Remarkable Creatures

Until I boarded the Unity, I had always thought of the sea as a boundary keeping me in my place on land. Now, though, it became an opening. As I sat I occasionally saw another vessel, but most of the time there was nothing but sky and moving water. I often looked to the horizon, lulled into a wordless calm by the rhythm of the sea and by ship life. It was oddly satisfying to study that far-off line, reminding me that I spent much of my life in Lyme with my eyes fixed to the ground in search of fossils. Such hunting can limit a person's perspective. On board the Unity I had no choice but to see the greater world, and my place in it. Sometimes I imagined being on shore and looking out at the ship, and seeing on deck a small, mauve figure caught between the light grey sky and dark grey sea, watching the world pass before her, alone and sturdy. I did not expect it, but I had never been so happy.

The winds were light, but we made steady if slow progress. The first I saw of land was on the second day when the chalk cliffs to the east of Brighton came blinking into view. When we made a brief stop there to unload cloth from Lyme's factory, I considered asking Captain Pearce if I might go ashore to see my sister Frances. However, rather to my surprise, I felt no real urge to do so, or to send her a note saying I was there, but was content to remain on board and watch the residents of Brighton on land walking back and forth along the promenade. Even if Frances herself had appeared, I am not sure I would have called out to her. I preferred not to disturb the delicious anonymity of standing on deck with no one looking for me.

On the third day we had passed Dover with its stark white cliffs, and were coming around the headland by Ramsgate when we saw a ship off our port side run aground on a sandbar. As we drew nearer I heard one of the crew name it as the Dispatch, the ship carrying Mary's plesiosaurus.

I sought out the Captain. 'Oh yes, that be the Dispatch,' he confirmed, 'run aground on Goodwin Sands. They'll have tried to turn too sharp.' He sounded disgusted and entirely without sympathy, even as he called for the men to cast anchor. Soon two sailors set out in a boat to cross over to the listing vessel, where they met with a few men who had by now appeared on deck. The sailors talked to them for just a few minutes before rowing back. I leaned forward and strained to hear what they shouted to the Captain. 'Cargo was taken to shore yesterday!' one called. 'They're taking it overland to London.'

At this the crew jeered, for they had little respect for travel by land, I had learned during the trip. They saw it as slow, rough and muddy. Others--coachmen, for instance--might retort that the sea was slow, rough and wet.

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 shamful 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 moustache 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 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 behaviour 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.'