Tracy Chevalier - Remarkable Creatures

Joseph stood aside so that I could go. I paused as I passed him. “Joseph, I should be very grateful if you didn’t tell Mary or your mother that I have been here. There is no need to upset them, is there?”

Joseph nodded. “I guess I owe you a favour anyway.”

“Why?”

“It were you suggested I become an apprentice after we sold the croc. That were the best thing ever happened to me. I thought once I started I wouldn’t never have to hunt curies again, but always something pulls me back into it. After this is sold-” he nodded at the plesiosaurus “-I’m done with curies for good. It’ll be upholstering and nothing else. I’ll be glad if I never have to go down upon beach again. So I will keep your secret for you, Miss Philpot.” Joseph smiled briefly-the only smile I had ever seen on his face. It brought out a touch of his father’s handsomeness.

“I hope you will be very happy,” I said, using the words I hadn’t been able to say to his sister.

The rapping on our front door interrupted us as we were eating. It was so sudden and loud that we all three jumped, and Margaret upset her watercress soup.

Normally we let Bessy go to the door in her own ponderous fashion, but the knocks were so urgent that Louise sprang up and hurried down the passage to answer it. Margaret and I could not see whom she let in, but we heard low voices in the passage. Then Louise put her head around the door. “Molly Anning is here to see us,” she said. “She has said she will wait until we have finished eating. I’ve left her to warm by the fire and will get Bessy to build it up.”

Margaret jumped up. “I’ll just get Mrs Anning some soup.”

I looked down at my own soup. I could not sit and eat it while an Anning waited in the other room. I got up as well, but stood uncertain in the doorway of the parlour.

Louise saved me, as she often does. “Brandy, perhaps,” she said as she brushed past with a grumbling Bessy in tow.

“Yes, yes.” I went and fetched the bottle and a glass.

Molly Anning was sitting motionless by the fire, the centre of all the activity around her, much as she had been when she came to see us with her letter to Colonel Birch. Bessy was poking the fire and glaring at our visitor’s legs, which she perceived to be in the way. Margaret was setting up a small table at her side for the soup, while Louise moved the coal scuttle. I hovered with the brandy bottle, but Molly Anning shook her head when I offered it. She said nothing while she ate her soup, sucking at it as if she didn’t like watercress and was eating it only to please us.

As she mopped her bowl with a chunk of bread, I felt my sisters’ eyes on me. They had played their parts with the visitor, and were now expecting me to play mine. My mouth felt glued shut, however. It had been a very long time since I had spoken either to Mary or to her mother.

I cleared my throat. “Is something wrong, Molly?” I managed at last. “Are Joseph and Mary all right?”

Molly Anning swallowed the last of her bread and ran her tongue around her mouth. “Mary’s taken to her bed,” she declared.

“Oh dear, is she ill?” Margaret asked.

“No, she’s just a fool, is all. Here.” Pulling a crumpled letter from her pocket, Molly Anning handed it to me. I opened it and smoothed it out. A glance told me it was from Paris. The words “plesiosaurus” and “Cuvier” popped out at me, but I hesitated to read the contents. However, as Molly seemed to expect me to, I had no choice.

Jardin du Roi

Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle

Paris

Dear Miss Anning,

Thank you for your letter to Baron Cuvier concerning a possible sale to the museum of the specimen you have discovered at Lyme Regis, and believe to be an almost compete skeleton of a plesiosaurus. Baron Cuvier has studied with interest the sketch you enclosed, and is of the opinon that you have joined together two separate individuals, perhaps that of the head of a sea serpent with the body of an ichthyosaurus. The jumbled state of the vertebrae just below the head seems to indicate the disjuncture between the two specimens.

Baron Cuvier holds the view that the structure of the reported plesiosaurus deviates from some of the anatomical laws he has established. In particular, the number of cervical vertebrae is too great for such an individual. Most reptiles have between three and eight neck vertebrae; yet in your sketch the creature appears to have at least thirty.

Given Baron Cuvier’s concerns over the specimen, we will not consider purchasing it. In future, Mademoiselle, perhaps your family might take more care when collecting and presenting specimens.

Yours faithfully,

Joseph Pentland Esq.

Assistant to Baron Cuvier

I threw down the letter. “That is outrageous!”

“What is?” Margaret cried, caught up in the drama.

“Georges Cuvier has seen a drawing of Mary’s plesiosaurus and has accused the Annings of forgery. He thinks the anatomy of the animal is impossible, and says that Mary may have put together two different specimens.”

“The silly girl’s taken it as an insult to her,” Molly Anning said. “Says the Frenchman has ruined her reputation as a hunter. She’s gone to bed over it, says there’s no reason to get up and hunt curies now, as no one’ll buy them. She’s as bad as when she were waiting for Colonel Birch to write.” Molly Anning glanced sideways at me, gauging my reaction. “I come to ask you to help me get her out of bed.”

“But-” Why ask me, I wanted to say. Why not someone else? On the other hand, perhaps Mary had no other friends Molly could ask. I had never seen her with other Lyme people of her age and class. “The trouble is,” I began, “Mary may well be right. If Baron Cuvier believes the plesiosaurus is a fake, and makes public his view, it could cause people to question other specimens.” Molly Anning did not seem to respond to this idea, so I made it plainer. “You may find your sales will fall as people wonder whether Anning fossils are authentic.”

At last I got through to her, for Molly Anning glared at me as if I had suggested such a thing myself. “How dare that Frenchman threaten our business! You’ll have to sort him out.”

“Me?”

“You speak French, don’t you? You’ve had learning. I haven’t, you see, so you’ll have to write to him.”

“But it’s nothing to do with me.”

Molly Anning just looked at me, as did my sisters.

“Molly,” I said, “Mary and I have not had a great deal to do with each other these last few years-”

“What is all that about, then? Mary would never say.”

I looked around. Margaret was sitting forward, and Louise was giving me the Philpot gaze, both also waiting for me to explain, for I had never provided a sufficient reason for our break. “Mary and I…we did not see eye to eye on some things.”

“Well, you can make it up to her by sorting out this Frenchman,” Molly Anning declared.

“I am not sure I can do anything. Cuvier is a powerful, well-respected scientist, whilst you are just-” a poor, working family, I wanted to finish, but didn’t. I didn’t need to, for Molly Anning understood what I meant. “Anyway, he won’t listen to me either, whether I write in French or English. He doesn’t know who I am. Indeed, I am nobody to him.” To most people, I thought.

“One of the men could write to Cuvier,” Margaret suggested. “Mr Buckland, perhaps? He has met Cuvier, hasn’t he?”

“Maybe I should write to Colonel Birch and ask him to write,” Molly Anning said. “I’m sure he would do it.”

“Not Colonel Birch.” My tone was so sharp that all three women looked at me. “Does anyone else know that Mary wrote to Cuvier?”

Molly Anning shook her head.