CHAPTER X A TAXIDERMIST AS A SCULPTOR
After I had got over my first youthful enthusiasm about taxidermy and had seen how it was practiced, I recognized that, as it then was, it was not an art—that it was in fact little better than a trade. I had moments when I felt like abandoning the whole thing. I used to study sculpture, particularly animal sculpture, in relation to taxidermy. I remember that when I was twenty-eight years old I came to New York and spent hours at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the itch in my hands and brain to become a sculptor. But one thing restrained me. I had enough common sense to know that while I might become a sculptor and even a fairly successful one I could never contribute to that art what I could contribute to taxidermy. I believed then that I could start taxidermy on the road from a trade to an art. So I turned away from sculpture. Nevertheless, the idea of being a sculptor kept running in my mind. And whenever it did, it depressed me. Finally, I gave up going near the Art Museum altogether.
But the discipline that I inflicted on myself I could not inflict on other people. I had to make little clay groups as studies and models for the animal groups that I was mounting. Many people who saw these clay models would suggest that I have them cast in bronze. If I had not still had the fever of sculpturing in my blood, these remarks would not have stuck in my mind, but as it was they did. So this idea became familiar to me.
However, it was a good many years after it first became a regular inhabitant of my mind that I put it in practice, for along with it had grown up the notion that I should not merely turn models into bronzes but that I would wait until I had a real contribution. Real contributions did not seem abundant and so year after year went by with no bronzes made.
Then in 1912 a situation arose which I thought forced sculpture upon me. I had a dream of a great African Hall of forty groups of animals with all the ingenuity, all the technique, and all the art the country could boast of. By that time I had come to feel that taxidermy could be a great art. I felt that a beautifully modelled animal required at least as much knowledge, taste, skill, and technique as a bronze or stone animal. But I knew that this conception was not common. A taxidermist couldn't talk art. Especially he couldn't talk art convincingly to the kind of men who supported great museum ventures. It was a recognized thing to support art. Taxidermy had no such tradition. The only way out of the dilemma that I could see was to prove that whether or not taxidermy was an art at least a taxidermist could be an artist.
It was my desire to make an appeal to those men who support art financially that stimulated my first work in bronze. I felt that we might expect the aid of these men in such undertakings as the African Hall if I could once get them to see the artistic possibilities of taxidermy. The American Museum of Natural History already had friends who were interested in art, but it had not occurred to them that the Museum's animal groups had any relation to sculpture because these groups had not been presented in the accepted materials of sculpture such as stone and bronze. Through the medium of bronze I hoped to lead them to see in the taxidermist's productions something worthy of their support as patrons of art.
So I set to work to do a bronze that would prove that a taxidermist could be an artist. Years before I had heard the story of an elephant bull wounded by hunters, whose two comrades had ranged themselves one on either side and helped him to escape. I have told the story in detail elsewhere. It always appealed to me as showing a spirit in the elephant that I should like to record. I set to work on The Wounded Comrade. It was a part of the story of the elephant, a theme that always aroused enthusiasm in me. And I felt it was a labour of love for African Hall. It was pleasant work. It went well. The thing seemed to take shape naturally. It was soon finished. Then came its test.
Mr. J. P. Morgan came to the Museum to talk over African Hall. I explained the whole plan, showed him the model of the hall and incidentally The Wounded Comrade. He liked the scheme. As he left he said that he was convinced. "And," he added, "I don't mind saying," pointing to the little bronze of The Wounded Comrade, "that it is what did it." I shall always be indebted to Mr. Morgan for that sentence. It gave me an extraordinary amount of contentment. A. Phimister Proctor, the animal sculptor, also came to see The Wounded Comrade in my studio. He spent a long time in silence, carefully studying the little model. I knew that Mr. Proctor never gave praise lightly, but that he never hesitated to express admiration when in his opinion the work had merit. I felt that much depended on his praise or blame. And when he finally spoke, his enthusiasm was keen. I did not realize how keen until an order came for a bronze of The Wounded Comrade from Mr. George Pratt, a friend of Mr. Proctor, whose only impression of the piece was gained from Mr. Proctor's description. Throughout my career as a sculptor nothing has meant so much to me as the encouragement and appreciation of the man who first declared The Wounded Comrade a success.
In recognition of this first bronze, I was made a member of the American Sculpture Society. Inasmuch as such a cordial reception was accorded to The Wounded Comrade by artists as well as by the general public, I felt justified in devoting more attention to sculpture. I felt that I had many stories to tell about elephants and that I could tell these stories more effectively by the work of my hands than in any other way. One chapter is told in the group of mounted elephants now in the American Museum of Natural History. Many others can be told in small bronzes. I want to tell these stories, and in the time I have on earth I could not record many elephant stories in taxidermy, for one group really done well takes years—but I can tell these stories in bronze.
After The Wounded Comrade had made a success, many of my friends came to my studio (where I did taxidermy) in the Museum and advised me to keep on making bronzes. "Here's your opportunity," they said. "You have a market. Fortune favours you. Don't neglect the fickle lady."
But I did not follow this advice and make many bronzes. It may have been because I was lazy or busy with other things, but I like to think that it was because I had decided not to make bronzes unless I had a real story to tell. I wanted to do justice if I could to my friend, the elephant. And, also, I wanted to do what I did well enough to prove that a taxidermist could be, as he ought to be, an artist.
So I progressed with sculpture very slowly. In the nine years since The Wounded Comrade was made I have made only six bronzes.
In my second piece I have pictured a scene that will always remain very vivid in my memory—a charging herd. I had been following a large herd of elephants, two hundred or more, in the Budongo Forest for two days. They had broken up into small bands and the particular band which I was following had got near the edge of the forest. Nevertheless, I was having a hard time to get a look at them. Finally, I had recourse to the somewhat hazardous experiment of beating on the tree trunks with sticks in the hope of scaring them into the open. This was successful. I followed them, but the grass was so high that I couldn't see over it. I was in the act of climbing a tree for better observation when they came rolling along, grunting and squealing, back to the forest. They passed me within twenty-five yards. They were irritated sufficiently to convince me that it was time to let them alone and go to camp. I started along the edge of the forest. As I was pushing along through the high grass a few minutes later I heard another band coming out of the forest. As I couldn't see over the grass I ran to an ant-hill. This ant-hill was six or seven feet high. As I got on top it I saw, about one hundred yards away, eleven great animals pass one by one over a little rise. I had as good a view of this majestic march as a man will ever get. When they had gone two or three hundred yards, they suddenly stopped. They had got down wind and had smelt me. Then they began to talk. There was grumbling and rumbling. Conversation of this kind meant trouble. It was an old story to me. And trouble came. They came back squealing and roaring. I had to wait the first two hundred yards of the charge without shooting for they were behind the ridge. Then they loomed up over it, led by an old cow with her trunk up and her great ears cocked. As the leader lost the scent and slowed a little, they jammed into a solid mass. Then the old cow saw me perched on my ant-hill. Changing course, they came toward me, falling apart as they came.
That picture stays in my memory. And as I saw it I have put it in bronze. The bronze shows the first seven elephants of the herd jammed together in that moment of hesitation just after the old cow saw me and turned in my direction. Her trunk is curled up tight, her ears back and all cleared for action. The elephant on her left is following her example. The others still have their trunks extended, feeling for my scent.
The next elephant story that I told in bronze grew out of another experience of mine. I was following a herd of elephants in bush country. I was some distance behind them and they knew nothing of me. Suddenly I heard a great commotion, squealing and beating of bushes. A few minutes later the herd moved on. When I came to the spot where the commotion had been I found the bushes all trampled down and, at one side of the area of destruction in the sand, the remains of a big green tree snake that had been stamped into the ground. I followed after the herd but was soon deflected from the main body by noises in a little glade off at one side of the main trail. I went to the edge of this glade and saw a young bull elephant smashing about in the forest alone, breaking down trees, squealing, and in general acting like a small boy who had been stung on the nose by a hornet. After a while he quieted down and went along after the others, grumbling and protesting. I came to the conclusion that while feeding in the bushes he had thrust his trunk too close to a poisonous tree snake and had been stung; that he had beaten the snake on to the ground with his trunk and stamped it to death. In the bronze I pictured the snake alive on the ground and the elephant in the act of trampling it to death.
In addition to these elephant bronzes I have done one other bronze of a combat between a lion and a buffalo, and I have two other elephant subjects started in clay. I have never seen a lion and a buffalo fight nor do I know of any one else who has. But I know at least two authentic records of the dead bodies of a lion and a buffalo together—mute evidence of a fight to a finish and death to both. And I have seen dead buffalo carcasses from which one could tell pretty well how the lion had killed his prey. The lion tries to throw the buffalo in much the same manner as a cowboy "bulldogs" a steer—that is, he throws him by jerking the buffalo's head down. In the bronze I have represented the lion as having "bulldogged" the buffalo by catching his nose with a front paw and bending his head to the ground in his effort to throw him. The buffalo has saved himself from a fall by bracing himself with one front foot and the scene is set for a battle royal unless the lion bolts.
One of the bronzes that will soon be published records a scene that will always be a pleasant memory to me. I was watching an elephant herd on the march through an open grass country. The elders moved along sedately enough, but at one side of the herd several babies were squealing and pushing each other—having a fine time at play. Sometimes they were ahead of the herd and sometimes behind it, but all the time in a very gay mood. There seemed to be something that they were playing with, but the grass was too high and I was too far off to make out what it was. However, where the trail of the herd finally went into the forest, I discovered the babies' plaything. It was a big dirt ball about two and one half feet in diameter, a fragment of an ant-hill. These ant-hills are made of a mixture of saliva and sand which when baked by the African sun gets almost as hard as brick. A steel-jacketed bullet will be cut all to pieces before penetrating the surface of an ant-hill at all. In some way the baby elephants had got a fragment of an old ant-hill that was nearly round and this they had used as a ball to roll along in their play. It is not so surprising, therefore, that an elephant can be made to do tricks with a ball in the circus!
I am putting the youngsters and their ball into bronze for one group.
The other is called At Bay and represents an elephant with trunk up standing at bay with his hind leg tied to a great log.
One of the native's methods of hunting elephants is to dig a pit in an elephant path, cover the pit over with a "basket"—a kind of trap—put a noose on top of the "basket," and camouflage the whole with grass and leaves. When the trap is set there is no evidence of anything but a plain and safe path. The noose is one end of a twisted rawhide cable, the other end of which is fastened to a heavy log. If the trap works, the elephant steps on the "basket" and his leg goes through. The "basket" sticks to his leg and holds the noose until the elephant moves enough to draw it tight. Then he begins to drag the heavy log through the forest. He cannot go far or fast and he leaves an unmistakable trail. He is a high-strung, nervous creature and when after a few days of trekking about with his tormenting log the natives come up with him, he is weak from lack of food and water. There he stands at bay, as I have pictured him in bronze. But his defiance is of slight avail, for there is little to be feared from his charge. It is comparatively simple for his enemies to finish him off with poisoned spears and arrows.
In my bronzes I am telling bit by bit my stories of African animals. A series of three groups telling the story of native lion-spearing will be finished by the time this book is out and will ultimately take its place in Roosevelt African Hall. In 1911 I got together a band of Nandi spearmen on the Uasin Gishu Plateau to hunt lions. I wanted a motion picture of native lion-spearing, the most dramatic thing Africa has to offer. In twenty days the Nandi had speared ten lions and five leopards. My moving pictures were not very satisfactory but I did get two other very diverse results from the trip—the determination to invent a better camera for wild-animal photography, and the idea for these lion-spearing groups.
The first two groups represent three native spearmen in the act of facing the charge of a lion and lioness, the lioness characteristically leading the charge. The third group, a sequel to the other two, shows the three hunters chanting a requiem over the dead lion.
I have done another lion—one that interests me more than all the others. And this piece of sculpture came about in this way. When I met President Roosevelt at the White House on my return from Africa in 1906, I was impressed with the power and humanity of the man as all were who knew him. One of the great experiences of my life was that quiet talk with Theodore Roosevelt in the shade of the acacia tree on the Uasin Gishu Plateau when I came to know the man and to love him. After our return from Africa, he was constantly reminding me of my unwritten African book and saying that he wanted to write a foreword and a chapter for that book. But I had no such hankering to write as I had to do sculpture, and so I put it off. At last, however, in 1919, after the war was over, I sat down one day and started to write him a letter to say that I would begin the book. I had written the two words, "Dear Colonel," when the telephone rang. It was my friend, George H. Sherwood, the executive secretary of the Museum.
"Ake," he said, "I have bad news for you. Colonel Roosevelt died this morning."
For me the bottom dropped out of everything. From that time until I got back from the funeral I did nothing. When I returned from the funeral I was terribly depressed. I had to find expression. I found it most naturally in modelling. I set to work on a lion. I meant to make it symbolic of Roosevelt, of his strength, courage, fearlessness—of his kingly qualities in the old-fashioned sense. And this modelling afforded me great comfort and relief. I worked on it day after day. Taxidermy, groups and bronzes, were all forgotten. While I was so engaged one day an old friend of mine, James Brite, an architect, called me on the telephone. I asked him if he wouldn't come up and design a pedestal for the lion. He came up not only that day but many others. Neither of us knew just what we were going to do with it when it was finished. I had a vague idea of casting it, making one bronze for Mrs. Roosevelt, and destroying the model.
We were still working when one day Archie Roosevelt came in. I showed the lion to him.
"None of us want to see statues of Father," he said. "They can't make Father," and as he put his arms about the pedestal of the lion, "but this is Father. Of course, you do not know it, but among ourselves we boys always called him the 'Old Lion' and when he died I cabled the others in France, 'The Old Lion is dead.'"
Other members of the Roosevelt family and friends of the Colonel came, and what they said encouraged us. I made one model after another, trying to blend the majesty of a real lion with the symbolism. Then one day when Mr. Brite and I were in the studio a man came in whom we had never seen before. After some desultory conversation he asked how large the lion was to be. We said we didn't know. "How big ought it to be?" we asked. "It ought to be as big as possible and it ought to be placed in Washington," was his reply.
Brite pointed out that so large a lion would necessitate a pedestal that would nearly cut him off from view from the ground. And then developed the idea of placing the lion in a great bowl.
That was the beginning of a long period of work on a great plan for a Roosevelt Memorial.
All this was originated without thought of the Roosevelt Memorial Society which had raised a million and a half dollars among other things to erect a monument to Roosevelt. The natural thing to do was to submit this offering of ours to that society. We have done this, and it will be judged in competition with the designs of others. If it should be chosen it will be because no other competitor, though they all be better sculptors, can possibly have the same deep desire as I to perpetuate the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt and to do him all honour.