The Lady and the Octopus

The Lady and the Octopus — page 3 — Jeanne has done her fair share of mending and like the octopus she has labored to create something eye catchingly beautiful Seventeen years ago when she was a young dressmaker in Paris France Jeanne sewed a wedding gown for a princess Though it had nothing to do with the sea that remarkable feat set her on the path that led her here Because of the gown she married a merchant because of the merchant she moved to Sicily and because of Sicily she met the argonaut Now she's up to her elbows in seawater rather than fabric and her attention has shifted from chemises to shells For most kinds of octopuses distinguishing females from males is difficult Both sexes have eight arms attached directly to their head which bears two large eyes and a siphon for breathing and jetting A large soft body called a mantle contains their organs gills stomach kidneys and three separate hearts The mantle's size and shape are similar in both sexes The only difference is that one of the adult male's arms is slightly modified to deliver sperm with a groove along its length and a rounded tip The giant Pacific octopus a relative of the argonauts Jeanne studied is often displayed in public aquariums THE LADY AND THE OCTOPUS 6

The Lady and the Octopus — page 4 — ON HISTORICAL ACCURACY A biography presents the facts of a person's life places and dates experiences and discoveries It offers historical context the political and cultural movements a person lived through Ideally it tells a human story To get it all right biographers conduct research We read what the subjects of our biographies wrote and what has already been written about them We hunt for drawings photographs and movies of them Unfortunately Jeanne lived and died before the invention of audio or video recordings and even photography became available only late in her life Jeanne wrote volumes and extensively illustrated her work but most of her notes and drawings were destroyed in a shipwreck This biography relies heavily on her surviving books and papers as well as a handful of articles written about her during her lifetime We can imagine aspects of Jeanne's life based on how women of her age race wealth and social status typically lived in the various places she called home We can also make inferences by combining different sources of information For example if we know that a famous naturalist visited Sicily while Jeanne was there we can guess that the two of them met and conversed And if they were both interested in reptiles then what do you suppose they talked about We do know that Jeanne would not have described herself as a scientist That word didn't even exist until 1834 and then it took a while to enter common usage I've chosen to call Jeanne and her colleagues scientists anyway because that's how we think of them today In this book you'll come across plenty of maybes and probablys to qualify educated guesses about Jeanne's life You'll also read direct Jeanne Villepreux Power lived through the invention and popularization of photography This portrait was taken by the famous French photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri quotes from Jeanne and her friends telling as much of the story as possible in their own words Perhaps more historical sources will one day come to light literally dredged from the deep if the shipwreck is ever salvaged They would doubtless improve our understanding of Jeanne and her work and might even contradict some of my educated guesses I like to think that Jeanne would be understanding of such errors After all she was wrong about a few things in the course of her research but she did her best with what was available to her That is what I too have done

The Lady and the Octopus — page 5 — But again this octopus is different At the time Jeanne begins her work scientists know only about female argonauts who use their shells to brood their eggs No one has ever seen a male argonaut Perhaps as a few people think males don't exist But Jeanne wonders Sometimes little wormlike creatures are found inside female argonauts and although other scientists call them parasites Jeanne thinks they may be the males of the species Jeanne is full of ideas as well as the patience dedication and resources to explore them That's why she's sitting wet armed in a boat in the port of Messina instead of staying home to manage her household as well off women of her time are expected to do Although European society in 1833 is depressingly sexist Jeanne is both white and wealthy a privileged position from which she will convince many of her male colleagues to recognize her accomplishments Despite laws that prohibit women from voting in an election or attending a university she'll become the first female member of the local scientific organization the Gioenia Academy and will join many other learned societies during her life When an aquarium craze sweeps across Europe and the United States a widely respected fellow scientist will support her efforts to be credited as the inventor of aquariums The city of Messina Sicily and its surroundings became Jeanne's home and laboratory This panorama by Italian painter Carlo Bossoli depicts Messina in 1858 later in Jeanne's life THE LADY AND THE OCTOPUS 8

The Lady and the Octopus — page 6 — But she'll be no stranger to disappointment A man whom she entrusts with her report on argonaut biology will steal her ideas and present them as his own A ship that she entrusts with sixteen cases of invaluable specimens drawings and notes will sink en route from Sicily to England Partly because of this tragedy which destroys so much of her scientific legacy in the years after her death Jeanne will be often forgotten Her story will also be revived from time to time although storytellers will sometimes alter the facts and add their own embellishments to make the story more romantic Today through the efforts of historians scientists artists and writers around the world Jeanne is finding her place in history as a trailblazing inventor and scientist At a time when studying marine biology usually meant looking at dead fish on a table Jeanne insisted on observing live animals as often as possible in their natural habitats While other biologists presented their conjectures and hypotheses as facts Jeanne was a determined designer of experiments as well as aquariums Experiments test hypotheses and experimentation is a cornerstone of modern science Jeanne's revolutionary approach yielded results which she shared widely by writing in multiple languages and doggedly responding to criticism It is through Jeanne's own work that we know her best and none of her research was dearer to her than her studies on that strange and beautiful octopus the argonaut THE MYSTERY OF THE ARGONAUTS 9

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