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.