SYMHC Classics: Walter Potter's Wild and Wonderful Taxidermy

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Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Since Walter Potter's taxidermy tableau of the death and burial of cock Robin made an appearance in the show this week, we thought we would share our episode on him for Today's Saturday Classic. This episode originally came out on February and it came out when we were transitioning onto the show as host, So it is hosted by me and previous host Sarah Dowdy. And just as a heads up in case it is not obvious from the mention of taxidermy, this episode includes various references to the deaths of small animals. Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Sarah Dowdy. And do you know is Sarah? Do you recall your first exposure to our topic today, taxidermy? Well, I was going to save this story a little bit, but I'm gonna bring it out now. I was telling it to you already this morning. I'm pretty sure at the Atlanta's Capital, Georgia State Capital here in Atlanta, lovely building, gold Dome. Anybody who's been to Atlanta has probably noticed it. Driven it. If you grow up in Atlanta, you go there on many a field trip. And the most memorable memorable part, at least for me and for I think most of my classmates, was not the trips to the you know, see the legislators or any of that. What was excited about government in action. It was the museum, the Little Capital Museum, which featured lots of strange Georgia history, but also, most memorably, a two headed calf, a two headed snake. Welcome to Georgia is And I said this to you this morning. But I went there sort of on a whim just a few years ago, so as an adult, and I noticed that those two items were not as prominently displayed as they used to be. They almost seemed to be displayed just as like a nod. We know people really liked these. We have to keep them out, but they're kind of weird and maybe don't exactly belong in the state capital. Yeah, so that's my answer, that's my Those are the first clear memories of taxidermia. I would have been familial because I both of my parents are from farm families that hunted, so I know there were some deer head and I vaguely remember being at my grandparents house and being barely transfixed by one particular buck that I had that simultaneously, oh, this is really neat and interesting and oh, dear, he was just looking for a meal when you shot families, Dad. Yeah, but I do remember being fascinated and like questioning my father relentlessly about how did they Why? Who thought this was a good idea? What do you they just how? Like I was completely simultaneously horrified and just fascinated, like why does this exist? Yeah? Why did we do it? And then later in my life I was exposed to the work of the text ermist we're talking about today, who anyone who is into taxidermy I am confident will know this person the second we say his name, and it is Walter Potter. And I got exposed to his work when I was working in the library and a book that featured one of his pieces came across my desk and I remember looking at it and then looking at it again, and looking at it about seventeen more times in the next twelve minutes. And somebody really put this together, uh, because he did these amazing, wondrously bizarre tableau with animals and this is where people do need to stop for a minute and if you're on your run, okay, we'll come back to its. Well, describe a few things, but are going to want the visuals for yourself. Up this stuff for sure, and that it makes you wish that it was a video podcast at a time like this. But check out these because well to describe them, but you really need the pictures. And there's some great pictures fortunately to like modern color pictures. And we'll talk about kind of where his work is now, um, like where the physical works exist now, um. But we'll start at the beginning. So he was born in Sussex, um in five and he worked at his family's in which was called the White Lion now it's called the Castle and it's in Bramber And I have never I've read several biographical accounts about him, no one ever really talks about his early childhood. I presume it was probably pretty standard and kids stuff, you know, kids stuff, working in the family um in. But then at approximately aged fifteen, he I'm pres zooming because no one ever spelled this out either. I'm presuming his pet canary passed before he had the idea to preserve it um Let's hope. So yeah, it was a memento almost. Yeah, And this was at a time when preserving your pets was starting to become more popular anyway, So it was not necessarily a thing an idea he would have just magically had on his own. He may have seen something about it or read something about it. Not the sign of a disturbed teenage boy, a normal thing to do. No, he didn't do it that well though. No, Apparently that first effort was not so hot, which anytime someone's learning a new craft or trade, usually the first go is not going to be a masterpiece. There has been some discussion, but there's never been any corroboration that he might have been influenced by an exhibit that was at the Great Exhibition in London, in one by Ermann Pluquet, And anyone feel free to correct me if I mispronounced that. But he had an exhibit that was small Animal Taxidermy UM, and it was UM basically the story of Renicky the Fox, which is based on the Wilhelm von Kalbach etchings of Geta's medieval trickster tale. So it's kind of like a uh, it's these if you've never seen that one. It's these hilarious little rodents that are acting out these adventures, and they're kind of like two. It's like a pair that are doing one activity after another, like almost like a comic strip animal tableau. Yeah, so it's not one big tableau that tells the story. It's it's laid out like sequential art. But I like the idea that he would have been inspired by the Great Exhibition. To so many of the subjects we've discussed in the past, including Deablina's last episode, there was some toilet inspiration that came from the Great Exhibition. It's an exciting time in London. It is this sort of cultural point where where all people are exposed to new things for the first time. And it certainly seems plausible that this young boy from a country village would come across something that he found really magical at the Great Exhibition. Well, and even like I said, there have not been any corroborative writings that say definitively yes, he was there, But the Great Exhibition was so big that people were talking about the things that they had seen, and it traveled even if he had been worth so uh so, yeah, he did his Canary and there's a great um quote that he gave, apparently in he did a correspondence interview with the Idler magazine and he says, well, after I've done my canary, people encouraged me to persevere. If they saw any bird or animal they thought I would like, they'd bring it or send it to me. So he was practicing throughout these years after he was fifteen, because he did take a shine to this craft, and then he got the idea that he could put them together in big works of arts. And that's kind of the turning point here, not just melting an animal and displaying it uniquely creating some scene with it. Yeah. It really became almost like a painter with a paintbrush. He would create entire vistas and stories using mounted animals. UM. And the first big one is the History of cock Robin, which uh he used ninety eight birds. I believe that he had been working on through the years, and this is when he was nineteen. He had gotten all of those together and he worked on the history of the original death and burial. I'm sorry it wasn't The history UM is the original death and Burial of cock Robin. And he worked on this for years and years. But it basically was a big funeral procession for cock Robin, including the I believe it was a sparrow that had shot him with an arrow with my arrow. Yeah, and there was an owl grave digger, and you know the grave is the or there are other animals there to pay their respects. It's like a big story, yeah, inspired by the nursery rhyme to where all of the birds are picking their roles the role they will perform during cock Robin's funeral. Um. And and that's the other major difference here, So putting the animals together in a tableau, but not in an animal like way. It's not a natural history museum setting. It's a human like setting. Yeah, these aren't. Later on he starts to add even more human accessories to it. These aren't like clothed yet there are a couple with ribbons around their necks. Um. And the owl clearly is holding a little little shovel where that he's digging the grave with. But yeah, this is really you know, as Sariou said the verse time, that it was mounted animals doing human things, almost like you would see in like a children's book or a cartoon. Yeah, that that nurse reevime inspiration is very apparent, and it carries through his work pretty much his entire life. Uh. So at that point, as his work started to expand, they had to expand his work area. So he first moved into a barn loft at his family's house. Uh. And then once he started creating these big works, they went on display at the end. Uh. And there have been different accounts of where they went on display and what the purpose was. And I think it's kind of a case of revisionist history. Uh. It sounds like his parents were very encouraging of his work because I'm sure they saw it as a potential career. Um. And he says in that same interview with the Idler that his father um eventually built does he call it a key shed? I think behind the end where he could put his his big work on display. And of course then his work continued to grow and growing. Lenny describes the little girls about his age, you know, teenage girls coming to to see the see his work for the first time and leaving some coins behind and starting to get that idea, oh wait, maybe I can make money. Yeah, that's where he got his idea for a museum. Well, and as you were mentioning too, with other accounts you see of this. I mean, some are saying it was a direct marketing strategy, that his parents were like, come and see the inn where we have have a pint animal check out of the death of cock Robin. Yeah, exactly, But others are more like, oh, it kind of happened accidentally. I can I can see it either way. I mean we were saying earlier, I think I would go slightly out of my way to visit an inn or a pub that had these strange scenes, especially since they were pretty trendy at the time, or just you know, you happen upon them. It has nothing to do with marketing the pub. So eventually, UM in eighteen sixty six he moved his workshop to a new spot because the stable loft was not containing his situation anymore, and then again in eighteen eighty he moved into a specially built building which eventually became his museum. And that museum wasn't only for his work. He also collected curiosities from other places UM including like a lot of it was natural history type items like horns and teeth. There were skulls, and he had some human artifacts like his shoes and jewelry. Uh, just sort of a random collection hodgepodge of things. This part of the story reminded me so much of P. T. Barnum's story and the the era before him of of natural history museums, I guess, the birth of natural history museums and going from these collections curios, just a strange hodgepodge of things, some valuable, some just old teeth or horns or what not, all brought together, and and the fad for for seeing those at the time. Yeah, I mean, people were very fascinated by this idea of just looking at things from other people's lives or other animals that they maybe hadn't been exposed to in their natural, day to day life. Um. That it was, as you said, like this was really when the idea of the natural history museum was starting to kind of boom and grow and um, the Natural History Museum and the freak Show Museum, and it was all kind of very different. People were looking for entertainment in a variety of ways at the same time. Um. And he did start taking on work as um a taxidermist, like on demand for people like he would preserve their pets for them. UM. It was very starting to get very popular for people to keep mounted animals in their parlors. UM. Some would be like their personal family pet, but some also collected like exotic birds. Apparently, UM, Queen Victoria had some exotic birds, which is the thing I had not known until we were digging in on research for this. UM. So he would do all of that, but really he always wanted to continue creating these tableau And a question that always comes up whenever you're talking about Walter Potter with people is where was he getting these animals? Does he starts seeing tableau with twenty kittens and them will cross your mind? Yeah. So apparently he mentioned in that that interview that I scited earlier that people would bring him what they thought were interesting specimens. But he also kind of had a deal going on with local farmers. And this is where our modern pet loving brain has to kind of close down and be put aside for a little while, because I have a hard time with this being like a crazy animal person. UM. You know, on farms, they don't with span neuter their pets and cats are there to work, they're there to keep vermin at bay. But because they are animals that have not been fixed, they are having lots of babies, and often way more than really can be sustained by what the rodent population on the farm is, so farmers would bring him unwanted kittens. I have not really found a clear indicator as to whether they were already deceased when they got to Mr Potter or if he took care of that um. But I do know, like I said, I grew up with some farm family background. For you know, people that grow up in that, it's often not and especially at this period of time, it wasn't like you went to the vet and had animals euthanized. You kind of learned to do the dirty work and make the hard decision of taking care of situations like that. Well, and and the history of the animals seemed to become kind of an issue too in the nineteen seventies, with the museum and visitors concerned that it was cruelty to animals, so much so that museum had to put up a little placard saying, for one thing, these are over a hundred years old, and also don't worry, no animals were specifically killed for the project, which they know if they would have been done away with one way or the other. This way, they just went on to become part of art. Still though troubling it is. I mean, I, as I said, I have to kind of put away my my animal loving brain for a moment and just think about, you know, the time period and how animals. You know, we're seeing more as livestock at that point. It wasn't like their cuddly pet. It was they were working creatures. But also people would bring him, um, unfortunate specimens that had maybe not lived very long because they were not healthy. Maybe once more in line with my two headed snake to experience um we mentioned earlier. You can find all manner of images of these things if you look, and some of them, some of the more malformed ones there. It's like the kitten with eight legs and two tails, which is what it's called. It's very basic, um kitten with eight legs and yeah, kitten with eight legs and two tails. There's one that has There are a couple who have like two faces. There are um, you know, there's so he did those kind of out of fascination, and I think he was probably studying anatomy at the same time, you know, what I mean, it was giving him some clues into how the differences between right and wrong create the structure properly. But then he was also doing really artistic works like the Village School, which is a bunch of tiny bunnies with little chalkboards and they have little desks, and he would craft all of their accessories as well, so they're tiny little lesson books. All of that was handmade. Um. The Guinea Pigs cricket match, that one has always cracked me up. There is a full Guinea pig band with brass multi piece. Yeah. There they are full and ready to play orchestral pieces. There's a pavilion and then there are the guinea pigs who are getting ready for their cricket match. And another thing to point out about these tableau two is they all have these beautifully soft painted background which seemed so striking against the by this point kind of dusty Victorian animals. Um, but they add to that nursery rhyme fairytale quality was trying to go for. For sure. There's one really odd one that is a When we first started talking about doing this episode, I was like, Sarah, you have to see this picture, and it's a monkey riding a goat, and I don't know why. Every time I look at it it makes me kind of chuckle because the expression of the monkey's face is funny. The whole setup is funny. The proportion of it is just perfectly hilarious. That one seemed so reminiscent of Barnum to me because you know, and you can give this to Potter too, who was not trying to um pull one over on his audience. It was, you know, this is a this is a kitten who was born with two heads or whatnot. He wasn't trying to create creatures that didn't exist. He was riding in the goat. Was nature? Just a strange decision to combine two animals into into one scene like this, and then the big one that um, I think for people that are fans of his work, and it is very striking. There's one called The Kitten's Wedding, and it is a full wedding party comprised of kittens in full gown, elaborate dresses and jewelry and little suits. It's it's fascinating and bizarre and there's a grotesque element to it, but it's also one of those things where I can't help but think like about the hours of meticulous, exacting labor that goes into something like this. I mean, he made teeny tiny austin just to put on each of them, and they're all quaffed like their hair is done there. It's it's really quite fascinating to think about how much just he must have been in love with his art, because he really did seem to just dedicate his heart and soul to it. It's easy to focus solely on the mounts though, and and not look at not look at the kittens dresses, but look at their face. Looks quite right, you know. I think, um probably the goal of many taxidermists today. And we've heard from we have listeners to who have written in to tell us about their work. Um, tell us that it's not stuffing, it's mounting. UM. I think maybe of the modern goal of taxidermy is to look as though the animal wants alive, to have the idea of capturing a natural moment, a living quality about them. And you certainly cannot say that about Potter's work. And I don't think that was the goal, but his taxidermy skills wouldn't have allowed that anyway. I mean the kittens don't have they don't look like they were ever alive. No, they look like dolls. They really do have a doll like quality by the time he has done humanizing them, you know, antropomorphizing them with outfits and accessories and just concepts that they would not be put into. Like you know, very few kittens get invited to weddings in my experience, but so m once in a while it happens. Um. But yeah, it's not it's not trying to capture that moment of the animal in the wild. Some of his um malformed creatures are more intended to look like their life like state. Um. But these ones, once he gets into tableau, it's really about creating something entirely new. Some of the life like quality, or lack thereof two comes from his skill mounting to I mean, things didn't always go quite as land, especially for more exotic animals. Yeah, because he didn't have practice. He didn't get to practice with them. He got pretty good at kittens and apparently was very good with birds. But there is allegedly a baby giraffe that he attempted that I could never find a photo for that just didn't come out quite right, um, and then the lion that looks like it's wearing saggy pantyhose because his the skin on the legs. You know, it's with any anyone who's been around a cat, you know that the skin has some flexibility. But he didn't quite get where it is. Yeah, it looks and just the stance of the lion too. It's one of those where Okay, maybe he didn't ever see a living lion. Maybe he didn't have that opportunity because the lion doesn't stand quite like that. Yeah, it looks just off. I mean, you can recognize it as a lion. There is a certain you know, it's a lion, so there's a certain natural majesty to it. But you just something's not quite right. And that reminds me of of old engravings of descript you know, explorers who have described animals and then they're illustrated by engravers back in Europe, and these are African animals or North American animals, and the illustrator has never seen them, and they're trying to imagine what the animal looks like. Yeah, it's just not quite right. A plus effort um, and he continued to mount his entire life, and then in nineteen fourteen he suffered a stroke and he never really fully recovered. And he was I believe seventy nine at the time, so it wasn't like he was struck down as a very young man. Um But then in nineteen eighteen he passed away and he had spent his whole life there in Sussex. Basically he was buried in the village churchyard um and his museum was left to his daughter, Minnie Collins and his grandson alternate also named Walter, but his last was Collins Uh and they were the curators of the museum until the nineteen seventies and they basically got to a point where, you know, they just couldn't handle it anymore. It was too much work. I mean, that's a lot to keep going, and so um it got moved first to Arundel and then in the nineteen eighties it went to the Jamaica Inn in Cornwall. There was a moment in the middle where it was almost going to be shipped off to America because I think that first stopping point also didn't quite know what to do with it and didn't have the resources to keep it in good condition and then the Jamaica in stepped in and said no, no no, we will take it. So those people hung onto it until two thousand three and they decided to liquidate the collection because their curator had died or had retired rather i'm sorry, and their taxidermists had passed away. He had leukemia, and they who had maintained all of these fascinates too. And and it's like to thousand specimens by that point. And it would be a lot of work too. It's not something that you can just put in a case and then forgot about. No, it needs constant care and maintenance, especially you know as it gets older, it is more and more work. You sent me a video from the nineteen sixties where there's a man who is tending to some of the specimens, I think to a cow in one of the pictures, which is he didn't preserve a life size cow, it's a it with cap skin. But the curator is carefully dusting and cleaning and then returns the cow to the tableau. It would be a tremendous amount of work. And also I can see why the museums would be facing problems in this time too, because this is kind of kitchy. At this point. It was very popular in the Victorian era to go look at mounted animals and they found it quite charming. There was a growing um sense of unrest at it, like there wasn't the same Oh that's magical and charming. It was they saw more of the grotesque than the charm at that kind of the cob And like we mentioned earlier, the questions about wait a minute, is this humane or not? They were all killed a hundred years ago. Yeah, certain changing tastes played a role in this. Yeah. So, and it was a Mr. And Mrs Watts that owned the collection at this point. So in two thousand three they decided that they would sell the collection, and they were hoping that someone would buy the whole thing in one shot and maintain the museum, because even though it had shifted and was not in the original museum, they still considered it the museum um And unfortunately that did not happen. I mean, there were many attempts made. There was even a landowner nearby that was offering a parcel for free and saying, you can build a new museum here if you can keep the collection together. But they still needed capital to do all of that, and it never came through, and it it's pretty interesting did numbers when you look at the prices some of these pieces fetched. And then we'll come back to sort of some other things that developed or came to light after the fact. There was a little bit of scandal, and there were, as I said, there were lots of people trying to get together the money to put this thing, to keep it together and to buy the whole collection outright, but they just never there was never enough and so eventually, for example the death and burial of Cock Robin, the original estimate for what I was going to go for was ten thousand dollars, and I think it actually went four twenty five hundred British pounds, which is about thirty three thousand dollars US at the time of the sale. And that was the high high mark for for the works, but a lot of them Kitten's Wedding actually it was a little bit more. A little more, Yeah, that was thirty five thousand dollars, but a lot of them were pulling in in the in the twenties. UM eleven thousand, ten thousand, Monkey Monkey Riding a Goat brought in eleven thousand, six hundred dollars, which I think is a bargain, But I mean there really were even though this is years and years later. I mean this is in the two thousand's, there were enough people that knew about his work that were very excited to go. And you can read some accounts online of people that were like, Okay, I have you know, I'm throwing out a random number, like ten thousand dollars. I'm gonna get whatever I can because I really want a piece of Walter Potter's legacy. Okay. So the crazy thing is, though, even though these works went for way more than expected and ultimately pulled in around five nine thousand, nine hundred pounds, which is you said, was twice what they had predicted, the scandal came because there had apparently been an offer to keep the collection together, and that offer had been for way more than that collective price a million pounds, right, and that was from an artist, a British artist named Damien Hurst. Uh, and he really wanted it. I mean, he's a fan of Walter Potter, he knew about his work. He's best known to by the way, for the shark Suspended tank. When it came to light that he had actually made an offer to Bottoms, which was the auction house that handled the sale. The Watts were actually really upset because they had never been informed of this offer. As of two thousand seven, they were threatening to sue Bottom's for not accepting that offer and for not informing them, because they were supposed to have notified them if they received any serious offer to keep the collection intact, and let alone one that was is so high above what actually Yeah, so they were planning to sue both for monetary damages for half a million pounds. But also they really did. I mean, these are people that actually tended this collection for years. It's not like they just were trying to turn it and make a buck. You know. They clearly cared about it and wanted it to go in one big set, not piecemeal. It ended up in different lots and which is I'm sure heartbreaking to people that had tended to it very lovingly for you know, decades at that point. So as it stands, Mr Watts has taken it to court and he said, we have tried to discuss this amicably, but with no joy. They leave us with no option to but to pursue our complaint in the Court, so that seems to be ongoing. It was no recent update on it, Yeah, I didn't see one, but there is a different recent update there is, and the collection is coming together again, although well it did briefly UM in twenty ten um Damien Hurst again and he did buy some of the lots. Was basically kind of using his connections in the art world to try to put this together in the Museum of Everything, which is a pop up museum in Primrose Hill in London, which I apparently used to be a Victoria It was a dairy and Victorian era and then it became a recording studio get acoustics, and then it was at least for this time, a pop up museum space. And so he actually did get together a lot of the pieces, even some that had been sold to collectors overseas. I know there were some pieces that were here in the US that were being shipped over for the collection. And it ran until the end of at least I don't know if any portion of it continued UM as an exhibit, but I have a feeling this is probably not the last time we will see people try to put this together, because it's odd how lovingly people look at this collection and there's just something about it that it it makes you want to like pull for it to all come back together. It does, I mean, I was it's interesting to look at these and it is such a i don't know, a strange slice of Victorian life, but the fascination that people have with it, even though this is clearly not in style today, it is interesting. And that there are these people who are investing great deals of money in it too, to try to reunite these pieces and bring them all back together. Yeah, it's I mean when you read accounts of people that were trying to save it during the two thousand three auction, I mean there's really like a sense a tone of just dismay and heart heart break that it's, you know, a pity they think it's a national treasure. Why isn't you know, some big institution stepping in and making sure that this you know, full color action museum doesn't get preserved as it is. And I wonder to how much of that comes into nostalgia too, If if this museum was a favorite place for generations of kids to visit, you know, through through the seventies certainly, but beyond too, and the Watts were maintaining it. Um just like I would be sad if the capital finally put away their two headed snake. Don't let me know if you work there and it's gone now. UM I wonder if if people feel that way too, that this is something um strangely British and and worth maintaining and celebrating. It's also there's such a sweetness to the story that it was just basically a simple kid in the country who had a love for a thing and that was the only thing he really did his whole life. I mean, he married, he had several children, but it was his life's work, was his museum, in his taxidermy, and you know, mounting animals in new and creative and artistic ways that no one had ever thought to do before. There's just you want to cheer for those people, so you know, you want to maintain what's left of their work when they're gone, and that he did have success in his life too, even if the collection is now going through hard times being split up. But um, I thought one of the most interesting points was that at one point the museum was so popular that they had to extend the railway platform in town to accommodate the people that were just visitors coming coming out to visit, coming to see a kitten wedding. They got an invite to the kitten wedding. They brought their gifts, they're ready to be fabulous guests and have a good time. So hopefully we'll see more stories about the Potter collection, and I would love to see it myself at some point. That's like one of my bucket list items is to see at least some decent chunks of the Potter call. It sounds like kitten wedding is possibly in the States too, if if because Damien Hurst had had trouble getting to the collection, they mentioned it was somewhere, but I don't know if it's in a in a private collection in somebody's house. This story made me sort of more interested too in just the history of taxidermy too, and um, you know how it got to this extremely decorative point in the late Victorian era, but it's earlier roots too. And and also I couldn't help but thinking of the health issues to working with the chemicals. I mean, he lives to a rifled age. It obviously doesn't seem to have affected his health, but arsenic there's a lot of a lot of sludge and gross chemicals that are not kind to the the body. Um. Yeah, and it's funny too because we love these things so much. But I the idea of preserving a beloved pet has certainly fallen out of favor. I mean, I know there are people that still do it from time to time, but they're definitely outliers of like the pet parents and community. I know fewer people. I don't know any personally. I don't think that's done that, um, but I know people do it. So it is kind of a it's an interesting lens that we can kind of flare out where we really love this, but we would be a little creeped out by our own you know, animals being part of something like that. Well, in that game preservation is still a totally mainstream Yeah. Suit, I'm suddenly having a flash to the Field Museum in Chicago. Have you ever been a huge taxidermy collection? I have not. I thought of the Biltmore House, the h in there, the Gentleman's Room essentially, Uh, there is a huge collection of of games. Yeah, if anyone is in Chicago or is visiting Chicago, go to the Field and I mean, it's it blows you away just how many specimens they have on display. They even have the Ghost in the Darkness, the lions that were murderous um that there was a movie about them there on display there. I mean, it's just walking through Museum Hall, aftrom Museum Hall of Mounted Animals. It's kind of fascinating. I'm sure we're going to hear from our I hope. I bet they can give us all manner of insights that you don't always get when you're doing regular research. There are things that you learn from the inside of any trade that you would not normally learn when you're reading about it or studying about it. So I look forward to those Pay so much for joining us on this Saturday. 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