Someone come to stand near me as I worked. I was used to visitors looking over my shoulder and seeing what the famous Mary Anning were up to. Sometimes I could hear them talking about me from a distance. “What do you think she’s found there?” they’d say. “Is it one of those creatures? A crocodile or, what was it I read, a giant turtle without its shell?”
Though I smiled to myself, I didn’t bother to correct them. It was hard for people to understand that there had lived creatures they could not even imagine and that no longer existed. It had taken me years to accept the idea, even when I had seen the evidence so plainly before me. Though they respected me more now I’d found two kinds of monsters, people were not going to change their minds simply because Mary Anning told them so. I had learned that much from taking out curious visitors. They wanted to find treasure upon beach, they wanted to see monsters, but they did not want to think about how and when those monsters lived. It challenged their idea of the world too much.
Now the spectator moved so that he blocked the sun and his shadow fell on the ichie, and I had to look up. It was one of the burly Day brothers, Davy or Billy, I wasn’t sure which. I laid down my hammer, wiped my hands, and stood.
“Sorry to bother you, Mary,” he said, “but there be something Billy and me need to show you, back by Gun Cliff.” As he spoke he glanced down at the ichie, checking my work, I expect. I’d got much better over the years at chiseling out a specimen from the rock, and didn’t need the Days to help so much, except sometimes to carry slabs of rock back to the workshop.
Their opinion mattered to me, though, and I was glad to see he looked satisfied with what I’d done so far. “What have you found?”
Davy Day scratched his head. “Don’t know. One of them turtles, maybe.”
“A plesie?” I said. “Are you sure?”
Davy shifted from one foot to the other. “Well, it could be a crocodilly. I never knowed the difference.” Recently the Days had begun sea-quarrying in the Blue Lias, and often found things in the ledges off Lyme. They never wanted to understand what they dug up. They knew it made me and them money, and that was all they cared about. People often come to me to help them with what they found. Usually it was a small bit of ichie—a jawbone, some teeth, a few verteberries fused together.
I picked up my hammer and basket. “Tray, stay,” I commanded, snapping my fingers and pointing. Tray come running up from the water’s edge, where he had been chasing the waves. He curled his black-and-white body into a ball and lay his chin on a rock next to the ichie. He was a gentle little dog, but he growled when anyone come near one of my specimens.
I followed Davy Day round the bend that hid Lyme. The sun lit the houses piling up the hill, and the sea was silvery like a mirror. The boats moored in the harbor were strewn about like sticks, abandoned however the water set them on the seabed at low tide. My heart brimmed with fondness for these sights. “Mary Anning, you are the most famous person in this town,” I said to myself. I knew very well I was too full of pride, and would have to go to chapel and pray to be forgiven my sin. But I couldn’t help it: I had come such a long way since Miss Elizabeth first hired the Days for us so many years before, when I was young and poor and ignorant. Now people come to visit me and write about what I found. It was hard not to get a big head. Even the people of Lyme were nicer to me, if only because I brought in visitors and more trade.
One thing did keep me from swelling too much, though, and were a little needle in my heart. Whatever I found, whatever was said of me, Elizabeth Philpot was no longer in Lyme to share it with.
“It be here.” Davy Day gestured to where his brother was sitting, holding a wedge of pork pie in his big paw. Near him was a load of cut stone on a wooden frame they were using to carry it. Billy Day looked up, his mouth full, and nodded.
I always felt a little awkward with Billy, now he was married to Fanny Miller. He never said anything, but I often wondered if Fanny spoke harsh words about me to him. I weren’t exactly jealous of her—quarrymen are not considered suitable for any but the most desperate women. But their marriage reminded me that I was at the very bottom of the heap, and would never marry. Fanny was having all the time what I experienced only the once with Colonel Birch in the orchard. I had my fame to comfort me, and the money it brought in, but that only went so far. I could not hate Fanny, for it were my fault she was crippled. But I could not ever feel friendly towards her nor comfortable round her.
That was the case with many people in Lyme. I had come unstuck. I would never be a lady like the Philpots—no one would ever call me Miss Mary. I would be plain Mary Anning. Yet I weren’t like other working people either. I was caught in between, and always would be. That brought freedom, but it was lonely too.
Luckily the ledges gave me plenty of things to think about other than myself. Davy Day pointed at a ridge of rock, and I leaned over and made out a very clear line of vertebrae about three feet long. It seemed so obvious I chuckled. I had been over these ledges hundreds of times and not seen it. It always surprised me what could be found here. There were hundreds of bodies surrounding us, waiting for a pair of keen eyes to find them.
“We was carrying a load to Charmouth and Billy tripped over the ridge,” Davy explained.
“You tripped over it, not me,” Billy declared.
“It were you, you dolt.”
“Not me—you.”
I let the brothers argue and studied the vertebrae with growing excitement. They were longer and fatter than an ichie’s. I followed the line to where the paddles would be and saw there enough evidence of long phalanges to convince me. “It’s a plesiosaurus,” I announced. The Days stopped arguing. “A turtle,” I conceded, for they would never learn that long, strange word.
Davy and Billy looked at each other and then at me. “That be the first monster we ever found,” Billy said.
“So it is,” I agreed. The Days had uncovered giant ammonites, but never an ichie or plesie. “You’ve become fossil hunters.”
In unison the Days took a step back, as if distancing themselves from my words. “Oh no, we be quarrymen,” Billy said. “We deal in stone, not monsters.” He nodded at the blocks of stone awaiting their delivery to Charmouth.
I was astonished at my own luck. There was probably a whole specimen here, and the Days didn’t want it! “Then I’ll pay you for your time in digging it out for me and will take it off your hands,” I suggested.
“Don’t know. We got the stone to deliver.”
“After that, then. I can’t get this out myself—as you saw, I am working on an ich—a crocodile.”
I wondered if I were imagining it, but it seemed that for once the Days were not in complete agreement. Billy was more uneasy about having anything to do with the plesie. I took a chance then at guessing the matter. “Are you going to let Fanny rule what you do, then, Billy Day? Does she think a turtle or crocodile will turn round and bite you?”
Billy hung his head while Davy laughed. “You got the measure of him!” He turned to his brother. “Now, are we going to dig this out for Mary or are you going to sit with your wife while she holds your balls in her claws?”
Billy bunched up his mouth like a wad of paper. “How much you pay us?”
“A guinea,” I answered promptly, feeling generous, and also hoping such a fee would stop Fanny’s complaints.
“We got to take this load to Charmouth first,” Davy said. That was his way of saying yes.
There were so many people upon beach now looking for fossils, especially on a sunny day like this one, that I had to get Mam to come and sit with the plesie so no one else would claim it as theirs. Summers were like that now, and it was partly my fault, for making Lyme beaches so famous. It was only in winter that the shore cleared of people, driven away by the bitter wind and rain. That was when I could go out all day and not meet another soul.
The Days worked fast and got the plesie out in two days, about the same time I finished with my ichie. As I was just roun
d the corner from them, I could go back and forth between the two sites and give them instructions. It weren’t a bad specimen, though it had no head. Plesies seem to lose their heads easily.
We had just got both specimens back to the workshop when Mam called from her table out in the square, “Two strangers come to see you, Mary!”
“Lord help us, it’s too crowded here,” I muttered. I thanked the Days and sent them out to be paid by Mam, and called for the visitors to come in. What a sight met them! Two monster specimens laid out in slabs on the floor—indeed, covering so much of it the men couldn’t even step inside, but hung in the doorway, their eyes wide. I felt a little jolt of lightning run through me, one I couldn’t explain, and knew then that they could not be ordinary visitors.
“My apologies for the mess, gentlemen,” I said, “but I’ve just brung in two animals and not had a chance to sort them out yet. Were there something I can help you with?” I knew I must look a sight, with Blue Lias mud all over my face and my eyes flaming red from working so hard to get the ichie out.
The young one—not much older than me, and handsome, with deep-set blue eyes, a long nose, and a fine chin—recovered himself first. “Miss Anning, I am Charles Lyell,” he said with a smile, “and I bring with me Monsieur Constant Prévost, from Paris.”
“Paris?” I cried. I could not contain the panic in my voice.
The Frenchman gazed at the riot of stone on the floor, and then at me. “Enchanté, mademoiselle,” he said, bowing. Though he looked kindly, with curly hair and long sideburns and wrinkles round his eyes, his voice was serious.
“Oh!” He was a spy. A spy for Monsieur Cuvier, come to see what I was up to. I stared at the floor, looking at it as he must see it. Laid out side by side were two specimens—an ichie without a tail and a plesie without a head. The plesie’s tail was detached from its pelvis and could easily be moved to complete the ichie. Or, I could take the ichie’s head, remove some vertebrae from the neck of the plesie, and attach the head. Those who knew the two creatures well wouldn’t be fooled, but idiots might buy them. From the evidence in front of him, it was easy enough for Monsieur Prévost to reach the conclusion I was about to join the two incomplete monsters together to create one whole, third monster.
I wanted to sit down with the suddenness of it all, but I couldn’t in front of the men.
“I bring greetings from the Reverends Buckland and Conybeare,” Charles Lyell went on, oblivious that he was adding fuel to the fire by mentioning their names. “I was Professor Buckland’s student at Oxford, and—”
“Mr. Lyell, sir, Monsieur Prévost,” I interrupted, “I can tell you now I’m an honest woman. I would never fiddle with a specimen, whatever Baron Cuvier thinks! And I will swear on a Bible to it, sirs, that I will! We don’t have a Bible here—we had one once for a bit but had to sell it. But I can take you to the chapel right now and Reverend Gleed will hear me swear on it, if that will do any good. Or we can go to St. Michael’s, if you prefer. The vicar there don’t know me well, but he’ll provide a Bible.”
Charles Lyell tried to interrupt me, but I could not stop. “I know these specimens here ain’t whole, and I swear to you I will set them as I see them, and never try to swap parts. A plesiosaurus’s tail might fit onto an ichthyosaurus, but I would never do that. And of course an ichie’s head is far too big to fit onto the end of the plesie’s neck. It wouldn’t work at all.” I was babbling, and the Frenchman in particular was looking perplexed.
Then it all started to come down on me, and I had to sit, gentlemen or no. Truly I was ruined. Right there, in front of strangers, I begun to cry.
This upset the Frenchman more than any words could have done. He begun rattling away in French, with Mr. Lyell interrupting him and speaking his own slow French, while all I could think of was that I wanted to call out to Mam to pay the Days just a pound, as I’d been too generous and we would need the extra shillings since I would no longer be able to hunt and sell monsters. I would have to go back to the piddling curies, the ammos and bellies and gryphies of my youth. Even then I wouldn’t sell so many, as there were that many more hunters selling such things themselves. We would grow poor again, and Joe would never get to set up his own business, and Mam and I would always be stuck on Cockmoile Square and not move up the hill to a better shop. I let myself cry over my future until my tears were spent and the men were silent.
When they were sure I was done crying, Monsieur Prévost pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. Leaning across the slabs so that he wouldn’t step on the specimens, he held out the han kie to me like a white flag over a battlefield of stone. When I hesitated, he gestured with it to encourage me and gave me a little smile that dug deep dimples in his cheeks. So I took it, and wiped my eyes on the softest, whitest cloth I’d ever touched. It smelled of tobacco and made me shiver and smile, for the lightning struck again, just a little. I made to hand it back, now smeared with Blue Lias clay, but he would not take it, indicating that I should keep it. It was then I begun to think maybe Monsieur Prévost were not a spy after all. I folded the handkerchief and tucked it away under my cap, for that was the only place in the room not filthy.
“Miss Anning, please let me speak,” Charles Lyell begun tentatively, perhaps fearful I would burst out crying again. I did not; I was done. I noticed then that he was calling me Miss Anning rather than Mary.
“Perhaps I should explain to you what we are doing here. Monsieur Prévost kindly hosted me last year when I visited Paris, introducing me to Baron Cuvier at the Museum of Natural History and accompanying me on geological expeditions in the area. Thus when he wrote to say he was coming to England, I offered to take him to some of the most important geological sites in the southern parts of the country. We have been to Oxford, Birmingham and Bristol, and down to Cornwall and back, via Exeter and Plymouth. Naturally we were keen to come to Lyme Regis and visit you, to go out on the beaches where you collect fossils and to see your workshop. Indeed, Monsieur Prévost has just said he is most impressed by what he sees here. He would tell you himself, but alas, he speaks no English.”
As Mr. Lyell was speaking, the Frenchman squatted by the ichthyosaurus and run a finger up and down its ribs, which were almost complete and beautifully spaced like iron railings. I could no longer just sit while he was crouching with his thighs so near to me. I picked up a blade, knelt by the ichie’s jaw and begun to scrape at the shale clinging to it.
“We should like to examine the specimens you have found more closely, if we might, Miss Anning,” Mr. Lyell said. “We would like also to see where they have come from on the beach—they, and the plesiosaurus you found last December. A most remarkable specimen, with its extraordinary neck and head.”
I froze. His bringing up the most worrying part of the plesie sounded suspicious. “You seen it?”
“Of course. I was there when it arrived at the Geological Society offices. Did you not hear of the drama of it?”
“I heard nothing. Sometimes I feel I could be the man in the moon, for the little I hear of what’s happening in the scientific world. I had someone who was going to keep me informed, but—Mr. Lyell, do you know of Elizabeth Philpot?”
“Philpot? No, I have not heard that name, I’m sorry. Should I know her?”
“No, no.” Yes, I thought. Yes, you should. “What was it you was saying—about the drama?”
“The plesiosaurus was delayed in its arrival,” Mr. Lyell explained, “and did not reach London until almost two weeks after the Society meeting at which Reverend Conybeare was speaking of it. You know, Miss Anning, at the meeting Reverend Buckland was very complimentary of your collecting skills.”
“He was?”
“Yes, indeed. Now, when the plesiosaurus arrived at last, the men could not get it up the stairs, for it was too wide.”
“Six feet wide, the frame round it was. I know, for I built it. We had to turn it sideways to get it out this door.”
“Of course. They tried the better part of a day
to get it up to the meeting rooms. Finally, though, it had to be left in the entranceway, where many Society members came to look at it.”
I watched the Frenchman crawl between the ichie and plesie to get round to the plesie’s front paddle. I gestured with my head. “Did he see it?”
“Not in London, but when we went to Birmingham from Oxford, we stopped en route at Stowe House, where the Duke of Buckingham has taken it.” Mr. Lyell, though polite as a gentleman ought to be, made a little face. “It is a splendid specimen, but rather swamped by the duke’s extensive collection of glittering objects.”
I paused, my hand on the ichie’s jaw. So this poor specimen would go to a rich man’s house, to be ignored amongst all the silver and gold. I could have wept. “So is he”—I nodded at Monsieur Prévost—“going to tell Monsieur Cuvier that the plesiosaurus isn’t a fake? That it really does have a small head and a long neck and I weren’t just putting two animals together?”
Monsieur Prévost glanced up from his study of the plesie with a keen look that made me think he understood more English than he spoke.
Mr. Lyell smiled at me. “There is no need, Miss Anning. Baron Cuvier is fully convinced of the specimen, even without Monsieur Prévost having seen it. He has had a great deal of correspondence about the plesiosaurus with various of your champions: Reverend Buckland, Conybeare, Mr. Johnson, Mr. Cumberland—”
“I wouldn’t call them my champions exactly,” I muttered. “They like me when they need something.”
“They have a great deal of respect for you, Miss Anning,” Charles Lyell countered.
Remarkable Creatures Page 26