Two wonderful Museums – and mention of another

As a child, I was fascinated by a box that was kept in a back room of our house and which contained "curios". I cannot remember all the bits and pieces in the box, but there was a claw (from a tiger?) and some coarse hair that was said to come from a giraffe's tail. It was our family's cabinet of curiosities, like those kept by Nineteenth Century collectors and Natural History enthusiasts, but I've no idea where the claw and hair came from. Perhaps they were given to my parents by a contact who, unlike us, had travelled widely? I now think the source was more likely to be Paignton Zoo, within easy walking distance of where we lived.

It is possible that my interest in Natural History Museums developed from my fascination with the curios, although I also enjoyed looking at plants and animals while walking in the countryside, or looking in rock pools and streams. It certainly grew when I went into the Sixth Form of Torquay Grammar School and began studying Botany and Zoology at A-level. For some reason, our classes in those subjects were held at the local Technical College, that shared the same campus as the school, and this brought much more freedom. Instead of going to the School Library, a group of us now spent time collecting animals on the shore during our free time, something that was completely against school regulations. Occasionally, we made trips to Exeter to visit the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and little did I know then that the RAMM was to provide a delightful surprise over fifty years later when a Curator, Holly Morgenroth, kindly let me see their collection of drawings by Henry and Edmund Gosse [1,2] – and to think they were there during my schoolboy visits all those years before (although not on display).

It was during the Sixth Form that I joined the Torquay Natural History Society and this allowed me free access to talks and also to their Museum. It was rather musty and dark at that time, not like the welcoming place it is today, and I spent hours in the Library, with its smell of dust and old leather, and volumes going back to the Seventeenth Century. One I remember was printed in London in 1666 and that set me thinking whether this was before, or after, the Great Fire and what a story that book could tell. Being free to look through the exhibits and the books was just like being given a very large box of curios to me. 

The Torquay Museum is housed in a building dating from 1874 (see above), collections previously having been in more temporary quarters [3]. The secretary of the Torquay Natural History Society from 1851 to 1890 was William Pengelly who was made an FRS for his many contributions to palaeontology, especially after the excavation of caves in the Torbay area.  A quote from a biography of Pengelly by his daughter [4] emphasises the central role he played in the development of the Society and I certainly owe him a debt of gratitude, for my love of museums started in Torquay:

It was indeed mainly due to Mr Pengelly's energy that the autumn of 1844 witnessed the foundation of the Torquay Natural History Society. Over its early fortunes he exercised the most watchful care, and in 1851 he was induced to accept the office of honorary secretary, an office which he continued uninterruptedly to hold, to the unspeakable advantage of the Society, for no less than nine-and-thirty years.. ..Year after year he lectured there, tincturing the locality with his own enthusiasm; and from the Society there ultimately sprang the Museum in Babbacombe Road, with its admirable local collections. In the reading-room attached to the Museum there fitly hangs an oil-painting of the man whose individuality is unmistakably marked upon the entire institution – William Pengelly

Pengelly, unlike the "other Torquay  FRS", Henry Gosse, was a regular visitor to London and he was acquainted with E. Ray Lankester, the eminent Zoologist who held the Jodrell Chair at University College London, attending conversazione that were held by that great academic. Lankester had a wide circle of friends and contacts, extending to Karl Marx, H. G. Wells and Anna Pavlova, so he wasn't just well known in his own field. In their monograph on Lankester [5], Lester and Bowler state that, although they mainly communicated through correspondence, he "much admired" Gosse and Edmund Gosse writes [6]:

Among the younger zoologists of the day, few of whom were personally known to my father, there was not one in whose discoveries and career he took a livelier interest than in those of Professor E. Ray Lankester, for whom, from his earliest publications, he had predicted a course of high distinction.

As Jodrell Professor, Lankester inherited the Zoology Museum built up by his predecessor Robert E. Grant (for whom the museum is now named), adding considerably to the collection. The museum is still used for teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students, but it is also open to the public and all who visit appreciate its wonders as it has a powerful atmosphere of the glory days of the Nineteenth Century [7]. Its current location, that shows off the collections so well, is the latest in a series and one hopes that it will remain there for a long time. Of course, the Grant Museum of Zoology is not just about teaching and connecting with the heyday of Natural History; it is also very contemporary, with some wonderful displays to attract and fascinate visitors [8] and a blog that is always worth reading [9]. One novel approach to develop interest is a scheme to adopt a specimen and I did this eagerly, choosing a sea slug Marionia quadrilatera (see below, with the adoption certificate). I chose it as I taught Aquatic and Invertebrate Biology, and a sea slug is appropriate for both. Interestingly, it was part of the collection added to by Lankester and may well have been one of the many specimens brought back from Naples in 1885 [5] by Alfred Gibbs Bourne, a student of Lankester's (note that the jar is labelled "Naples").

While a member of staff at UCL, I listened to one neophyte colleague chatting about the destiny of the Museum of Zoology and how much better it would be to use space for laboratories and contemporary biomedical research. I found this sad and was delighted to serve on the UCL Museums and Heritage Committee where there were never discussions of this kind and where we focussed on the marvellous collections held by the University. Heritage is so important and I'm delighted that Lankester still looks out at the Museum (albeit from a photograph – see below - with specimens of Limulus, about which Lankester wrote an important essay [5]), just as Pengelly looked out in the Library of the Museum in Torquay. I like those connections.

[1] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2015/01/brilliant-illustrations-of-organisms.html

[2] http://www.rwotton.blogspot.com/2015/01/a-moving-discovery-in-royal-albert.html

[3] http://www.torquaymuseum.org/about/our-history

[4] Hester Pengelly (1897) A Memoir of William Pengelly, of Torquay, F.R.S., Geologist. London, John Murray.

[5] Joe Lester and Peter J. Bowler (1995). E. Ray Lankester and the Making of Modern British Biology. British Society for the History of Science Monograph 9.

[6] Edmund Gosse (1896) The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, William Heinemann.

[7] http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/tetrapod-zoology/a-day-at-londons-grant-museum-of-zoology/

[8] http://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums/zoology/about

[9] http://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/museums/category/zoology/

Photographs were taken with the permission of the UCL Grant Museum of Zoology.

“.........life is moving peacefully towards its close”

Given the obvious concern of the public, Lord Dawson, physician to King George V, issued a statement on 20th January 1936 stating that: “The King's life is moving peacefully towards its close”. It is a moving and memorable sentence but the peaceful end was not a natural one as, later that day, Dawson administered two injections which effectively killed the King. One was of morphine and the other of cocaine. Dawson took this step to ensure that an announcement of the King’s death could be made in The Times on the following morning, as this would be considered the best way of breaking the news by the Establishment, a powerful presence, then and now, in British society. For King George V, death would bring an end to his suffering with bronchitis and other lung problems associated with years of heavy smoking, and the actions of Lord Dawson remain the highest profile case of euthanasia in the public domain.

Bertrand Dawson was born in 1864 and studied at University College London where he read for a BSc degree before going on to study medicine. One of his most influential teachers was E. Ray Lankester, with whom Dawson took courses in Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in the academic year 1882-3. ¹ Lankester had been re-appointed to his post at UCL earlier in 1882, having accepted the Regius Chair of Natural History at the University of Edinburgh, and then rapidly resigned this prestigious position when he realised that he preferred the academic conditions and way of life he enjoyed in London. Lankester was impeccably connected and had the facility to make friends across a wide spectrum - Karl Marx, Anna Pavlova, Sir Henry Wood, Sir Edmund Gosse - and many other leaders of the Establishment of the time. He also had many excellent contacts within science, acquired initially from his father’s network (as we would call it now), but then from his own circle, and he was a man of enthusiasm and presence, unafraid of taking a stand for things be believed in. ² Lankester must have made a strong impression on Dawson and probably encouraged him in his studies leading to medicine - he was a strong believer in “Medicine and Economic Zoology” - and his ease, and contacts, in Society would also have impressed the young man.

Throughout his life, Lankester preferred to be called a Naturalist, as this “linked him to his father’s friends” like Henfrey, Hooker, Owen and [Philip Henry] Gosse. ³ In contrast to the devout and immovable Christian beliefs of the latter, his view was that “Christianity was a compound of two things; a system of morality approved by the united conscience of civilised man, and a fantastic mythology”. ³ Typical of the man, this difference did not deflect from profound respect for Gosse’s achievements. ⁴ Lankester died aged 82, on 15th August 1929, during the last years of the reign of King George V and we have a marvellous painting made months before he died. ⁵  

Gone is the energetic and powerful figure of most of his adult life and the description given by Lester and Bowler of the picture sums up Lankester’s sad condition: ³ “Early in 1929 [or was it late 1928?] Sir William Orpen painted a portrait of Lankester that attracted much attention at the Academy exhibition. Wearing a brown tweed jacket, Lankester holds an open book and reclines on a couch. There is great knowledge and great weariness in the lined face.” The latter sentence would fit equally well to the late self-portraits by Rembrandt and the loss of faculties and the feeling of slipping towards death is something, accidents excepted, that we all face. Artists sum it up so well. 

 

¹ I am grateful to Robert Winckworth of the UCL Records Office for providing this information

² http://www.ucl.ac.uk/research-frontiers/contest/wotton.pdf

³ Lester, J and Bowler, P.J. (1995) E. Ray Lankester and the Making of Modern British Biology. British Society for the History of Science Monograph 9.

⁴ Gosse, E. (1890) The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. [Read in the 1896 Edition. London, Heinemann].

⁵ This image is reproduced courtesy of the Birmingham Museums Trust

Edmund Gosse on an “accidental portrait” of his father

Edmund Gosse wrote Father and Son as “a record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs. It ended, as was inevitable, in disruption.” ¹ It was published in 1907, nineteen years after the death of his father, Philip Henry Gosse, and describes the closeness, and then the developing tension, between them. The disruption in their relationship described by Edmund centred on Henry’s immovable and narrow religious beliefs that dominated his life and that of his son, until Edmund broke away. ²

In 1890, Edmund wrote an earlier biography of his father at the request of E. Ray Lankester, who admired Henry’s outstanding work as a Natural Historian, illustrator and populariser of aquaria, microscopes and what might be called the study of Nature (I share Lankester’s admiration). The Naturalist of the Sea-shore: the Life of Philip Henry Gosse included a letter written by Edmund to Ray Lankester in which he declared: “No one who reads this book will require to be told that there were many points of vital importance upon which your convictions and those of the subject of this biography were diametrically opposed. Yet you respected him and he admired you, and of all our friends you were the earliest to urge me to undertake this labour of love.” ³ The opposition between the parties refers to Henry’s deeply-held belief in Creation, as described in the Holy Bible.

The first biography, written when Edmund’s step-mother was still alive (Eliza Gosse contributed to the volume in writing “Reminiscences of my husband from 1860 [when they married] to 1888”) was respectful and did not contain the pent-up negative feelings that Edmund harboured and which were expressed later in Father and Son. In The Naturalist of the Sea-shore: the Life of Philip Henry Gosse, Edmund describes Henry as having a severe appearance, with his black hair brushed back from his “large and massive” face, a strong chin, “tightly compressed lips” and large hazel eyes. “His smile was rare, but when it came it was exquisite”.  The severity was partly the result of Henry’s very serious approach to life (he expected the Second Coming at any moment) and partly from his acute shyness and inability to be at ease in company. There are, of course, photographs of Henry Gosse and the cover of the Penguin edition of Father and Son shows a dual portrait of Henry and Edmund taken shortly after Edmund’s mother had died in 1857 and the little family had moved to Torquay. It was the time when they were at their closest, collecting together on the seashore and with Edmund increasingly involved in the Brethren chapel where Henry was the leader of the congregation. ² There was much affection between the two as they shared their bereavement and started the process of recovery.

Having described Henry’s appearance in The Naturalist of the Sea-shore: the life of Philip Henry Gosse, Edmund then includes a fascinating footnote: “A very remarkable accidental portrait of my father, as he looked when he was about sixty years of age, exists in the museum at Brussels. Philip [Henry] Gosse might have sat for the man, holding a crimson missal, who kneels in the left-hand wing of the triptych, by Bernard van Orley (No. 40 in the Catalogue), except that the nose is too large and flat. The eyes and mouth, the general form of the face, and the colour of the skin are marvellously identical.” ³ The painting to which Edmund refers is The Haneton Triptych, Haneton being the figure holding the missal, with his seven sons behind him. It is a reverential and highly Catholic work, the wings being on either side of a Pietà, and Edmund would have been very aware of this. Throughout his adult life, Henry Gosse had a strong dislike of Catholicism and being likened to someone holding a missal and gazing on the Pietà would have made him very angry. Of course, we do not know whether Edmund was just drawing our attention to Henry’s likeness in the footnote (13 years after that in the earlier photograph above), or whether he was making an initial foray into the ground covered in Father and Son. I suspect it was the latter and that is why we have to find the work from the clues provided, rather than in an explicit reference.

 

¹ Edmund Gosse (1907) Father and Son reprinted in 1989 in Penguin Twentieth Century Classics. London, Penguin.

² Roger S. Wotton (2012) Walking with Gosse: Natural History, Creation and Religious Conflicts. Southampton, Clio Publishing.

³ Edmund Gosse (1896) The Naturalist of the Sea-Shore: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. London, Heinemann [First published in 1890]