The Most Defiant Devil: William Temple Hornaday and His Controversial Crusade to Save American Wildlife

3. Stuffed and Living Animals

52 3 ) _ STUFFED AND LIVING ANIMALS A FTER TWO and a half years of traveling abroad, Hornaday returned to Rochester, New York, in April 1879 with two ambitious goals. First and foremost, he wished to write a gripping and informative memoir of his journey on a level with the work of the French explorer and natural historian Paul du Chaillu, though he was in no rush to complete it. The second idea, which had gelled more slowly in his mind, could be implemented more quickly. It was to introduce a revolutionary new concept in museum presentation , the group display. He was unimpressed by the museums of the great imperial powers; he found their workmanship shoddy and their designs poor. Pieces of both England and India “would NEVER do for the museums of my Country!” he exclaimed. The pieces had only gotten worse as he had traveled east. In a letter to Henry Ward, he described the specimens in Singapore as “vandalism.” Hornaday felt something had to be done to raise the standards of taxidermy in order to improve the educational value of museums around the world. He set out to spark this transformation.1 As was his wont, Hornaday wasted no time. Just a few hours after returning from Asia, he sketched out an idea for a display of multiple animals of different species acting out a scene he had witnessed in the jungle. Ward looked it over, then ordered him to “proceed!” For several months, Hornaday painstakingly built his complicated design from the inside out. He used wood to simulate bone and papier-mâché and clay for muscle. Completed in midsummer 1879 and entitled “Fight in the Treetops,” the scene re-created a dramatic (some might say sensa- sTUffeD aND lIvINg aNImals 53 tionalistic) battle between an orangutan and a gibbon in the canopy of Borneo. Hornaday was providing his audience with a snapshot of a natural struggle that they would never be able to see for themselves. “Of the comparatively few animals which do draw blood of their own kind through ill temper and jealousy, I have never encountered any more given to internecine strife than orangutans,” he wrote in 1901. “Their fighting methods, and their love of fighting, are highly suggestive of the temper and actions of the human tough.” He amplified this in his diorama with some red paint to depict bite marks.2 “Fight” was not the first group display ever constructed by a taxidermist . Charles Willson Peale earlier had a “Missouri bear group” at his famous museum in Philadelphia. The scene centered on a bruin collected during the Lewis and Clark expedition. But the bear group did not catch on, nor, in fact, did Peale’s museum, though it was fairly well known in its day for possessing a mastodon skeleton and enjoying such famous patrons as Thomas Jefferson. Peale struggled to keep his business operating, and his children sold off the remaining items after his death and closed the doors. Hornaday lived in a different era, one that took its museums and natural history much more seriously, supporting them with public and philanthropic funds and valuing them as educational facilities.3 “Fight in the Treetops” debuted in August 1879 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Hornaday also delivered a natural history lecture there on the habits of the orangutans of Borneo. Impressed by the lecture and dazzled by “Fight,” G. Brown Goode, the driven, chain-smoking curator of the United States National Museum in Washington, offered Hornaday the position of chief taxidermist. Owing two years on his contract with Ward at the Natural History Establishment, Hornaday declined the invitation from a man he later described as “a progressive and daring museum-builder.”4 In the month following the scientific meeting, Hornaday returned to Battle Creek, Michigan, to marry Josephine Chamberlain. Frederic Lucas, his closest friend and fellow taxidermist at Ward’s Establishment , was the best man. Their marriage was an affectionate and strong bond that lasted until Hornaday’s death fifty-seven years later. Hornaday’s notes to Josie, addressed as “My Choicest blessing and solace of my soul,” “My life’s joy,” “Dearest finest and best of women,” and the like, spoke of the depth of his feelings. Will and Josie were a so- THE MOST DEFIANT DEVIL 54 cial couple who enjoyed spending time with friends and family. They also...