the people are so coarse, in general; one rarely encounters good society, beyond the doors of the Assembly Rooms. At this time of year, the town is overrun with common labourers and fisherfolk; and the degradations to which one is subjected! You have heard, I suppose, of the hanged man.”
“Only a little,” I said coolly. “But men may be hanged anywhere, I believe. I had understood it to be quite a common thing in Ireland.”
“But in such a manner!” my new acquaintance cried. “The placement of the gibbet! The placard hung about his neck! The binding of his hands and feet! The mutilation of his features!”
“Of all these, 1 had not heard,” I said, with greater interest. “There was a placard, you say?”
“Assuredly, my dear girl.” Mrs. Barnewall advanced rather too rapidly to terms of intimacy for my taste, but in search of further particulars, I ignored her familiarity. “My tyger told me all of it. ‘Done for as he did,’ the words read, in ragged letters; and it was hung about his neck with a bit of fishing twine, of the sort such folk use for their nets.”
“How very odd!” I said thoughtfully. “One supposes such violence to be the result of a bitter feud among the fishermen.”
“Undoubtedly,” Mrs. Barnewall replied, and loosed her parasol. “I trust, Miss Austen, I shall see you tonight at the Assembly. Not that it is worth the trouble of attending; neither so very good company, as to be called select, nor so very bad, that one might fancy it dangerously exciting . But when in Lyme, it may be termed a delight, for want of competition/’ And with a nod for Mr. Milsop, she took her leave.
“What a very singular lady,” I said.
The draper stiffened and surveyed me narrowly with his quizzing glass. “The Honourable Mathew Barnewall is to be a viscount. He is heir to extensive estates in Ireland.”
“And yet, even that does not explain his wife, my dear sir.” I drew on my new gloves with a smile, and left the spotted pair on Milsop's counter.
IT WAS AS I APPROACHED WlNGS COTTAGE THAT A PROCESSION FROM the Cobb neared where I stood, and I pressed hard against a neighbouring building so that they might more easily pass. A glimpse only of their sad burden did I have; but it was enough to nearly overpower me. Do not think, however, that it was the corpse's starting eyes, or its lolling tongue, or what Mrs. Barnewall had airily termed a “mutilation”—in this instance, a knife slash that opened one cheek—all these, I could have withstood. But the source of my faintness upon viewing the hanged man was entirely of another order. For I had seen these features and this fellow before—and only the previous afternoon, as he lounged in the doorway opposite, hurling what I believed to be drunken insults at the angelic Seraphine. The man had appeared to earn Geoffrey Sidmouth's contempt on that occasion, and possibly his rage. But as the body slowly passed, I wondered with a chill in my heart whether his impertinence had cost him even dearer—whether it had won him, in fact, the brutal manner of his death.
1 Austen probably refers here to the beach that fronted Lyme's harbor, which is also called the Cobb, though not to be confused with the jetty of the same name. —Editor's note.
2 This was a long-handled lorgnette, with a single magnifying lens, that hung about fashionable necks. —Editor's note.
3 A tyger was a small boy arrayed in livery, almost as a mascot, whom the fashionable set employed to ride on the exterior of their carriages. —Editor's note.
4 These words, slightly modified and expanded, make up Austen's principal description of Lyme Regis in her final novel, Persuasion. —Editor's note.
7 September 1804
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THE LYME ASSEMBLY ROOMS SIT ON BROAD STREET, AT BELL CUFF and Cobb Gate, and their windows so o'erlook the sea, that when one is twirling in the midst of the floor (and well supplied with negus),1 one might almost believe oneself aboard ship, and borne on the crest of a wave. Or so Captain Fielding observed; and as he is a Naval man, albeit lame in one leg and now retired, I must take his observations as more generally apt than most
But I run ahead to the middle of the play, and neglect to draw open the curtain and set the scene; and so I give you the Reverend George Austen, attired in a shabby if respectable black tailcoat of