Remarkable Creatures

by Tracy Chevalier

  Bessy had accompanied us from London and relished complaining about her revised situation: the steep climb from the town to Morley Cottage; the sharp sea breeze that made her chesty; the impenetrable accent of the locals she met at the Shambles; the Lyme Bay crabs that brought her out in a rash. While Bessy had been a seemingly quiet, solid girl in Bloomsbury, Lyme brought out in her a bullishness she expressed with her cheeks. Behind her back we Philpots laughed at her complaints, though at times it brought us close to giving her notice as well, when she wasn’t threatening to leave.

  Mary didn’t budge from the doorsill, Bessy’s temperament having no effect. “What you making?”

  “Elderflower cordial,” I replied.

  “Elderflower champagne,” Margaret corrected, with an accompanying flourish of her hand.

  “Never had that,” Mary said, eyeing the lacy flower heads and sniffing at the muscat bloom that filled the room.

  “There is such an abundance of elderflowers here in June,” Margaret said. “You should be making things out of them. Isn’t that what country folk do?”

  I winced at my sister’s patronizing words. But Mary didn’t seem offended. Instead her eyes followed Margaret, who was now spinning about the room in a waltz, dipping her head over one shoulder, then the other, twisting her hands in time to her humming.

  Lord help her, I thought, the girl is going to admire the silliest of us. “What is it, Mary?” I did not mean to sound so short.

  Mary Anning turned to me, though her eyes kept darting back to Margaret. “Pa sent me to say he’ll make the cabinet for a pound.”

  “Will he, now?” I had gone off the idea of the cabinet if it was to be made by Richard Anning. “Tell him I will think on it.”

  “Who is our visitor, Elizabeth?” Louise asked, her fingers still in the elderflowers.

  “This is Mary Anning, the cabinetmaker’s daughter.”

  At the name, Bessy turned from the table, where she was turning out a fruitcake she had left to cool. She gaped at Mary. “You the lightning girl?”

  Mary dropped her eyes and nodded.

  We all looked at her. Even Margaret stopped waltzing to stare. We had heard about the girl struck by lightning, for people still talked of it years later. It was one of those miracles small towns thrive on: children seeming drowned then spurting out water like a whale and reviving; men falling from cliffs and reappearing unscathed; boys run down by coaches and standing up with only a scratched cheek. Such everyday miracles knit communities together, giving them their legends to marvel at. It had never occurred to me when I first met her that Mary might be the lightning girl.

  “Do you remember being struck?” Margaret asked.

  Mary shrugged, clearly uncomfortable with our sudden interest.

  Louise never liked that sort of attention either, and made an effort to break up the scrutiny. “My name is Mary too. I was named after my grandmothers. But I didn’t like Grandmother Mary as much as Grandmother Louise.” She paused. “Would you like to help us?”

  “What do I do?” Mary stepped up to the table.

  “Wash your hands first,” I ordered. “Louise, look at her nails!” Mary’s nails were rimmed with gray clay, her blunt fingers puckered from limestone. It was a state I would become familiar with in my own fingers.

  Bessy was still staring at Mary. “Bessy, you can clean in the parlor while we’re working here,” I reminded her.

  She grunted and picked up her mop. “I wouldn’t have a girl who’s been struck by lightning in my kitchen.”

  I tutted. “Already you’re becoming as superstitious as the local people you like to look down on.”

  Bessy blew out her cheeks again as she banged her mop against the doorjamb. I caught Louise’s eye and we smiled. Then Margaret began to waltz around the table again, humming.

  “For pity’s sake, Margaret, do your dancing elsewhere!” I cried. “Go and dance with Bessy’s mop.”

  Margaret laughed and pirouetted out of the door and down the hallway, to our young visitor’s disappointment. By then, Louise had Mary plucking stems from the flower heads, careful to shake the pollen into the pot rather than around the kitchen. Once she understood what she was to do, Mary worked steadily, pausing only when Margaret reappeared in a lime green turban. “One feather or two?” she asked, holding up one, then another ostrich feather to the band crossing her forehead.

  Mary watched Margaret with wide eyes. At that time turbans had not yet arrived in Lyme—though I can report now that Margaret pushed the fashion onto Lyme’s women, and within a few years, turbans were a common sight up and down Broad Street. I am not sure they complement empire-line gowns as well as other hats, and I believe some laughed behind their hands at the sight, but isn’t fashion meant to entertain?

  “Thank you for helping with the elderflowers,” Louise said when the flowers were soaking in hot water, sugar, and lemon. “You may have a bottle of it when it’s ready.”

  Mary Anning nodded, then turned to me. “Can I look at your curies, miss? You didn’t show me the other day.”

  I hesitated, for I was a little shy now to reveal what I had found. She was remarkably self-possessed for a young girl. I suppose it was working from such an early age that did it, though it was tempting, too, to blame the lightning. However, I could not show my reluctance, and so I led Mary into the dining room.

  Most people when they enter the room remark on the impressive view of Golden Cap, but Mary did not even glance through the window. Instead she went straight to the sideboard, where I had laid out my finds, much to Bessy’s disgust. “What are those?” She gestured to the slips of paper beside each fossil.

  “Labels. They describe when and where I found the fossil, and in which layer of rock, as well as a guess at what they might be. That is what they do at the British Museum.”

  “You been there?” Mary was frowning at each label.

  “Of course. We grew up near it. Do you not keep track of where you find things?”

  Mary shrugged. “I don’t read nor write.”

  “Will you go to school?”

  She shrugged again. “Sunday school, maybe. They teach reading and writing there.”

  “At St. Michael’s?”

  “No, we ain’t Church of England. We’re Congregationalists. Chapel’s on Coombe Street.” Mary picked up an ammonite I was especially proud of, for it was whole, not chipped or cracked, and had fine, even ridges on its spiral. “You can get a shilling for this ammo, if you give it a good clean,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m not going to sell it. It’s for my collection.”

  Mary gave me a funny look. It occurred to me then that the Annings never collected to keep. A good specimen to them meant a good price.

  Mary set down the ammonite and picked up a brown stone about the length of her finger, but thicker, with faint spiral markings on it. “That’s an odd thing,” I said. “I’m not sure what it is. It could be just a stone, but it seems—different. I felt I had to pick it up.”

  “It’s a bezoar stone.”

  “Bezoar?” I frowned. “What’s that?”

  “A hair ball like you find in the stomachs of goats. Pa told me about them.” She put it down, then took up a bivalve shell called a gryphaea, which the locals likened to the Devil’s toenails. “You haven’t cleaned this gryphie yet, have you, miss?”

  “I scrubbed the mud off.”

  “But did you scrape it with a blade?”

  I frowned. “What kind of blade?”

  “Oh, a penknife will do, though a razor’s better. You scrape at the inside, to get the silt and such out, and give it a good shape. I could show you.”

  I sniffed. The idea of a child teaching me how to do something seemed ridiculous. And yet . . . “All right, Mary Anning. Come along tomorrow with your blades and show me. I’ll pay you a penny per fossil to clean them.”

  Mary brightened at the suggestion of payment. “Thank you, Miss Philpot.”

  “Off you go, now. Ask B
essy on the way out to give you a slice of her fruitcake.”

  When she was gone, Louise said, “She remembers the lightning. I could see it in her eyes.”

  “How could she? She was little more than a baby!”

  “Lightning must be hard to forget.”

  The following day Richard Anning agreed to make me a specimen cabinet for fifteen shillings. It was the first of many cabinets I have owned, though he was only to make four for me before he died. I have had cabinets of better quality and finish, where the drawers glide without sticking and the joins don’t need to be reglued after a dry spell. But I accepted the flaws of his workmanship, for I knew that the care he neglected to put into his cabinets he put into his daughter’s knowledge of fossils.

  SOON MARY HAD FOUND her way into our lives, cleaning fossils for me, selling me fossil fish she and her father had found once she discovered I liked them. She sometimes accompanied me to the beach when I went out hunting for fossils, and though I didn’t tell her, I was more at ease when she was with me, for I worried about the tide cutting me off. Mary had no fear of that, for she had a natural feel for the tides that I never really learned. Perhaps to have that sense you must grow up with the sea so close you could leap into it from your window. While I consulted tide tables in our almanac before going out on the beach, Mary always knew what the tide was doing, coming in or going out, neap or spring, and how much of the beach was exposed at any given time. On my own I only went along the beach when the tide was receding, for I knew I had a few clear hours—though even then I often lost track of time, as is so easy to do while hunting, and would turn to find the sea creeping up on me. When I was with Mary she naturally kept track in her head of the movement of the sea.

  I valued Mary’s company for other reasons too, as she taught me many things: how the sea sorts stones of similar sizes into bands along the shore, and which band you might find what fossils in; how to spot vertical cracks in the cliff face that warn of a possible landslip; where to access the cliff walks we could use if the tide did cut us off.

  She was also handy as a companion. In some ways Lyme was a freer place than London; for example, I could walk about town on my own, without needing to be accompanied by my sisters or Bessy, as I would in London. The beach, however, was often empty save for a few fishermen checking crab pots; or scavengers of debris whom I suspected were smugglers; or travelers walking at low tide between Charmouth and Lyme. It was not considered a place for a lady to be out on her own, not even by independent Lyme standards. Later, when I was older and better known in town, and when I was less bothered about what others thought of me, I went out alone on the beach. But in those early days I preferred company. Sometimes I could persuade Margaret or Louise to come with me, and occasionally they even found fossils. Though Margaret hated to get her hands dirty, she did enjoy finding chunks of iron pyrites, for she liked the glitter of fool’s gold. Louise complained of the deadness of rock compared with the plants she preferred, though she did sometimes scramble up the cliffs and study blades of sea grass with her magnifying glass.

  We spent much of our time on the mile-long beach between Lyme and Charmouth. East past the Annings’ house, at the end of Gun Cliff, the shore bends sharply to the left so that the beach is out of sight of the town. It is flanked for several hundred yards by Church Cliffs, which are made up of what is called Blue Lias—layers of limestone and shale with a blue-gray tint, forming a striped pattern. The beach then curves gently around to the right before straightening out towards Charmouth. High above the beach past that curve hangs Black Ven, an enormous landslip that has created a slanted layer of mudstone from the cliffs down to the shore. Both Church Cliffs and Black Ven hold many fossils, gradually releasing them over time onto the shoreline below. That was where Mary found many of her finest specimens. It was also where we experienced some of our greatest dramas.

  BY OUR SECOND SUMMER in Lyme, Margaret had settled well into her new life. She was young, the sea air gave her a fresh complexion, and she was new, and therefore the object of much attention amongst the entertaining set. She soon had her favorite partners for whist, her preferred bathing companions, and families who would parade with her along the Cobb. During the season there was a ball at the Assembly Rooms every Tuesday, and Margaret did not miss a dance, becoming a favorite for being so light on her feet. Louise and I sometimes accompanied her, but she soon found more interesting friends to go with: London or Bristol or Exeter families in Lyme for part of the summer, as well as a few select Lyme residents. Louise and I were relieved not to have to go each time. Ever since the cutting remark I had overheard about my jaw years before, I had not been comfortable dancing, preferring to sit and watch or, better, read at home. One hundred and fifty pounds per annum between three sisters does not leave money for the purchase of many books, and Lyme’s circulating library contained mostly novels, but I requested that any gifts at Christmas or birthdays should be of books on natural history. I went without a new shawl so that I might buy a book instead. And friends from London lent books to me.

  My sisters did not complain of missing London life. Being the center of attention in a modest place suited Margaret better than fighting to be noticed amongst thousands in London society. Louise also seemed more content, for the quiet suited her nature. She loved the garden at Morley Cottage, with its view of Lyme Bay and a huge hundred-year-old tulip tree in one corner. The garden was much bigger than we’d had in Red Lion Square. There, of course, we’d had gardeners, whereas now Louise did most of the work herself, and preferred it that way. The climate challenged her as well, for the salty wind demanded hardier plants than those that thrived in soft London rain: hebe and sedum and juniper, salvia and thrift and sea holly. She created rose beds more beautiful than any I had seen in Bloomsbury.

  Of the three it was I who thought of London most. I missed the currency of ideas. In London we had been part of a wide circle of solicitors’ families, and social occasions had been mentally stimulating as well as entertaining. Often I had sat with my brother and his friends at dinner as they discussed Napoleon’s prospects, or whether Pitt ought to have become Prime Minister again, or what should be done about the slave trade. I even occasionally contributed to the conversation.

  In Lyme, however, I heard no such talk. Though I had my fossils to keep me occupied, there were few people I could discuss them with. When I read Hutton or Cuvier or Werner or Lamarck or other natural philosophers, I could not go around to friends to ask what they made of these men’s radical ideas. The Lyme middle classes were surrounded by noteworthy natural phenomena, but they did not show much curiosity about them. Instead they talked about the weather and the tides, the fishing and the crops, the visitors and the season. You might think they would be concerned about Napoleon and the war with France, if only because of its effect on the small shipbuilding industry in Lyme. But local families discussed repairs to the seawall that was taking a battering, or the bath house not long opened that was doing so well others were sure to copy it, or whether the town mill was grinding flour fine enough. Summer visitors we met at the Assembly Rooms or at church or over cups of tea at others’ houses could sometimes be encouraged to discuss topics of more substance, but often they were traveling to get away from such talk, and relished local news and gossip.

  I was particularly frustrated, as the fossils I was finding were so very puzzling, and filled me with questions I wanted to air. Ammonites, for instance, the most visible and striking of the fossils found at Lyme: What exactly were they? I could not believe they were snakes, as so many unquestioningly did. Why would they curl up into balls? I had never heard of snakes doing such a thing. And where were their heads? I looked carefully each time I found an ammonite, but could discover no trace of a head. It was very peculiar that I could find so many fossils of them on the beach, and yet not see them alive.

  This did not seem to bother others, however. I hoped someone might suggest to me over a cup of tea in our parlor, “Do you know, Miss P
hilpot, ammonites remind me rather of snails. Do you think they might be a sort of snail we haven’t seen before?” Instead they talked about the mud on the road from Charmouth; or what they were going to wear to the next ball; or the traveling circus they were going to Bridport to see. If they did say something about fossils, it was to question my interest. “How can you be so fond of mere stones?” a new friend Margaret brought back from the Assembly Rooms once asked.

  “They’re not just stones,” I tried to explain. “They are bodies that have become stone, of creatures that lived long ago. When one finds them, that is the first time they have been seen for thousands of years.”

  “How horrible!” she cried and turned to listen to Margaret play. Visitors often turned to Margaret when they found Louise too quiet and me too peculiar. Margaret could always entertain them.

  Only Mary Anning shared my enthusiasm and curiosity, but she was too young to engage in such conversations. I sometimes felt in those early years that I was waiting for her to grow up so that I could have the companionship I craved. In that, I was right.

  At first I thought I might talk about fossils with Henry Hoste Henley, Lord of Colway Manor and Member of Parliament for Lyme Regis. He lived in a large house set back at the end of an avenue of trees on the outskirts of Lyme, about a mile from Morley Cottage. Lord Henley had a large extended family; apart from his wife and many children, there were also Henleys in Chard, several miles inland, and Colway Manor brimmed with guests. We were occasionally invited too—to a dinner, to their Christmas ball, to watch the start of the hunt, where Lord Henley handed out port and whisky before the hunters rode out.

  The Henleys were the closest to gentry that Lyme had, but Lord Henley still had mud on his boots and dirt under his nails. He had a collection of fossils too, and when he found out I was interested, he sat me at his side at dinner so that we could talk about them. Thrilled at first, I discovered after a few minutes that Lord Henley knew nothing about fossils other than that they were col lectible and made him appear worldly and intelligent. He was the kind of man who led with his feet rather than his head. I tried to draw him out by asking what he thought an ammonite was. Lord Henley chuckled and sucked in a great slug of wine. “Has no one told you, Miss Philpot? They are worms!” He banged his glass onto the table, a signal for a servant to refill it.