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Comforting creatures
Material Culture: Creatures as Artefacts and Objects of Comfort

Animal Objects: Memory, Desire and Mourning

Objets animaux : souvenirs, désir et regrets
Julia Courtney

Résumés

Mon article examine les façons dont les corps animaux ont été transformés en objets chargés de forces affectives puissantes, organisant la discussion sur les thèmes de la mémoire, du désir et du deuil. Des trophées de chasse, des montures taxidermiques et des objets domestiques fabriqués à partir de pièces démembrées préservées ont permis aux « Nimrods » coloniaux et aux « Dianas » intrépides de revivre les expériences vives de la chasse. En même temps, les griffes, les dents et les cornes désincarnées portaient une charge érotique lorsqu’elles étaient transformées en cadeaux d’amoureux, tandis que la réaction sensuelle aux peaux d’animaux peut être vue dans l’art contemporain et la fiction. Troisièmement, les regrets des animaux de compagnie décédés ou des animaux célèbres, à une époque où la mort et le souvenir étaient des forces culturelles importantes, pouvaient impliquer la préservation d’un animal entier ou de parties isolées, comme dans le cas de grandes créatures telles que les chevaux. Puisant dans le journalisme contemporain, la fiction et la description des objets eux-mêmes, j’examine des sujets tels que l’ironie de la « naturalisation », la synecdoque des parties démembrées et la puissance des objets pour focaliser les émotions. Alors que la mort de l’animal est implicite dans la construction de l’objet domestique, la possession de l’objet permet au propriétaire de retrouver, voire de revivre, des moments intensément vécus de danger, de violence, de camaraderie, de prouesse physique, de proximité avec la nature et surtout, de pouvoir.

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1‘What remains of animals when they die is usually just the remains of their bodies. By contrast humans leave behind a vast array of artefacts which quite literally objectify their past presence’ (Tilley 60). This article examines what can happen when animal remains become part of that vast array, when the dead animal or its parts function as an object within the ongoing subject/object relationship rendering permeable the apparent boundaries between the human and the non-human, the active and the passive, the living and the dead.

2It has been suggested that during the Victorian period ‘[t]he most frequent contact humans had with animals . . . was not with their living bodies but with their body parts’ (Colley 16). This could be in the form of taxidermic mounts (which although purporting the semblance of wholeness through the process called in France naturalisation, in fact utilises only selected body parts such as skin, hooves, claws etc.) or more obviously dismembered parts crafted into furniture, jewellery or variously sized domestic items.

3I discuss these animal objects via the themes of memory, desire and mourning in order to focus on the emotive/affective responses provoked by or inherent in the dismembered parts, the ‘dialectic of matter and affect’ (Biles 140). Of course the categories overlap; the act of memory mourns the loss of the past moment and desires its recapture, but grouping the objects in this way enables movement between different emphases.

4Firstly it seems important to examine the role of the souvenir, in the form of an animal relic. Just as with human relics, ‘[t]he folk wisdom behind the full force of synecdoche is at work here: the piece of the person can bring the presence of the whole’ to quote Deborah Lutz (Lutz 141). The term souvenir is formed from the verb venir, to come, so that the experience associated with the object ‘comes again’. Via their dismembered parts the animals are REmembered, in the sense that the life experiences associated with them can be relived. This is especially so with items acquired through big game hunting which was one of the most intensely lived experiences of many Victorians and Edwardians of both genders and many nationalities. Most big game hunters’ houses are ‘one vast museum of trophies’ stated an article in the Strand Magazine from 1896 which also asserted that ‘one year spent in the pursuit of big game is worth half a century of commonplace existence’ (Steelcroft 437). John Miller in his Empire and the Animal Body discusses the complex and powerful emotions felt by hunters in the wild (Miller 167) especially at the almost orgasmic moment of the kill, a ‘little death’ for the hunter as well as death on a grand scale for an elephant, tiger or lion.

5In contemporary accounts big game hunters are often called Nimrods or shikaris, terms with multiple implications. Nimrod was a Biblical figure whose brief appearance in the Old Testament describes him as ‘A mighty hunter in the face of the Lord’, ‘wherefore it is said, even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the LORD’ (Genesis 10:9). For example an article from the 1890s mentions ‘[t]hat mighty Nimrod Mr J Gardiner Muir of “Hillcrest”, Market Harborough’ (Fitzgerald 1896, 274). An illustration shows a ‘chair… made from a baby giraffe, which with its mother was shot by Mr Gardiner Muir near the Kiboko River in British East Africa’. The animal’s head and neck form the back of the chair while its skin morphs around the structure of the seat and arms; a similar piece is a hall porter’s chair fashioned from a baby elephant, where the head again forms the back with the trunk curling over the seat and two legs stand on each side of the seat. The chairs are examples of ‘animal furniture’ of the type popular at the end of the nineteenth century: expensive, labour-intensive and closely linked with the social and economic networks of Empire. Rowland Ward, an outstanding taxidermist, an astute business man and a talented self-publicist claimed the original idea of ‘turning sporting trophies into domestic ornaments’ (Ward 52) but several high-end taxidermy firms followed suit. Also featured in the Strand article is ‘the foot of a big elephant fashioned into a liqueur stand, so that it may be placed on the table in the midst of a group in reminiscent mood, Nimrods who may perchance be fighting their battles over again’ (Fitzgerald 1896, 278). Clearly the elephant foot is the trigger for the group recovery of intense past experiences, perhaps linked with male bonding and togetherness. The Nimrods are figured as warriors, with the elephant as the foe. Fitzgerald also describes a letter clip made from the beak of an albatross as ‘a relic with a history’. An ‘adventurous voyager’ crossed the Atlantic in ‘a craft little larger than an open boat’; on the way he was ‘attacked by an enormous albatross’ which he shot and ‘its head [was] eventually brought to Mr Butt [the taxidermist] to make up the beak… Doubtless that mariner is still reminded of his lonely fight in mid ocean every time he files a letter’ (Fitzgerald 276, 277).

Finally we note an extremely interesting and even beautiful table ornament, made from the tusks of Indian wild boars [also] by Mr Butt of Wigmore Street. It cost £55, and the mountings are of silver. In this case, the tusks were forwarded by the adjutant of a crack regiment stationed in the North West Provinces. The officers of that regiment had indulged extensively in the noble pastime of pig sticking, and had carefully preserved the boars’ tusks with the view of having them fashioned into some useful and handsome ornament which might adorn the mess table and serve almost literally as a peg on which to hang many an exciting story (Fitzgerald 275).

6Pig sticking involved chasing wild boar, with spears on horseback at speed over wild terrain: surviving illustrations suggest it was like lethally unorganised polo with additional danger, and by all accounts it was an exciting and addictive activity. Hunters were also referred to as shikaris or shikarees, with reference to shikar, an Indian code of hunting practice involving both lavish hospitality as for example the Indian princes’ entertainment of King George V on his 1911 visit to India, and also a code of values involving fair tactics and respect for the quarry, thus seen as good sporting behaviour. An officer of the Gurkha Rifles, Lt Col Duleep Sinh recalled an experience from as recently as the 1960s when his cousin, ‘an acclaimed shikari’, reminded him ‘of the shikari’s code of conduct, which lays down that it is the bounden duty of whoever wounds an animal to follow it and kill it to put it out of its misery’ (http://www.nawang.com/​shikar.htm). Trophies of such hunts would carry with them the sense of male honour and fair play as well as recalling daring exploits in the face of (albeit self-chosen) danger. Taxidermist Rowland Ward’s book A Naturalist’s Life Study published in 1913 quotes a journalist’s account of the transformation of

a tiger’s skull into the case for a bedroom lamp. The old shikaree, sunburnt and rheumatic sportsman of the past, as he toddles with uncertain steps up to his bedroom in the wilds of Hampshire, can fight his battle o’er again, and sitting opposite the grinning jaws of the wild beast recall that glorious day when he saw the same jaws grinning with another meaning, and quite another light gleaming from those cruel eyes, when a stout nerve and a small leaden bullet were all that stood between him and eternity. (Ward 58–59)

7Some sense of the complex relationship between hunter and hunted emerges from the memoir of a hunt for rare European bison (bison bonasus) left by the First World War air ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen. A self-described ‘sportsman’ with ‘a hunting passion’ von Richthofen declared,

The bison has died out. On the whole earth there are only two spots where bisons may be found. These are the Pless Estate and in the Bialowicz estate of the ex-Czar. The Bialowicz forest has, of course, suffered terribly through the war. Many a magnificent bison which ought to have been shot either by the Czar or by some other monarch has been eaten by German musketeers.

8Here the bison is ‘magnificent’, fit prey only for the hunting elite, not the hoi polloi of the hungry. And for Richthofen, one of that elite, the mighty, magnificent, gigantic bison is an honourable opponent similar to his English foes:

At the moment when the bull came near I had the same feeling, the same feverishness which seizes me when I am sitting in my aeroplane and notice an Englishman at so great a distance that I have to fly perhaps five minutes in order to get near him. The only difference is that the Englishman defends himself. (http://www.richthofen.com/​13b.htm)

9Although the fate of Von Richthofen’s hunting trophies is unknown, the Bulgarian National Museum of Natural History in Sofia foregrounds a pair of magnificent European Bison shot in Silesia in 1915. These two are definitely hunting trophies, very skilfully mounted and with high quality plaques telling the name of hunter and the exact time and date of shooting. Since they came from Silesia my guess is that they were part of the herd kept by the Princes of Pless as mentioned by von Richthofen.

10If male big game hunters were known as Nimrods, female hunters, of whom there were many, adopted the title of Diana: goddess of the chase. Rowland Ward lists numerous ‘sportswomen’ (Ward 210) but research on women as big game hunters is sparse. Maxime van Hanswiick de Jonge offers a survey of ‘Dianes célèbres du moyen âge à nos jours’ while K. P. Czech’s Women as Big Game Hunters, 1880-1940 is drawn largely from the ‘Dianas’ own autobiographical accounts. It seems likely that some women who accompanied husbands or family members on hunting trips preferred to be out in the field rather than left waiting back at the camp; there were also many women who ventured on independent expeditions. There appear to be significant differences between male and female hunting memoirs—Czech notes that ‘women tended to personify the game they stalked with strangely affectionate descriptions’ (53)—but overall the women’s comments suggest a sense of adventure, freedom, prowess, and power over large wild animals, as well as the impetus to succeed in a traditionally male ‘sport’, which contrasts with nineteenth century stereotypes of femininity. While the Dianas’ hunting trophies may have sparked rather different memories and emotions from those of the Nimrods, they were clearly equally valued. Hélène Duchess of Aosta, sister of the famed hunter Philippe Duc d’Orléans, collected a vast amount of animal parts (de Jonge 126) while Lady Margaret Jenkins’ trophies were ‘hung on the “dear old oak-panelled walls” of her home in Wales’ (Czech 53). Perhaps the ultimate in hunting memory recall is the life-sized reconstruction of an incident in the life of Philippe d’Orléans. The Orléanist claimant to the French throne, the Duc (1869–1926) travelled the world in search of big game; Rowland Ward recalled that in May 1889 he ‘was entrusted with a commission from His Royal Highness the Duc d’Orléans to mount a series of trophies obtained by him on a big shoot in Nepal’ (Ward 82). In the Duc’s words,

Two cubs of a tigress had been shot . . . [the mother] was crouching in a small patch of jungle behind a tree . . . the tigress sprang out with a roar and a tremendous leap right on the top of my howdah, smashing in the front of it, breaking my gun with one blow of her paw and exploding the right hand barrel before I had time to fire. (Ward 84)

11Chaos broke out as the Duc’s elephant bolted in panic and the expedition returned to camp; however the following morning ‘we cornered our game in nearly the same spot, and I had the good luck to bring her down’.

  • 1 The guide book of the Grande Galerie de l’Ēvolution dates the set piece to 1893 rather than 1889. T (...)

12Always one to rise to a challenge, Ward ‘chose the moment when the animal was in the very act of trying to enter the howdah’ (Ward 85) producing a detailed set piece of taxidermy and modelling which was displayed in the Duc’s Twickenham home and can now be seen in the Paris Museum of Natural History.1

13An attraction of hunting was said to be the closeness of hunter and hunted, as the hunter enters the wilderness, recovering his or her own inner animal to whom hunting is supposedly ‘natural’. Traditional taxidermy which seeks to restore the animal to a semblance of life could fit this scenario; the hunter through the agency of the skilled taxidermist, creates at least an illusion of the life he has taken. But the use of animal parts in rugs and in ‘animal furniture’ complicates this interpretation, for these objects seem particularly charged with the conflation of exotic and domestic; the trophies are not just hung on a wall and contemplated but are integrated into daily life allowing their owners to recapture or imagine moments of intense emotion and excitement outside their quotidian experience.

14Further, as Andrew Flack writes, ‘animal fragments were transformed into objects of desire’ (Flack 315). The Strand Magazine article already cited begins with some unsettlingly erotic physical references as the reader is invited to ‘Fancy . . . throwing your hat on the horn of a rhinoceros, which identical horn was once half buried in the writhing body of your host’ while Rowland Ward ‘set up a mirror supported by elephant tusks as a present from a sportsman to his bride. An inscription read, may you feel more comfortable in front of these tusks than I did’ (Morris 127).

15We hear of ‘A titled lady who occasionally wears a necklace of gold mounted bear’s claws, which correspond exactly with a number of frightful looking scars on her noble husband’s back’, a reference to ‘claw jewellery’ like that described in an article in The Art Journal of November 1872: ‘[T]he endeavour is how to convert the unsightly objects of tusks and claws of animals into ornaments for the person. Tigers’ claws and leopards’ claws can be set as earrings, brooches, or pins . . . . A tiger claw necklet with gold setting and suspended locket was shown [at a London exhibition] by Lady Garlies’ (Simmonds 272). Birds and insects were also used as jewellery and accessories: ‘indeed a lady may almost be clothed and decorated from head to foot with products of the animal kingdom’ with clothing ‘embroidered with dazzling beetle wings . . . She may indulge in necklets of beetles, and earrings and brooches of the same. Her coronal or tiara may be of the brilliant breasts and heads of the hummingbird or other most costly nodding plumes’. (Simmonds 272).

16Michelle Tolini analyses the fantasy element of such bird and beetle jewellery which moves ‘nature into the “order of theatricality, seduction and enchanted spectacle” [via] the transformation of living animals into ornament’ (Tolini 1–2). She quotes the following reminiscence left by the society beauty Lillie Langtry (‘The Jersey Lily’, 1853–1929) who recalled:

Of my many attempts at originality, I remember a yellow tulle gown, draped with wide-meshed gold fishnet, in which preserved butterflies of every hue and size were held in glittering captivity. This eccentric costume I wore at a Marlborough House Ball, but it could scarcely be considered a very serviceable garment, for the Prince of Wales told me that, the morning after, he picked up many of the insects, which were lying about the ballroom floor. (Tolini 5)

17Tolini comments on Langtry’s matter of fact acceptance of the continuing availability of the butterflies and their use as trimmings; but equally striking is the image of the Prince roaming the deserted ballroom in the act of gathering up the little creatures which had been so close to the body of a desirable woman: Langtry soon became his mistress. Similarly, part of the appeal of the bird and beetle jewellery and dress accessories must have been their sheer tactile attraction. Willoughby Dewar, a champion of legislation protecting bird species, recalled with embarrassment that a member of his family ‘had the front of a dress made up from the red breasts of robins’ (Haynes 30). An instinctive temptation to reach out and touch the soft feathers on the woman’s bosom must have conflicted with Victorian propriety.

  • 2 An internet search for ‘Skin Rugs in Paintings’ produces many examples.

18The enchantment of touch was at its most potent in the case of animal skins and rugs. Ann C. Colley discusses and contrasts the effect of animal skins in two Victorian paintings, In the Tepidarium (Alma Tadema 1881) and Whistler’s The White Girl (1861-1862) but the trope of a lovely woman, usually lightly clad, in juxtaposition with an animal skin is a recurrent trope celebrated in paintings, illustrations, posters, postcards and so on.2 Fascination with tiger skins produced the famously satirical response to Elinor Glyn’s 1907 novel Three Weeks: Would you like to sin with Elinor Glyn on a tiger skin or would you prefer to err with her on some other fur? The rhyme refers to the erotic potential of a tiger skin rug presented to the novel’s heroine by her lover, Paul. A major theme of Three Weeks is the identification of the heroine with a tiger, represented by her relationship with the skin rug. When Paul examines the skin he has purchased, we read ‘What a splendid creature—it reminded him in some way of her—his lady’ (Glyn 63). Certainly the lady is supple (and subtle) sensuous, wild and exotic, as her persona merges with that of the tiger. Later she exclaims

‘My beautiful tiger!’And she gave a movement like a snake, of joy to feel its fur under her, while she stretched out her hands and caressed the creature where the hair turned white and black at the side, and was deep and soft.
‘Beautiful one! beautiful one!’she purred. ‘And I know all your feelings and your passions, and now I have got your skin—for the joy of my skin!’ And she quivered again with the movements of a snake.
‘He was my lover in another life—perhaps—who knows?’ (Glyn 65)

19Skins and furs were of course widely used as clothing. Between the 1890s and the 1950s American Vogue carried numerous advertisements and articles conveying the ‘allure’ and ‘flattery’ of fur coats and accessories: in December 1920 a whimsical and beautifully illustrated article titled ‘Fashion: Who’s Who in the Zoo’ purported to be the report of a congress of prestigious pelt animals discussing the relative popularity of their furs. ‘What Every Woman Should Know About Furs’ (Vogue, August 1941) offered a detailed account of the prices, origins and aftercare of a wide range of furs, together with advice on choosing the right style: those of petite stature were warned off bushy or fluffy furs as, ‘You don’t want to look like a small fur-bearing animal, do you?’ Clearly it was attractive to wear the fur of a dead animal, but not to resemble one…

20The animals used for clothing and rugs (although Glyn’s Lady fantasizes her tiger as the reincarnation of a past lover) were largely anonymous. But for beloved pets and celebrity animals who were famous and popular in life, there might be a continuing existence after death. To return to the 1896 Strand article, the writer declares ‘of course the idea of turning into useful articles pets that have died from natural causes or old age is at once ingenious and praiseworthy’ and we read that ‘some years ago a certain lady’s pet monkey died and although her grief was great she resolved to have her dead darling turned into something useful as well as ornamental’. In life the monkey had been lively and mischievous; apparently ‘the sorrowing mistress couldn’t bear to think of the poor little thing as a mere stuffed specimen grinning idiotically beneath a glass case’ so it is set up as a candle holder, ‘grasping in its little fists the polished brass sconces, and with quite an eager, officious air’ (Fitzgerald 274), a description which brings to mind David Brigham’s comment that

In arguing that specimens be reanimated [i.e. displayed in as ‘natural’ way as possible] many naturalists used words like ‘character’, ‘attitude’, and ‘gesture’ that linked animal displays to human qualities. The taxidermist’s art was thus associated with the representation of the human face and figure: the art of the sculptor and portraitist. (Brigham 196)

21This skill would be especially valuable in the case of ‘celebrity animals’. They were perceived as special, unique entities; as Flack notes, ‘mourning reflects notions of animal individuality’ (Flack 305), indicating not just any elephant or gorilla, but a distinct personality. The renowned Carl Akeley was the taxidermist chosen to mount the original Jumbo, an elephant owned by the circus promoter P. T. Barnum. A popular feature of zoos in Paris and London before being purchased by Barnum in 1882, Jumbo was killed by a train in Canada in 1885. Thanks to Akeley’s skills Jumbo continued to earn money as an attraction for some years after his death, eventually becoming the symbol of Tufts University while his name passed into language as signifying anything large. More recently Alfred the Gorilla lived in Bristol Zoo from 1930 until his death in 1948. Healthy gorillas were rare in British zoos at the time, and Alfred attracted much attention (possibly augmented by the 1933 movie King Kong). Flack and Paddon have both noted Alfred’s popularity, his identification with Bristol life as regular Alfred-related items appeared in the local press, and his iconic status during the hardships of the Second World War. In fact Alfred was anthropomorphised into ‘An almost human pet of civic, national and increasingly global fame’ (Flack 228). There was widespread grief when he died, and Flack records varied public reactions to his mounted form:

‘Alfred is now in Bristol Museum as a stuffed exhibit but I still visit him and speak to him and say a little prayer. I like to think that he is now in the spirit world, back in the jungle with his family, free to roam as nature intended’ and ‘Alfred’s outward form, preserved and imprisoned like Jeremy Bentham’s at London University, still casts a dark, enigmatic shadow in the hall of the museum at Bristol’, imbuing the body with a sense of a life confined. (Flack 238)

22Alfred’s form has enjoyed a varied afterlife including kidnapping by a group of students in the 1950s, an event which came to light relatively recently. In the cases of both Jumbo and Alfred, the animal was removed from his natural habitat at an early age and lived and died as a focus for human constructions of the animal world, albeit constructions overlaid by affection and in Alfred’s case, Bristolian local pride.

23Animal sporting heroes also achieved afterlives as mounted museum objects. Persimmon (1893–1908) was a successful racehorse owned by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. A beautiful if temperamental bay horse, Persimmon won a series of major races culminating in the 1906 Epsom Derby. Not only was this the first royal victory in the Derby for more than a century; the race itself was sensational as Persimmon beat his rival St Frusquin in a record time. In addition it was one of the first sporting events ever filmed, with Richard Paul capturing the scene for the kinematograph, with showings throughout the summer of 1906 at London’s Alhambra Theatre and subsequent tours of Australia and New Zealand. Persimmon was painted by equestrian sculptor and artist Adrian Jones, with many prints of the original work available to the public. By the time Persimmon retired to stud in 1897, never having fully recovered from a punishing run over hard ground at Sandown Park, he was an international celebrity. When the horse died in 1908 Rowland Ward was called in to mount his head, ‘displaying very clearly the sinuous Arab profile’ derived from Persimmon’s pedigree (Ward 67). This head is now on display at the National Horseracing Museum in Newmarket; amongst the museum’s stock of images is a photograph showing Queen Elizabeth visiting Persimmon when she opened the museum in 1983. Clearly visible in an alcove beside the case containing the head is a Derby montage showing the Queen’s great grandfather, an unmistakeably rotund top-hatted racegoer on the memorable day in 1906. Persimmon embodies the tradition of royal associations with racing together with popular enthusiasm for the world’s most famous horse race; his mounted head enshrines a wealth of memory and tradition. At the other end of the sporting social scale is Mick the Miller (29 June 1926–6 May 1939) a male brindle greyhound. He became ‘an icon in the sport’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Mick_the_Miller) after winning nineteen races in a row, including the English Greyhound Derby twice. In retirement Mick made guest appearances at race tracks and featured in several movies including one with comedians Flanagan and Allen. By the time he died Mick had earned around £20,000 in stud fees, prize money and film payments. Mick was stuffed and presented to the Natural History Museum; he now forms part of the collection of taxidermy dogs in the Natural History Museum outpost in Tring, Hertfordshire.

24Railway or Station Dogs were introduced to Britain’s railway stations in the 1880s in a scheme inspired by railway guard John Climpson to collect funds for the dependants of employees killed or injured on the railways. The pre-Nationalisation railway companies employed a large number of workers and pay and conditions were generally good; on the other hand train transport was dangerous (Charles Dickens’s experience at Staplehurst in June 1865 comes to mind) and many employees were killed and injured in the course of duty, their dependants cared for by the Widows and Orphans Funds set up by the various rail companies. Station Jim was a Canine Collector at Slough for the Great Western Railway Widows and Orphans Fund from 1894 until his death in 1896. After his death he was stuffed and placed on display in a glass cabinet with a collection slot which enabled him to continue his work after death. Another dog, Tim collected at Paddington Station for the GWR widows and orphans, working from 1892–1902. Apparently when Queen Victoria passed through the station on her way to Windsor she would look out for Tim and place a golden sovereign in his collecting box. Tim’s death and subsequent fate inspired the rhyme:

Our pet we still may gaze upon
Tho dead like life in form and limb
For what he did at Paddington
Now Rowland Ward is padding Tim. (Morris 22)

25London Jack also worked at London’s Paddington station from 1894 until 1900, raising more than £450 in his lifetime. After his death, he was preserved and placed in a glass box where he continued to raise charitable funds, as was Laddie the Airedale who collected on Wimbledon Station and is now at the National Railway Museum.

26The Railway Dogs embodied praiseworthy characteristics; sagacity, loyalty, enterprise, affection and so on during lifetimes of public service commemorated by taxidermic preservation. In life, they were ‘characters’ engaged in charitable work, familiar to travellers, known to Royalty and celebrated in art and rhyme; after death, transformed into animal objects, they continued the good work, continuing to collect funds and publicise the railway charities.

27Writers on taxidermy, such as Alberti, often refer to the ‘afterlives’ of such commemorated animals. Their preservation and presentation offers space for the fiction that animal is still alive in some way, perhaps through projection of known or remembered characteristics onto the dismembered and reconstituted body. As Deborah Denenholz Morse says, ‘human control over animals includes imaginative possession’ (Flack 174); but this imaginative possession remains anchored in some way to the physical remains in a two-way relationship with the object itself.

  • 3 Today taxidermy is enjoying a fashionable revival as antiquarian kitsch and an avant-garde art form (...)
  • 4 Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited (1945) features a bear named Aloysius, derived from a ‘re (...)

28Jeremy Biles refers to ‘[t]he ambivalence of an object or figure at once living and lifeless, alive and dead’, suggesting that this gives rise to a sense of unease or ‘estranged familiarity’ (Biles 138) and certainly taxidermy can cause discomfort to the present day viewer.3 Children seem relatively untroubled by the implications of taxidermy, perhaps still undecided on the relationships between living animals, the taxidermy exhibits, the talking animals of children’s stories, cartoon animals and toy animals who can take on quite complex personalities. It is ironic that teddy bears, one of the toys most likely to take on acquired characteristics,4 originate with the victim of one of Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt’s hunting trips.

29One of Tunbridge Wells Museum’s most popular exhibits with visitors is a stuffed dog, named as ‘Minnie, Lu Lu Terrier Native of China Born May 27th 1871 Died April 16th 1883.’ Lu Lu Terriers are not a recognised breed; Minnie is almost certainly a Maltese Terrier, a breed registered with the Kennel Club (founded 1874) towards the end of the century. Minnie is displayed in an elaborate decorative case made of Tunbridge Ware, the local inlaid wood technique. Normally only small items such as workboxes or photo frames are made of Tunbridge Ware, so a large high quality object like Minnie’s case would have been expensive. The beautiful dog is surrounded by artificial flowers and coloured decoupage. She makes me think of Snow White in her glass coffin, or of the Sleeping Beauty: a fairy-tale object evidently prized in her life time for her delightfully white fluffy appearance and her exotic origins. She is also reminiscent of the cased relics of saints such as Saint Thérèse de Lisieux, whose elaborate glass case, floral décor and detailed physical reconstruction as she lies in her glass tomb in the Carmel of Lisieux hint at the possibility of resurrection while presenting a dead body as an object of beauty. The careful noting of the exact dates of Minnie’s birth and death, the expensive nature of her case and the expert work of the taxidermist combine to make the dog an exceptional object embodying the commemorative and decorative functions of taxidermy, together with the appeal of the romantic Orient. As Deborah Lutz has said, ‘[t]he [animal] body [is] utilised to produce some other material object, thus transforming and aestheticizing it’ (Lutz 97).

30While it is noteworthy that deceased pets, however much ‘one of the family’ were available for preservation beyond that allowable for the human body, the question of the preservation of saintly relics complicates this.

  • 5 For a fuller treatment of Flaubert’s text, see Julia Courtney, ‘The View from the Perch: Flaubert’s (...)

31Perhaps the figure who most fully embodies the action of memory, desire and mourning in animal objects of the nineteenth century is Loulou, parrot hero of Flaubert’s Un cœur simple (1877).5 As is well known, Loulou enters midway through the text at a particularly low point of the servant Félicité’s life: after a hard childhood and desertion by her lover, she loses her adored charge Virginie, her nephew Victor and even père Colmiche who all die before the parrot appears to console her. At first Loulou is a disruptive element in the bourgeois milieu of Pont-l’Évêque, but after Félicité loses her hearing the relationship between them becomes intense:

  • 6 They had conversations, he endlessly reciting the three phrases in his repertoire and she respondin (...)

Ils avaient des dialogues, lui, débitant à satiété les trois phrases de son répertoire, et elle, y répondant par des mots sans plus de suite, mais où son coeur s’épanchait. Loulou, dans son isolement, était presque un fils, un amoureux. Il escaladait ses doigts, mordillait ses lèvres, se cramponnait à son fichu; et, comme elle penchait son front en branlant la tête à la manière des nourrices, les grandes ailes du bonnet et les ailes de l’oiseau frémissaient ensemble. (Flaubert 73)6

When Loulou dies, Félicité entrusts his body to a taxidermist (un empailleur) in Le Havre. Six months later he returns in splendid shape perched on a branch and nibbling a gilded nut, to become the star object in Félicité’s room:

  • 7 This place, to which she admitted few people, was like a chapel and a bazaar at the same time, sinc (...)

Cet endroit, où elle admettait peu de monde, avait l’air tout à la fois d’une chapelle et d’un bazar, tant il contenait d’objets religieux et de choses hétéroclites’ (Flaubert 77).7

Loulou embodies the past, and is the channel by which Félicité relives happier days:

  • 8 Each morning as she awoke she saw him in the clear light of dawn and she recalled the days that had (...)

Chaque matin, en s’éveillant, elle l’apercevait à la clarté de l’aube, et se rappelait alors les jours disparus, et d’insignifiantes actions jusqu’en leurs moindres détails, sans douleur, pleine de tranquillité. (Flaubert 78) 8

  • 9 as she breathed her last sigh, she believed she saw, in the opening heavens, a gigantic parrot hove (...)

32Gradually the stuffed figure of Loulou, with all its associations of love and memory merges increasingly with Félicité’s idea of the Holy Spirit: the famous closing sentence of the story is the apotheosis of the stuffed parrot as the dying Félicité, ‘quand elle exhala son dernier souffle, elle crut voir, dans les cieux entr’ouverts, un perroquet gigantesque, planant au-dessus de sa tête’. (Flaubert 89)9

33For Félicité the preserved Loulou is a focus of memory (‘she recalled the days gone by’), of desire (‘almost a son, a lover’) and like the Holy Spirit, ‘The Consoler’ he comforts her mourning for those she has loved and lost. Even if he is not intended as le Saint-Esprit (elle crut voir) Loulou is certainly the patron saint of stuffed animals.

34The animals discussed in this chapter range from beetles to elephants but it could be argued that all of them have been reduced to objects by human agency, whether as fragmented items of jewellery or as anthropomorphised celebrity ‘characters’. Yet this interpretation occludes the complex relationships between the hunter and the hunted, the implications of iconic local status, the interaction between pet and owner and the magical power of the relic. Memory, desire and mourning may be for a specific animal, for the lost youth of the hunter, even for our supposed wild side.

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Bibliographie

Biles, Jeremy. ‘Out of This World, the Materiality of the Beyond’. Religion and Material Culture. Ed. David Morgan. London: Routledge, 2010. 135–53.

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Courtney, Julia. ‘The View from the Perch: Flaubert’s Loulou’. Ed. Julia Courtney and Paula James. The Role of the Parrot in Selected Texts. Lampeter: Mellen, 2006. 87–129.

Fitzgerald, William G. ‘Animal Furniture’. Strand Magazine, July 1896, 274.

Fitzgerald, William G. ‘A Curious and Interesting Fad in Furniture’. The Decorator and Furnisher (November 1896 and January 1897): 42–43 and 111.

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Notes

1 The guide book of the Grande Galerie de l’Ēvolution dates the set piece to 1893 rather than 1889. The Duc’s collection was left to the Museum on his death and displayed in a specially designed building until 1960, when some of the animals were transferred to the Zoology Gallery.

2 An internet search for ‘Skin Rugs in Paintings’ produces many examples.

3 Today taxidermy is enjoying a fashionable revival as antiquarian kitsch and an avant-garde art form.

4 Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited (1945) features a bear named Aloysius, derived from a ‘real’ teddy bear (Archie/Archibald Ormsby-Gore) belonging to John Betjeman, one of Waugh’s Oxford contemporaries.

5 For a fuller treatment of Flaubert’s text, see Julia Courtney, ‘The View from the Perch: Flaubert’s Loulou’, in Julia Courtney and Paula James, eds, The Role of the Parrot in Selected Texts, Lampeter: Mellen, 2006, 87–129.

6 They had conversations, he endlessly reciting the three phrases in his repertoire and she responding with words which were equally disconnected but which came from her heart. In her isolation Loulou was almost a son, a lover to her. He used to climb up her fingers, nibble her lips and hang from her shawl; and when she bent forward and gently shook her head from side to side as nurses do, the great wings of her bonnet and the bird’s wings quivered in unison. (my translation)

7 This place, to which she admitted few people, was like a chapel and a bazaar at the same time, since it contained both religious objects and a collection of ill-assorted items. (my translation)

8 Each morning as she awoke she saw him in the clear light of dawn and she recalled the days that had gone and insignificant actions in the minutest detail, without grief but in absolute tranquillity. (my translation)

9 as she breathed her last sigh, she believed she saw, in the opening heavens, a gigantic parrot hovering above her head.

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Julia Courtney, « Animal Objects: Memory, Desire and Mourning »Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens [En ligne], 88 Automne | 2018, mis en ligne le 20 janvier 2019, consulté le 08 mai 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cve/4192 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/cve.4192

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Auteur

Julia Courtney

Dr Julia Courtney is an independent scholar, having retired from the Open University where she served as an administrator, research fellow and Associate Lecturer, latterly in the Post Graduate Literature programme. Julia’s PhD was on the novelist Charlotte M. Yonge and she has published on this author as well as recent articles in Women: A Cultural Review, English Review and the Journal of William Morris Studies. Taxidermy is a ‘second string’ which is rapidly taking over Julia’s research interests, especially given the current widespread academic work being done in Animal Studies. She has given numerous conference papers on the subject and has published in Hampshire Studies (2011).
Dr. Julia Courtney est enseignant-chercheur indépendant. Retraitée de l’Open University où elle a successivement occupé les postes de gestionnaire, d’allocataire de recherche puis d’Associate Lecturer, intervenant au sein du programme de Master de littérature. Auteur d’une thèse de doctorat sur la romancière victorienne Charlotte M. Yonge, elle a publié plusieurs études sur cet auteur ainsi que des articles parus dans Women: A Cultural Review, English Review et dans le Journal of William Morris Studies. À son sujet de recherche initial s’est dernièrement ajouté un intérêt croissant et une passion dévorante pour la taxidermie, sujet d’autant plus porteur qu’il s’inscrit dans la droite ligne des récentes recherches universitaires menées autour du champ émergent des « Animal Studies ». Julia Courtney est l’auteur de nombreuses communications sur la taxidermie et a récemment publié des articles à ce sujet dans la revue Hampshire Studies (2011).

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