Read Online Curiosity by Joan Thomas - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Joan Thomas
Tags: Historical
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generated newer and larger chambers, abandoning its previous home
.
When she got to the limit of the words she knew from Mr. Buckland’s letter, she halted in confusion. Her father had turned away, he stood with his head down, but the Philpot sisters watched her still, their eyes anxious. Elizabeth Philpot let out a laugh of surprise and looked down at the page and then up at Mary, her mouth caught in a nervous twist, and then she picked up the book and began to read aloud from it herself.
The next week, Miss Philpot stopped by the shop and told Molly that the grammar school was offering free places to apt scholars among the poor – four free places. One day shortly after, Richard was in Charmouth, so Molly and Mary put on their Sunday bonnets and Molly asked Mrs. Bennett to mind the little ones while they went to the school. A senior scholar came to the door of the school and went to call the master. But the master would not allow them into the hall to speak to him; he refused Mary outright as a Dissenter. Her mother heard this with bitterness (months had passed now without any of them darkening the door of the Independent Chapel) and she did not refrain from telling Richard when he came home. If he was angry that they had asked for charity, he did not say so. He said only that the Independent Chapel itself was setting up a Sunday school and if they found a teacher, Mary would go there. “On Sundays, I go to the shore,” said Mary, and he said, “Ye’ll go to the shore no more if there’s the chance of school.”
Mary ached with shame that Miss Philpot would think she had set out to trick her. The lie was in the way she put her finger to the print – children who went to school did so, they ran their fingers along the lines in exactly that fashion. But it was not entirely a lie: the meaning of letters was in her brain, just as numbers had always been. If only she were given books and the time to bear down on them, she would certainly produce the sense on her own, and much more nimbly than other children! She thought of their neighbour Annie Bennett’s pitiful attempts to read, and the botched writing she’d seen produced by scholars from the grammar school, Joseph among them.
But Mary Anning was not like other children. The whole town knew the story of the lightning bolt, with Mary herself at the centre of it, a little lass of under two years. Everyone told the story to explain Mary’s cleverness. They enjoyed dwelling on what a dull child she’d been before, a girl who hardly spoke and whose hair was the colour of mud. They told how a woman named Eliza Hastings had stopped by the workshop with talk of an amusement being held at Rack Field – a lottery, the prizes being a copper tea kettle and a leg of mutton, and horsemen making a display of their riding. Eliza Hastings offered to take Mary, and when Richard and Molly agreed, little dull Mary came happily out and took Eliza’s hand. And then, out on the field, a storm blew up. When the rain began, Eliza Hastings snatched Mary up from the ground and sought shelter under a giant oak, where two girls already huddled. And there the lightning bolt found them and the massive oak was split. Mrs. Stock was one who liked to tell it. “Dead in a trice!” she would cry. “Eliza Hastings, Fanny Fowler, Martha Drower! And
you
knocked insensible, stinking of brimstone.” Mrs. Stock would turn her eyes up into her head so that only the whites showed, to demonstrate the look of Mary.
Mary listened to this story skeptically. If only she could have been a watcher in the field that day, to see what had really happened to her other, duller self. Thunder must have echoed from the cliffs, although no one ever mentioned thunder. She could see the lightning swing from the sky like a great hairy rope, electric fluid pouring down it. The crowd in the meadow must have taken a breath and thanked Providence that they could still do so. And then someone would have cried out,
.
When she got to the limit of the words she knew from Mr. Buckland’s letter, she halted in confusion. Her father had turned away, he stood with his head down, but the Philpot sisters watched her still, their eyes anxious. Elizabeth Philpot let out a laugh of surprise and looked down at the page and then up at Mary, her mouth caught in a nervous twist, and then she picked up the book and began to read aloud from it herself.
The next week, Miss Philpot stopped by the shop and told Molly that the grammar school was offering free places to apt scholars among the poor – four free places. One day shortly after, Richard was in Charmouth, so Molly and Mary put on their Sunday bonnets and Molly asked Mrs. Bennett to mind the little ones while they went to the school. A senior scholar came to the door of the school and went to call the master. But the master would not allow them into the hall to speak to him; he refused Mary outright as a Dissenter. Her mother heard this with bitterness (months had passed now without any of them darkening the door of the Independent Chapel) and she did not refrain from telling Richard when he came home. If he was angry that they had asked for charity, he did not say so. He said only that the Independent Chapel itself was setting up a Sunday school and if they found a teacher, Mary would go there. “On Sundays, I go to the shore,” said Mary, and he said, “Ye’ll go to the shore no more if there’s the chance of school.”
Mary ached with shame that Miss Philpot would think she had set out to trick her. The lie was in the way she put her finger to the print – children who went to school did so, they ran their fingers along the lines in exactly that fashion. But it was not entirely a lie: the meaning of letters was in her brain, just as numbers had always been. If only she were given books and the time to bear down on them, she would certainly produce the sense on her own, and much more nimbly than other children! She thought of their neighbour Annie Bennett’s pitiful attempts to read, and the botched writing she’d seen produced by scholars from the grammar school, Joseph among them.
But Mary Anning was not like other children. The whole town knew the story of the lightning bolt, with Mary herself at the centre of it, a little lass of under two years. Everyone told the story to explain Mary’s cleverness. They enjoyed dwelling on what a dull child she’d been before, a girl who hardly spoke and whose hair was the colour of mud. They told how a woman named Eliza Hastings had stopped by the workshop with talk of an amusement being held at Rack Field – a lottery, the prizes being a copper tea kettle and a leg of mutton, and horsemen making a display of their riding. Eliza Hastings offered to take Mary, and when Richard and Molly agreed, little dull Mary came happily out and took Eliza’s hand. And then, out on the field, a storm blew up. When the rain began, Eliza Hastings snatched Mary up from the ground and sought shelter under a giant oak, where two girls already huddled. And there the lightning bolt found them and the massive oak was split. Mrs. Stock was one who liked to tell it. “Dead in a trice!” she would cry. “Eliza Hastings, Fanny Fowler, Martha Drower! And
you
knocked insensible, stinking of brimstone.” Mrs. Stock would turn her eyes up into her head so that only the whites showed, to demonstrate the look of Mary.
Mary listened to this story skeptically. If only she could have been a watcher in the field that day, to see what had really happened to her other, duller self. Thunder must have echoed from the cliffs, although no one ever mentioned thunder. She could see the lightning swing from the sky like a great hairy rope, electric fluid pouring down it. The crowd in the meadow must have taken a breath and thanked Providence that they could still do so. And then someone would have cried out,
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