Remarkable Creatures (31 page)

Whoever was right, Mary’s plesiosaurus was now somewhere in a long, slow train of carts grinding through Kent towards London. Having left a week before me, the specimen would now probably arrive in London after me, too late for the Geological Society meeting.

We reached London in the early hours of the fourth day, docking at a wharf on Tooley Street. After the relative calm on board, all now became a chaos of unloading by torchlight, of shouts and whistles, of coaches and carts clattering away full of people and cargo. It was a shock to the senses after four days of Nature providing her own constant rhythms. The people and the noise and the lights reminded me too that I had come to London for a reason, not to enjoy anonymity and solitude whilst eyeing the wider horizon.

I stood on deck and looked out for my brother at the quayside, but he was not there. The letter I had posted at the same time as I left must have got stuck in the mud en route and lost its race with me. Though I had never been before, I had heard about London’s docks, how crowded and dirty and dangerous they were, especially for a lady on her own with no one expecting her. Perhaps it was because the darkness made everything more mysterious, but the men unloading the
Unity,
even the sailors I had got to know on board, now appeared much rougher and harder.

I hesitated to disembark. There was no one to turn to for help, though: the other passengers—even the cocksure man from Honiton—had hurried away in ungentleman-like haste. I could have panicked. Before the journey I might have. But something had shifted in me while I spent all that time on deck watching the horizon: I was responsible for myself. I was Elizabeth Philpot, and I collected fossil fish. Fish are not always beautiful, but they have pleasing shapes, they are practical, and they lead with their eyes. There is nothing shameful about them.

I picked up my bag and stepped off the boat amidst a score of bustling men, many of whom whistled and shouted at me. Before anyone could do more than call out, I walked quickly to the Customs House, despite swaying with the shock of being on land again. “I would like a cab, please,” I said to a surprised clerk, interrupting him as he ticked items on a list. He had a mustache that fluttered like a moth over his mouth. “I shall wait here until you fetch me one,” I added, setting down my bag. I did not stick out my chin and sharpen my jaw but gazed steadily at him with my Philpot eyes.

He found me a cab.

 

 

 

THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY’S OFFICES in Covent Garden were not far from my brother’s house, but to get there one had to pass through St. Giles and Seven Dials, with its beggars and thieves, and I was not keen to do so on foot. Thus on the evening of the 20th of February 1824, I waited in a cab across from 20 Bedford Street, my nephew Johnny beside me. There was snow on the street, and we huddled under our cloaks against the cold.

My brother was horrified that I had come all the way to London on a ship because of Mary. When he was woken in the middle of the night to find me at the door, he looked so ill with surprise that I almost regretted I had come. Being quietly tucked away in Lyme, my sisters and I had rarely given him cause to worry, and I did not like to do so now.

John did everything he could to persuade me not to go to the Geological Society, bar expressly forbidding me. It seemed he was only willing to indulge me in unusual behavior just the once, when he had escorted me to Bullock’s to view Colonel Birch’s auction preview. Mercifully he had never found out I attended the auction itself. He would not help me with something so odd and risky again. “They will not let you in, for you are a lady, and their charter does not allow it,” he began, using first the legal argument. We were in his study, the door closed, as if John were trying to protect his family from me, his erratic sister. “Even if they let you in they would not listen to you, for you are not a member. Then,” he added, holding up a hand as I tried to interrupt, “you have no business discussing and defending Mary. It is not your place to.”

“She is my friend,” I replied, “and no one else will take her part if I don’t.”

John looked at me as if I were a small child trying to convince my nurse I could have another helping of pudding. “You have been very foolish, Elizabeth. You have come all this way, making yourself ill en route—”

“It is just a cold, nothing more.”

“—ill en route, and worrying us unnecessarily.” Now he was using guilt. “And to no purpose, for you will gain no audience.”

“I can at least try. It is truly foolish to come all this way and then not even try.”

“What exactly do you want from these men?”

“I want to remind them of Mary’s careful methods of finding and preserving fossils, and to get them to agree to defend her publicly against Cuvier’s attack on her character.”

“They will never do that,” John said, running his finger along the spiral of his nautilus paperweight. “Though they may defend the plesiosaurus, they will not discuss Mary. She is only the hunter.”

“Only the hunter!” I stopped myself. John was a London solicitor, with a certain way of thinking. I was a stubborn Lyme spinster, with my own mind. We were not going to agree, nor either of us convince the other. And he was not my target anyway; I must save my words for more important men.

John would not agree to accompany me to the meeting, and so I did not ask, but turned to an alternative—my nephew. Johnny was now a tall, lanky youth who led with his feet, and had a residual fondness for his aunt and an active fondness for mischief. He had never told his parents about discovering me sneaking out of the house to go to the auction at Bullock’s, and this shared secret bound us. It was this closeness I now relied on to help me.

I was lucky, for John and my sister-in-law were dining out on the Friday evening of the Geological Society meeting. I had not told him when the meeting was to take place, but allowed him to believe it was the following week. The afternoon of the supper I took to bed, saying my cold was worse. My sister-in-law pursed her lips in clear disapproval of my folly. She did not like unexpected visitors, or the sort of problems that, for all my quiet life at Lyme, I seemed to trail behind me. She hated fossils, and disorder, and unanswered questions. Whenever I brought up topics like the possible age of the earth, she twisted her hands in her lap and changed the subject as soon as it was polite to.

When she and my brother had gone out for the evening, I crept from my room and went to find Johnny and explain what I needed from him. He rose to the occasion admirably, coming up with an excuse for his departure to satisfy the servants, fetching a cab, and hurrying me into it without anyone in the house discovering. It was absurd that I had to go to such lengths to take any sort of action out of the ordinary.

However, it was also a relief to have company. Now we sat in the cab on Bedford Street across from the Geological Society house, Johnny having gone in to check and found that the members were still dining in rooms on the first floor. Through the front windows we could see lights there and the occasional head bobbing about. The formal meeting would begin in half an hour or so.

“What shall we do, Aunt Elizabeth?” he demanded. “Storm the citadel?”

“No, we wait. They will all stand so that the meal can be cleared away. At that moment I will go in and seek out Mr. Buckland. He is about to become president of the Society, and I am sure he will listen to me.”

Johnny sat back and propped his feet up on the seat across from him. If I had been his mother I would have told him to put his feet down, but the pleasure of being an aunt is that you can enjoy your nephew’s company without having to concern yourself with his behavior. “Aunt Elizabeth, you haven’t said why this plesiosaur is so important,” he began. “That is, I understand that you want to defend Miss Anning. But why is everyone so excited about the creature itself?”

I straightened my gloves and rearranged my cloak around me. “Do you remember when you were a small boy and we took you to the Egyptian Hall to see all the animals?”

“Yes, I remember the elephant and the hippo.”

“Do you recall the stone crocodile you found and I was so upset by? The one that is now in the British Museum and they call an ichthyosaurus?”

“I’ve seen it at the British Museum, of course, and you’ve told me about it,” Johnny answered. “But I confess I remember the elephant better. Why?”

“Well, when Mary discovered that ichthyosaurus, she did not know it at the time, but she was contributing to a new way of thinking about the world. Here was a creature that had never been seen before, that did not seem to exist any longer, but was extinct—the species had died out. Such a phenomenon made people think that perhaps the world is changing, however slowly, rather than being a constant, as had been previously thought.

“At the same time, geologists were studying the different layers of rock, and thinking about how the world was formed, and wondering about its age. For some time now men have wondered if the world isn’t older than the six thousand years calculated by Bishop Ussher. A learned Scotsman called James Hutton even suggested that the world is so old it has ‘neither a beginning nor an end,’ and that it is impossible for us to measure it.” I paused. “Perhaps it would be best if you didn’t mention any of what I’m saying to your mother. She doesn’t like to hear me talk of such things.”

“I won’t. Carry on.”

“Hutton thought the world is being sculpted by volcanic action. Others have suggested it has been formed by water. Lately some geologists have taken elements of both and said a series of catastrophes has shaped the world, with Noah’s Flood being the latest.”

“What does this have to do with the plesiosaurus?”

“It is concrete evidence that the ichthyosaurus was not a unique instance of extinction, but that there are others—maybe many extinct creatures. That in turn supports the argument that the earth is in flux.” I looked at my nephew. Johnny was frowning at the light snowflakes swirling about outside. Perhaps he was more like his mother than I realized. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to upset you with such talk.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s fascinating. I was just wondering why none of my tutors discuss this in lessons.”

“It is too frightening for many, for it challenges our belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful God and raises questions about His intentions.”

“What do
you
believe, Aunt Elizabeth?”

“I believe . . .” Few had ever asked me what I believed. It was refreshing. “I am comfortable with reading the Bible figuratively rather than literally. For instance, I think the six days in Genesis are not literal days, but different periods of creation, so that it took many thousands—or hundreds of thousands of years—to create. It does not demean God; it simply gives Him more time to build this extraordinary world.”

“And the ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus?”

“They are creatures from long, long ago. They remind us that the world is changing. Of course it is. I can see it change when there are landslips at Lyme that alter the shoreline. It changes when there are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions and floods. And why shouldn’t it?”

Johnny nodded. It was a relief to say such things to a sympathetic ear and not be judged either ignorant or blasphemous. Perhaps he could be so open-minded because he was young.

“Look.” He pointed at the windows of the Geological Society house. Figures were blocking the light as the men got up from their tables. It was time for me to lead with my eyes. I took a deep breath and opened the cab door. Johnny leapt out and helped me down, excited to be acting at last. He strode to the door and knocked boldly. The same man answered as had the first time, but Johnny treated him as if he had never spoken to him before. “Miss Philpot here to see Professor Buckland,” he announced. Perhaps he thought such confidence would open all doors.

The doorman, however, was not taken in by youthful assured-ness. “Women are not allowed in the Society,” he replied, not even glancing at me. It was as if I did not exist.

He began to shut the door, but Johnny stuck his foot on the jamb so that it wouldn’t close. “Well, then, John Philpot, Esquire, here to see Professor Buckland.”

The doorman looked him up and down. “What business?”

“It’s to do with the plesiosaurus.”

The doorman frowned. The word meant nothing to him, but it sounded complicated and possibly important. “I’ll take up a message.”

“I can only speak to Professor Buckland,” Johnny replied in a haughty tone, enjoying every moment.

The doorman appeared unmoved. I had to step forward, forcing him at last to look at me and acknowledge my presence. “As it is to do with the very subject of the meeting that is about to start, it would be wise of you to inform Professor Buckland that we are waiting to speak to him.” I looked him straight in the eye, with all of the steadiness and resolve I had discovered in myself on board the
Unity
.

It had its effect. After a moment the doorman dropped his eyes and gave me the briefest of nods. “Wait here,” he said, and shut the door in our faces. Clearly my success was limited, for it did not overcome the rule that women were not allowed inside, but must stand out in the cold. As we waited, snowflakes dusted my hat and cloak.

A few minutes later we heard footsteps clattering down the stairs, and the door opened to reveal the excited faces of Mr. Buckland and Reverend Conybeare. I was disappointed to see the latter; Reverend Conybeare was not nearly as easy and welcoming as Mr. Buckland.

I think they were a little disappointed to see us as well. “Miss Philpot!” Mr. Buckland cried. “What a surprise. I did not know you were in town.”

“I only arrived two days ago, Mr. Buckland. Reverend Conybeare.” I nodded at them both. “This is my nephew, John. May we come in? It is very cold outside.”

“Of course, of course!” As Mr. Buckland ushered us in, Reverend Conybeare pursed his lips, clearly unhappy that a lady was being allowed across the threshold of the Geological Society. But he was not president—Mr. Buckland would become so in a moment—and so he said nothing, but bowed to us both. His long narrow nose was red, whether from wine, a seat close to the fire, or temper, I couldn’t guess.