Don't forget about Mary

I'm supposed to be writing my next article for The Bay but though I know where I want it go I don't where it should start so I'm blogging instead. My latest article, by the way, is here.

Lyme Regis has its famous Cobb, a stone walled harbour, that had a starring role in The French Lieutenant's Woman, which I read but don't think I ever saw the film. Naturally I had to take up a pose on the Cobb. 

I have to say they're missing an opportunity there. A little stall at the start of the Cobb, selling or renting black cloaks, would make a fortune. Although maybe today's young people have forgotten about the film. Then again, Lyme isn't really a young people's haunt. It's more for the old and families. Even the gangs of motor-bikers who congregate there are all in their sixties.

Now, you will notice, if you look closely, that I am wearing my Wales rugby woolly hat. It keeps my head warm and I didn't even think about the fact that I was in England. 

As we were walking back along the Cobb there was a man coming the other way along with young couple. As he passed us he gave an Eric Morecambe style cough and muttered, "20-10."* It took a few moments, by which time he was way past, for me to work it out - otherwise I would have remonstrated! And forcibly. 

I spent the rest of the weekend coming up with witty retorts I could have made. Well, retorts anyway.

There is a small garden behind the promenade currently home to a number of sculptures. 

This was my favourite. 

By Victoria Westaway, it's called The Reader, and it "represents slowing down time, it reminds us of stepping away and getting lost in stories and fables."

We also spent some time in the lovely little museum finding out about Lyme's history and especially about Mary Anning, an early palaeontologist who made some remarkable discoveries.

Mary lived in the first half of the nineteenth century and from an early age accompanied her father on his fossil hunting forays. She learned how to look for and clean fossils, which her father sometimes sold in his shop. He was a cabinet-maker by trade. His early death left the family very poor and Mary's mother urged her to sell her finds to help pay off the family debts.

When Mary's brother, Joseph, found an unusual fossilised skull, Mary very carefully and painstakingly uncovered the rest of the skeleton which was eventually given the name of Icthyosaurus. Her next big find was the skeleton of a Pleiosaurus. Despite her growing reputation for finding and identifying fossils the scientific community was hesitant to recognise her work, and men who bought fossils from her rarely named her in their research papers.

Her next big discovery was the first pterosaur discovered outside Germany. It was later given the name Pterodactyl. Perhaps less well known is the fact that she also pioneered the study of fossil poo.

In spite of all her success Mary died at age forty-seven, still in debt. Her little shop was very popular with children who would spend ages, encouraged by Mary whom they liked, choosing the fossil they wanted and all for a few pennies.

The museum also had a special literary room celebrating those writers, such as Tolkien, Tracy Chevalier, and Beatrix Potter, who all "once spent a summer holiday here" according to Husband. I think their connection goes a bit deeper especially that of John Fowles, author of TFLW, who was volunteer curator of the museum there for a number of years. And Jane Austen was inspired by Lyme to write Persuasion. She even wrote part of it while she was staying there.

This isn't from Persuasion but is the first page of the draft manuscript of TFLW.

"The Cobb has invited what familiarity breeds for at least seven hundred years, and real Lymers will never see much more to it than a long arm of old grey wall that flexes itself against the sea. 

"But to a less tax-paying, or more discriminating, eye it is quite simply the most beautiful sea rampart on the south coast of England."

* England beat Wales 20-10 in their most recent encounter a week or so ago.