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As any long term reader of my mother's work will know, she was a prodigious diarist from a very young age. Much of my adult life has been spent wrangling the words she's set to the page into something both ready to print and mostly free of libelous screeds against those she saw fit to excoriate while waiting for permits to be issued and excavations to begin.
When her publisher, after her passing, asked me if there were any hidden gems that I could unearth for the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of her birth, I set out on a dig no less comprehensive and extensive than anything my mother and father engaged in at Amarna, or any of the other sites they laid claim to over the years.
At the same time, my lady wife took on the equally massive task of going through my father's papers in anticipation of a similar project being requested of us in a few years' time.
About six months into our effort, my lady wife and I came across the following accounts. They have been treated with the same flair and probable editorializing as the rest of my mother's work, either by her hand or the unworthy efforts of myself. This is partially because there are certain things no-one, not even the most fiendish reader, cares about, but also takes into the consideration that, as always, while most of those my mother refers to are no longer among the living, many of them certainly have relatives who would not necessarily appreciate the way they have been described.
However, being well aware of the storied beginnings of my parents' marriage and the nearly three-quarters of a century they spent terrorizing the unsuspecting in North Africa, it can be certain that neither of them knew exactly what mysteries were contained in their own not-so-distant paths.
But, as we shall see, the crocodile on the sandbank can be very cunning indeed.
W.P. Emerson
Manchester, England
August, 1951
~~~
The following is from the papers of Mrs. Amelia Peabody Emerson, date unknown.
In March of 1873, at the end of Hilary Term, Father sent me to Oxford to deliver sundry papers to a Professor James Farnsworth—something a servant could have done—and to retrieve from him record of an artefact that had been lately brought from Thebes—which a servant could not have done, not and maintain peace in our house.
We had heard of the item—a stele about a foot square, covered in carved characters, similar to Mr. Turner's Rosetta Stone—for months, ever since Father's acquaintance at Thebes, one Ashley Covington, had discovered it along with several preserved papyri sealed in a jar. The papyri had gone to the British Museum, due to their frailty, but the stele had come to rest at Merton College Library, in Oxford, under the care of Professor Farnsworth, due to his expertise in the ever evolving field of ancient languages.
Father had fretted from one side of his study to the other, worrying over the state of the stele and its secrets as it came to the Professor by foot, camel, ship, train, and foot again. He checked weather tables, read foreign newspapers, and railed rather more about the dangers of antiquities transportation than he ever did about the state of the household affairs. More concerningly, at least for someone entrusted with ensuring such things were repaired, he quite literally wore a hole in one of the Abyssinians.
Finally, once the stele made it within reach, Father bid me to go and make a record of exactly what was inscribed upon it since, no matter how persuasive he had tried to be, the Professor and Mr. Covington refused to risk such a valuable artefact the one hundred and fifty-odd kilometers between Hastings and Oxford, nevermind the fact that it had come from Dover via Calais in the first place and therefore passed us on the way.
I suppose that, while listening to the purely sensible suggestions I made daily was not something the wider world was ready to engage in, since I had proven so adept at caring for the things he did not, Father deemed me capable of caring for the things he did, even if those things didn't necessarily include me as anything other than a copyist.
I boarded the train to Oxford, with connections at Tunbridge and Reading, at 7:00 A.M. on the 14th of March, armed with a sage green walking dress in the Artistic style, a steel-ribbed parasol in the same color, and the housekeeper's daughter, Hephzibah Crump. While I had nothing against Hephzibah, who was a perfectly lovely and sensible girl about two years my junior, I had not asked for her presence. When I stated this to Father, however, he made it clear that going alone on the rail line was a dream about as feasible as Professor Farnsworth's stele arriving in Hastings.
We had lodging waiting for us in Oxford, a snug inn on Rose Lane that catered exclusively to female guests—another one of Father's insistences.
It, like Hephzibah's presence, put me out of my element. I was used to Father not necessarily noticing that I was female, or vulnerable in any way. Primarily, what he noticed was that I had a head for figures and couldn't be swindled by the chandler. Whatever it was that was engendering this streak of protectiveness was, I confess, alarming.
Nevertheless, after a brisk stroll around Merton College and its environs, in anticipation of our appointment with Professor Farnsworth on the morrow, I ate a hearty supper, donned my nightclothes, and went to bed, secure in the knowledge that, despite Father's fretting, everything was going to plan.
~~~
The following excerpt is from the personal journals of R. Emerson, dated 14 March 1873.
Woke again to gray skies, a cold nose, and no fire in the grate. I am reminded daily that the marvels of Oxford are in her libraries, not her lodgings.
Attended Farnsworth's lecture on demotic philology. Have resolved to find myself someone who speaks the modern dialect so that I may converse with them. Reading rocks is all well and good until you have to ask someone to help you pull said rock out of the ground, and neither you nor the rock actually know the local tongue.
Walter will know who to ask, even if he's still at Harrow.
The lads have asked me to row with them on Saturdays, even though they did all right in Torpids and have already got a boat set for the fixture against Cambridge. I said yes. Don't want Eaton to have an excuse to find me on the Mob tomorrow and ask why I'm not doing Farnsworth's reading.
Besides, if I'm at Eights, I don't have to go back to Manchester before Trinity starts.
~~~
From the papers of Mrs. Amelia Peabody Emerson, date unknown.
When I awoke on the fifteenth, the glass panes in the window were frosted over. The air still held a mighty chill, even this late into March. Hephzibah was curled up in her bedsheets like a pillbug and I imagine I looked the same. The fire in the grate had been banked the night before and the remaining heat from the embers didn't quite reach us.
It being Saturday, the street below was less busy than usual, as the students who normally streamed this way and that in their blues were stubbornly still abed, or at least trying to be. I did see a few harried looking boys quick-stepping with sacks of pastries and flagons of hot tea in tow, heading back towards what I presume must have been student housing.
Hephzibah and I were downstairs by 8:00 A.M., I in a blue dress in the same style as the day before, and Hephzibah in the same gray tweed she'd worn on the train up from Hastings. While I succumb to some elements of fashion, my parasol was the same sage green one. There is practicality to having multiple dresses. Multiple parasols veers dangerously toward frivolity, and I am never frivolous.
In his letters to Father, Professor Farnsworth had indicated that he would be free to show and discuss the stele at 9:30 A.M. in the main room of the Merton College Library. We, therefore, were out the door and walking briskly down the cobbled streets by 8:45 A.M., the wind snapping at our backs.
The Library itself is a marvelously old building, with vaulted ceilings that wouldn't look out of place in a cathedral. A massive desk of dark-stained wood, at which the librarian on duty sits, guards the front entrance. Beyond its watchful presence, Hephzibah and I were able to see several students hunched in carrels, piles of books contributing to the partition separating them from their looming exams.
I spoke to the librarian, a Mr. Dunweedy from Lincolnshire who was all shy smiles and horrible blushes when interacting with Hephzibah, and he directed us up a flight of stairs to the mezzanine, which housed even more books as well as the offices used by the college faculty. Professor Farnsworth's name graced the fifth door from the stairs on the left side.
The door was closed. I knocked, using the handle of my parasol to ensure that I was heard. The door jerked open a moment later, and a thin, bespectacled man in his early sixties with an unhealthily ruddy complexion and a shock of thinning white hair glared at me from about two inches below my eyeline.
"Ma'am," he said, slightly sheepish. "Excuse my abruptness, but I am expecting someone. Can I take a card?"
"Professor Farnsworth," I replied. "There is no need for excuses, or cards. My name is Amelia Peabody. Edward Peabody is my father. I believe it is I you have been expecting."
The professor blinked, his eyes magnified by his glasses, before drawing back slightly. "Peabody, eh? Seems odd to have the two of you come, but I suppose Oxfordshire is lovely this time of year, if the sun can be bothered to come out. When will Mr. Peabody be along?"
"Father?" I was startled. "I believe he said in his correspondence with you that he was unable to make the journey himself, owing to his schedule and his health."
"Yes, yes," Professor Farnsworth replied, "he did say all that, in addition to the fact that he was sending someone trustworthy, one of his own, down to take initial impressions."
"Precisely," I said, watching as Professor Farnsworth's eyes got very round and then suddenly lose the ability to make contact with mine. "I pride myself on the trust my father places in me, in all things."
"Oh," Professor Farnsworth's voice had gone flat, before he seemed to rouse himself again. "But what of your brothers? Surely one has accompanied you today."
"Julian is on the Continent, Fabian and Cornelius are taking the waters at Bath with Aunt Patience, Horatio is in London, James hasn't written home in a year, and Charles was needed on the estate," I said, ticking each one off. "Besides, none of them know anything about Egyptology, or making impressions on anything other than Society mamas, nor have they any desire to learn."
"Really, though," Professor Farnsworth said, almost muttering to himself, "Interest or not, Edward ought to have known better than to have sent a woman, no matter her relation or enthusiasm."
I could feel the bones in my spine snapping straighter and straighter the more he spoke. A familiar frustration bubbled in my stomach.
Dismissal and derision from my family was one thing. James' sneers and the others' indifference to father and I's passions were to be expected. After all, I did not care for diabolical scheming, the rugby tables, or the goings on of White's, which not even James had admittance to. My indifference to them was equal to their indifference to me. I acknowledge that most of us would drop anything for the other at a moment's notice, but that was entirely for mother's sake, not out of particularly strong bonds of sibling love.
Outside of the family, suffragists had been making moves in the last five years, Lady Jersey be damned, and Girton College at Cambridge had been admitting women for about as long. Not to mention that, it was rumored, Oxford itself was about to open a women's college.
It came down to this: Being dismissed by my family was an old pain, one I had learned to live with and occasionally forget when the fire of learning was lit in Father's heart and reflected in mine. The dismissal of the world, however, of myself and all womankind, without a single thought towards the prolific evidence of my intelligence, was unbearable. Modern society may be changing at the pace of the slowest molasses, but I knew that I was capable of carrying out the task that had been set for me, and I knew it from almost my very first breath.
And so, I embarked upon the Herculean task of outlining that capability to Professor Farnsworth, in great detail. My voice, I will admit, did strain from the effort of keeping it to a polite, library-like whisper, but the tip of my parasol suffered no such limitations. It swooshed through the air, punctuating my points with sharp stabs and harsh glitters of sunlight off the metal tip. Professor Farnsworth seemed transfixed by it, his eyes even crossing a little when it came near him during a particularly apt point.
Of course, the need to keep my tone at an even register only lasted as long as we were in the library. Professor Farnsworth slowly herded Hephzibah and I back down the stairs, past a cowed looking Mr. Dunweedy—who still managed a smile and a small wave for a blushing Hephzibah—and out on the the rectangular patch of grass that occupies the center of the square of buildings the library makes up one side of.
"Still, Miss Peabody," Professor Farnsworth huffed, looking around wildly for either eavesdroppers or supports and apparently finding neither, "I cannot allow you to do this. The artefact itself, nevermind the impressions, is—" here he dropped his voice, as if he had indeed found listeners or simply distrusted the ability of university students to keep their own counsel "—not suitable for a lady's delicate sensibilities."
"It is a stone slab," I cried, exasperated. "A stone slab engraved with three different ancient languages. I hardly think that carved Greek could be unsuitable for anyone's eyes, except perhaps the Turks."
"It is unseemly," Professor Farnsworth declared, in the manner of the worst sort of governess. "Please convey my respects to your father, as I shall not be budged from my position."
Dear Reader, I am afraid that, at that point, I lost my temper.
I said—oh, many things. Aspersions upon the professor's character followed by derision towards the intelligence of his employer, which culminated in acrimonious injunctions against the Egyptological field as a whole for encouraging such scurrilous behavior. Hephzibah had to remind me of half of it later, I was in such a high dudgeon.
Well, it matters not, anyway. After my slightly indecorous display, Professor Farnsworth has agreed to show me the artefact in truth on Tuesday and allow me to take any and all impressions or notes Father may need.
As to why he suddenly permitted it, I do not know. Perhaps he recognized my passion and fervor as similar to that of his own, prompting a change of heart. Perhaps I threatened, with no small degree of sincerity, to go to the warden of his college, who happens to be my godmother's father, and claim that he was allowing the progress of British Egyptological inquiry to fail due to spurious prejudice, and then to Germany to claim the same but for the sake of global progress.
As I said, I do not quite remember. I shall have to ask Hephzibah in the morning.
~~~
The following excerpt is from the personal journals of R. Emerson, dated 15 March 1873.
Thank God I was on the Isis all day, drenched in riverwater, freezing, and getting yelled at by an anxious fellow who lives in the front quad. Never caught his name but his commands to "ready all" had me jumping.
Came back to Stubbins at around eight to find the place in an uproar. Apparently some chit up from Sussex had it out with Farnsworth in the middle of the Mob. Bledsoe says she was ripping into him about some artefact or other and how he was a disgrace to the field or some such. Threatened to write to Lepsius in Germany and have him revoke the lending agreement.
Twick even felt moved enough by it to do a dramatic reenactment of part of the whole thing, which involved him waving around a decorative sword, calling it a parasol and doing nearly as much damage as his subject. We almost got the prefect down on us but apparently he just wanted to correct Twick's form and to remind him of a friendly against Baliol Tuesday next.
~~~
From the papers of Mrs. Amelia Peabody Emerson, date unknown.
We were in Oxford for Sunday services, which sent Hephzibah and I down the High Street to Magdalen College Chapel. We could have attended Merton College Chapel since, even after my outburst, we were still guests of Professor Farnsworth, but Hephzibah and I mutually decided that awkward meetings were better suited to communal spaces without a prohibition against vigorous conversation.
Besides, the most direct path to Merton College Chapel from our lodgings is something called Deadman's Walk, which is ominous in precisely the wrong way for a spring morning, even if it is bitingly cold.
After we escaped the muffled, beeswax-infused interior of Magdalen College Chapel, we diverted ourselves with visits to several confectionery shops before settling to tea with Warden Marsham.
I did not mention having invoked his name with one of his staff—why bother such a great man when the issue is already resolved?
~~~
The following excerpt is from the personal journals of R. Emerson, dated 16 March 1873.
All the money flowing into this place, you'd think they'd at least heat the church they shuffle us all into every Sunday, but no. The Chapel is just as frigid as where they put the first-years, maybe even more so.
Farnsworth looked peaky during the service, kept twitching and looking over his shoulder at every little sound. Bledsoe says its the Sussex girl he's looking for, as if she'd bang in to the sanctuary hall and upbraid him again before God and all Mertonians. I almost wished she would; It'd give me time to take a nip of the scorching tea Twick keeps in a flask under his bluer.
All quiet today, though, excepting the wind, which was ghastly.
~~~
From the papers of Mrs. Amelia Peabody Emerson, date unknown.
I despise waiting.
I understand its necessity, and I can wait with all the focus and stealth of a cat if the situation calls for it, but the regular sort of “not until tomorrow” waiting is the very worst.
Monday was all waiting. Waiting and brisk walks through the winter-stripped branches of the botanical gardens, the real game of it, this early in the year, being guessing what's still alive and what will bloom next.
One more day, and we will have what we came for. One more day and the only judgment I have to endure is that of my family.
~~~
The following excerpt is from the personal journals of R. Emerson, dated 17 March 1873.
Tutorial first thing, with Farnsworth, which might have well have been a telegram. He dropped a copy of Lepsius' Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien, in the original German, on my desk, said, "read that, we'll talk later", then walked away to whisper furiously at Reardon while the skinny cox from front quad stared just as dolefully at him as I was doing to Farnsworth.
Finally managed to slip Farnsworth and get a librarian, who was able to swap out my Denkmäler for a Monuments—no-one ever said an interest in the classics and the distant past meant you had to learn German—and spent the last hour of tutorial doing something other than looking at pictures.
Hingham's philosophy lecture after that. Aside from the Latin practice, I think I got more out of Denkmäler. He set us a reading from one of the Diogenes'—in the Greek, of course—and sent us on our merry way into the cold and bluster.
~~~
From the papers of Mrs. Amelia Peabody Emerson, date unknown.
The day at last.
Hephzibah and I arrived at Merton College Library at 9:30 A.M., in an echo of Saturday's debacle, armed with the righteous knowledge that we were permitted to be there and our Sunday finest, in addition to the ever present and previously victorious sage green parasol. My dress, a thinly striped pink-and-green calico, gave me an aura of English delicacy I usually wasn't able—nor, to be perfectly honest, looking—to achieve, and Hephzibah's blue and white tartan complimented her far better than the gray.
Mr. Dunweedy, managing the desk again, certainly noticed it. He came out from behind the great oak edifice when he saw us come in and offered to fetch the Professor down, but his eyes were only for the delicate, quivering halo of Hephzibah's curls, luminous in the early morning sun.
We accepted his offer, and waited as he ascended the stairs. Though there was no way of knowing if the same students were in the study carrels as had been on Saturday, there was enough of an air of furious whispering and pen scratching on the edge of our hearing that implied that Oxford boys were as much inveterate gossips as Aunt Patience’s set in Bath.
Professor Farnsworth descended the stairs some ten minutes later, after some furious whispering of his own to Mr. Dunweedy that Hephzibah and I politely ignored.
“Miss Peabody,” he said as he approached, “Please, follow me.”
“Thank you, Professor,” I replied, repressing the pleased smile that is the due of someone who is not only getting their way, but is getting it because it is deserved. “I trust that you have all of the requisite supplies on hand?”
Professor Farnsworth harrumphed, but conceded that he did, in fact, have paper for impressions and charcoal aplenty, as well as, on my request, several sheets of coordinate paper.
The stele was presented on a table that, judging by the large bookstand hastily shoved underneath it and the massive copy of Oxfordshire and Her Environs: A Current and Historical Topographical Survey of the Country West of London currently balanced atop a row of bookshelves, usually housed the impressively old books with intricate pictures that libraries are so fond of having on display. A thick, sturdy piece of undyed cloth was laid underneath the stone, protecting both the table and the artefact from any damage.
Once we were presented with the materials, Hephzibah and I set to the task of recording every possible detail of the stele that my father might wish to study. Hephzibah took measurements of the stone’s dimensions using a small tailor’s tape while I began copying the Greek characters, which were incredibly well preserved, into the squares of the coordinate paper. Once I was finished with the Greek, Hephzibah took rubbings, with my direction and the—admittedly reluctant—aid of Professor Farnsworth’s hands. We then repeated the process with the demotic, which took a little longer due to my lack of facility in that language, and with the hieroglyphics, the copying of which tested my ability as an artist as well as a surveyor.
An hour or so later, once we had everything recorded and packed away in a folio, I turned to Professor Farnsworth and asked him whether or not he had a copy of where and how the stele had been found.
He blinked at me, looking rather like a surprised owl. “I beg your pardon?” he said, finally.
Charcoal was smudged across his left cheek leading up into his eyebrow. I did not point this out to him.
“Do you have a record of where the stele was found?” I asked again.
“Thebes,” he said, “It was found in Thebes—Miss Peabody, you know this.”
“Yes, yes,” I said, “But how was it found? Don’t you have a report from the dig site about what it looked like in situ?”
Professor Farnsworth resumed blinking. “I do not. I don’t believe one was made.”
I sighed. Short of traveling in time to ensure Mr. Covington’s expedition conducted themselves to his expectations, Father would simply have to live with the disappointment.
“Well, then,” I said, looking around me in case any stray notes or impressions had escaped us in the flurry of activity. “That will be all. Thank you so much for your cooperation in this matter, I’m sure Father will be pleased.”
“Well,” Professor Farnsworth said, looking a little lost. “Anything for a friend. Good day, ladies.”
With that, we took our leave.
~~~
The following excerpt is from the personal journals of R. Emerson, dated 18 March 1873.
Caught sight of Farnsworth's virago, or at least her immediate aftermath.
Came into the library after lunch to find the large sheets of paper they use for taking impressions scattered all over the library, with Farnsworth standing over one of the steles they found at Thebes last season, charcoal smeared all over his hands and streaked across his face, which looked appropriately gobsmacked.
"Women," was all he said for a moment, then: "Can you believe they're opening a college for them here? God, we'll be overrun."
He then wandered off in the direction of the church, which I suppose says all it needs to.
The stele was interesting though, similar to Turner's, with the three scripts etched across the front in clear blocks. My less than half-trained eye was able to pick out most of the Greek, a very little of the demotic, and none of the hieroglyphics at all.
The thought of being able to read all three at a glance, though, and understand all of what was being said? The though of being the one to pull it out of the ground, recognize its significance, and send it back to here, or the British Museum, or Lepsius in Berlin?
That had me turning back to the stacks, determined anew to find my way to the sands and dig sites of Egypt, ready to catalogue every inch of ground and secrets they could be persuaded to give up.