‘In short, stimulated to more minute and extended examinations, I arrived at the conviction that the specimen had come from a bird, that it was the shaft of a thigh-bone, and that it must have formed part of the skeleton of a bird as large as, if not larger than, the full-sized male ostrich, with this more striking difference, that whereas the femur of the ostrich, like that of the rhea and eagle, is pneumatic, or contains air, the present huge bird’s bone had been filled with marrow, like that of a beast[[121]].’
The suggestion was received with sceptical astonishment, and the paper in which Owen announced it to the Zoological Society (November 12, 1839) narrowly escaped exclusion from the Transactions of that body on the ground of its improbability. But confirmation was not slow to arrive, though in a direction that was not then expected. The bone was not fossilized; it was therefore naturally concluded that there existed somewhere in New Zealand—then but partially explored—a race of birds of gigantic stature and struthious affinities. We have no space to tell the story of the extinction of the moa, as the natives call it—surely the most weird and curious of all ‘the fairy-tales of science’; but to Owen certainly belongs the credit of having been the first to point the way to the great discovery. No work of his created so much excitement. Society, headed by Prince Albert, hurried to inspect the huge remains, of which a large series soon reached this country, and to be introduced to the fortunate necromancer, at whose bidding a phantom procession of strange creatures had suddenly stepped out of the past into the present.
From this time forward Owen continued to pay as much attention to extinct as to recent animals, as his numerous publications testify. The work fascinated and excited him.
‘There was no hunt,’ he declared, ‘so exciting, so full of interest, and so satisfactory when events prove one to have been on the right scent, as that of a huge beast which no eye will ever see alive, and which, perhaps, no mortal eye ever did behold. Such a chase is not ended in a day, in a week, nor in a season. One’s interest is revived and roused year by year as bit by bit of the petrified portions of the skeleton comes to hand. Thirty such years elapsed before I was able to outline a restoration of Diprotodon australis’ [the gigantic extinct kangaroo].
In 1841 appeared his ‘Description of the Skeleton of an Extinct Gigantic Sloth (Mylodon robustus), with observations on the osteology, natural affinities, and probable habits of the megatheroid quadrupeds in general’—‘a masterpiece both of anatomical description and of reasoning and inference,’ as Sir W. Flower calls it. He demonstrated its affinities with the sloths on osteological and dental grounds, and then reasoned out its habits from its configuration; showing that a creature so vast could not have ascended trees, but must have pulled them down to browse on them at its leisure. Then came the work on British Fossil Mammals and Birds, with a long series of memoirs, growing in importance as evidences of new forms, discovered in all parts of the world, came pouring in, as though his own reputation had attracted them; on the Triassic Labyrinthodonts of Central England; on the extinct fauna of South Africa and Australia; on the Reptiles of the Wealden and other formations in England, published by the Paleontographical Society, of which he was one of the first and most ardent supporters; on the Archæopteryx from Solenhofen; on the Great Auk; and on the Dodo, one of the representations of which, in an old Dutch picture, he had the good fortune to discover. It is, indeed, as Mr Huxley remarks, ‘a splendid record: enough, and more than enough, to justify the high place in the scientific world which Owen so long occupied.’
These researches did not pass unrewarded. In 1838 the Geological Society gave to Owen the Wollaston Gold Medal for his work on Darwin’s collections, and it happened, by a fortunate coincidence, that Whewell, his fellow-townsman and school-fellow, occupied the chair on the occasion. In subsequent years he was twice invited to be president of that society; but on both occasions he was compelled to decline. Next, in 1841, Sir Robert Peel offered him a pension of £200 from the Civil List, protesting in a very gracious letter that he knew nothing about his political opinions, but merely wished ‘to encourage that devotion to science for which you are so eminently distinguished.’ This offer, which was gratefully accepted, laid the foundation of an intercourse between Owen and Sir Robert which ripened by-and-by into something like friendship. Dinners in London were succeeded by visits to Drayton, at one of which Owen amused the company with a microscope which he had brought with him (of course quite accidentally); and, finally, his portrait was painted for the gallery there, as a pendant to that of Cuvier. In 1845 Owen refused knighthood.
At this point in Owen’s career it will be convenient to pause for a moment and describe very briefly what manner of man it was that was rapidly becoming a leading figure in London society. We remember him from an earlier date than we care to mention, but, as we have no turn for portrait-painting, we gladly accept Sir W. Flower’s lifelike sketch:
‘Owen was tall and ungainly in figure, with massive head, lofty forehead, curiously round, prominent, and expressive eyes, high cheek-bones, large mouth, and projecting chin, long, lank, dark hair, and, during the greater part of his life, smooth-shaven face and very florid complexion.’
His manners were distinguished for ceremonious courtesy, coupled with the formal exactness of a punctilious Frenchman. His bows were not easily forgotten. His enemies said, and his friends could not deny, that they varied with the rank of the person to whom he was presented. In fact Owen might have said, with Sir Pertinax Macsycophant, ‘I naver in my life could stond straight i’ th’ presence of a great mon; but awways boowed, and boowed, and boowed, as it were by instinct.’
Next to what he called ‘my dear comparative anatomy,’ Owen loved music, and was at one time no mean performer, both vocally and instrumentally. Music was his constant recreation in an evening, and he has even been known to take his violoncello out with him to parties. He was a frequent attendant at concerts and operas, and when Weber’s Oberon was first performed in London he went to hear it thirty nights in succession. The stage also had attractions for him, and he and his wife had many friends in the dramatic profession. Macready in Henry the Fifth, Charles Kean in Louis XI. and Richard III., and many minor stars, gave him great pleasure; and it was on the stage of Drury Lane Theatre, while joining the actors in singing the National Anthem on the occasion of the Queen’s first state visit, that he met Charles Dickens, who afterwards became his intimate friend. ‘London,’ he once said, ‘is the place for interchange of thought’; and it was a relief to him to lay his habitual pursuits aside for a few hours, and exchange ideas with men whose lives lay in lines wholly different from his own. He found dining-out a relaxation—the hours were earlier in those days—and gradually, as his social gifts were discovered, he was much in request. No man could tell a story better, and his general conversation was brilliant and original. He had the happy art of dilating on his own pursuits without being either a pedant or a bore. Consequently he was a member of many societies who, ‘greatly daring, dined,’ as, for instance, the Abernethy Club, the Literary Society, and The Club, founded by Dr Johnson, an exclusive society limited to forty members, in which he occupied the place once filled by Oliver Goldsmith. He also promoted the Royal Literary Fund and the Actors Benevolent Fund—where his after-dinner eloquence was much appreciated. He was a good chess-player, and was often matched, successfully, with some of the first players of the day, as Landseer, Staunton, and the Duke of Brunswick. His acquaintance with literature was wider than might have been expected from his absorbing occupations in other directions, and his retentive memory enabled him to quote pages of Milton, Shakespeare, and other standard writers. He was also an ardent novel-reader. Mrs Owen kept him well supplied with the novels of the day; and he sat up half the night over Eugene Aram, the serial stories of Dickens, Vanity Fair, Shirley, and The Mill on the Floss, which we are glad to find he preferred to all the rest of George Eliot’s stories. Apart from his social proclivities, he managed to get acquainted with most of the celebrated people of the day. They either came to see him and the museum he directed, or they asked him to call on them. Among those whom he met in this way we may mention Mrs Fry, Miss Edgeworth, Turner, Samuel Warren, Emerson, Guizot, the younger Dumas, Fanny Kemble, Tennyson, Macaulay, and Carlyle, who described him as ‘the man with the glittering eyes,’ and decided that he was ‘neither a fool nor a humbug.’ In his own especial line of science he was intimate with Lord Enniskillen, Sir Philip Egerton, Prince Lucien Bonaparte, Sedgwick, Murchison, Lyell; and subsequently took a keen interest in the researches of Livingstone, whom he helped with the first record of his African work. ‘Poor Livingstone!’ he says; ‘he does not know what it is to write a book.’ When Owen could find time for a holiday, which was but seldom, he enjoyed fishing and grouse-shooting; but his delight in Nature was so keen that probably sport was what he least valued in these excursions.