TO READ THE CHARLES WATERTON STORY IN ORDER (RECOMMENDED) CLICK THE APPROPRIATE LINK: PART ONE, PART THREE, PART FOUR.
Waterton's World of Wourali & Taxidermy...
A visit to Wakefield Museum is essential when researching the life of Charles Waterton. Though the room that houses the Waterton exhibition is small, I still managed to spend well over an hour in there (which probably explains why I always fall out with the wife if I manage to drag her into a museum).
The displays tell Waterton’s story primarily through specimens he preserved using his expertise as a taxidermist. Even the caiman he caught in South America is there, under glass in the floor, so you too can straddle it, or at least stand astride it.
Before we examine his creative, often bizarre and satirical taxidermy, though, let us explore his association with the poison curare.
Curare (which was known as wourali during Waterton’s time) was used in the Guyanan forest by the local Amerindians on the end of their poison darts when they went hunting. Waterton is thought to be the first European to see how curare was collected and prepared, during his 1812 expedition into the hinterland. He is also credited as the first person to bring curare back to Europe.
Curare is derived from a type of vine that grows in the rainforests of South America. The exhibition features a bowl used to collect the
poison, together with a roll of darts.
poison, together with a roll of darts.
Waterton believed that curare could have an important role to play in the treatment of muscular disorders involving spasms, such as tetanus (sometimes known as lockjaw) and rabies (known to people at the time as hydrophobia).
Upon his return to England, he was invited to London by the Royal Society to help with an experiment designed to show the potential of curare (another piece I read said he did experiments with two surgeons at the Royal Veterinary College – maybe he did both).
Several animals were immobilised using the curare as part of these experiments, including famously an ass. It was this particularly animal that first got me interested in Waterton. A while back, I was watching a programme about the history of medicine, presented by Michael Mosley, when he began doing a piece to camera standing alongside an ass. He was outside Walton Hall, on or near the iron bridge that spans the lake adjacent to the house.
Mosley was describing this experiment, which the programme makers clearly thought was an important one as far as medical advancement was concerned, and it was being connected to Wakefield, so I took particular note.
An animal injected by curare, either by poison dart or syringe, would be expected to die within a few minutes, as its breathing shut down. However, in the experiment they cut a hole in the ass' windpipe and pumped air into it by means of bellows. Once the poison wore off, the animal made a full recovery.
This particular ass made such a full recovery that it lived another 25 years. It was named Wouralia, as a result of the experiment, and was kept by Waterton at Walton Hall as something of a pet, enjoying the finest pasture available and being excused from any exertion. When she did finally die, she even got an obituary in a local paper, the St James Chronicle.
For a time, Waterton was much in demand when it came to demonstrations of the properties of curare. This illustration shows him in the Leeds home of a Dr Hobson, holding a rattlesnake. The experiment was designed to show the differing effects of rattlesnake poison and curare on rabbits, guinea pigs and pigeons.
I can't imagine results were too positive for these poor creatures and have no evidence that any of them were given miniature tracheotomies. Clearly, conservationism was still in its infancy. The rattlesnake did briefly escape, however, and tried to even the score by showing the effects of rattlesnake poison on humans. Waterton was, apparently, the only person brave enough to catch it and restore calm to the situation.
He was also called to Nottingham when a policeman caught rabies there. The man died before Waterton made it to the town, but he was still asked to perform some experiments with his supply of curare for interested physicians.
The experiments were similar to the one that involved Wouralia and another ass survived its experience with the poison due to the wonders of artificial respiration. The demonstration made such an impression that Nottingham General Hospital named its Intensive Care Unit after him 100 years or so later, calling it the Waterton Ward.
Frustratingly for the scientists of the time (and presumably Waterton), they never quite worked out how to use curare in a clinical setting. It took until the 1940s before real breakthroughs were made in its use. Since then, curare has been widely used as a muscle relaxant in conjunction with anaesthesia, so Waterton's legacy lives on today.
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By all accounts, Charles Waterton only ever had one proper portrait done. It's in the National Gallery, though, so he has a 100% record in that regard, which gives an indication of the impression he made on British life.
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The Guild of Taxidermists once described Waterton as 'the father of modern artistic and scientific taxidermy'. Indeed, they celebrated the 200th anniversary of his birth at Walton Hall in 1982.
Waterton preserved many of the animals he encountered in his life and on his expeditions. He employed a method unique at the time where he carefully removed the skin of a new specimen before soaking it in what he called sublimate of mercury (mercuric chloride dissolved in alcohol).
This hardened the skin but left it in a state where it could still be manipulated. It also removed the need for the specimen to be stuffed, as in most taxidermy.
"Allow me to inform you that there are no stuffed animals in this house," he famously told a visitor to Walton Hall in 1856. To prove it, he removed the head of a stoat he had on display.
Although his methods were unique and possibly afforded better results, they were too lengthy for them to be adopted by the profession as a whole. Removing the skin of the animal without damaging it, for instance, required a great deal of time and patience (when he was 75, Waterton spent seven weeks setting up a peacock - not everyone had this luxury).
Waterton's special place in the history of taxidermy lies in the artistic and sometimes satirical nature of his displays. A man belonging his social status would often have entered politics, but as a Catholic Waterton refused to take the Oath of Allegiance.
He clearly had strong opinions regarding government, though, and he was inclined to use his skills as a taxidermist to make his point on political and religious matters. Looking around Wakefield museum at some of these examples, it is possible to imagine Waterton winning the Turner Prize, if it had existed at the time.
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Waterton taught his method of taxidermy to John Edmonstone, a former slave of his uncle and great friend, Charles Edmonstone. John accompanied Waterton on his trips into the Guyanan forests, helping to preserve specimens, and after he was given his freedom by Charles Edmonstone, he settled in Edinburgh.
In Edinburgh, he tutored the young Charles Darwin in the method of taxidermy taught him by Charles Waterton. He also regaled Darwin with tales of his time in Guyana and is thought to have been a great inspiration to Darwin, who soon after ditched his medical studies in Edinburgh and hopped on the Beagle.
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A good sample of Waterton's '3D satire' is his piece 'John Bull and the National Debt'. In it, the nation, or John Bull character, is depicted as a tortoise-shelled creature with a dragon of sorts on its back. It is accompanied by other unpleasant looking creatures, to help drive home the point he was trying to make (Waterton had little time for the Treasury).
Another creation showed off his anarchic sense of humour. Various reptiles were dressed as famous English Protestants in a piece he called 'The English Reformation Zoologically Demonstrated'.
Sadly, this taxidermal artwork has been lost, but there is another sample of his religious satire on display, though this one is perhaps rather more blunt.
In 'Martin Luther After His Fall', the main protagonist in the early development of Protestantism is depicted as a gorilla. Waterton had visited this particular gorilla, Jenny, several times as she was transported around the country as part of a travelling menagerie based in Scarborough. Jenny was still young when she died while on tour in Warrington. The owner of this zoo on wheels agreed to send her to Walton Hall, where she would become incorporated into Waterton’s satirical taxidermy.
Despite getting a close-up view of the creature, he was under the impression that Jenny was a chimpanzee. While she was still alive he wrote of her awkward walking style and stated that she should be swinging in the trees.
This gives an indication of how much knowledge of the natural world was in its infancy. A man with a great interest in the natural world couldn’t distinguish a young gorilla from a chimpanzee. It is important to remember, however, that when he created his piece ‘Martin Luther After His Fall’ in 1856, it was still three more years before ‘The Origin of Species’ was published.
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The naturalist Paul du Chaillu is usually credited as being the first European to have reliably seen and confirmed the existence of gorillas, as a result of his expeditions to West Africa. This was around the same time – the late 1850s – that Waterton had a gorilla in his house in Wakefield.
I wonder if du Chaillu ever found out and thought he should have saved himself the bother of journeying to West Africa and just have gone to West Yorkshire instead.
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During my visit to the Waterton exhibition at Wakefield Museum, there was a video playing over and over with Sir David Attenborough talking about how much he admires Waterton. Attenborough opened the new premises of the museum in 2013. One gets the impression that it was the Waterton connection that persuaded him to come to Wakefield for the ceremony.
The part of the video that stuck in my head was when Attenborough is explaining how Waterton wrote that a fellow naturalist should be horsewhipped for some of his assertions regarding the natural world.
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John James Audubon |
Considering I must have heard the tape go round 20 times during my visit, I really should know which naturalist had so upset him. It may well have been du Chaillu or it could have been the French-American ornithologist John James Audubon.
Most important, I guess, was the way it illustrated Waterton's fiery temper. He wrote several essays on natural history (they were later compiled into three volumes) and he seems often to have used these essays to attack fellow naturalists.
His falling outs with the likes of du Chaillu and Audubon were partly due to his apparent feeling that they were too po-faced about the subject for his liking. This brings us on to one of the centrepieces of the exhibition - the Nondescript.
Waterton gave the title of the Nondescript to a creation of his that caused something of a stir. Created in the mid-1820s, he refused to say exactly what it was, which led to various stories and rumours.
One such rumour was that he had killed a man during one of his treks into the Guyanan jungle. He had then disguised the head as that of a monkey and got customs officials to turn a blind eye as he brought the head home as a souvenir.
The story is, of course, a load of rubbish. Waterton clearly enjoyed fuelling people’s imagination or, to put it another way, messing with their heads. I'm guessing that he loved hearing the gossip about him killing a man, knowing full well it was untrue.
He probably also enjoyed putting the thought into people's mind that such a creature could exist. Looking at it today, sitting in its glass case, it is hard to see how anyone could think it lived in the jungles of South America, but again we have to remember the context of the times. It was not long since sailors could tell stories of all sorts of mythical creatures living in the oceans, for example.
From Waterton's autobiography: " Some gentlemen of great skill and talent, on inspecting his [the Nondescript's] head, were convinced that the whole series of its features has been changed. Others again have hesitated, and betrayed doubts, not being able to make up their minds, whether it be possible, that the brute features of the monkey can be changed into the noble countenance of man."
This is a man who was plainly relishing the debate that his artwork generated. His position as a prankster was confirmed when experts later established that the main body of The Nondescript was in fact the rear end of a howler monkey. Waterton had used his unique skills as a taxidermist to give the backside a human face.
But what would his inspiration have been for creating such a thing? Another story circulated at the time which may also be apocryphal, but one could imagine it to be true. It is certainly an entertaining one.
On returning to England from Guyana in 1821 with a trunk full of animal specimens, Waterton encountered a jobsworth at Liverpool customs. The official, a Mr Lushington, made him pay an exorbitant fee for the import of the specimens, despite Waterton's protestations that they were of no commercial value.
The next time Waterton passed through Liverpool customs on his way back from South America, he had The Nondescript with him. Whether or not Lushington again dealt with him or not we do not know, but the tale goes that the face of the Nondescript bore an uncanny resemblance to the man who had made Waterton pay his high import duty.
Was Waterton laughing about his secret revenge all the way back to Wakefield in his coach from Liverpool docks? Possibly. He was not the sort to stop the fun by putting an end to wagging tongues, as they busily embellished tall tales. In another version, for instance, the backside of the monkey had been adapted into the features of the Secretary to the Treasury - an organisation that, as we know, Waterton disdained
Some would say, though, that the last laugh was on Waterton himself. When The Nondescript was exposed as a fake it apparently damaged his reputation among scientists. I get the feeling, however, that he didn’t care all that much, as it had been worth it for entertainment’s sake.
It comes time for me to depart Wakefield Museum and head back to Waterton Park. Waterton's collection of birds and other animals were on display at Walton Hall for years, before arriving at the museum in 1967/the 1970s (another case of sources giving different accounts), via an extended stay at Waterton's old college, Stoneyhurst. I'm hoping to have a look inside his old home and tread in his footsteps.
Firstly, however, I wanted to make a quick stop in Walton village, so I can bring another interesting episode from Waterton's life to your attention.
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