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20th of February 1824,
“They will not let you in, for you are a lady, and their charter does not allow it,”
1824
John was a London solicitor, with a certain way of thinking.
was a stubborn Lyme spinster, with my own mind.
Lawyers DO think differenty
went to find Johnny and explain what I needed from him. He rose to the occasion admirably,
Elizabeth s nephew
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.”
“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.
looked him straight in the eye, with all of the steadiness and resolve I had discovered in myself on board the Unity.
venomous look Reverend Conybeare threw me over his shoulder as he reached the top and turned to go into the meeting room. Johnny chuckled. “You have not made a friend there, Aunt Elizabeth!” “It doesn’t matter to me, but I fear I have put him
Reverend Conybeare linked himself favorably with Baron Cuvier, so that whatever criticism arose from the Frenchman would not seem to be directed at him.
That is all she will get, I thought: a scrap of thanks
Miss Elizabeth is taken ill
It seemed whenever I found something, I lost something else.
the Frenchman come.
Ichthyosaurus tenuirostris—I can say that now, for the men have identified and named four species, and I know each one just from a glance.
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.
felt a little jolt of lightning run through me, one I couldn’t explain, and knew then that they could not be ordinary visitors.
Reverend Buckland was very complimentary of your collecting skills.”
“For Cuvier? Monsieur Cuvier wants one of my plesies?” I looked so astonished that both men begun to laugh.
“The Days found it, didn’t they?” she continued, relentless as always. “They found it and dug it up, and you bought it off them the way Mr. Buckland or Lord Henley or Colonel Birch bought specimens off you and called them theirs.
Do that mean you’ll tell the Frenchman to put the Days’ names on the label along with yours when they display it in Paris?”
What I wanted to do more than anything was to go up Silver Street to Morley Cottage and sit at the Philpots’ dining room table spread with Miss Elizabeth’s fossil fish and talk to her.
When she saw me, her face lit up like Golden Cap does when the sun touches it. Then I begun to run, shoving people out of the way and yet hardly seeming to move at all. When I reached her I threw my arms round her and begun to cry, in front of the whole town,
this was the lightning that signaled my greatest happiness, in all my life.
felt anxious, for I knew I had to do something difficult. I had to say sorry.
“Miss Elizabeth, I’m sorry for all the things I said,” I blurted out. “For being so proud and full of myself. For making fun of your fish and your sisters.
She was like a fossil that’s been cleaned and set so everyone can see what it is.
Mary saidnanout Elizabeth
We say very little, for we do not need to. We are silent together,
Joe and me
