clothes.
In some areas and time periods, you’d take off all your clothes, because people would swim in the nude. In the early 1800s, it was typically only men that did that, and not in all areas. Most likely, in the bathing machines in Lyme Regis at the time of Persuasion, people were changing into bathing suits.
Once you were changed, the bathing machine was wheeled into the water, and often this was done by horses, and then positioned so as to block anyone from shore from seeing you and your party as you entered the water. It was pretty unheard of for men and women to swim together until the early 1900s.
If you’ve seen Regency-era bathing clothes for women, it’s interesting, because they weren’t exactly immodest. It’s interesting that they would go through all this trouble to remain unseen in their bathing clothes. That changed pretty drastically in the early 1900s once men and women started swimming together, where it didn’t become such a big deal anymore.
If you’ve been to a beach in the UK or parts of Europe or other places, former British crown colonies such as Australia or South Africa, you’ve probably seen this tradition persist today in the form of these little colorful beach huts, sometimes called bathing boxes, which will often line the shore of a beach. Those are the modern day equivalent of bathing machines.
These are typically privately owned. People will use them to go and put all their stuff in or change clothes, so they can go to the beach and not have to worry about hauling a bunch of stuff to and from the beach every time they go.
Lyme Out of Season
The other thing of note here is that because the party visits Lyme in November, not a lot is going on. The one time I was in Lyme Regis, it was early January, and it was much the same. All the shops and businesses were closed for the season. Not all of them, but most of them. Most of the vacationers were absent, and there weren’t hardly any sea bathers because the water was so cold.
I’ve never been to Lyme in the summer, but some of the locals tell me that it is crowded. In fact, they say it’s almost impossible to get up and down the main street because there’s so much traffic coming in and out with tour buses and such. I imagine even in Jane Austen’s time, it would have been similar, because again, the roads are so narrow, traffic is so high, lots of people go to Lyme Regis, even in that time period, for vacation.
The Cobb
Finally, we need to talk about the infamous Cobb, which forms the backdrop for one of the most pivotal scenes in the novel (I guess that was a bad pun) coming up in Chapter 12.
The Cobb is a seawall or jetty that juts out into the English Channel for a few hundred feet, forming a natural harbor that allowed Lyme Regis to flourish as a seaport and shipbuilding town over the centuries. It has a sidewalk on top of the wall, as well as another sidewalk called the Lower Walk that follows along the base of the wall out into the sea. These two walks are connected by a few different stone staircases.
The most fascinating historical fact about the Cobb, at least to me, is that nobody knows exactly when it was built or why it’s called the Cobb. We only know that it’s been around since at least the early 1300s, because there are documents talking about it dating back to 1313, and it’s been destroyed and rebuilt a few different times because of storms.
The two prevailing theories about its name are either that it was named for some ancient feast known as the Cobb Ale Feast (and we don’t know what that was either; we just know that it was talked about in some documents), or that it may have been named Cobb because the word cob is a term for a male swan. The structure, if you look at it from above, resembles a swan’s neck. Again, those are just the prevailing theories, but nobody really knows why it’s named the Cobb.
While it’s always been relatively well known, you can pretty easily argue that it was Austen’s writing about it that propelled it into local and international tourist attraction status.
In fact, Jane Austen’s great niece, Fanny Lefroy, who wrote some fascinating things about Austen, which we should spend some more time talking about in a future episode, wrote about a visit that Lord Alfred Tennyson made to Lyme in 1867.
His friends from the area thought that he’s the legendary author of “The Charge of the Light Brigade”; surely he’d be interested in the military history of Lyme, particularly where the Duke of Monmouth had landed.
The Duke was the illegitimate son of King Charles II who tried unsuccessfully to start a rebellion in the 1600s to overthrow King James. He sailed from Holland to Lyme, which is also an interesting story. They wanted to show him, hey, here’s where he landed, and blah, blah, blah. Lefroy, talking about her aunt Jane Austen, says:
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 …, “Don’t talk to me of the Duke of Monmouth. Show me that precise spot where Louise Musgrave [sic] fell.” Fanny Caroline Lefroy, “Hunting for Snarkes at Lyme Regis”, Temple Bar, 1879
Interesting that even this famous poet is interested in this kind of literary landmark. It’s not just crazy tourists that go there. It was distinguished guests as well.
Poets
Speaking of poets, I want to wrap up today’s episode with a brief comment about this clip on poets.
and having talked of poetry, the richness of the present age, and gone through a brief comparison of opinion as to the first-rate poets, trying to ascertain whether Marmion or The Lady of the Lake were to be preferred, and how ranked the Giaour and The Bride of Abydos; and moreover, how the Giaour was to be pronounced, he showed himself so intimately acquainted with all the tenderest songs of the one poet, and all the impassioned descriptions of hopeless agony of the other; he repeated, with such tremulous feeling, the various lines which imaged a broken heart, or a mind destroyed by wretchedness, and looked so entirely as if he meant to be understood, that she ventured to hope he did not always read only poetry, and to say, that she thought it was the misfortune of poetry to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly. Persuasion, Chapter 11
Of the poems that they’re discussing here, Marmion and Lady of the Lake were written by Sir Walter Scott, and the Giaour and Bride of Abydos were written by Lord Byron.
These two poets were contemporaries in the 1800s, and sometimes they were friends, but they were more like frenemies. They were harsh rivals and critics of one another, but they admired one another’s works, but they were also pretty quick to write disparaging comments in public about one another. If you’re interested at all in British poetry, it’s worth looking into the lives and squabbles of these two men, because it’s pretty fascinating.
Sir Walter Scott was about 17 years older and viewed himself as the elder statesman, and Lord Byron is like the young whippersnapper who’s coming on the scene with his outlandish ideas. Of course Lord Byron would have viewed Sir Walter Scott as so old-fashioned, and some of his poems are so tired and hackneyed and clichéd and blah blah blah, and we need new things like the Giaour and the Bride of Abydos, and look how amazing those are. Anyway, pretty interesting stuff.
Conclusion
That wraps up this episode of My Cousin Jane. As always, if you enjoy the show and would like to help support us, please consider clicking the little donate button or subscribing to our newsletter. Either way, thanks so much for listening.
