Remarkable Creatures

This chapter is narrated by Elizabeth Philpot. She is one of four sisters; their brother, John, became their guardian after their parents died. Their family isn’t wealthy and only has money to marry off one of the sisters, who is named Frances. Elizabeth says she and her other two sisters, Margaret and Louise, are plain and aren’t likely to marry. When John marries, the sisters are expected to move out of the family home in Red Lion Square in London, allowing John’s wife to become the lady of the house. After touring the shore with their aunt and uncle, Elizabeth, Margaret, and Louise decide to settle in Lyme Regis, where Elizabeth would later meet Mary Anning.

Elizabeth falls in love with Lyme Regis because of its natural beauty. While Margaret is entertained by the town’s social scene, Louise and Elizabeth enjoy exploring the seaside landscape. One day, while exploring the shoreline of Monmouth Beach with family friends, the Durhams, Elizabeth discovers a striped stone Mr. Durham calls a “snakestone.” He explains that the area is known for large deposits of fossils. Elizabeth later learns the fossil she found is called an ammonite. They continue exploring and find the “Snakes’ Graveyard,” which is littered with significant fossilized impressions in the limestone. Elizabeth is fascinated with creatures that existed many thousands of years ago. She decides to live in Lyme Regis permanently so she can study them.

Elizabeth and her sisters move to Morley Cottage in Lyme Regis the following spring. Though it is much smaller than their London home, and they only have one servant, Bessy, instead of an entire staff, the cottage is cozy and has a lovely view of the seashore. However, Elizabeth admits that she does miss her home in London; their social circle in Lyme Regis is much smaller. Still, Margaret enjoys attending parties and is hopeful that she will meet a husband. She wears a green turban with feathers to social gatherings, which is a fashion-forward choice. With Margaret busy about town and Louise immersing herself in gardening, Elizabeth begins spending more time collecting fossils, though the activity is “seen as an unladylike pursuit, dirty and mysterious” (26). As her collection grows, she goes to town to purchase a cabinet for the “curies,” as they’re called. When she arrives at Richard Anning’s cabinet shop, his daughter Mary is sorting fossils on a table. Richard rudely quotes an inflated price for the cabinet, and Elizabeth refuses his offer. Mary is curious about Elizabeth’s collection, though she has a much more extensive and diverse collection.

Later, Mary visits Morley Cottage to see Elizabeth’s curie collection and tell her that Richard has agreed to make the cabinet at a lower price. Bessy recognizes Mary as the “lighting girl” who miraculously survived a lightning strike. Though Bessy is rude to Mary since she is working class, Elizabeth invites Mary to help them make elderflower syrup. Elizabeth also shows Mary her fossil collection, which she has carefully labeled. Mary says she doesn’t label her fossils but instead cleans them for selling. She can’t read or write, though she says she could learn at their Congregationalist church, which isn’t a part of the Church of England. Elizabeth asks Mary to return the following day and offers to pay her to help Elizabeth clean the specimens. Gradually, Mary begins spending more time with the Philpots and accompanies Elizabeth to the shoreline. Since Elizabeth is often lonely in Lyme Regis, she enjoys Mary’s company. She is amazed by the young girl’s instinctual knowledge of tidal patterns.

After a year in Lyme Regis, Margaret and Louise are content though Elizabeth still  misses the cosmopolitanism of London. She longs for someone with whom she can discuss natural history and her fossils—in Lyme Regis, no one is interested in scientific research. Though everyone claims the ammonites are snakes or snails, Elizabeth is convinced they are some other species. She meets Henry Henley, Lord of Colway Manor, and learns that he collects fossils, too, but after she speaks with him, she sees that he isn’t interested in science and only collects for show. He thinks the ammonites are worms, a hypothesis Elizabeth finds absurd. When she makes an astute observation about one of his specimens, he says, “What a clever little lady you are” (44). Furthermore, she notices people staring at her because she is conversing with a man, a practice seen as inappropriate.

Eventually, Margaret falls in love with a gentleman named James Foot, but Louise says he won’t marry Margaret because she is only middle class. When James sees Elizabeth gathering fossils on the beach with Mary, he looks at her dirty gloves and mud-streaked face disapprovingly, and Elizabeth realizes that Louise is right about him. James departs Lyme Regis on family business and later marries someone else. Consequently, Margaret becomes despondent.

The narrative shifts to Mary’s perspective in this chapter. She says she loved the ocean from an early age and developed a keen eye for finding rare fossils on the beach. Her older brother Joe has a systematic way of searching for them, but Mary compares her method to looking for a four-leaf clover, where she would scan an area and then look again to see what she missed. Finding and selling curies is vital to their family’s income, and Mary truly enjoys hunting for them. Mary’s father learned to fossil hunt from a man named Mr. Crookshanks, and until Elizabeth Philpot, the only other fossil hunter in Lyme Regis was William Lock, a man they called “Captain Cury.” Mary never had many friends, but she does befriend a girl named Fanny Miller at church. Fanny often accompanies Mary to the beach, but she doesn’t like hunting for fossils because they frighten her; Fanny’s mother says they come from fairies. Eventually, Mary begins spending more time with Elizabeth and Fanny stops playing with her because people in town think the “spinster” is strange; the townspeople also look down on fossil hunters. To exact revenge on Fanny for being unkind, Mary intentionally takes her to the cliffs during high tide. The experience frightens Fanny so much that she never speaks to Mary again.

Mary’s father, Richard Anning, dies when he drunkenly falls off a cliff, leaving her mother pregnant and with no way to support the family. To soothe her grief, Mary goes to the cliffs to hunt and finds a perfectly preserved ammonite. She resolves to keep it to remind her of her father. Elizabeth arrives and offers her condolences; she promises to visit the Annings later, with gifts for Mary’s mother. In town, a Londoner offers Mary half a crown for the ammonite fossil; she agrees to sell it since that would be enough money to feed the Annings for a week. Later, Mary’s mother gives birth to a baby whom she names Richard, after her late husband. She is so weakened from the birth that Mary must take care of the colicky baby. Joe hunts fossils by himself and finds a large, intact skull at Church Cliffs; they think it is a crocodile’s fossil. Mary goes to investigate, but she has to take the baby with her, and it is freezing outside. She notes that the baby died the following summer; she worries that it was her fault, even though many of her siblings died young. Joe and Mary need help excavating the large fossil and consult Elizabeth.

Elizabeth examines the skull and compares it to one they saw in Georges Cuvier’s paleontology book. Due to the strange shape of the eye socket, Mary isn’t sure it’s a crocodile. The fossil is too large to extract, and Elizabeth suggests hiring men from town to dig it out. The Annings don’t have the money to pay a crew, so Elizabeth offers to lend them the money until they receive payment for the fossil. Joe sees Captain Cury hunting nearby, and they scatter so as not to draw attention to the fossil since the Captain has stolen some of their finds in the past. Elizabeth tells Joe and Mary to stand guard over the fossil, which Joe calls “one of God’s creatures” (79), while she gathers help in town. Elizabeth wonders out loud about the divine nature of fossils but cuts herself off when she notices Mary and Joe looking at her strangely.

After four hours of meticulous digging, twin brothers Davy and Billy Day succeed in excavating the crocodile skull. Captain Cury watches the excavation, and Mary nervously asks that they transport the fossil home as quickly as possible. Many villagers watch as they carry the fossil in a sheet through the streets. Since they only excavated the skull, Mary wants to find the body, which is still buried in the cliff. When she returns to the site to investigate, Captain Cury is already looking around, trying to capitalize on their luck. Mary climbs the cliff above him and sends down a few large rocks, trying to convince him that an avalanche is coming. Not fooled, Captain Cury climbs the cliff to search for his attacker, and Mary must hide. Thinking that the coast is clear, she searches around the hole where the brothers had dug. Captain Cury sneaks up on her and curses at her for trying to harm him. Just as he is about to attack her with his shovel, an avalanche rains down, and they both scurry to safety. Mary laments that the fossil body is now buried under rubble. Still, she is confident that Captain Cury won’t bother with it anymore since he is averse to hard labor.