Kessel - Pride and Prometheus

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For Karen Joy Fowler,

who told me to write it

But my dearest Catherine, what have you been doing with yourself all this morning?Have you gone on with Udolpho ?

Yes, I have been reading it ever since I woke; and I am got to the black veil.

Are you, indeed? How delightful! Oh, I would not tell you what is behind the black veil for the world! Are not you wild to know?

Oh! yes, quite; what can it be?But do not tell meI would not be told upon any account. I know it must be a skeleton, I am sure it is Laurentinas skeleton. Oh! I am delighted with the book! I should like to spend my whole life in reading it....

... when you have finished Udolpho , we will read The Italian together; and I have made out a list of ten or twelve more of the same kind for you.

Have you, indeed! How glad I am!What are they all?

I will read you their names directly; here they are, in my pocketbook. Castle of Wolfenbach , Clermont , Mysterious Warnings , Necromancer of the Black Forest , Midnight Bell , Orphan of the Rhine , and Horrid Mysteries . Those will last us some time.

Yes, pretty well; but are they all horrid, are you sure they are all horrid?

JANE AUSTEN,

Northanger Abbey

I agree with you, replied the stranger; we are unfashioned creatures, but half made up, if one wiser, better, dearer than ourselvessuch a friend ought to bedo not lend his aid to perfectionate our weak and faulty natures.

MARY SHELLEY,

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus

When she was nineteen, Miss Mary Bennet had believed three things that were not true. She believed that, despite her awkwardness, she might become interesting through her accomplishments. She believed that, because she paid strict attention to all she had been taught about right and wrong, she was wise in the ways of the world. And she believed that God, who took note of every moment of ones life, would answer prayers, even foolish ones.

Thirteen years later, below the sea cliffs at Lyme Regis, among the tangled driftwood and broken shale exposed by the retreating tide, Mary found a flat stone plate that, when broken open by a tap of her hammer, revealed four Devils Fingers.

Mr. Woodleigh! she called.

Three days of rain had softened the cliffs above Pinhay Bay, and a recent avalanche had scattered heaps of shale across the stony beach. Behind her the early March surf broke continually upon the shingle. Seabirds cried. A cold offshore wind rustled the stunted trees on the verge of the cliff above. Marys hair came loose from her bonnet and fell into her eyes; she brushed it away with the back of the gloved hand that held the hammer.

At her call, Charles Woodleigh, bent over the rocks some twenty feet away, raised his head. What is it, Miss Bennet?

See what Ive found!

He laid down his hammer and came to stand beside her as she crouched over her discovery. In the face of the stone plate were four slender conical shells, the shortest an inch or so, the largest, completely intact, at least four inches. It looked not so much like a finger as the point of a spear. She rubbed her thumb over the hard, smooth surface, whose color ranged from rusty brown to dark gray.

Lovely, Woodleigh said. I believe you have discovered something, Miss Bennet.

I have! Mary said.

The rock containing the fossils was roughly a foot across. Together they pulled it from beneath the rubble and placed it into her canvas satchel. It was not so heavy, but Mr. Woodleigh carried it toward the dogcart they had left at the foot of the road, where his man Daniel and Alice, Mrs. Bennets maid, waited. As they approached, Daniel saw them, hurried over, and took the satchel, carrying it the rest of the way.

Woodleigh had him set it on the floor of the cart. The gravity with which Alice had taken her duties as chaperone was evidenced by her staying with Daniel rather than braving the blustery seashore. Now she was all concern. She tucked the lap robe around Mary while Mr. Woodleigh told Daniel to take them to the inn.

A very lucky find, indeed, Woodleigh told Mary as they rode back to town, his feet resting on her discovery.

The rear seat of the cart faced backward, and as it bumped up the rutted path, their view of the bay expanded. The tide would soon cover the beach where they had spent the last hours. The sinuous masonry of the Cobb, the famous seawall, embraced Lymes small harbor and its fishing boats. Below the Promenade the beach lay devoid of the bathing machines of summer. The high street pitched steeply up from the harbor, not half so busy as it would be in that season. Daniel maneuvered their cart around a man waiting anxiously with a groom alongside a chaise and four. Under the overcast sky the town lay steeped in twilight. Some servants could be seen at the fish market and butchers shop, while men in work clothes came out of the ironmongers. Outside the Assembly Rooms, a boy was lighting the lamps at each side of the entrance.

At the Kings Crown Inn they dismounted. Woodleigh sent Daniel to stable the horse and cart; Mary allowed the shivering Alice to hurry indoors while she stopped at a table set up outside the inn. On the table were displayed baskets full of Dudley Locusts, verteberries, and several such Devils Fingers as Mary had discovered. A large, flat stone leaning against a table leg showed the skeleton of some ancient fish. A girl of perhaps fifteen years of age, wearing a well-worn dark green wool dress and an unadorned bonnet, minded the table. Her ungloved hands, which she kept crossed before her, were rough, her knuckles red. This was the celebrated Mary Anning, the girl the locals said had survived being struck by lightning as an infant, and who had acquired such a reputation for her ability to find fossils that enthusiasts from as far away as Edinburgh frequented her stall.

Mary had made her acquaintance earlier. Mary Anning was shy around her betters, but at moments her intelligence broke through their difference in station. Mary wanted to tell the girl what she had found, but hesitated, and in a moment Woodleigh arrived. A basket on the table contained a dozen Devils Fingers. Woodleigh selected one. Mary Annings hopeful eyes watched his every move. He addressed the girl.

You ask a shilling for one of these? Yet this lady has found several herself this very day.

Mary Annings eyes met Marys, a glimmer of excitement in her gaze. Did you go where

Excuse me? Woodleigh interrupted. I believe I asked you a question.

Beg pardon, sir. The lady asked me how she might look for such as these and I told her.