The group of Henry VIII and his six wives was surveyed in stolid silence by a monarch not likely to be moved by such a spectacle. In a shadowed portion of the gallery he nearly mistook (and slightly frightened) two nice English girls in white for wax figures.
In the Chamber of Horrors he showed from his observations that he was familiar with the main features of several of the crimes commemorated there.
I may add that every honour was done the King on that occasion. We had the public excluded from the Exhibition, and the Siamese National Anthem was played on his arrival and departure.
The King of Siam’s inspection of the elephant reminds me that, beside the stuffed monkey which one of the wives of Henry VIII is fondling, the only animals ever shown in the Exhibition were in the “Tiger Hunt” scene in question. The tusker was the famous Juno, which was for many years the King of Burmah’s war elephant.
The Prince of Wales had just mortally wounded a male tiger, and was about to give the coup de grace to another beast which, unexpectedly springing from the jungle, had been pinned to the ground by Juno. The animals were stuffed and staged by the late Mr. Rowland Ward.
When I say that these were the only animals shown in the Exhibition I mean, of course, dead ones.
Within the past twelve months a monkey that escaped from the Zoo, barely a mile away, entered the Exhibition by a back window, and was seen in the act by a crowd of people, who had been amused by its antics outside.
It appears that the monkey, in scurrying through the building, caught sight of its dead counterpart on the lap of Henry’s Queen, and tried to attract its attention. Failing in this, the little creature pawed it, and the result was electrical.
The strangeness of coming unexpectedly in contact with a dead animal which was thought to be alive seems to have startled the monkey beyond measure, for it became terrified, and, springing away, went at great speed to the remotest part of the Exhibition, where it took refuge in one of the side rooms.