Gerald Durrell

by Douglas Botting

  Gerald’s ambition to break into television was to prove difficult. He had no innate talent as a cameraman or director, and was ill at ease in front of the camera, at least in the cramped and inhibiting studio conditions of those days. The footage he had shot with Jacquie on his third Cameroons expedition was not wildly promising, but skilfully structured and drastically cut by BBC producer Tony Soper, it stretched to a three-part series called To Bafut for Beef, which included studio excerpts featuring Gerald, Jacquie and Cholmondeley.

  By now Cholmondeley was well used to making public appearances. He had done several photo-calls for the press to show off his skills with washing-up brush, sponge, mop, kitchen scales, telephone and camera. He had appeared several times on television, and had been a guest at the production launch of a Twentieth Century-Fox movie. ‘Brother Gerry has become a television star,’ Lawrence wrote to Henry Miller from Sommières, ‘owing to a clever little chimp he has brought back from the Congo which does everything but vote apparently.’ At a trade book fair at Olympia Cholmondeley had been guest of honour at the W.H. Smith stand, and comported himself impeccably at the hotel lunch afterwards. ‘Lunch was served by an ancient and aristocratic waiter,’ recalled Gerald, ‘who did not bat an eyelid at the sight of a chimpanzee in a Fair Isle pullover, sitting on my lap and eating food from my side plate … During the course of the meal he suddenly leant over and enquired softly and deferentially: “Would the … er … er … young gentleman like some more peas, sir?”’ Cholmondeley grew quite accustomed to the train journey up to London, which he enjoyed hugely, except for the cows in the fields, which frightened him, but as word of his presence spread great crowds would gather, blocking the corridors and infuriating the guards, so that eventually he had to be taken up to town by car, which was just as much fun, especially the pub stops and the beer and crisps that went with them.

  ‘My beastly brother has started a zoo in Bournemouth and travels everywhere with a giant ape called Chumley,’ Lawrence reported to Richard Aldington. ‘Dreadful scenes in the dining car of the Bournemouth Belle; but I must admit it is a good way to call on one’s publishers when asking for money. Our techniques are widely different. I find that Fabers get awfully scared when I put imaginary titles to books. For a long time I convinced them that Justine was to be called “Sex and the Secret Service” or “Not Now Your Husband’s Looking”. Gerry, who is cruder (with Hart-Davis one must be tougher I suppose), always threatens to write a life of Jesus. I expect they’ll come down here and make my life a cicada-ridden mystery before long …’

  Gerald’s television series To Bafut for Beef had a mixed reception. Cholmondeley had grown a little cocky with adulation, and behaved unpredictably, while Gerald was so uncomfortable under the lights that he sweated continuously and profusely, an embarrassing phenomenon which the cameras picked up with pitiless precision. ‘If Gerry was going to pursue any career in this particular medium,’ Jacquie concluded, ‘he would have to be filmed on location and not asked to perform in a studio.’

  ‘Durrell is still a tiny bit nervous,’ wrote the Observer’s reviewer after the second programme, ‘but he communicates a good deal of his own charm and all his animals’.’ One review in particular, by Jessie Forsyth Andrews in Christian World, gave Gerald special gratification, not just because it was favourable but because it was imbued with a way of thinking that was not very far from his own:

  What is the right relationship between man and the lower creation? Some humans have almost a passion for animals, tame or wild, familiar or strange; and I cannot believe it is anything but a God-given instinct. I am thinking of the whole range of sentient creatures in earth and sky and sea. Are we their owners – or their trustees?

  One of the greatest recent achievements of science has been the long-range photographic lens. We explore space and locate sputniks with it. But at the opposite end of the scale it brings us acquaintance with the life-histories of the wild creatures of the jungle and the desert. Some of the best programmes on television have given us the same insight – especially recently the short series of films from West Africa by Gerald Durrell, the genial young explorer who collects what his native friends call ‘beef in the Cameroons and brings them home. He almost made me love the egg-hunting snake – and snakes paralyse me even in pictures.

  But in a generation or so will man’s knowledge of the wild creatures be gathered only from films and books, and from Whipsnades, small or vast, here and there in the world? Is it to be Man versus Beast henceforth?

  There remains for me this question: aeons ago God created and evolved marvellous creatures in the vast spaces of earth where no man was – surely therefore for His own delight in them. For untold millions of years His eye alone has beheld them. By His gift now we partly share His joy in them. Is it His will that they should cease from the earth?

  Argentina now began to occupy more and more of Gerald’s time and attention. The BBC were keen for him to film the expedition, and though they felt unable to send a cameraman out with the party, they were confident enough to offer Gerald a contract.

  ‘Gerry was obsessed with Charles Darwin’s book The Voyage of the “Beagle”,’ Jacquie recalled, ‘and had a secret ambition to go to Patagonia to see for himself the penguins, fur seals and elephant seals that live along its coast.’ In Gerald’s rough shooting script for a series of eight half-hour films, Tierra del Fuego was to be the subject of the first two (Land of Fire and The Edge of the World), followed by programmes on the pampa, the Lower Andes and Formosa.

  There was a moment of crisis when Gerald discovered that David Attenborough was also heading for South America to shoot another Zoo Quest series, this time in Paraguay, but when he phoned Attenborough he found to his relief that they were not really in competition, for their aims were very different. ‘Whereas David is really going on another zoo quest for only two or three special creatures,’ Gerald reassured the Head of Programmes at BBC Television in Bristol, ‘what I am trying to do is to present a complete picture of the pattern of animal life in a vast area ranging from almost polar conditions down south to tropical conditions up north.’ Conceived in this way, the proposed series revealed a breadth of vision and a grandeur of scale that was ahead of its time in documentary programme-making. Built in to the series, too, was a conservation dimension that was still rare, for Gerald had drawn up an exhaustive list of animals on the verge of extinction in South America that he wanted to film.

  Shortly before Gerald set off for Argentina he approached his colleague and mentor Peter Scott to see if there were any species he particularly wanted for his Wildfowl Trust at Slimbridge. Scott told him that one of his great ambitions was to secure a pair of the rare torrent ducks thought to inhabit the high Andes of Bolivia. ‘He was, as always, wildly enthusiastic,’ Gerald recalled, ‘and he begged me to obtain some Torrent ducks for him. He talked so enthusiastically about the Torrent ducks that at one point I was under the impression that I had already got them for him. His enthusiasm for everything to do with conservation or the animal world would warm you like a fire. Half an hour’s talk with Peter and you felt you could succeed in realising your wildest dreams.’ Sadly, Gerald was not to secure any Torrent ducks in South America, and Scott never succeeded in keeping the species at Slimbridge.

  In the middle of his preparations for the expedition, Gerald’s mind returned to the problem of the zoo. What happened next has become part of the mythology of zoo history. There were three stages. The first involved (once again) Jacquie. She wrote:

  I thought that the matter of the zoo had been shelved entirely, but I had overlooked Durrell’s stubborn nature.

  ‘Surely there must be somewhere left that has sensible people in charge who are not hidebound or tied up with red tape and the dear old Town and Country Planners,’ Durrell moaned bitterly one day. Before I realised what I was saying, I found myself suggesting the Channel Islands.

  ‘They’ve got a better climate than ours and their own government, so I think t
hey’re worth trying.’

  Gerald agreed. But they didn’t know anyone in the islands who could help fix things for them. The conversation petered out, and the flicker of hope faded.

  The second stage involved (again) Rupert Hart-Davis. Gerald recalled:

  Reluctantly (for the idea of starting my zoo on an island had a very strong appeal for me) we forgot about the Channel Islands. It was not until a few weeks later that I happened to be in London and was discussing my zoo project with Rupert Hart-Davis that a gleam of daylight started to appear. I confessed to Rupert that my chances of having my own zoo now seemed so slight that I was on the verge of giving up the idea altogether. I said we had thought of the Channel Islands, but that we had no contact there to help us. Rupert sat up, and with the air of a conjurer performing a minor miracle, said he had a perfectly good contact in the Channel Islands (if only he was asked) and a man moreover who had spent his whole life in the islands and would be only too willing to help us in any way. His name was Major Fraser, and that evening I telephoned him. He did not seem to find it at all unusual that a complete stranger should ring him up and ask his advice about starting a zoo, which made me warm to him for a start. He suggested that Jacquie and I should fly to Jersey and he would show us round the island, and give us any information he could. And this accordingly we arranged to do.

  Major Hugh Fraser was waiting for them at the airport. He was a tall, slim man, and wore his trilby hat so far forward that the brim almost rested on his aquiline nose. They drove out of the airport and through St Helier, the island’s minuscule capital, into the countryside. The roads were narrow and ran between steep banks and overhanging trees as if through a green tunnel. The landscape reminded Gerald of Devon on a miniature scale, but the farmhouses were built of the beautiful Jersey granite, which contained, Gerald observed, ‘a million autumn tints in its surface where the sun touches it’. Within a remarkably short time they had viewed two substantial properties with what could be called zoo development potential; but neither seemed quite right, and spirits began to sink. Then they headed for the district called Trinity, where Major Fraser himself lived. They turned down a drive, and there before them was Fraser’s family home, Les Augrès Manor (The House of Ghosts), one of the most beautiful houses on the island.

  ‘The Manor was built like an E without the centre bar,’ Gerald was to write of that fateful encounter; ‘the main building was in the upright of the E, while the two cross pieces were the wings of the house, ending in two massive stone arches which allowed access to the courtyard. These beautiful arches were built in about 1660* and, like the rest of the building, were of the lovely local granite. Hugh showed us round his home with obvious pride, the old granite cider-press and cow-sheds, the huge walled garden, the small lake with its tattered fringe of bulrushes, the sunken water-meadows with the tiny streams trickling through them.’

  The party walked back into the sunlit courtyard. It was, Gerald agreed, a wonderful place. He turned to Jacquie, and by way of a polite, idle aside he said: ‘Wouldn’t it make a wonderful place for a zoo?’

  As far as Gerald knew, there was no question of the manor being available. It was therefore fortunate beyond belief that he happened to say what he did just then. In future years this sort of thing came to be known as ‘Durrell’s luck’.

  ‘Are you serious?’ said Major Fraser. ‘Come inside, dear boy, and we’ll discuss it.’

  They discussed it over aperitifs. They discussed it over lunch. They discussed it over brandies after lunch. Major Fraser, it seemed, was finding the upkeep of the property a bit beyond his means, and was thinking of moving to a smaller place on the mainland. Perhaps, he suggested, Gerald might be interested in renting the manor for the purpose of establishing his zoo?

  ‘So, after a frustrating year of struggling with councils and other local authorities,’ Gerald was to write, ‘I had gone to Jersey, and within an hour of landing at the airport I had found my zoo.’

  The Durrells returned to the mainland in a turmoil of emotions – elation, anticipation and relief mixed with anxiety, and doubts as the daunting demands of the enterprise began to sink in. When Gerald announced the good news on his return to Bournemouth, it was greeted, he recalled, ‘with alarm and despondency by all who knew me’. Only Margaret seemed pleased, for though she thought the scheme ‘harebrained’, she was relieved that she might soon be able to reclaim her garden from the various denizens of the jungle who still inhabited it.

  James Fisher, Britain’s foremost ornithologist, who had earlier approved of Gerald’s plans for captive breeding, poured scorn on the idea of trying to set about it on an offshore pimple of a place. ‘You’re mad, dear boy,’ he exclaimed. ‘Quite mad. Too far away. End of the world. Who the hell d’you think is going to come to some remote bloody island in the English Channel to see your set-up? The whole thing’s lunatic. I wouldn’t come that far to drink your gin. That’s a measure of how silly I think your scheme is. Ruination staring you in the face. You might just as well set up on Easter Island.’

  Gerald tried Sir Julian Huxley, the doyen of the biological scene. ‘He had always been kind and helpful in the past,’ Gerald reported, ‘but this was a somewhat grandiose idea and I was fearful he would treat it in some damning way. I need not have worried, for he greeted it with the infectious enthusiasm he showed for every new idea, great or small.’ Gerald and Sir Julian sat down to tea and talked of monkey-puzzle trees and giant sloths and many other things. Then Sir Julian glanced at his watch.

  ‘Have you seen that film young Attenborough brought back from Africa on that lioness … you know, Elsa? It was reared by that Adamson woman. They’re repeating it this afternoon.’

  ‘So the greatest living English biologist and I,’ Gerald wrote, ‘perched on upright chairs and in silence we watched Joy Adamson chasing Elsa, Elsa chasing Joy Adamson, Joy Adamson lying on top of Elsa, Elsa lying on top of Joy Adamson, Elsa in bed with Joy Adamson, Joy Adamson in bed with Elsa, and so on, interminably …’ By the end they felt they had watched the world’s first natural history blue movie.

  Gerald listened to the advice he was given, then made up his own mind. With less than a month to go before he was due to sail to Argentina, there was no time for prevarication or fine tuning. He could proceed with the zoo on Jersey forthwith, or abort the idea immediately and for good. He had no difficulty deciding. Within a few days the Durrells were back on Jersey to discuss the practical problems of founding a zoo with the island’s authorities. The head of tourism, Senator Krichefski, responded enthusiastically to the idea and promised his total support. Other officials were equally helpful, and appreciated the need for speed. All this was a far cry from the red tape of the local bureaucracies on the mainland. Meanwhile Hugh Fraser’s advocate was drawing up a lease to grant the tenancy of Les Augrès Manor to the Durrells. The dream was on the verge of becoming reality. All that was left was the matter of the zoo itself.

  It helped that Gerald had already had a dry-run in Poole, so the basic aims and principles had already been thoroughly worked out, and many of the detailed specifications could simply be transferred to Jersey, with modifications here and there to suit the lay-out of the manor and its grounds and buildings. Gerald’s plan was for the zoo to open to the public in the spring of 1959, while he was still in South America. He would ship the Cameroons animals over from Paignton once their cages had been set up, then add his South American collection when he returned. To manage the zoo and supervise its establishment in his absence, he persuaded his old friend Ken Smith to take over as Superintendent. ‘Smith was always eager for change and advancement,’ Jacquie recalled, ‘so it was very easy to persuade him to come to Jersey. Smith collected all the Jersey staff. He insisted on carte blanche in everything as the price of his leaving Paignton. I strenuously opposed this for various reasons and was, alas, proved to be only too right.’

  In the middle of this hectic time, Encounters with Animals was published. To Gerald’s surprise – f
or the book was essentially no more than a rehash of his two radio series – it was well received, and sold moderately well. ‘If animals, birds and insects could speak,’ wrote one reviewer, ‘they would possibly award Mr Gerald Durrell one of their first Nobel prizes … His creatures are as alive as his style.’

  Finally, on 18 October 1958, the day after he signed the lease for the zoo site in Jersey, thereby becoming the ‘Lord’ of the Manor of Les Augrès in the Parish of Trinity, Gerald set sail from Plymouth on board the English Star, a cargo boat of the Blue Star line, bound for Buenos Aires in the company of his wife, his mother (who was going out for a two-week holiday) and his secretary. He had mortgaged his future to start his zoo, but he did not regret it: it was not his own future that was now his major concern, but that of the wildlife of the world.