6. Giants upon the Scene
109This blessed day will I go: Herman Melville, “Cock-a-Doodle-Doo!” Harper’s Magazine 8 (1854): 80.
109Few Westerners took Marco Polo: Stephen G. Haw, Marco Polo’s China: A Venetian in the Realm of Khubilai Khan (London: Routledge, 2006), 130.
110“Perhaps no officer of equal”: Dictionary of National Biography, eds. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1885), s.v. “Belcher, Sir Edward (1799–1877).”
110The Dictionary: Basil Stuart-Stubbs, “Belcher, Sir Edward,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 10, accessed March 20, 2014, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/belcher_edward_10E.html.
110Belcher was from: Anonymous, Men of the Time: Biographical Sketches of Eminent Living Characters . . . Also Biographical Sketches of Celebrated Women of the Time (London: Kent, 1859), 55.
110Shortly after, Diana Belcher: Edward Belcher et al., A Report of the Judgment: Delivered on the Sixth Day of June, 1835 (London: Saunders and Benning, 1835).
110Diana ultimately got her: Diana Jolliffe Belcher, The Mutineers of the Bounty and Their Descendants in Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands (New York: Harper & Bros., 1871).
111His luck changed in 1836: Richard Brinsley Hinds et al., The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Sulphur: Under the Command of Captain Sir Edward Belcher during the Years 1836–42 (London: Smith, Elder, 1844), 2.
111“He was much attached”: Ibid., 2.
111A British zoologist named: Bo Beolens et al., The Eponym Dictionary of Reptiles (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), s.v. “Belcher.”
111It is the world’s: Cindy Blobaum, Awesome Snake Science: 40 Activities for Learning about Snakes (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2012), 84.
111Chinese authorities insisted: Andrew L. Cherry et al., Substance Abuse: A Global View (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002), 41.
112In January 1841: Edward Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World (London: H. Colburn, 1843), 139.
112After an absence of six years: L. S. Dawson, Memoirs of Hydrography, Including Brief Biographies of the Principal Officers Who Have Served in H.M. Naval Surveying Service between the Years 1750 and 1885 (Eastbourne: Henry W. Keay, the “Imperial Library,” 1885; Google eBook), 18.
112She enjoyed what she called: R. J. Hoage and William A. Deiss, New Worlds, New Animals: From Menagerie to Zoological Park in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), 50.
112“The Orang Outang is too”: The Royal Archives, Queen Victoria’s Journals, May 27, 1842, accessed May 18, 2014, www.queenvictoriajournals.org.
112Darwin, who had also visited the same ape: Steve Jones, The Darwin Archipelago: The Naturalist’s Career Beyond Origin of the Species (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 1.
113The queen loved the circus: S. L. Kotar and J. E. Gessler, The Rise of the American Circus, 1716–1899 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2011), 132.
113The year before: “The Court,” The Spectator 16 (London: F.C. Westley, 1843): 50.
113In late September 1842: Sidney Lee, Queen Victoria (New York: Macmillan, 1903), 139–44.
113The five hens and two cocks: There is no direct evidence of formal presentation of the birds, and there is continued controversy over when the fowl arrived at Windsor, their breed, and their donor. Several contemporary sources, however, support the assertion that Captain Belcher, newly arrived in London, made the presentation, though it is unlikely this was done in person given his personal circumstances. No other theory can account for the timing of the gift or the peculiar silence about the donor’s identity.
113The birds were quickly dubbed: Illustrated London News 3–4, December 23, 1843, 409; The Countryman 69, no. 2 (1968), 350.
114He had noted in his log the purchase of chickens: Belcher, Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, 257.
114Victoria and Albert immediately: Jane Roberts, Royal Landscape: The Gardens and Parks of Windsor (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 205.
114Raised on a German country estate with: Ibid., 205.
114In December, the government: Ibid.
114“Partly forester, partly builder, partly farmer, and partly gardener”: Robert Rhodes James, Prince Albert: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1984), 142.
115“We walked down to the Farm”: Queen Victoria’s Journals, January 23, 1843.
115The fanciful structure was: W. C. L. Martin, The Poultry Yard: Comprising the Management of All Kinds of Fowls (London: Routledge, 1852), 7.
115When the Illustrated London News: Illustrated London News 3–4, December 23, 1843, 409.
115The morning the article was published: Queen Victoria’s Journals, December 23, 1843.
115The same week: Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas (London: Chapman & Hall, 1843), i.
115But it was chicken rather: “A Royal Banquet,” Carlisle Patriot, January 6, 1844.
116The following spring, after: Queen Victoria’s Journals, April 4, 1844.
116By the summer of 1844: Ibid., July 12, 1844.
116Mainly, however, this: Ibid., November 22, 1847.
116The author of the 1844: John French Burke, Farming for Ladies; Or, a Guide to the Poultry-Yard, the Dairy and Piggery (London: John J. Murray, 1844).
116Chickens were already in Britain: Kitty Chisholm and John Ferguson, Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press in Association with the Open University Press, 1981), 595; Margaret Visser, Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos, of an Ordinary Meal (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 123.
117Roman men carried the right: Janet Vorwald Dohner, The Encyclopedia of Historic and Endangered Livestock and Poultry Breeds (Yale University Press, 2001), s.v. “Chickens.”
117The oldest handwritten: C. R. Whittaker, Rome and Its Frontiers: The Dynamics of Empire (London: Routledge, 2004), 98.
117The Latin saying: John G. Robertson, Robertson’s Words for a Modern Age: A Cross Reference of Latin and Greek Combining Elements (Eugene, OR: Senior Scribe Publications, 1991), 237.
117and Roman bakers: Apicius, Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome, ed. and trans. Joseph Dommers Vehling (Milton Keynes, U.K.: Lightning Source, 2009), 95.
117And in Roman Britain: Bruce Watson and N. C. W. Bateman, Roman London: Recent Archaeological Work; Including Papers Given at a Seminar Held at the Museum of England on 16 November, 1996 (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1998), 96.
117The sixth-century AD Rule: Terrence Kardong, Benedict’s Rule: A Translation and Commentary (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996), 326.
117It was, the food scholar: C. Anne Wilson, Food & Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century (Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1991), 130.
117You could buy a whole bird: Ibid.
118In thirteenth-century London: Ibid., 123.
118One historian calculates that: Phillip Slavin, “Chicken Husbandry in Late-Medieval Eastern England: 1250–1400,” Anthropozoologica 44, no. 2 (2009): 35–56, doi:10.5252/az2009n2a2.
118“Whoever could afford, substituted chickens”: Ibid.
118At Henry VI’s 1429: John Lawrence et al., Moubray’s Treatise on Domestic and Ornamental Poultry: A Practical Guide to the History, Breeding, Rearing, Feeding, Fattening, and General Management of Fowls and Pigeons (London: Arthur Hall, Virtue, and Co., 1854), 27.
118Besides providing delicious meat: Jeffery L. Forgeng, Daily Life in Elizabethan England (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), 113.
118Their profits, sniffed: Samuel Smith, General View of the Agriculture of Galloway Comprehending Two Counties, Viz. the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright and Wigtonshire, with Observations on the Means of T
heir Improvement (London: printed for Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, 1813), 298.
118In 1801, Parliament: David W. Galenson, Markets in History: Economic Studies of the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 16.
118In 1825, London’s population: Jennifer Speake, Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia (New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003), 739.
119Less food and more: Thomas Robert Malthus and Michael P. Fogarty, An Essay on the Principle of Population: In Two Volumes (London: Dent, 1967), 15.
119One of his tutors, Adolphe Quetelet: Gillian Gill, We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009), 134.
119The prince encouraged: Roberts, Royal Landscape, 93.
119The transformation of British: J. W. Reginald Hammond, Complete England (London: Ward Lock, 1974), 20.
120By the 1840s Leadenhall: George Dodd, The Food of London: A Sketch of the Chief Varieties, Sources of Supply, Probable Quantities, Modes of Arrival, Processes of Manufacture, Suspected Adulteration, and Machinery of Distribution, of the Food for a Community of Two Millions and a Half (London: Longmans, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1856), 326.
120Most poultry was brought: Ibid.
120Britons ate about 60 million: William Henry Chandler, Chandler’s Encyclopaedia: An Epitome of Universal Knowledge (New York: Collier, 1898), vol. 5; s.v. “Poultry.”
120Eggs were also used to: Lawrence, Moubray’s Treatise on Domestic and Ornamental Poultry, 48.
120As the Windsor aviary: Illustrated.
121“In order to improve”: Berkshire Chronicle, September 28, 1844.
121London’s first poultry show: Poultry Science 47, 1968, 1–1048.
121Europe’s wet June continued: Charles C. Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created (New York: Knopf, 2011), 285.
121“Another fine morning, when”: Queen Victoria’s Journals, September 13, 1845.
122That day, the potato blight: Mann, 1493, 285.
122An 1845 government report: Margaret F. Sullivan, Ireland of To-day; the Causes and Aims of Irish Agitation (Philadelphia: J.C. McCurdy & Co., 1881), 185.
122“Deprive him of this”: Joseph Fisher, The History of Landholding in Ireland (London: Longmans, Green, 1877), 119.
122At Windsor on November 6: Queen Victoria’s Journals, November 6, 1845.
122“Half of the potatoes”: James H. Murphy, Abject Loyalty: Nationalism and Monarchy in Ireland During the Reign of Queen Victoria (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 62.
122That winter, outraged Irish: Michael Gillespie, The Theoretical Solution to the British/Irish Problem: Using the General Theory of a Federal Kingdom Clearly Stated and Fully Discussed in This Thesis (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2013), 115.
123In 1841, the Irish sent: Fisher, History of Landholding, 118.
123“Eggs also constitute”: Lawrence, Moubray’s Treatise on Domestic and Ornamental Poultry, 48.
123On February 23, 1846: John Kelly, The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People (New York: Henry Holt, 2012), 75.
123The Royal Dublin Society: The Journal of the Royal Dublin Society 7, 1845.
123Prince Albert, who had recently: Henry Fitz-Patrick Berry, A History of the Royal Dublin Society (London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1915), 279.
124On March 23, as Albert: Kelly, The Graves Are Walking, 100.
124A London paper reported: London Daily News, April 17, 1846, p. 3.
124He explained to a rapt audience: Ibid.
124“But if this be a fact”: Edmund Saul Dixon, Ornamental and Domestic Poultry: Their History and Management (London: At the Office of the Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1848), 167.
124The birds “created such”: Walter B. Dickson et al., Poultry: Their Breeding, Rearing, Diseases, and General Management (London: Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden, 1853), 5.
124He was impressed by the: James Joseph Nolan and William Oldham, Ornamental, Aquatic, and Domestic Fowl, and Game Birds: Their Importation, Breeding, Rearing, and General Management (Dublin: Published by the Author, at 33, Bachelor’s -Walk and to Be Had of All Booksellers, 1850), 4.
125In the decade between 1845: Geo P. Burnham, The History of the Hen Fever: A Humorous Record (Boston: J. French, 1855).
125“Events which are injurious”: The Poultry Book for the Many: Giving Full Directions for the Selection, Breeding . . . of Every Description of Poultry; with Portraits of the Principal Varieties and Plans of Poultry Houses . . . By Contributors to “the Cottage Gardener and Poultry Chronicle” (London: Wincester 1857), 170.
126In 1854, Watts exchanged: Lewis Wright, The Book of Poultry; with Practical Schedules for Judging, Constructed from Actual Analysis of the Best Modern Decisions (London: Cassell, 1891), 445.
126“If you travel by a railway”: The Poultry Book for the Many, 4.
126“The eggs having been freely distributed”: Dickson, Poultry, 10.
127At the time, Watts’s publication noted: Wright, Book of Poultry, 208.
127At London’s popular summer: Poultry Chronicle, 65.
127“People really seemed going”: Wright, Book of Poultry, 209.
127The Times was disturbed by: “The Birmingham Cattle Show,” The Times of London, December 14, 1853.
128“They have fallen in”: Poultry Chronicle, 66.
128“If the Cochin China breed”: The Times of London, reprinted in The Southern Cultivator, (J. W. & W. S. Jones, 1853), vol. 11, 126.
7. The Harlequin’s Sword
129“No one comes to see”: Joanne Cooper, interview by Andrew Lawler, 2013.
129Now public, the museum: “History of the Collections,” Natural History Museum at Tring, accessed March 20, 2014, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/tring/history-collections/history-of-the-collections/.
130His 1859 book On the Origin of Species: Charles Darwin, The Annotated Origin: A Facsimile of the First Edition of On the Origin of Species, annotated by James T. Costa (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), 2009.
131“God created, Linnaeus”: David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim, The Intellectual Devotional Biographies: Revive Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Acquaint Yourself with the World’s Greatest Personalities (New York: Rodale, 2010), 206.
132Within a species, he pointed: Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon, Buffon’s Natural History: Containing a Theory of the Earth, a General History of Man, of the Brute Creation, and of Vegetables, Minerals, &c. (London: Printed by J. S. Barr, Bridges-Street, Covent-Garden, 1792), 353.
132The varieties of chickens: Georges Louis Leclerc Buffon, The System of Natural History, comps. Jan Swammerdam, R. Brookes, and Oliver Goldsmith (Edinburgh, Scotland: J. Ruthven, 1800), 256.
132“The cock is one of the oldest companions”: Ibid.
132The French naturalist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy: An Exposition with Regard to the Natural History of Animals, first English trans. (New York: Hafner, 1914).
132In a clever stunt that drew: Wietske Prummel et al., Birds in Archaeology: Proceedings of the 6th Meeting of the ICAZ Bird Working Group in Groningen (23.8–27.8.2008) (Eelde, Netherlands: Barkhuis, 2010), 279.
133Yet evidence mounted: Jan van Tuyl, A New Chronology for Old Testament Times: With Solutions to Many Hitherto Unsolved Problems through the Use of Rare Texts (self-published via AuthorHouse, 2012), 434.
133The Philadelphia Quaker and physician: Prideaux John Selby, The Annals and Magazine of Natural History including Zoology, Botany and Geology (London: Taylor & Francis, 1858), 211.
133The Charleston pastor closely: John Bachman, The Doctrine of the Unity of the Human Race Examined on the Principles of Science (Char
leston, SC: C. Canning, 1850), 88.
133An ardent opponent: Adrian Desmond and James R. Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause: How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009), 90.
134He once paid for lessons: William E. Phipps, Darwin’s Religious Odyssey (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2002), 22.
134Listed in a contemporary directory: Laurence S. Lockridge et al., eds., Nineteenth-Century Lives: Essays Presented to Jerome Hamilton Buckley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 97.
135Wallace independently came: Alfred Russell Wallace, Writings on Evolution, 1843–1912, ed. Charles H. Smith (Bristol, U.K.: Thoemmes Continuum), 2004.
135The Reverend Edmund Saul Dixon: “Edmund Saul Dixon,” Dickens Journals Online, accessed March 20, 2014, http://www.djo.org.uk/indexes/authors/mr-edmund-saul-dixon.html.
135Dixon married and moved: Edmund Saul Dixon, Ornamental and Domestic Poultry: Their History and Management (London: At the Office of the Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1850), viii.
136Dixon was puzzled: Ibid.
136In 1844, an anonymous: Robert Chambers, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (New York: W. H. Coyler), 1846.
136Prince Albert read it to: Johnathan Sperber, Europe 1850–1914: Progress, Participation and Apprehension (Harlow, England: Pearson Longman, 2009), 46.
136But it also drew critics: Desmond and Moore, Darwin’s Sacred Cause, 218.
136In a gossipy letter: “Darwin, C. R. to Hooker, J. D.,” Darwin Correspondence Database, October 6, 1848, accessed March 20, 2014, http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/entry-1202.
136Two months later, Dixon: Darwin’s personal copy of Dixon’s Ornamental Poultry, accessed May 14, 2014, http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/106252#page/4/mode/1up.
136Monarchies tottered: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (London: Vintage Books, 2010).
137On Christmas Day, as: Illustrated London News, December 23, 1848.
137It also was: Dixon, Ornamental and Domestic Poultry, x.
137Darwin underscored Dixon’s strong: Darwin’s personal copy of Dixon’s Ornamental Poultry.
Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? Page 34
