Why Lyme Regis #2: Jane Austin

According to her letters, Jane Austin stayed in Lyme Regis at least twice with her family. Austen's last great novel, Persuasion, has an important scene set along the coast. Although Lyme Regis was already a fashionable seaside town in the 18th and 19th century, when Persuasion was released in 1817, tourism skyrocketed. I've always wanted to visit the Cobb, which is where the most dramatic scene in Persuasion takes place: Louisa Musgrove falls off the steps of the Cobb and is "taken up lifeless!"

​Horrors!

“There was too much wind to make the high part of the new Cobb pleasant for the ladies, and they agreed to get down the steps to the lower, and all were contented to pass quietly and carefully down the steep flight, excepting Louisa; she must be jumped down them by Captain Wentworth.

In all their walks, he had had to jump her from the stiles; the sensation was delightful to her. The hardness of the pavement for her feet, made him less willing upon the present occasion; he did it, however.
​
She was safely down, and instantly, to show her enjoyment, ran up the steps to be jumped down again. He advised her against it, thought the jar too great; but no, he reasoned and talked in vain, she smiled and said, “I am determined I will:”
he put out his hands; she was too precipitate by half a second, she fell on the pavement on the Lower Cobb, and was taken up lifeless!”
                                               From Jane Austin's Persuasion

“Show me the exact place where Louisa Musgrove fell!”
Alfred Lord Tennyson on a visit to Lyme Regis. 

Favorite passages from Jane Austin's works:

“Her own thoughts and reflections were habitually her best companions.”
Mansfield Park, 1814

“It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”
Sense and Sensibility, 1811

“There is a stubbornness about me that never can bear to be frightened
​at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”
Pride and Prejudice, 1813

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”
Emma, 1815

“There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.
I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.”
Northanger Abbey, 1818

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.”
Northanger Abbey, 1818

“To be fond of dancing was a certain step towards falling in love.”
Pride and Prejudice, 1813

​“Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.”
Mansfield Park, 1814

“Ah! There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.”
Emma, 1815

“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would
attend to it, than any other person can be.”
Mansfield Park, 1814

“For what do we live, but to make sport for
our neighbours and laugh at them in our turn?”
Pride and Prejudice, 1813

“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure
in a good novel, ​must be intolerably stupid.”
Northanger Abbey, 1818

​“Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance.”
Pride and Prejudice, 1813