Still Life

by Melissa Milgrom

  "You're not the truth ... No one could look as good as you...

  "Mercy."

  His voice was rich and smooth and had the incredible Orbison range: the range Bob Dylan said made you want to drive a car off of a cliff; the voice of a professional criminal; the voice that could jar a corpse.

  "Cause I need you ... I'll treat you right ... Come with me baby ... Be mine tonight..."

  "Pretty woman stop awhile ... pretty woman talk awhile ... pretty woman yeah, yeah, yeah..."

  More and more people joined the dance floor. Everyone was swaying and singing. I watched from the back, taking notes. The falsetto was spot-on, the growl beyond masterful. If you close your eyes, his parents said to me, you can't tell the difference.

  So I closed my eyes. My heart wanted to dance. My heart wanted to throw this notebook off a cliff. I squeezed onto the dance floor, swaying and stomping with everyone else. For a moment, I forgot I was in Springfield. I forgot who was onstage. Something Ken once said flashed in my mind: "I idolized Roy Orbison. Always have. And that's why I was able to get as close as I did."

  Now Ken sang, "But, wait ... what do I seeeeeee..." He held the word in suspension for several seconds. It hung in the air like the shrill cry of an exotic bird. And then it struck me: Ken had brought Roy Orbison back to life.

  * * *

  SOURCES

  Behind many a stuffed animal lurks a

  thrilling story of travel and adventure.

  —WILLIAM HORNADAY, 1896

  ***

  The history of taxidermy, natural history, habitat dioramas, and museums is central to Karen Wonders's amazingly comprehensive study "Habitat Dioramas: Illusions of Wilderness in Museums of Natural History" (Ph.D. diss., Uppsala University, 1993); Stephen Christopher Quinn's Windows on Nature: The Great Habitat Dioramas of the American Museum of Natural History (Abrams, in association with the American Museum of Natural History, 2006), which also contains beautiful photographs; and Stephen T. Asma's Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums (Oxford University Press, 2001). Asma explains with considerable delight why people have always been drawn to the macabre and the strange, and nothing is quite as macabre and strange as a museum of natural history.

  An immensely fascinating book about the natural history mania that swept the United Kingdom from 1820 to 1870 is Lynn Barber's The Heyday of Natural History (Doubleday, 1980). This profoundly affecting book about natural history in the pre- and post-Darwin eras provided a rich context essential to my understanding of the world in which the taxidermists I wrote about lived and worked. For an understanding of how the trade was practiced in the nineteenth century, I relied on popular turn-of-the-century taxidermy manuals and on Christopher Frost's self-published A History of British Taxidermy (1987), which describes the era from 1820 to 1910, when Britain was the center of the taxidermic universe, having taken over the role from France and not yet relinquished it to the United States. Pat Morris's splendid article "An Historical Review of Bird Taxidermy in Britain" (Archives of Natural History, 1993) chronicles taxidermy's early development. An Annotated Bibliography on Preparation, Taxidermy, and Collection Management of Vertebrates with Emphasis on Birds by Stephen P. Rogers, Mary Ann Schmidt, and Thomas Gütebier (Carnegie Museum of Natural History, 1989), called the "blue book" for short, is a trove of facts and sources.

  For information about specific bird species, I used the Sibley Guide to Birds by David Allen Sibley (Knopf, 2000). For mammalian taxonomy and phylogeny, I relied on the Princeton Field Guides book Mammals of North America by Roland W. Kays and Don E. Wilson (Princeton University Press, 2002) and numerous Web sites, including the National Museum of Natural History's Mammal Species of the World Database, www.nmnhgoph.si.edu/msw. Also see the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Red List of Threatened Animals, www.iucnredlist.org.

  Taxidermy is an obscure topic for which no central archive or comprehensive book exists. If it weren't for the taxidermists themselves—who love to preserve things—countless old manuals, scrapbooks, memoirs, and catalogs would have perished. Thankfully, several taxidermists and taxidermy collectors generously lent me sources from their impressive personal libraries. Additionally, I spent weeks at the AMNH archives and the Explorers Club library in Manhattan.

  1. SCHWENDEMAN'S TAXIDERMY STUDIO

  The idea for this book grew out of an article I wrote for the New York Times, "When a Polar Bear Needs a Pedicure," which ran on March 26, 2002. For that piece, the AMNH's exceptionally knowledgeable senior project manager, Stephen C. Quinn ("Mr. Diorama"), gave me a private tour of every diorama and display in the museum bearing the mark of David Schwendeman.

  Anyone who has had the distinct pleasure of hanging around Schwendeman's Taxidermy Studio for fifteen years (or fifty years) will get to meet every living Schwendeman, every Milltown neighbor and friend, every fellow birder and curiosity seeker who loves to poke around in such anachronistic shops of wonders. In addition to many enjoyable talks with David and Bruce Schwendeman and their extended family and friends, Rose Wadsworth (the AMNH's former exhibition coordinator for living invertebrates) wrote me two anecdote-filled letters and sent me an assortment of photographs, memos, relevant book chapters, and news clips. Further sources include the following articles: "Memories and Lessons from a House of Nature," Home News, March 23, 1986; "Taxidermy—All in the Family," New York Times, October 23, 1977; and the AMNH's employee newsletter, Grapevine (May/June 1983 and January/February 1987).

  William Hornaday's quote is from his popular manual Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1891; I used the 1916 edition). This book was used as the basis of Elwood's popular correspondence course, established in 1904 and undertaken by several living taxidermists quoted in this book.

  Information on Ker & Downey is from Ker & Downey Safaris: The Inside Story by Jan Hemsing (Sealpoint Publicity, 1989).

  It is still possible to see Misty at the Beebe Ranch in Chincoteague, Virginia. Trigger is on display at the Roy Rogers-Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Missouri, as is Dale Evans's horse Buttermilk and Roy Rogers's stuffed German shepherd Bullet.

  Charles Darwin's foray into taxidermy is discussed in Stephen Asma's Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads.

  A New York Times article on rebuilding Deyrolle ran on November 15, 2008.

  My source on contemporary antifur campaigns was Andrew Bolton's Wild: Fashion Untamed (Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2004).

  The New York Times obituary for Douglas Herrick ran on January 19, 2003.

  The Third Annual Report of the Society of American Taxidermists (Gibson Brothers, 1884) contains a bibliography of taxidermy, in which the obscure methods used in the 1700s are described. Additional methods can be found in Amandine Péquignot's "The History of Taxidermy: Clues for Preservation (Collections: A Journal for Museum Archives Professionals, February 2006) and An Annotated Bibliography on Preparation, Taxidermy, and Collection Management of Vertebrates with Emphasis on Birds by Stephen P. Rogers, Mary Ann Schmidt, and Thomas Gütebier, which does a great job of defining the role of the museum taxidermist.

  I found Peale's correspondence with Washington in the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology guide About the Exhibits (1964, 1985).

  The story of Bécoeur is expertly told by L. C. Rookmaaker, P. Morris, I. E. Glenn, and P. J. Mundy in "The Ornithological Cabinet of Jean-Baptiste Bécoeur and the Secret of Arsenical Soap" ( Archives of Natural History, 2006).

  William Hornaday's quote about jealous, narrow-minded taxidermists ran in Science on July 24, 1880.

  John James Audubon's effort to animate bird skins with wires is from Audubon and His Journals, vol. 2 (Dover Publications, 1986).

  Pat Morris's article on arsenic exposure and the life spans of Victorian taxidermists, "Stuffing for Longevity," was published in New Scientist in August 1982.

  Stephen Quinn's Windows on Nature has wonderful mini-biographie
s of the AMNH'S diorama artists; this is where I read about James Perry Wilson and the first renovation of the Hall of Ocean Life. The rest is from David and Bruce Schwendeman and AMNH press releases.

  Facts about the Biology of Birds renovation came from AMNH's employee newsletter, Grapevine (May/June 1983).

  2. THE CHAMPIONS

  Retired Milwaukee Public Museum taxidermist Floyd Easterman generously shared documents from his personal archive with me, including the SAT annual reports of 1881, 1882, and 1884 and William Hornaday's personal scrapbook of newspaper clippings. Mary Anne Andrei's fastidiously researched article "Breathing Life into Stuffed Animals: The Society of American Taxidermists, 1880–1885" (Collections: A Journal for Museum Archives Professionals, November 2004) was extremely illuminating, as was an interview I had with her by phone.

  America's approach to taxidermy is described in Karen Wonders's Habitat Dioramas. This is where I learned about the tradition of American sportsmen such as Theodore Roosevelt and the Boone and Crockett Club.

  For panda information and information on Hsing-Hsing, see "China's Panda Ambassadors," http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4508873.stm; "Animal Info—Information on Endangered Mammals," http://animalinfo.org/; and the National Zoo's Web site, http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Animals/GiantPandas/default.cfm.

  No one can describe A Fight in the Tree-Tops with more animation and wit than its creator, William Hornaday. I found his lively words in his memoir A Wild-Animal Round-up: Stories and Pictures from the Passing Show (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925) and in Andrei's article "Breathing Life into Stuffed Animals." Wonders's Habitat Dioramas, from which I got Hornaday's quote "I love nature..." from Two Years in the Jungle (1885), provided the context in which I could view Tree-Tops in its era.

  William Hornaday's account of Ward's Natural Science Establishment, "The King of Museum-Builders" (Commercial Travelers Home Magazine, February 1896), is incredibly vivid. Likewise, Natural History's March-April 1927 issue has articles by famous Ward's grads such as Frederic A. Lucas and William Wheeler, who lovingly describe the place. The Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology guide About the Exhibits (1964, 1985) also has a section on Professor Henry Ward and his magnificent quarry.

  3. THE MAN WHO HUNTED FOR SCIENCE

  Sources on Carl Akeley, his African expeditions, and his taxidermy process come from many places, including primarily the AMNH archives (his personal papers, journal, telegrams, correspondence, press bulletins, and records, as well as those of his widow, Mary Jobe Akeley) and to a lesser extent the Explorers Club library in Manhattan. I also relied on the following works: Akeley's memoir In Brightest Africa (Doubleday, 1920; I used the 1923 edition); Carl Akeley's Africa, an account of the Akeley-Eastman-Pomeroy Expedition by Mary Jobe Akeley (Blue Ribbon Books, 1929; I used the 1932 edition); The Wilderness Lives Again by Mary Jobe Akeley (Dodd, Mead, 1940), which describes his step-by-step preservation process. Roy Chapman Andrews's essay "Akeley of Africa" (True, June 1952) provided thoughtful insight into the character of this complex man, as did Robert Rockwell's memoir My Way of Becoming a Hunter (Norton, 1855). Stephen Quinn's Windows on Nature contains images from the AMNH's archives and behind-the-scenes information on the making of African Hall. The May 1914 issue of the American Museum Journal (14, no. 5) is about Akeley, as are the essays "The Autobiography of a Taxidermist" ( Natural History, March-April 1927) and "Carl Akeley's Enduring Dream" by George R. Price (Reader's Digest, September 1959). The March-April 1927 issue of Natural History is devoted entirely to Akeley's legacy and contains glowing commemorative essays by his dearest friends and colleagues: Kermit Roosevelt, Baron de Carter de Marchienne, F. Trubbee Davison, George Sheerwood, Frederic Lucas, William Wheeler, and Henry Fairfield Osborn.

  Of all the Akeley books and articles, none is as passionately researched and rendered as African Obsession: The Life and Legacy of Carl Akeley by Penelope Bodry-Sanders (Batax Museum Publishing, 1998). I relied on this book for specific details about his early life and career, his time at Ward's, and his Congo expeditions.

  I attended the June 2004 elephant radiography press conference at the museum, where I interviewed the conservation team while they shot images of the elephants. The New York Times ran a piece on the elephant project on June 4, 2004.

  The Roosevelt-Smithsonian expedition of 1909 is described in Karen Wonders's "Habitat Dioramas."

  The alleged elephant substitution is from Bodry-Sanders's African Obsession.

  I found descriptions of Ward's Natural Science Establishment in the aforementioned memoirs and books; in Hornaday's profile of Ward, "The King of Museum-Builders"; in the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology guide About the Exhibits (1964, 1985); and in Robert Rockwell's memoir My Way of Becoming a Hunter.

  "Zoological Collections in the Early British Museum—Documentation of the Collection" by Alwyne Wheeler ( Archives of Natural History, 1996) summarizes the British Museum's collections, sources, and importance. The origins and contents of famous AMNH collections (those of Prince Maximilian of Wied, P. T. Barnum, and Roy Chapman Andrews) are from two old AMNH guidebooks (1953, 1972) and from the New York Times obituary of paleontologist James Hall (August 9, 1894).

  The Thomas Barbour expedition is from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology guide About the Exhibits (1964, 1985).

  Peale's information is drawn from many sources, chiefly Charles Coleman Sellers's Mr. Peale's Museum (Norton, 1980) and from Lynn Barber's The Heyday of Natural History.

  The account of Roy Chapman Andrews's expedition is from Science Explorer: Roy Chapman Andrews by Jules Archer (Simon & Schuster, 1968).

  Charles Waterton's quote is from the 1889 edition of his expedition memoir Wanderings in South America (Macmillan).

  Taxidermists originally portrayed the dodo as looking like it had swallowed a Gouda cheese and the goblin shark as having a shovellike protuberance on its forehead. The fat dodo theory was debunked in Andrew C. Kitchener's study "On the External Appearance of the Dodo, Raphus cucullatus" ( Archives of Natural History, 1993). An anatomically accurate rendering of the goblin shark can be seen in Sharks and Rays of Australia by P. R. Last and J. D. Stevens (Fisheries Research and Development, 1994). A goblin shark with a shovel-like protuberance is depicted in The World Encyclopedia of Fishes by Alwyne Wheeler (MacDonald, 1985).

  Additional information on Akeley's first expedition to the Congo to collect gorillas is primarily from his article "Gorillas—Real and Mythical" (Natural History, September-October 1923). I also used documents from the AMNH archives, including Mary Jobe Akeley's personal correspondence and an essay by Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn.

  The New Yorker published a delightful review of African Hall called "Africa Brought to Town" on May 2, 1936. David Schwendeman's vivid memories brought the ribbon cutting alive.

  Frederic A. Lucas's quote about what to call the modern taxidermist is from Natural History, March-April 1927.

  4. HOW THE ORANGUTAN GOT ITS SKIN

  In addition to many thoughtful conversations with John Matthews, Paul Rhymer, and Ken Walker, I interviewed National Museum of Natural History collections manager Linda K. Gordon, curator in charge James G. Mead, and conservator Catharine Hawks, as well as conservation scientist Amandine Péquignot, Centre de recherches sur la conservation collections at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris, and Frank Greenwell, Smithsonian taxidermist from 1957 to 1999. The Smithsonian's mammal hall press conference, where museum scientists and administrators spoke and then led reporters on guided tours of the new hall, took place in November 2003. I was on Associate Director for Public Programs Robert Sullivan's tour. The Smithsonian's Office of Public Affairs provided statistics and facts about the old West Wing and the new Kenneth E. Behring Family Hall of Mammals, as did the November 2003 issue of Smithsonian.

  British Natural History Museum fish curator Oliver Crimmen ("We're just a bunch of state-funded Tony Perkinses") took me on two fascinating behind-the-scenes tours of the museum. At Wandsworth, t
he museum's gigantic off-site storage facility, we came upon a donkey that looked as if it had laughed so hard it burst its seams, and we began to talk about why people humanize mammals. Crimmen said, "It will be a sad day when I stop anthropomorphizing." Only now do I realize how deeply his words influenced how I approached this book.

  The New York Times reported Lawrence M. Small's resignation in "Report Faults Oversight by Smithsonian Regents" on June 19, 2007. "History for Sale" (Washington Post, January 20, 2002) chronicles Small's efforts to privatize the Smithsonian through big-time donors; I relied on this for figures and context, including the protest memo signed by curators at the National Museum of American History and also for information about Kenneth H. Behring. The Archaeological Institute of America ran an online feature on Small and Behring called "Crisis at the Smithsonian," www.archaeology.org/online/features/smithsonian/behring.html, September 19, 2002.

  For accounts of how Behring tried to import the trophy remains of the argali sheep, see "Controversy Surrounds Rare Sheep in Canada" (CBC Radio Transcripts, http://archives.foodsafetynetwork.ca/ animalnet/2001/8-2001/an-08-19-01-01.txt, August 17, 2001). The Humane Society's online feature is called "Trophy Hunting," www.hsus.org/wildlife/hunting_old/trophy_hunting/, n.d. "How to Bag Your Own Endangered Species" by Linda Gottwald ran in USA Today on February 3, 2000. Also see the Safari Club International's Online Record Book, www.scirecordbook.org/login/index.cfm.

  A New York Times feature titled "Friends Matter for Reclusive Creature of African Forest" (October 12, 2004) describes how scientists based in the Congo continue to study the okapi.