Fanny Burney in Dorset, August 7-8, 1791, Milton Abbas to Lyme Regis; Sublime Landscape

From the Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Volume 2 (edited by her niece, Philadelphia, 1842)

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From CUP Edition, Vol. 5:

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Her observations on Milton Abbas, Dorchester, Bridport, Lyme Regis and the sublime coastal scenery.

On Milton Abbas, Sunday August 7, 1791:

"After an early dinner we set off for Milton Abbey, the seat of Lord Milton. We arrived, through very bad roads, at a village built by his Lordship, very regularly, of white plaster, cut stone fashion and thatched, though every house was square and meant to resemble a gentleman's abode, a very miserbale mistake in his good Lordship, of an intended fine effect; for the sight of the common people and of the poor, labouring or strolling in and about these dwellings, made them appear to be reduced from better days than flourishing in a primitive or natural state".

(See also Sir Frederick Treves, Highways and Byways in Dorset, 1905, pp 95-97), about Joseph Damer's decision to remove the "offensive" village of Milton, "squatted indecently near to the spot where he intended to build his mansion", and to build the new Milton Abbas "well out of sight of the great house", in 1786).

In Dorchest, Fanny was diverted by the town's "comic, irregular odd old houses". She thought Bridport "a remarkably clean town, with the air so clear and pure, it seemed a new climate".

August 8, 1791

She was overwhelmed by the sublime scenery encountered on the road between Bridport and Lyme: "the most beautiful to which my wandering destinies have yet sent me...diversified with all that can compose luxuriant scenery...with just as much of the approach to sublime as is the province of unterrific beauty...the vales of the finest verdure, wooded and watered as if to give ideas of finished landscapes". She loved the high, noble hills- "the whole from time to time rises into still superior grandeur, by openings between the heights that terminate the view with the splendour of the British Channel".

On the fate of the village of Middleton (Milton)