It must be confessed, however, we gather from this volume that the great naturalist was, out of his profession, by no means a wise man, and certainly not a witty one. He loved jokes of a schoolboy sort, and indulged in sarcasms more practical than theoretical. The two knockers of his front-door were cast, from bell-metal, in the similitude of human faces, the one representing mirth, and the other misery. The former was immovably fixed to the door, and seemed to grin with delight at your fruitless efforts to raise it; the latter appeared to suffer agonies from the blows you inflicted on it. In the vestibule was a singularly conceived model of a nightmare, with a human face, grinning and showing the tusks of a wild boar, the hands of a man, Satanic horns, elephant's ears, bat's wings, one cloven foot, one eagle's talon, and with the tail of a serpent; beneath it was the following motto:
"Assidens praecordiis
Pavore soinnos auferam." [Footnote 45]
[Footnote 45: Sitting on the region of the heart, I take away sleep by fear.]
It was his humor, more than once, when between seventy and eighty years of age, to welcome the author, when he came to dinner, by hiding on all-fours under the hall-table, and pretending to be a doll. He made use of his wonderful taxidermic talents to represent many individuals who took a leading part in the Reformation by loathsome objects from the animal and vegetable creation, and completed the artistic group with a sprinkling of "composite" demons. He was seriously vexed at a stranger under his own roof, who had profanely designated his favorite (stuffed) Bahia toad as "an ugly brute." These and similar instances of bad taste we think Dr. Hobson might have left unrecorded with advantage. Still, there was much to like as well as to admire about the great naturalist. He could show good taste as well as bad. No museum of natural history elsewhere could compare with the beauty and finish of the specimens, prepared by the squire's own hand with wonderful skill and patience, which adorned the inside of Walton Hall. "Not even living nature," says our author, "could surpass the representations there displayed." In attitude, you had life itself; in plumage, the lustrous beauty that death could not dim; "in anatomy, every local prominence, every depression, every curve, nay, the slightest elevation or depression of each feather." The great staircase glowed with tropic splendor. At the top of it was the veritable cayman mentioned in the Wanderings, on which the squire mounted in Essequibo, and a huge snake with which he contended in single combat. Doubts have been thrown on both these feats, but Dr. Hobson relates instances of presence of mind and courage shown by the squire in his own presence quite as marvellous as these. Wishing to make experiment as to whether his Woorali poison, obtained in 1812 from the Macoushi Indians, was more efficacious than the bite of the rattlesnake, he got an American showman to bring him twenty-four of these dangerous reptiles, and took them out of their cases, one by one, with his own hand, while the Yankee fled from the room in terror, accompanied by very many members of the faculty, who had assembled to witness the operation. In his old age, he alone could be found to enter the cage of the Borneo orangoutang at the Zoological Gardens, in order minutely to inspect the palm of its hand during life, and also the teeth. It was with difficulty he obtained permission to run this hazard, the keepers insisting upon it that the beast would "make very short work of him." However, nothing daunted, the squire entered the palisaded enclosure. "The meeting of these two celebrities was clearly a case of love at first sight, as the strangers embraced most affectionately, kissing one another many times, to the great amusement of the spectators. The squire's investigations were freely permitted, and his fingers allowed to enter his jaws; his apeship then claimed a similar privilege, which was as courteously granted; after which the orang-outang began an elaborate search of the squire's head."
The strength and activity of Waterton were equal to his physical courage, notwithstanding that he was wont to indulge in venesection to a dangerous extent, always performing that operation himself, even to the subsequent bandaging. At eighty-one, the suppleness of his limbs was marvellous; and at seventy-seven years of age our author was witness to his scratching the back part of his head with the toe of his right foot! Death, however, claimed his rights at last in the squire's eighty-third year.
Charles Waterton lies buried in a secluded part of his own beautiful domain, at the foot of a little cross, with this inscription, written by himself:
Orate
Pro anima Caroll Waterton,
Viatoris:
Cujus jam fessa
Juxta hanc crucem
Hic sepelluntur ossa.
Even those iron limbs of his, it seems, grew weary at last.