Mr Buckland pondered this suggestion. “It could not be recorded in the Society’s minutes,” he said at last, “but I am certainly willing to say something off the record if that will please you, Miss Philpot.”
“It will, thank you.”
He and Reverend Conybeare looked up at Johnny. “That will do, lad,” Reverend Conybeare muttered. “Come down, now.”
“Is that all, Aunt Elizabeth? Shall I come down?” Johnny seemed disappointed that he could not carry out his threat.
“There is one more thing,” I said. Reverend Conybeare groaned. “I should like to hear what you have to say at the meeting about the plesiosaurus.”
“I’m afraid women are not allowed in to the Society meetings.” Mr Buckland sounded almost sorry.
“Perhaps I could sit out in the corridor to listen? No one but you need know I am there.”
Mr Buckland thought for a moment. “There is a staircase at the back of the room leading down to one of the kitchens. The servants use it to bring dishes and food and such up and down. You might sit out on the landing. From there you should be able to hear us without being seen.”
“That would be very kind, thank you.”
Mr Buckland gestured to the doorman, who had been listening impassively. “Would you show this lady and young man up to the landing at the back, please. Come, Conybeare, we have kept them waiting long enough. They’ll think we’ve gone to Lyme and back!”
The two men hurried up the stairs, leaving Johnny and me with the doorman. I will not forget the 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 off his stride. Well, we shall hear in a moment.”
I did not put off Reverend Conybeare. As a vicar he was used to speaking in public, and he was able to draw on that well of experience to recover his equanimity. By the time William Buckland had got through the procedural parts of the meeting-approving the minutes of the previous meeting, proposing new members, enumerating the various journals and specimens donated to the Society since the last meeting-Reverend Conybeare would have looked over his notes and reassured himself about the particulars of his claims, and when he began speaking his voice was steady and grounded in authority.
I could only judge his delivery by his voice. Johnny and I were tucked away on chairs on the landing, which led off of the back of the room. Although we kept the door ajar so that we could hear, we could not see beyond the gentlemen standing in front of the door in the crowded room. I felt trapped behind a wall of men that separated me from the main event.
Luckily Reverend Conybeare’s public speaking voice penetrated even to us. “I am highly gratified,” he began, “in being able to lay before the Society an account of an almost perfect skeleton of Plesiosaurus, a new fossil genus, which, from the consideration of several fragments found only in a disjointed state, I felt myself authorised to propound in the year 1821. It is through the kind liberality of its possessor, the Duke of Buckingham, that this new specimen has been placed for a time at the disposal of my friend Professor Buckland for the purpose of scientific investigation. The magnificent specimen recently discovered at Lyme has confirmed the justice of my former conclusions in every essential point connected with the organisation of the skeleton.”
While the men were warmed by two coal fires and the collective bodily heat of sixty souls, Johnny and I sat frozen on the landing. I pulled my woollen cloak close about me, but I knew sitting back there was doing my weakened chest no good. Still, I could not leave at such an important moment.
Reverend Conybeare immediately addressed the plesiosaurus’ most surprising feature-its extremely long neck. “The neck is fully equal in length to the body and tail united,” he explained. “Surpassing in the number of its vertebrae that of the longest necked birds, even the swan, it deviates from the laws which were heretofore regarded as universal in quadrupedal animals. I mention this circumstance thus early, as forming the most prominent and interesting feature of the recent discovery, and that which in effect renders this animal one of the most curious and important additions which geology has yet made to comparative anatomy.”
He then went on to describe the beast in detail. By this point I was stifling coughs, and Johnny went down to the kitchen to fetch me some wine. He must have liked what he saw down there better than what he could hear on the landing, for after handing me a glass of claret he disappeared down the back staircase again, probably to sit by the fire and practise flirting with the serving girls brought in for the evening.
Reverend Conybeare delineated the head and the vertebrae, dwelling for a time on the number in different sorts of animals, just as Monsieur Cuvier had done in his criticism of Mary. Indeed, he mentioned Cuvier in passing a few times; the great anatomist’s influence was emphasised throughout the talk. No wonder that Reverend Conybeare had been so horrified by Cuvier’s response to Mary’s letter. However, whatever its impossible anatomy, the plesiosaurus had existed. If Conybeare believed in the creature, he must believe in what Mary found too, and the best way to convince Cuvier was to support her. It seemed obvious to me.
It didn’t to him, however. Indeed, he did just the opposite. In the middle of a description of the plesiosaurus’ paddles, Reverend Conybeare added, “I must acknowledge that originally I wrongly depicted the edges of the paddles as being formed of rounded bones, when they are not. However, when the first specimen was found in 1821, the bones in question were loose, and had been subsequently glued into their present situation, in consequence of a conjecture of the proprietor.”
It took me a moment to realise he was referring to Mary as proprietor, and suggesting she had made mistakes in putting together the bones of the first plesiosaurus. Reverend Conybeare only bothered to refer to her-still unnamed-when there was criticism to lay at her feet. “How ungentlemanly!” I muttered, more loudly than I had intended, for a number of the row of heads in front of me shifted and turned, as if trying to locate the source of this outburst.
I shrank back in my seat, then listened numbly as Reverend Conybeare compared the plesiosaurus to a turtle without its shell and speculated on its awkwardness both on land and in the sea. “May it not therefore be concluded that it swam upon or near the surface, arching back its long neck like the swan, and occasionally darting it down at the fish which happened to float within its reach? It may perhaps have lurked in shoal water along the coast, concealed among the sea-weed and, raising its nostrils to a level with the surface from a considerable depth, may have found a secure retreat from the assaults of dangerous enemies.”
He finished with a strategic flourish I suspected he’d thought up during the earlier part of the meeting. “I cannot but congratulate the scientific public that the discovery of this animal has been made at the very moment when the illustrious Cuvier is engaged in, and on the eve of publishing, his researches on the fossil ovipara: from him the subject will derive all that lucid order which he never has yet failed to introduce into the most obscure and intricate departments of comparative anatomy. Thank you.”
In so saying, Reverend Conybeare linked himself favourably with Baron Cuvier, so that whatever criticism arose from the Frenchman would not seem to be directed at him. I did not join in with the clapping. My chest had become so heavy that I was having difficulty breathing.
An animated discussion began, of which I did not follow every point, for I was feeling dizzy. However, I did hear Mr Buckland at last clear his throat. “I should just like to express my thanks to Miss Anning,” he said, “who discovered and extracted this magnificent specimen. It is a shame it did not arrive in time for this most illustrious and enlightening talk by Reverend Conybeare, but once it is installed here, Members and friends are welcome to inspect it. You will be amazed and delighted by this ground-breaking discovery.”