“What can we do to get her finding curies again, Miss Philpot?” Molly Anning said, running her hands over her lap to smooth out her worn skirt. “That’s what I come to ask—that and how to get the letter to Colonel Birch. I thought if I wrote and he sent money, that would make Mary happy and she would do better upon beach.” She paused. “I’ve wrote plenty of begging letters these last years—they take their time paying up at the British Museum—but I never thought I would have to write one to a gentleman like Colonel Birch.” She took up her cup and gulped the rest of her tea. I suspect she was thinking about him kissing her hand and cursing herself for being taken in.
“Why don’t you leave the letter to us and we’ll have it sent to London?” Louise suggested.
Molly Anning and I both looked at her gratefully for this neat solution: Molly because responsibility for the letter reaching its destination was taken out of her hands, I because I could decide what to do without having to reveal to her that Colonel Birch had written to me. “And I shall take Mary out hunting,” I added. “I’ll keep an eye on her and encourage her.” And put what fossils I find in her basket, until she has recovered her senses, I added to myself.
“Don’t tell Mary about the letter,” Molly ordered, pulling at her coat.
“Of course not.”
Molly looked at me, her dark eyes moving back and forth over my face. “I weren’t always sure of you Philpots,” she said. “Now I am.”
When she’d gone—seeming spryer now that she was no longer weighed down with the letter—I turned to Louise. “What shall I do?”
“Wait for Margaret” was her reply.
On our sister’s return in the evening, we three sat by the fire and discussed Molly Anning’s letter. Margaret was in her element. This was the sort of situation that she read about in the novels she favored, by authors such as Miss Jane Austen, whom Margaret was sure she’d met long ago at the Assembly Rooms the first time we visited Lyme. One of Miss Austen’s books had even featured Lyme Regis, but I did not read fiction and could not be persuaded to try it. Life itself was far messier and didn’t end so tidily with the heroine making the right match. We Philpot sisters were the very embodiment of that frayed life. I did not need novels to remind me of what I had missed.
Margaret held the letter in both hands. “What does it say? Is it really only about money?” She turned it over and over, as if it might magically open and reveal its contents.
“Molly Anning wouldn’t waste the time to write about anything else,” I said, knowing my sister was thinking about marriage. “And she wouldn’t lie to us.”
Margaret ran her fingers over Colonel Birch’s name. “Still, Colonel Birch must see it. It may remind him of what he has left behind.”
“He’ll be reminded that I received his letter and never responded. For if I add to the address he’ll know it’s I who has been meddling—no one else in Lyme would have his address.”
Margaret frowned. “This is not about you, Elizabeth, but about Mary. Don’t you want him to get this letter? Or would you prefer he live in perfect ignorance of Mary’s circumstances? Don’t you want the best for both parties?”
“You sound like one of your lady author’s novels,” I snapped, then stopped. I was gripping a copy of the Geological Society Journal Mr. Buckland had sent me. To calm myself I took a breath. “I believe Colonel Birch is not an honorable man. Sending the letter will just raise Molly Anning’s hopes for the outcome.”
“You and Louise have already done that very thing by taking the letter off her and promising to post it!”
“That is true, and I am beginning to regret saying we would. But I don’t want to play a part in a fruitless, humiliating plea.” I knew my arguments were swinging all about.
Margaret waved the letter at me. “You’re jealous of Mary gaining his attention.”
“I am not!” I said this so sharply that Margaret ducked her head. “That is ridiculous,” I added, trying to soften my tone.
There was a long silence. Margaret set the letter down, then reached over and took my hand. “Elizabeth, you mustn’t stand in Mary’s way of getting something you were never able to.”
I pulled my hand from her grasp. “That is not why I’m objecting.”
“Why, then?”
I sighed. “Mary is a young working girl, uneducated apart from what little we and her church have taught her, and from a poor family. Colonel Birch is from a well-established Yorkshire family with an estate and a coat of arms. He would never seriously consider marrying Mary. Surely you know that. Molly Anning knows it—that is why she has only written about the money. Even Mary knows it, though she won’t say it. You are only encouraging her. He has used her to enhance his collection—for free. That is all. She’s lucky he didn’t do worse. To ask him for money, or to reestablish the connection, just prolongs the Annings’ agony. We mustn’t do so just to please your and Mary’s romantic notions.”
Margaret glared at me.
“Your Miss Austen would never allow such a marriage to take place in her novels you so love,” I went on. “If it can’t happen in fiction, surely it won’t happen in life.”
At last I made myself understood. Margaret’s face crumpled and she began to cry, great, shuddering sobs that shook her entire body. Louise put her arms around her sister but said nothing, for she knew I was right. Margaret grasped on to the magic of novels because they held out hope that Mary—and she herself—might yet have a chance at marriage. While my own experience of life was limited, I knew such a thing would not happen. It hurt, but the truth often does.
“It’s not fair,” Margaret gasped as her sobs finally subsided. “He shouldn’t have paid her the attention he did. Spending so much time with her and complimenting her, giving her the locket and kissing her—”
“He kissed her?” A dart of the jealousy I was trying so hard to hide even from myself shot through me.
Margaret looked chastened. “I wasn’t meant to tell you! I wasn’t meant to tell anyone! Please don’t say anything. Mary only told me because—well, it’s just so delicious to talk it over with someone. It’s as if you relive the moment.” She fell silent, doubtless thinking about her own past kisses.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said, trying to limit the acid in my voice.
I did not sleep well that night. I was not used to having the power to affect someone’s life so and did not easily carry its weight, as a man might have done.
The next day, before taking the letter to Coombe Street to be posted, I added Colonel Birch’s address to it. For all my arguments with Margaret against encouraging a continued link between Colonel Birch and Mary, I could not in the end act as if I were God, but had to let Molly Anning write what she would to him.
The postmistress glanced at the letter, then at me, her eyebrows raised, and I had to turn away before she could say anything. I am sure by the afternoon the gossip had gone all around town that desperate Miss Philpot had written to that cad Colonel Birch.
The Annings waited for an answer, but they received no letter.
I HOPED THAT WOULD be the end of our dealings with Colonel Birch and that we would never see him again. He had his fossils—apart from the dapedium I would not send him—and could move on to another collecting fashion, such as insects or minerals. That is what gentlemen like Colonel Birch do.
It had never occurred to me that I might run into him in London. As Molly Anning had said, it is not Lyme. One million people lived in London compared with the two thousand in Lyme, and I rarely went to Chelsea, where I knew he lived, except to accompany Louise on her annual pilgrimage to the Physic Garden there. I never expected the tide would turn up two such different pebbles side by side.
We took our annual trip to London in the spring, eager to escape Lyme for a time, to see our family and make the usual rounds of visits to friends, shops, galleries, and theaters. When the weather was not good, we often went to the British Museum, housed in Montague Mansion close to our br
other’s house. Having regularly since we were children, we knew the collection intimately.
One particularly rainy day we had separated and were each in different rooms, with our own favorite exhibits. Margaret was in the Gallery, hovering over a collection of cameos and sealstones, while Louise was in the Upper Floor with Mary Delany’s exquisite florilegium, a collection of pictures of plants made of cut paper. I was in the Saloon, where the Natural History collection ranged over several rooms—mostly displays of rocks and minerals, but now with four rooms of fossils that had recently been rearranged and added to. There were a fair number of specimens from the Lyme area, including a few more fish that I had donated.
Mary’s first ichthyosaurus was also there, displayed in a long glass case of its own, thankfully without waistcoat or monocle, though there were still traces of plaster of paris here and there on the specimen, the tail was still straight, and Lord Henley’s name was still attached. I had already visited it several times, and written to the Annings to describe its new position.
It was quiet in the room, with just one other party of visitors wandering amongst the cases. I was studying the skull identified by Cuvier as a mammoth, when I heard a familiar voice ringing out across the room. “Dear lady, once you have seen this ichthyosaurus you will understand just how superior my own specimen is.” I closed my eyes for a moment to still my heart.
Colonel Birch had entered by the far door, dressed as usual in his outdated red soldier’s coat, while a lady a bit older than I held his arm and walked alongside. From her somber dress it seemed she was a widow. She wore a fixed, pleasant expression, and was one of those rare people who lead with no feature whatsoever.
I froze as the two went over to Mary’s ichthyosaurus. Though close to them, my back was turned, and Colonel Birch did not notice me. I heard all of their conversation—or rather, all that Colonel Birch said, for his companion added little except to agree with him.
“Do you see what a jumble of bones this is compared with mine?” he declared. “How the vertebrae and ribs have been squeezed into a mass? And how incomplete it is? Look, do you see the discolored plaster of paris, in the ribs there, and along the spine? That is where Mr. Bullock filled it in. Mine, however, needs no filling in. It may be smaller than this one, but I found it intact, not a bone out of place.”
“How fascinating,” the widow murmured.
“And to think they thought this was a crocodile. I never did, of course. I always knew it was something different, and that I must find one myself.”
“Of course you did.”
“These ichthyosauri are some of the most important scientific finds ever.”
“Are they?”
“As far as we know, no ichthyosaurus exists now and has not done for some time. This means, dear lady, that learned men are charged with discovering how these creatures died out.”
“What do they think?”
“Some have suggested they died in Noah’s Flood; others that some other sort of catastrophe killed them, like a volcano or an earthquake. Whatever the cause, their existence affects our knowledge of the age of the world. We think it may be older than the six thousand years Bishop Ussher allotted it.”
“I see. How interesting.” The widow’s voice trembled a little, as if Colonel Birch’s suggestions disturbed her ordered thoughts, which were clearly slight and not used to being challenged.
“I have been reading about Cuvier’s Doctrine of Catastrophes,” Colonel Birch continued, showing off his knowledge. “Cuvier suggests that the world has been shaped over time by a series of terrible disasters, violence on such a great scale that it has created mountains and blasted seas and killed off species. Cuvier himself did not mention God’s hand in this, though others have interpreted these catastrophes as systematic—God’s regulation over His creation. The Flood would be simply the most recent of these events—which does make one wonder if another is on its way!”
“One does wonder,” the widow said in a small voice, her uncertainty making me grit my teeth. For all he annoyed me, Colonel Birch was curious about the world. If I were at his side I would have said more than “One does wonder.”
I might have kept my back to them and let Colonel Birch pass forever from our lives, but for what he said next. He couldn’t resist boasting. “Seeing all of these specimens reminds me of last summer in Lyme Regis. I grew rather good at hunting fossils, you see. Not just the complete ichthyosaurus, but fragments of many others and a large collection of pentacrinites—the sea lilies I showed you, do you remember?”
“I’m not sure.”
Colonel Birch chuckled. “Of course not, dear lady. Ladies are not equipped to look at such things so carefully as men.”
I turned around. “I should like Mary Anning to hear you say that, Colonel Birch! She would not so easily agree, I think.”
Colonel Birch started, though his military bearing prevented him from revealing too much astonishment. He bowed. “Miss Philpot! What a surprise—and a pleasure, of course—to find you here. When we last met we discussed my ichthyosaurus, did we not? Now, may I present to you Mrs. Taylor. Mrs. Taylor, this is Miss Philpot, whom I met when I was staying in Lyme. We share an interest in fossils.”
Mrs. Taylor and I nodded to each other, and though her face didn’t lose its pleasant expression, her features seemed to snap into place, so that I noticed her lips were thin, with pursed lines along them like a drawstring bag.
“And how fares lovely Lyme?” Colonel Birch asked. “Do its residents still comb the shores daily in search of ancient treasure, of evidence of denizens of previous eras?”
I presumed this was an elaborate way of asking after Mary, couched in bad poetry. I did not have to respond with poetry, however. I preferred straightforward prose. “Mary Anning still hunts for fossils, if that’s what you’re asking, sir. And her brother helps when he can. But in truth the family is doing poorly, for they have found little of value for many months.”
As I spoke, Colonel Birch’s eyes followed the other party of visitors heading into the next room. Perhaps he wished he could disappear with them.
“Nor have they been paid for their services to others, as you will be aware from correspondence,” I added, raising my voice and allowing a needle into it that made Mrs. Taylor’s mouth pucker as if its strings were being pulled tight.
Just then Margaret and Louise entered from the far end of the room, in search of me, for we were expected home shortly. They stopped when they saw Colonel Birch, and Margaret turned pale.
“I should very much like to speak with you further about the Annings, Colonel Birch,” I declared. It was bad enough to come face-to-face with him in all his smugness, showing off to his widow friend about fossils he had not found. But it was his dismissal of women’s power of observation—thus denying Mary and me any credit for all that we had found over the years—which made me completely reverse my decision about keeping him out of the Annings’ lives. He owed them a great deal, and I would tell him so. I had to speak up.
Before I could continue, however, Margaret hurried forward, pulling Louise with her. Introductions between my sisters and Mrs. Taylor, as well as banal words to and from Colonel Birch, interrupted me—which is what Margaret intended, I am sure. I waited until the polite conversation was dying down before I repeated, “I should like to speak with you, sir.”
“I am sure there is much to say,” Colonel Birch replied with an uneasy smile, “and I would dearly love to call on all of you”—he nodded at my sisters—“but sadly I am shortly to travel to Yorkshire.”
“Then it will have to be now. Shall we?” I gestured to another corner of the room, away from the others.
“Oh, I don’t think Colonel Birch—” Margaret began but was interrupted by Louise, who tucked her arm through Mrs. Taylor’s and said, “Do you like gardens, Mrs. Taylor? If you do you must see Mrs. Delany’s florilegium—you will be enchanted. Come, both of you.” It took all of Louise’s goodwill to drag Mrs. Taylor throu
gh the Saloon towards the exit, Margaret trailing behind them and throwing me warning looks. Her face was still white but with two red spots in her cheeks.
When they were gone, Colonel Birch and I faced each other alone in the long room, the high windows throwing a rainy gray light over us. He was no longer looking neutral, but concerned and a little annoyed. “Well, Miss Philpot.”
“Well, Colonel Birch.”
“Did you receive my letter about providing a dapedium for my collection?”
“Your letter?” I was thrown off guard, for I had not been thinking about that letter. “Yes, I did receive it.”
“And you did not answer?”
I frowned. Colonel Birch was already steering the conversation away from where I had intended it to go, making it a criticism of my own behavior rather than his. His tactics were low and angered me, so that my response was as direct as a dagger. “No, I didn’t answer it. I do not respect you, and I will never let you have any of my fossil fish. I did not feel the need to put such sentiments in writing.”
“I see.” Colonel Birch reddened as if he had been slapped. I expect no one had ever told him to his face that they did not respect him. Indeed, it was a new experience for us both: unpleasant for him, frightening and thrilling for me. Over the years, living in Lyme had made me bolder in my thoughts and words, but I had never before been quite so reckless and rude. I lowered my eyes and unbuttoned and rebuttoned my gloves, to give my trembling hands something to do. The gloves were new, from a haberdasher’s in Soho. By the end of the year they too would be ruined by Lyme clay and seawater.
Colonel Birch laid his hand on the glass case nearest him, as if to steady himself. It contained a variety of bivalves, which in other circumstances he might have studied. Now he looked at them as if he had never seen one before.
“Since you left,” I began, “Mary has not found one specimen of value, and the family has little stock on hand to sell, for she gave everything she found last summer to you.”
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