by Ian Sansom
‘I suppose it’s not, Mr Morley, no.’
‘Certainly not to the Ashmolean, eh?’
‘They had a dodo?’
‘Everyone knows they had a dodo, Sefton,’ said Miriam.
‘Up until 1755,’ said Morley, ‘when they were clearing their collection of poorly preserved specimens, and out went the old thing.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You know, we could probably do him ourselves,’ said Morley. ‘If we got him home.’
‘What, stuff him?’ said Miriam.
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Father. You’re not a taxidermist.’
‘I’ve done a mouse,’ said Morley. ‘I wrote an article about it, for the Boy’s Own Weekly I think it was.’
‘I hardly think that qualifies you as a taxidermist,’ said Miriam. ‘And it certainly doesn’t qualify you to do a dog.’
‘But it’s the same principle, my dear. Just a matter of scale. Do you know Montagu Browne’s Practical Taxidermy, Sefton?’
‘I can’t say I do, Mr Morley, no.’
‘Published in numerous editions during the late nineteenth century. Excellent guide. I’m pretty sure he covers dogs. Charles Darwin hired a Guianese slave to give him taxidermy lessons, did you know?’
‘I did not, Mr Morley, no.’
‘And when his beloved raven, Grip, died, Dickens had it stuffed and mounted.’
‘Well, you’re not Dickens and you’re definitely not Darwin,’ said Miriam.
‘You must admit Pablo would make an interesting addition to the collection, though,’ said Morley.
‘We are not having him stuffed, Father. And that’s final.’
‘We used to have everything done at Rowland Ward’s. Do you remember my taking you there when you were a child, Miriam? Do you know them, Sefton, Rowland Ward’s?’
‘I fear not, sir.’
‘One of the greats of Victorian taxidermy, Rowland Ward. Premises on Piccadilly. Specialises in big game—’
‘Vile,’ said Miriam.
‘Not to my taste, certainly,’ said Morley. ‘They don’t so much stuff animals as upholster them. Also, they have a terrible habit of turning things into ornaments—’
‘Vile, vile. Utterly vile,’ said Miriam.
‘And items of household furniture: rhino-foot doorstops, zebra-legged tables, paperweight hooves and what have you.’
‘Sounds … charming,’ I said.
‘Revolting and repulsive,’ said Miriam.
‘Any more revolting and repulsive than the plight of the poor chicken in the pot?’ said Morley.
‘I am not going to dignify your question with an answer, Father,’ said Miriam. ‘If you cannot see the difference between an animal killed for sustenance and an animal killed to become a table lamp, then really …’
‘What about an animal killed for sustenance and to become a table lamp?’
‘I refer you to my previous non-answer, Father. So. Anyway?’
‘Yes, Mr Bristow produced a catalogue recently that included the white-winged snowfinch – difficult to believe it was found in Sussex. And the grey-tailed tattler.’
‘The grey-haired warbler,’ said Miriam.
‘Anyway,’ said Morley, ‘we could visit Mr Bristow on our way home and try to persuade him to do a dog. But we’d need to get this poor fellow into ice.’
Bevis was still awkwardly hanging around, clearly regretting ever having got involved with me, Morley, Miriam and the dog, but keen to help us resolve the problem.
‘There’s an iceman in town, but he won’t be delivering till morning.’
‘No,’ said Morley.
‘But there’s always Potter’s Museum, in Bramber, sir,’ he said.
‘Of course!’ said Morley, with a sudden burst of glee. ‘Good thinking, man! Potter’s Museum!’
‘The what?’ said Miriam.
‘How far’s Bramber from here?’ Morley asked Bevis.
‘It’d be twenty miles, sir.’
‘The Whatter Museum?’ said Miriam.
‘Closer than St Leonards?’
‘Definitely closer, sir,’ said Bevis.
‘That’s it then,’ said Morley. ‘Bit of a run out there, but I’m sure they’ll be able to help us. And we get to include Potter’s Museum in The County Guides. Two birds with one stone, as it were, uno in saltu lepide apros capiam duos.’
‘What is Potter’s Museum? Father?’ asked Miriam.
‘Wait and see,’ said Morley.
CHAPTER 28
ON THE WAY to Bramber and the mysterious Potter’s Museum, Miriam and Morley slipped into a game of Greece or Rome, which was one of their favourite car games, in which participants take it in turns to argue for the merits of one or other classical civilisation. (‘Greece!’ proposed Miriam. ‘Athenian democracy!’ ‘Which was a very limited form of democracy,’ countered Morley, ‘while the Romans handed out citizenship to millions.’ Etc.) It was not the sort of thing that would have made the pages of the Journal of Hellenic Studies, but it passed the time and got us – at least momentarily – off the subject of Lizzie Walter and Pablo, though alas Morley soon drifted back, inevitably, to the question of taxidermy.
‘“I do remember an apothecary,”’ he said, launching into a quote, ‘“and hereabouts he dwells … and in his needy shop a tortoise hung, an alligator stuff’d and other skins of ill-shaped fishes.”’
‘Romeo and Juliet?’ said Miriam.
‘Correct!’ said Morley. ‘Act?’
‘Five,’ said Miriam.
‘Scene?’
‘No one remembers the scene, Father.’
‘Scene one,’ said Morley. ‘You know, the history of the hanging of stuffed alligators and crocodiles is rather fascinating.’
‘Is it, Father?’
‘It is if you’re a herpetologist,’ said Morley.
‘Which you are not,’ said Miriam.
‘An amateur herpetologist,’ said Morley. ‘The symbolic meaning of the hung crocodile I think is generally believed to have been a sign and a warning about the presence of evil, and God’s power to overcome it.’
‘We could do with our own stuffed crocodile then, couldn’t we?’ said Miriam.
‘Indeed. Do you know, Miriam, when we get home I think perhaps I might consider a little book on the history of taxidermy.’
‘No, Father. No more plans for books.’
‘We would start with the history of the preservation of animals and animal parts from the – what? – sixteenth century, I suppose, when explorers and adventurers began hauling home their souvenirs and specimens from their trips all over the world, through the history of the Wunderkammaren … The word of course derives from?’
‘Wunderkammaren?’ said Miriam. ‘German? Just a guess.’
‘Sorry, no, the word “taxidermy”, I mean,’ said Morley.
‘From the Greek taxis?’ said Miriam.
‘Obviously,’ said Morley. ‘Meaning?’
‘Arrangement?’ said Miriam.
‘Correct,’ said Morley. ‘Arrangement, and derma – meaning?’
‘Skin?’ I offered.
‘All that expensive education not entirely to waste then, Sefton,’ said Miriam.
We arrived eventually at what appeared to be an insignificant roadside village, which Morley claimed was Bramber, but which showed absolutely no signs of being such.
‘Alas,’ said Morley, as Miriam pulled over, ‘I see that the villa- and the bungalow-builder has been let loose upon Sussex, as in so many other parts of the country.’
As soon as we had stopped, pretty much immediately, a deeply scowling local emerged from his bungalow on the main – the only – street.
‘Is this Bramber?’ asked Morley.
‘You’ll be looking for the museum?’
‘Yes, we are indeed, sir, how did you guess?’ said Morley.
‘Drackly up the road, by the station and the pub.’ The man pointed further up the street an
d then went back inside his house.
‘Marvellously friendly in Bramber, aren’t they,’ said Morley, entirely seriously.
Potter’s Museum, suffice it to say, is pretty much the opposite of the Lewes Museum. It is a small building that rather resembles a Nonconformist chapel but which announces itself with an enormous sign saying simply ‘MUSEUM’ and two other only slightly smaller signs, stating ‘OPEN’ and ‘DAILY’. You approach it through a gate into a garden with a small fountain, some flowerbeds and some benches. The price of admission is a penny for a child, twopence for adults, and for ‘ladies and gentlemen’ it is ‘what they please’. But what’s really remarkable about the place, and what distinguishes it from the Sussex Archaeological Society’s Lewes Museum, is that it is extremely popular with visitors. We had arrived late afternoon and the place was still thronged, packed with children, adults, ladies and gentlemen, locals, tourists and people who had come to Bramber on the train, all of them paying what they pleased, or what was required, with the sole purpose of visiting Potter’s Museum.
The Potter Museum, Bramber
The place is ‘an absolute must-see’, according to Morley in The County Guides: Sussex and as its name perhaps suggests, it features the work of a Mr Potter, Walter Potter, born in Bramber, son of the owner of the White Lion pub – and a keen amateur taxidermist. Where others may have used their skills in the art and craft of preserving animals for educational purposes, to create zoological specimens and museum displays, or to make hunting trophies, or indeed merely for ornaments, Mr Potter used his skills to make dead animals into incredible stories. The museum – a couple of rooms really – features the occasional pathetic display of some freakish two-headed lamb, and a four-legged chicken, a three-legged pig, but mostly the animals are arranged together in mahogany display cases, in tableaux depicting scenes or episodes, or illustrations of stories and tales. Thus, there is ‘Monkey Riding a Goat’, which features a monkey riding a goat, ‘Kittens’ Wedding’, featuring kittens at a wedding, ‘Rabbits’ Village School’, ‘Guinea Pigs’ Cricket Match’, and so on, which are all self-explanatory. There are cigar-smoking, card-playing squirrels. There are rats getting drunk. There are kittens playing croquet, and a guinea pig brass band. The true Potter masterpiece, however, around which the crowds were gathered on that cool dark autumn afternoon, is undoubtedly ‘The Death and Burial of Cock Robin’.
According to A Guide to the Chief Objects in the Bramber Museum, an excellent little guide – indeed, ‘one of the finest museum guidebooks in the country’ according to Morley, outdoing, in his opinion, the official guides to the Victoria and Albert Museum, the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, and the National Museum in Cardiff – this thing, ‘The Death and Burial of Cock Robin’, this piece, this artwork, whatever one might want to call it, took Walter Potter seven years to complete. The story goes that when he was a young man, reading his sister’s book of nursery rhymes, he came across the famous rhyme about Cock Robin and decided to illustrate the tale. Thus, into a small mahogany display he crammed almost a hundred British birds, depicting Cock Robin’s funeral cortège making its way through a graveyard. There is a parson rook, there are robin pall-bearers, there is the sparrow with his bow and arrow, and of course poor Cock Robin himself in his coffin. I have never seen – you have never seen, no one has ever seen – anything quite like it.
‘Marvellous,’ said Morley.
‘Ghastly,’ said Miriam. ‘Animals are not objects, Father, and should not be treated as such.’
‘But these are tableaux, Miriam. They are tales. They are—’
‘Frankly as repulsive, if not more so, than the display of animals as hunting trophies or examples of extinct species.’
‘Are you not fascinated with the taxidermist’s craft, Sefton?’
‘I can’t say I am, Mr Morley, no.’
‘An endless source of fascination,’ said Morley to himself.
‘Ghoulish, odd and unpleasant is what it is,’ said Miriam.
‘Hardly,’ said Morley.
‘Pursued by the ghoulish, the odd and unpleasant.’
‘I think it’s rather like our own enterprise, in some ways, actually,’ said Morley.
‘I don’t quite see how, Father.’
‘Well, I wonder if what we’re embarked upon is in fact a sort of taxidermy project: the preservation of a nation.’
‘The what?’
‘Are we not, like Mr Potter, up to our armpits, as it were, in arsenical soap, scrubbing up and scrubbing down this poor dying creature for the purposes of deconstruction and display?’
‘No,’ said Miriam.
‘Attempting to capture the vital flame that once animated this land, to fan the vivifying sparks that remain, to bring light again to eyes grown dark, to tongues become mute—’
‘Not sure about this, Father.’
‘To encourage our readers to an encounter that can never quite take place, to inhabit the great historical diorama that is England …’
As Morley spoke, and despite Miriam’s objections, I suddenly realised the horrible truth of what he was saying: that we were indeed embarked upon such a task, that England was dead and was dying, that Morley was a kind of Walter Potter, and that The County Guides were nothing more than a set of elaborate mahogany display cases.
The crowd who had been looking at Cock Robin had now turned and were looking at us.
‘The Potter style, while certainly extreme and unusual, is not entirely original,’ said Morley, to himself, to Miriam and me, and to everyone else who was now listening. ‘There was a chap called Hermann Ploucquet, I believe, who was the taxidermist at the Royal Museum of Natural History in Stuttgart, who designed displays of frogs shaving frogs, and piano-playing cats, and ice-skating hedgehogs, and so on. Mid-nineteenth century, Ploucquet. So there are precedents. I think what’s truly remarkable about Potter is the sheer range, is it not? The sheer audacity of his imagination, and the way in which he is clearly using these dead animals, posed as men, women and children, to remind us what we all have in common.’
‘Which is what?’ asked a woman standing with her young child.
‘That we are all going to die,’ said Morley.
‘Father,’ said Miriam. ‘The children.’
‘And so when beholding these stuffed animals what we are in fact staring at is our own inevitable fate.’
There was a moment of silence in Potter’s Museum, and then there could be heard the terrible sound of crying children.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ said a man who came striding into the room, who had clearly been alerted to our presence, presumably by a concerned parent. ‘I’m Mr Potter.’
‘The son?’ asked Morley.
‘The grandson, actually.’
‘It’s very nice to meet you, Mr Potter,’ said Morley. ‘Your grandfather was clearly a brilliant individual.’
‘We like to think so, sir, yes. Now—’
Mr Potter had obviously been intending to strong-arm us out of the museum. He was braced to usher us out – you could tell. But he suddenly did a double-take. This happened often with Morley: just as we were about to get into serious trouble, or arrested or apprehended, someone would recognise him and we would escape with a chastisement or a scolding; it was like being associated with some gangland godfather.
‘Is it Mr Swanton Morley? The People’s Professor?’
‘It is, sir. At your service.’
‘Well, we are honoured to have you here at Potter’s Museum,’ said Mr Potter.
‘We were just passing,’ said Morley.
‘If there is anything we can do while you’re here, sir, anything at all, just let me know.’
‘There might be something, actually,’ said Morley.
We wandered back out of the museum, accompanied by Mr Potter, to the great relief, no doubt, of the many weeping children and the other visitors.
‘Where on earth did your grandfather manage to obtain the large number of animals he us
ed in the displays?’ asked Morley. ‘It really is quite remarkable, simply in terms of volume.’
‘My understanding is that he had arrangements with some local farms, Mr Morley,’ said Mr Potter. ‘There’s a farm up near Henfield which supplied a lot of the cats, and the rabbits, I think, came from a breeder who lived up the road in a place called Beeding. But also the public brought him various items of interest.’
‘Not what you know, but who you know,’ said Morley.
‘Precisely,’ said Mr Potter.
‘Speaking of which …’ said Morley, as we reached the Lagonda, and I opened up the boot.
‘Ah,’ said Mr Potter.
‘So, we have this poor fellow,’ said Morley, unwrapping Pablo a little from his winding sheet, ‘and we were wondering if you might at least be able to store him for us, until we are able to make arrangements for his … disposal.’
Mr Potter examined the dog.
‘We wouldn’t normally, Mr Morley.’
‘No, of course not.’
‘But since it’s you, sir, that’s not a problem.’
‘Thank you, Mr Potter! That is really very much appreciated.’
‘In fact, if you would like,’ said Mr Potter, ‘we would probably be able to work on him for you.’
‘You mean you would …?’
‘I don’t have all the necessary skills myself, sir, but there are people in the village who knew my grandfather and who assisted him, and who help us maintain the collection. It requires a very unusual set of skills, you see. One has to be something of a craftsman as well as a scientist.’
‘And an artist, of course,’ said Morley.
‘Exactly, sir. In terms of how to paint the inside of a nose, or to colour a tongue.’
‘Ugh,’ said Miriam.
‘People often don’t realise, miss, but beyond the simple art of preservation, taxidermists also need to be barbers and woodworkers, all sorts. I’m sure everyone in the village would be honoured to work on a project for you, Mr Morley.’
‘Well, it is my daughter’s dog, actually, and I don’t think she’s keen, I’m afraid.’
Miriam was looking sadly at poor Pablo and his strange Bedlington features.