Rebecca had taken one course, however, from Sir Richard Ostlet, which she enjoyed. The course was called “Practical Mammalogy,” in which Sir Richard regularly championed the existence of the souls of beasts, often quoting Liebniz’s “A New System of Nature” from way back in 1695, which argued that animals are self-organized, they are not “matter which comes to be organized,” and Hieronymus Rorarius, a Hungarian papal diplomat who wrote even earlier, in 1547, that “brutes frequently make better use of their reason than men,” and Rebecca found herself so fascinated by the man Ostlet, who advocated as such for animals, who traveled the world to study mammals in their natural habitats, that she entered his dark office one bright morning and delivered, in a flat, pragmatic tone, a brief treaty explaining why Rebecca Green and Sir Richard Ostlet should marry.
Richard’s eyes had widened as she spoke, they grew dazzlingly bulbous, but the young woman was not deterred; in fact, she was amused when he coughed and apologized, said that his eyes always bulged like that, and he agreed that marrying made good sense—that is, if she could put up with his bad eyes, and with what would most certainly become his eventual blindness.
“I do not mind one bit,” Rebecca said.
They married the following spring. For the occasion, Rebecca wore a blue long-sleeved muslin, a little orange hat with a cluster of matching orange pelargonium from the Palm House in Kew Gardens adorning one side, and that evening, Richard, in preparation for a months-long journey to the Galapagos, showed her their new flat, which he purchased for her as a wedding gift, on Gloucester Walk in London, and, expecting that she would be lonely without him for these many months, Ostlet also presented his new wife with three wriggling, rust-colored puppies, each one a female purebred Irish setter with smooth, long-haired ears, conical heads, and Rebecca, in honor of Agnes Grey, named them Anne, Charlotte, and Emily—and so it is with the Brontës in tow that Rebecca Ostlet’s carriage drops her off at 24 Victoria Terrace in Royal Leamington Spa to View the aardvark, her husband’s final work.
The dogs, fully grown, spill out of the carriage in a trail of excited fire.
Rebecca dismounts, takes one glance at the two long lines which have formed at Titus Downing’s taxidermy shop, and instantly observes that while there appear to be men of every British stripe, she is the only woman, at least from where she stands, in attendance.
At first, this hardly fazes Rebecca Ostlet. As a woman in science, she’s used to it, and she nods to Gentlemen and Lowlifes alike when they tip their hats, yet it is only when the theater troupe spies her in her new cuirass bodice, masculine jacket, and necktie—it’s the latest fashion in London, a dress which is extremely tight fitting, long-waisted and long-boned with the worst kind of corset all the way down to the hips, a drawn-back polonaise that ruches in peacock, over her rear—that she learns the reason, what has kept the women away: the drunk boys see Lady Ostlet in her new garb and whinny their pig heads. Long rabbity ears flap their cheeks.