The Curse of the Labrador Duck

by Glen Chilton

  McGowan said, “You know that one recently came up for sale, do you?” With a wise look on my face, I jumped in to explain that the story about a garage sale duck was just that, a story. No such duck existed, and the story was based on a misremembered conversation. “No,” he explained, when I shut up long enough to give him a chance, “I was talking about one that came up for sale in Britain. I think it was owned by a fellow named Hewitt.” Asking McGowan for forgiveness while wiping off the decaffeinated coffee that I had spit all over his face, I asked for more details. Fearing a second decaffeinated shower, McGowan explained that whatever further details he had, he didn’t think he was at liberty to share. He offered to introduce me to his colleague Andrew Kitchener, principal curator of mammals and birds at the museum, who might be able to tell me a little more.

  Lisa and I found Kitchener to be another wonderful and embracing person, but the topic of Hewitt’s duck clearly put him a bit on edge. He confirmed that, to the best of his knowledge, it was Hewitt’s duck that had recently come up for sale, but he didn’t know who the vendor was, and really wasn’t at liberty to tell me who had purchased it. He did say he was trying to block the overseas purchaser from taking it out of the country under a British law that decreed that anything of historical or scientific value that had been in the country for more than fifty years required special permit for export. Indeed, if I could help show that the specimen had been in Britain for that period, it would strengthen his case. I promised to send him what I knew of the history of Hewitt’s duck, and he promised to be in touch with a friend of a friend who might know more about the purchase of the duck.

  True to his word, Kitchener had been in touch with a friend, who had been in touch with a friend. As a result, shortly after arriving back in Canada from Scotland, I received a cryptic email message from a gentleman whom I shall call “Sidney.” In it he said: “Ref your request to view the Labrador Duck specimen. The owner is presently out of the country and we are unable to make contact. We will pass on your request when we next see him. Regards ‘Sidney.’”

  I replied to “Sidney,” with gratitude, acknowledging that such matters can sometimes be delicate. I also asked him to pass along to the duck’s owner that I am no more than a harmless, if persistent, academic, with no desire to intrude on his privacy. That was something of a lie, of course, because I had every design on the owner’s privacy, at least in terms of his newly acquired duck.

  I waited for four months for “Sidney” to respond, and then sent him another polite email message, asking for an update. The next day I had a message waiting for me from “Keith,” informing me that: “‘Sidney’ left our Company in early July this year, and we can find no file on the subject. We act only as forwarding agents to His Excellency. I feel it is best that you make your approach direct to the Embassy of Qatar, as we have no interest or input in this matter. Regards ‘Keith.’”

  “His Excellency”? “Qatar”? What in hell was all of this about? “Keith” clearly wasn’t kidding when he said that they had no further interest in the matter. I sent additional messages begging for more information, but they all went unanswered; I couldn’t get a peep out of them. It was time to resort to that least reliable of all sources of information, the Internet. The company that employed “Sidney” and “Keith” was nowhere to be found on the Internet. Frankly, anything that manages to keep itself hidden from the invasive tendrils of the Internet frightens me, and so I’ll leave the company unnamed, and will never mention them ever again in the hope that they won’t hunt me down and kill me.

  I was, however, able to find that Qatar, an Islamic country with only a few hundred thousand citizens, is now one of the richest nations in the world, largely on the basis of its vast oil and gas reserves. The Al Thani family has ruled Qatar for about 1,500 years. Since 1995, the Emir of Qatar has been Sheikh Hamad Bin-Khalifah Al Thani, who took control of the country from his father, Sheikh Khalifah Bin-Hamad Al Thani, who was out of town at the time. I suppose that shows what can happen when the children start saying: “Gee, Dad, we don’t need a babysitter!” Could it be that the Emir had some odd interest in Labrador Ducks and enough pocket change to get one?

  I wrote again to Kitchener in Edinburgh, suggesting that the cat was now almost completely out of the bag, and asked him to open the bag just a little more to allow the cat to escape so that it might resume ripping up the living room drapes. Was Sheikh Hamad Bin-Khalifah Al Thani the man with the duck? He responded by saying that, to the best of his knowledge, the duck had been purchased by Sheikh Saud bin Mohd. bin Ali Al-Thani, but that he did not know the bird’s current location.

  The storyline was getting too complex for a Harlequin Romance, but at least I had evidence that the specimen really existed. According to du Pont, the Hewitt duck never got as far as Delaware. Rumor suggested that the duck may have been purchased by a Sheikh in Qatar, who was trying to get it out of Great Britain despite protestations; the whole affair was all very hush-hush, making my investigation all the more difficult.

  But for once, I knew a little more about this particular Labrador Duck than someone else. Despite Andrew Kitchener’s protestations about the need to keep the duck in Britain, I had been tipped off that it had already been taken to Qatar in the only place that a customs agent couldn’t look—a diplomatic bag. I was now in the deep end of the pool and I couldn’t swim. I wasn’t even wearing water-wings. Or a swimsuit. Knowing who owns the duck was no good when I didn’t know how to contact him, or even if it was possible to contact him. I am a lowly biology professor. I do not run in the sort of circle that allows me to call up a chum and say, “Listen, Reginald old buddy—you play cricket with Sheikh Saud of Qatar, don’t you? Do you think you could ring His Excellency up and ask him round for gin-and-tonics so that I could have a little chinwag with him? It’s just that he seems to have stumbled across a little duck thingy that I am interested in…”

  If you are curious, and if you never throw away your old copies of National Geographic magazine, you can see a picture of Sheikh Saud. In an article about Qatar’s move to modernize itself, a two-page photograph of Sheikh Saud inspecting his oilfields from the comfort of his silver convertible BMW Z8 appears on pages 84 and 85 of the March 2003 issue. With both hands on the wheel, but with his left arm resting in a jaunty fashion on the door frame, sporting ultra-cool sunglasses, with a cheap gift-bag at his right shoulder, he is the model of a man in control of his destiny.

  I couldn’t immediately think of any way to make forward progress in finding Hewitt’s duck, so I decided to try approaching the problem from the other end by going after Mr. R.L.E. Ford, who had discovered the duck in Kent somewhere around 1947. Fortunately for me, the company of Watkins and Doncaster, in operation since 1874, still exists, and is operated by Mr. Ford’s son, Robin. He was able to tell me that the senior Mr. Ford had passed away four years earlier, and that company records from the Labrador Duck era had been destroyed when the company moved locations in either 1956 or 1973. This didn’t leave much for me to follow up on.

  Surely there had to be a way to find the home in Kent where the Labrador Duck had been found. I contacted Kenny Everett, an English gentleman with a fondness for historical taxidermy, who told me that many of the great natural history collections in Kent had been destroyed in World War II, but suggested that I try to contact Errol Fuller, a noted British author, and a serious collector of natural history artifacts with a “tremendous collection.”

  I knew about Errol from his wonderful books on Great Auks and other extinct birds, and was destined to become good chums and would later go on Labrador Duck adventures with him, but to this point I had no reason to contact him. In doing the research for his books, Errol had corresponded with folks in many of the same museums as I, which, I felt, might give us some common ground. So, briefly describing my search for Hewitt’s Labrador Duck, I told him that, while thinking of a way to find out about the Sheikh, I was keen to find the house in Kent where Ford had first discove
red it. His response could not have been more welcome.

  Errol did not know in which house in Kent Ford had made his fantastic discovery, but he knew the current location of Hewitt’s Labrador Duck, and knew the owner personally. Imagine me making choking noises while swallowing my tongue. At that time, however, Errol wasn’t able to give me all of the details, having promised discretion and secrecy. As a writer, he fully appreciated the frustration of being told “I know what you want to know, but I can’t tell you,” and he promised to tell me all, eventually. I wrote back to say that Lisa and I were going to be in England later that year, and offered to buy him a bathtubful of beer at his local pub in the hopes of loosening his lips. He agreed.

  A few months later, Errol met Lisa and me at a train station near his home, and we became immediate friends. He showed us around the collection of natural history artifacts that occupy his home. We talked about England’s exit from the World Cup soccer tournament in the second round, and about the £10 wager he had made on Senegal to win that day’s game at 16 to 1 odds. (Senegal lost.) Over a curry at a restaurant close to his home, Errol spilled the beans about Hewitt’s duck.

  Captain Vivian Hewitt had not taken all of his collections to the Bahamas. The sheer bulk of the material he had collected over a lifetime would have made this impossible. Even some of his most valued possessions had remained behind in Wales. Hewitt’s “housekeeper,” Mrs. E. M. Parry, was a lot more to the Captain than that, and bore him three children, who referred to him as “Dad” around the house and “Captain” in the street. Of those children, only Jack Parry was still alive, but very elderly, and not necessarily watching television on the same channel as the rest of us.

  On Hewitt’s death, his children divided up the Captain’s treasures. Spink & Son sold the items with obvious value, such as the Captain’s enormous coin collection. There were something like 100,000 bird skins and 500,000 eggs in the collection at the time. Some of these, like the Great Auks, were of obvious value, and Spink & Son also dealt with those. Much of the remainder of the bird collection remained at the family house in Anglesey, Wales, and son Jack got that part of the Captain’s collection. Somewhere around 1968, not so many years after Captain Hewitt’s death, someone at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds told Jack that it was illegal to sell the specimens. This was entirely untrue, but it so upset Jack that he set his mind to tip the whole collection over a cliff into the ocean, and so end his (and everyone else’s) association with the specimens.

  Luckily, a seller of antique bird books, David Wilson, heard about Jack’s intentions, and drove from his home near Tring to Anglesey to try to change Jack’s mind. Jack wanted no further responsibility for the birds, and offered to give Wilson the whole collection on the spot. It was agreed that Wilson would return as quickly as possible with a small fleet of lorries to take the collection away, with the intention of turning it over to the British Trust for Ornithology. Parry and Wilson shook hands on the porch, and the deal was done. After some dickering, the collection was placed in the basement of the Walter Rothschild Museum in Tring, where the British Trust for Ornithology gradually sold off most of the items of value. A number of museums helped themselves to other bits and pieces, and finally John E. du Pont bought everything else, and took it to the museum in Delaware.

  Wilson had kept a very small number of items from Hewitt’s collection, including Hewitt’s personal papers, a stuffed Snowy Owl, a model of a Great Auk, and four or five other birds. It was a pretty modest haul, considering that Wilson technically owned the whole lot. Errol had met Wilson while working on his Great Auk book, and had always found him to be helpful and kind. Wilson knew that Errol had a great interest in natural history artifacts, so when he decided to sell what remained of the Hewitt material that had been in his possession for nearly a third of a century, he asked for Errol’s help in establishing prices. Wilson knew that there are a lot of unscrupulous dealers who would have been very happy to pay him a pittance to part with the items. Errol agreed to help out; having seen most of the items in Wilson’s home before, he knew it wouldn’t be too onerous a task.

  But then Wilson took Errol up to his attic, and showed him my holy grail. It was Hewitt’s Labrador Duck. Errol, always keen to get his hands on precious artifacts, bought the duck, and took it home. Errol kept it for two months before he found himself short of cash, at which point he put it up for sale with a London art dealer, who sold the duck to Sheikh Saud of Qatar, a man with a thirst for acquiring beautiful and rare objects, for whom money is not the greatest limitation in life.

  It seemed that there was no way for me to find out which country home in Kent had housed the duck when Ford found it. However, at this point I knew quite a lot about the comings and goings of the specimen. For instance, I knew that the duck had not followed Captain Hewitt to the Bahamas, but had remained behind in Wales with one of the Captain’s sons, Jack Parry. When the Captain died, someone had convinced Parry that having a collection of natural history artifacts was illegal. In the nick of time, David Wilson had stepped in, convincing Parry not to destroy the collection, but to pass it along. Wilson saw that suitable recipients got the collection, but retained the Labrador Duck for himself. This he sold many years later to Errol Fuller. Shortly after, it was purchased by Sheikh Saud.

  Now, OF COURSE, it was a matter of finding a way to see this, my fifty-fifth and final duck. This was going to be tricky. There was talk of the Sheikh, head of Qatar’s National Council for Arts, Heritage and Culture, establishing a national museum which would house an astonishing collection of natural history rarities. To this point, the museum was more of an idea than an institution, and it was unlikely to be open to the sort of request I had made of all the other museums with Labrador Ducks. The Sheikh was one of the richest men in one of the world’s richest countries. What could I offer him in order to be given the opportunity to see his duck? It really seemed as though I would pull up one bird shy of my goal to see all of the world’s Labrador Ducks.

  And then, on a Monday afternoon in August, fully nine years, one month, and six days after my search began, “the call” came through. It was from Errol Fuller. He wanted to know if I could fly to London immediately. Captain Hewitt’s duck was back in Great Britain, but the window of opportunity to see it was extremely narrow. Lisa leapt into action, and secured me a seat on a flight arriving at Gatwick at 10:50 the next morning.

  Errol and his son, Frankie, were waiting for me at Gatwick. As we drove off, Errol brought me up to date. The duck had been taken from England to Qatar in a fashion that, if not strictly illegal, was certainly not done by the books. The Sheikh, in an apparently random whim, had decided that his Labrador Duck was to be shipped back to England so that the proper paperwork could be completed for its removal to Qatar. Since the duck had been residing in Qatar for two years, and no one had any way of forcing its extradition to England, this seemed a rather odd move. Furthermore, there was a degree of urgency to complete the paperwork, as the duck was going to be one of the star attractions in an exhibition in Qatar ten weeks hence. Indeed, the paperwork might come in the form of a temporary export license to facilitate the duck’s appearance in the exhibition, although the chances of the duck’s returning to England afterwards seemed extremely remote. Regardless, the duck was residing at an art gallery near Piccadilly and had to be taken to a firm of international art shippers in Vauxhall, where it would be held until all of the necessary paperwork would be completed, at which time it would be shipped back to Qatar. Errol was well known to the gallery owners who had taken him up on his offer to transport the duck to the shippers. The interval between the art gallery and the shipper was to be my opportunity to examine the duck. The plan was to take the duck to Errol’s home so that I could examine it at leisure. We would give it to the shippers when Errol took me back to the airport.

  At the art gallery, on a street lined by an assortment of posh art galleries, we were buzzed in. Errol thought it prudent not to mention my spec
ific interest in the duck, and so I was introduced as his colleague. I was expecting the duck to be brought to us in a stout and professionally constructed shipping container, with lots of wood and big brass screws. I was surprised when we were brought a reused cardboard box sealed with masking tape and secured with a bit of string. It sported two small red “fragile” stickers, and the words LABRADOR DUCK were scribbled on the side in felt pen. Frankly, my Christmas ornaments reside in a more secure box.

  Labrador Duck 55

  A “cursed” duck, and the final specimen in my quest to see every Labrador Duck in the world. Having changed hands many times, it is now in the collection of Sheikh Saud of Qatar.

  When we got to Errol’s home, he cleared a bit of space at his kitchen table, and I set the box down. For some reason, I wasn’t in a terrible hurry to get on with my examination. Perhaps it was because we were suffering through a very hot and humid day, and I needed a breather. More likely it was because the box contained an object that I had been searching for for almost a decade, and it was to be the last new Labrador Duck I would ever see. This was it. Once I opened the box and poked at it a bit, the adventure would be over.

  Frankie watched me as I cut the string, pulled off the masking tape, and reflected the box’s flaps. At first all I could see was crumpled tissue paper, but as that came away, the duck revealed itself, and my breath rushed into my chest with a whoosh.

  I had seen a scanned image of a photocopy of a fifty-year-old, black-and-white photograph of the duck being examined by Richard Ford before selling it to Captain Hewitt, and from what detail remained after so much time and copying, it seemed a truly lovely specimen. Errol had warned me that the duck had been restuffed about 18 months earlier. This had been a really dangerous move; in taking apart a specimen this old, even the most skilled taxidermist might have been left with nothing more than a pile of feathers. However, Errol had assured me that a good job had been done. My first impression was of a very artistic interpretation. When it was first found, the duck had seemed a little too alert, but the new taxidermist had given it a more relaxed look. The neck was more bent, bringing the head closer to the shoulders, and the eyes were ever so slightly closed, as though the drake was getting ready to nod off. Originally, the duck had been mounted on a base covered in pebbles and seaweed, suggesting, I suppose, the seaside where the duck had lived. This had been replaced by a simple wooden slat, 18 by 19 by 2 cm, painted black, which allowed viewers their own interpretation of the duck’s circumstances.