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Elephants

Page history last edited by Kristal Phillips 6 years ago

 

Elephants

 

 

 

“There is scarcely any animal in the creation that has, at different times, occupied so much the attention of mankind as the elephant.”

(Bingley, Animal Biography, 129)

 

 

 

 

 Introduction

 


 

 

‘Elephant’ as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary:

 

“A huge quadruped of the Pachydermate order, having long curving ivory tusks, and a prehensile trunk or proboscis. Of several species once distributed over the world, including Britain, only two now exist, the African and Indian; the former is the largest of extant land animals, and the latter is often used as a beast of burden, and in war.”

 

 

‘Elephant’ as defined by Samuel Johnson’s dictionary:

 

 

 

    Figure 1.1: Definition of ‘elephant’, as found on page 682 of Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 1.2: A model elephant in the Tower of London

 

 

 

 

In the winter of 1254, King Henry III was gifted an African elephant by Louis IX of France. Housed in the Tower of London, it was fed an abundance of fine wine and choice cuts of beef, a diet which likely contributed to its early death. The next elephant to enter Britain would not occur until 1675, when a calf, only five feet high, was delivered by the East India Company and immediately exhibited outside a nearby public house at Whitefriars in London. The chapbook that was circulated to hail the arrival of this exotic beast was certainly not exaggerating when it reported the elephant as being “so great a stranger in these parts; there having never been but one of them before in England; so that very few persons now alive amongst us, but such as have travelled in the Eastern world, ever saw one of them” (A True and Perfect Description, 2). The lucky recipient of the baby elephant, Lord Berkeley, promptly put it up for auction, where it was sold ‘by the candle’ for a massive £2,000. Along with its new owner, the elephant toured fairs, taverns and coffee-houses across the south of the country until its death in 1681.

 

As trade links intensified and the East India Company enlarged its operations between Britain and the East Indies, elephants started to be shipped to Britain in burgeoning quantities. Of the assortment of larger, exotic animals to choose as a souvenir, elephants were relatively easy to maintain on the voyage home. Their herbivorous diet of hay and leaves was far more conservable than that of a Lion or leopard requiring fresh meat – and an elephant was less likely to cause damage to the ship or crew than a hungry lion. Moreover, animals on ships were usually kept together in open spaces, therefore a large and tractable elephant was less likely to sustain damage or be eaten by another animal than an antelope or mongoose. Despite these advantages, elephants were coming to Britain in ever-increasing numbers because they were particularly exotic and new to eighteenth-century civilisation, which meant they were especially sought after. They could only legally be brought into the Britain on the demand of royalty, and both Queen Charlotte and Louis XVI stressed their rapacious desire for elephants. Although the underground exotic animal trade in Britain was booming, smuggling an elephant onto a ship must have been a tricky task.

 

The higher classes, unable to legally import elephants, were still able to experience and learn of such exoticism by visiting elephants in the menagerie, or by purchasing paintings and ornaments of elephants, which were proliferative during the eighteenth century. At a minimum entrance fee of one shilling, menageries were too costly for much of the lower class. However, even the poor had a chance to catch a glimpse of an elephant roaming about the streets, journeying between exhibitions or perhaps just stretching its legs. In his memoirs, Londoner John Thomas Smith recalls returning home in the early hours of one morning in 1785:

 

 

 

Figure 1.3: Extract from John Thomas Smith's A Book for a Rainy Day, pages 106-7

 

 

 

It is difficult to ascertain exactly how many elephants arrived in Britain during the long eighteenth century. This is in no part due to a lack of accounts, but because elephants were rarely given names by their owners, and owners’ names were either not known or not specified. They also tended to die soon after arrival, due to the cold weather, malnutrition, or general mistreatment, so an account of an elephant a handful of years after one was imported to Britain is not guaranteed to be discussing the same elephant. An overwhelming lack of knowledge of exotic animals amongst the public of the period made some accounts inaccurate: there is an instance of a man mistaking a quagga for a zebra, and E. Johnson’s British Gazette talks of three elephants simultaneously residing at the Exeter ‘Change menagerie, despite other accounts only detailing two (Issue 847). Crucially, elephant population is hard to measure because many elephants were constantly on the move, travelling around from exhibition to exhibition, making them impossible to track. Some notably venturesome exhibitioners took their elephants touring across Europe, meaning that any newspaper broadcasting an entry of an elephant into Britain without particulars creates ambiguity as to whether the arrival is a returning or altogether new elephant. Notwithstanding these complications, a careful analysis of eighteenth-century texts suggests that at least eleven elephants arrived in Britain during the reigns of Queen Anne and Georges I and II, and Queen Charlotte was the happy recipient of at least ten Indian elephants over a ten year period.

 

The gradual influx of elephants to Britain from the late-seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth century is testament to Britain’s reputation as the ‘hub’ of exotic importation. France, a country actively involved in the European colonial powerplay in the Indian Ocean region, would often have their elephant imports intercepted and stolen by the British. In fact, after 1668, the next elephant did not make it to France until 1771. By the 1770s, the elephant had become a familiar sight to Georgians, but the way in which an article from the French periodical Avant-coureur opens makes clear that no elephant had stepped foot in Paris in over a century:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                        Figure 1.4: Front page of Avant-coureur                                                            Figure 1.5: Extract from page 23 of Avant-coureur

 

 

 

The account begins: “It is a rare and interesting sight to see a living elephant in Paris” (Avant-coureur 23). The newly-arrived French elephant is treated with the same level of novelty and incongruity as the article from the chapbook of 1675 treated the English elephant, which similarly boasted “very few… ever saw one of them” (A True and Perfect Description, 2). Whilst the British had owned more than eleven elephants by this time, and were opening menageries to accommodate them all, the French had never seen an elephant before. Knowledge of exotic animals was so directly linked to political alignments and the strength of trade relations that two countries within close proximity were worlds apart in their basic understanding, experience, and accumulation of exotic goods. 

 

The following two graphs shows the frequency of the term ‘elephant’ amongst the texts published during the eighteenth century:

 

 

 

Figure 1.6: Historical Texts term frequency chart. Frequency of documents published containing the term 'elephant' from 1700 to 1800.

 

 

 

Figure 1.7: Google Ngram showing frequency of the term 'elephant' from 1688 to 1832

 

 

 

 

Elephant discourse gradually increased throughout the eighteenth century as elephants arrived, newspapers advertised their whereabouts, public fascination and intrigue amplified, and scientific observations and anatomisations were recorded. Not only had elephants become more popular, but at the start of the century they were barely known of. For citizens of seventeenth-century Britain, the elephant was a mythological beast encountered only on gold five guinea pieces, the signposts of taverns, and in the legendary tales of antiquarians such as Aristotle and Plutarch. However, in the course of the long eighteenth century, the elephant could be seen in all forms: as a living spectacle, a dead corpse, and a preserved specimen. Figure 1.6 shows that only around forty documents concerning elephants were published in the year 1700, compared to over four hundred by the end of the century. We can see how important a role newspapers and periodicals played in the overall discussion on elephants because peaks of the graphs coincide with major elephant events, such as the arrival of a young male elephant in 1763, and the death of the most popular Exeter Change elephant in 1826. 

 

The remainder of this Wiki page will trace both the physical and cultural footsteps of the elephants that graced British soil over the long eighteenth-century. Once off the ship, they scattered into a variety of different residences, from Buckingham House to the Exeter Exchange, to street fairs, to Hunter’s anatomy school, to natural history cabinets in private homes. They served as entertainment for spectators, profit for exhibitioners, knowledge for scientists, symbols of empire and sovereignty, and vehicles for questioning contemporary British beliefs about slavery, material extravagance, and colonialism.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Understanding the Elephant – A Scientific Journey

 


 

 

 

 

Topsell, Buffon, and Bewick

 

 

 

A better understanding of how the portrayal of the elephant changed in natural history texts over the course of the long eighteenth century can be obtained by closely analysing three animal encyclopaedias:  Edward Topsell’s The History of the Four-Footed Beasts and Serpents (1658), Buffon’s Natural History Vol. VII (1758), and Thomas Bewick’s A General History of Quadrupeds (1790). Whereas seventeenth-century natural historians relied heavily on Renaissance authority and the anecdotes of antiquarians, eighteenth-century anatomists were confronted with physical specimens with which to accrue scientific insight on the elephant’s behaviour and physiology. Legendary myths surrounding the elephant were no longer recondite – they could be either verified or discarded through first-hand observation and anatomisation of internal structures.

 

Edward Topsell’s The History of Four-Footed Beasts is an 1100-page treatise on zoology that repeats ancient and fantastic legends about both real and mythic animals. Relying on the authority of "sundry learned men", Topsell includes beasts such as the sphynx, the winged dragon, and the unicorn alongside (and with as much gravity as) the sheep and the hedgehog (707). Although this text predates the start of the long eighteenth century, it is beneficial to ascertain what the public would have learned about the elephant before the first one since the 1200s arrived in England in 1675.

 

 

 

Figure 2.1: Extract from Topsell's History of Four-Footed Beasts, page 162.

 

 

 

 

This brief excerpt demonstrates Topsell’s perception of the elephant, notably that it has a sense of religion and conscience. He is prone to conflate the real with the fantastical, which often results in even the most basic of details feeling hyperbolic and chimerical. There is an air of legend about the way the elephant’s strength and power is dramatised when he claims, “Their skin is so hard and stiffe, that a sharpe sword or iron cannot pierce it” (150). These basic details are often inaccurate, or sometimes completely wrong. For instance, Topsell insists that the African elephant is smaller, weaker, and in “every way inferiour to the Indian” (150). An elephant “hath no hoofs but distinct feet like a mans (sic)”, and the tusks are “in the males downward … but in the females upward” (155, 150). He also cultivates the long-standing myth that flies nest in the wrinkles of elephant skin, elaborating that “by stretching forth” and “shrinking together again”, “they enclose the flies, and so kill them” (150). A huge portion of the elephant chapter is concerned with rehashing Greek and Roman myths featuring characters of varying legitimacy such as King Pyrrhus, Ajax, and Caesar. As the extract above demonstrates, each scientific claim that Topsell makes is supported by either an antiquarian’s tale directly following, or their name in the margin alongside Topsell’s statement. The belief that elephants worship the sun and moon is derived from Pliny the Elder’s avowal that Elephants are wise and just, remember their duties, enjoy affection, and respect religion” (162). Topsell’s bestiary is permeated with phrases such as “the King of Lybia writeth” and “Cicero affirmeth”, emphasising the extent to which seventeenth-century natural historians struggled to substantiate the elephant without use of ancient mythological and philosophical sources (164). “Vartomanus also saith” that elephants’ teeth can weigh up to 363 lbs, and upon crediting this story, Topsell concludes: “This is certain” (152). He admits to favouring the most popular evidence over the evidence that he believes to be the most accurate. In the Epistle, he writes: "I would not have the Reader... imagine I have ... related all that is ever said of these Beasts, but only [what] is said by many”. His inability to reject or correct antiquarian myths through lack of first-hand experience of the elephant means that he ends up corroborating the most illogical and bizarre of elephant fabrications:

 

 

“many times upon the leaves of trees he devoureth Chamaeleons, whereby he is poisoned and dyeth, if he eat not immediately a wilde Olive.” (154)

 

“There is as an inbred and native hateful hostility between Dragons and Elephants” (156)

(Topsell goes on to say that the dragons, jealous that the elephants are eating their plants and fruits, dig out the elephant’s eyes and strangle them to death)

 

“when they are secret and alone by themselves, they will practise leaping, dancing,

and other strange feats, which they could not learn suddenly

 in the presence of their Masters” (162) 

 

“When they go to copulation, they turn their heads towards the East, but whether in remembrance of Paradise, or for the Mandragoras, or for any other cause I cannot tell” (155) 

 

“in the river Ganges of India, there are blew Wormes of sixty cubits long having two armes; these when the Elephants come to drink in that river, take their trunks in their hands and pull them off” (156)

 

 

Interestingly, around the same time that Topsell was struggling to determine whether an elephant had large or small ears, the French were lightyears ahead in the anatomical mapping of the elephant:

 

 

 

 

 

 

                   Figure 2.2: Perrault's drawing of an elephant skeleton, page 499                      Figure 2.3: Perrault's drawing featuring the ventricles of the heart, the colon,                                                                                                                                                                                  omentum below the ventricle, and the tip of the proboscis, page 500

 

 

 

 

 

While France had a lack of elephant imports during the majority of the eighteenth century, they did own a live elephant in the 1660s. Figures 2.2 and 2.3 are based on the skeleton of that Congolese elephant, given by the King of Portugal to Louis XIV, and preserved after dissection by Claude Perrault. Perrault’s Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des animaux includes a 46-page description of the anatomy of the elephant, alongside six images. Figure 2.3, for instance, features anatomical drawings of the ventricles of the heart, the colon, the omentum below the ventricle, and the tip of the proboscis. Once again, this instance of two neighbouring countries being so scientifically disparate in their knowledge of the elephant proves that physically having the specimen to observe and dissect was crucial for generating scientific progress in the field of animalia exotica.

 

Buffon’s Natural History was by far the most popular animal encyclopaedia of the eighteenth century. He wrote thirty-six volumes over a period of thirty-nine years; "Written in a brilliant style, this work was read ... by every educated person in Europe" (Mayr 330). In contrast to when Topsell was writing, elephants were now parading the streets of Britain, and people wanted to educate themselves before observing them. Natural histories had become fashionable – they were no longer tailored for private reading, but were often read aloud in coffee-houses and drawing-rooms. Despite the surge of scientific advancement, the public did not want a book saturated with dry and convoluted terminology. Buffon played on this demand by creating a natural history with up-to-date knowledge, poetic phrasing, and fable-like didacticism, all combined. He cleverly played to his audience’s sensibilities by dramatising the elephant in a way that would produce impressive oratory in performance.

 

 

 

Figure 2.4: Extract from Buffon's Natural History, page 267.

 

 

 

This passage of an elephant refusing to mate would have resonated with the increasingly vocal rhetoric of opposition to slavery. Buffon conveys the elephant as a kind and faithful creature: he respects and cares for his master, and follows orders wilfully and prudently. Yet, as content as he appears in slavery, he “differs from all [other] domestic animals” because he is not a “born slave” to mankind (267). The individual is the slave, but the species will never be. The elephant’s defiance to propagate a race of slaves is testament to its proud and noble character, and somehow, its willingness to serve humankind only adds to its magnificence. A point such as this one would have struck a chord with an exacting audience seeking knowledge, sympathy, new perspectives on old legend, and a moral. Buffon finds common ground in the worlds of science and folklore by expressing that, whilst not capable of possessing a soul like man, elephants have thoughts, impressive memory, and emotions. They possess rational thinking and differing levels of sentiment, and this closeness to man makes the eighteenth-century reader question whether the elephant industry blossoming before their eyes is morally correct.

 

Published in 1790, Thomas Bewick’s A General History of Quadrupeds goes one step further in narrowing the distinction between human and elephant. The tone is matter-of-fact and unsentimental, unlike Buffon’s text, but opts to view and discuss the elephant in light of its relationship to man.

 

 

 

Figure 2.5: Introductory paragraph of Bewick's A General History of Quadrupeds, page 151.

 

 

 

As can be expected, the introductory sentence lists the elephant’s defining characteristics: its “size”, “strength”, “sagacity and obedience” (151). However, Bewick puts only slightly less (if not as much) significance in the second sentence, detailing the ways in which mankind have utilised the elephant over the years. The notion of elephant and man having had a successful bond since “time immorial” construes captivity as a normal and advantageous habitat for both parties, rather than one that is in reality very new and exploitative in Georgian Britain. Whilst Buffon humanises the elephant to make us question our attitudes towards slavery, Bewick’s humanising of the elephant does the opposite by characterising the elephant as an ancient and therefore indispensable servant to man.

 

A key difference between the three texts is that Topsell primarily writes about elephants in the wild, and where Buffon and Bewick write about elephants in captivity, they respectively stress it as a negative and positive concept. Because Topsell never experienced an elephant under English dominion, he could only focus on their natural and free behaviours. He does briefly mention the possibility of elephants being removed from their natural habitat when he asserts that elephants “have a wonderful love to their own Countrey, so as although they be never so well delighted with divers meats and joyes in other places, yet in memory thereof they send forth tears” (Topsell 154). Buffon, writing in the mid-eighteenth century and therefore comprehending European desires and ongoing efforts to domesticate the exotic, stresses anxieties about how captivity can stunt the elephant. A captive elephant will not grow as tall or live as long, and “it is scarcely to be imagined how much slavery and unnatural food change his natural habit and constitution” (Buffon 266). Bewick, meanwhile, decides to take a more selfish stance on captivity, celebrating their “purposes of labour or magnificent parade” (156).

 

The following table demonstrates how, over the course of the long eighteenth century, scientists were gradually able to iron out inaccuracies and get closer to scientific truth by gathering data and legitimate sources:

 

 

 

Topsell (1658)

Buffon (1758)

Bewick (1790)

Modern understanding (2018)

“their ears… are small like the wings of a Bat or a Dragon” (150) 

 

“The ears of the elephant are very long; he makes use of them as a fan, and moves them as he pleases” (300)

“The ears are prodigiously large, and marked on the edges with deep incisions” (152)

Elephant ears are large, with thick bases and thin tips. The difference in ear size between African and Asian elephants can be based on their geographic range.

“they are nine cubits [13.5 ft] high and five cubits [7.5 ft] broad” (150)

“The biggest elephants of India… are fourteen feet high… and those which are brought young into Europe acquire not that height. That which was in the menagerie of Versailles, which came from Congo, was but seven feet and a half high” (301)

“The height of the Elephant at the Cape is from twelve to fifteen feet” (152)

On average, male Indian elephants are 9.02 ft tall and females are 7.87 ft tall.

“They live to a long age, even to 200 or 300 years” (164)

“he lives… [to] one hundred and fifty years” (281)

“This animal… is said to live, though in a state of captivity, to the age of a hundred and twenty or a hundred and thirty years” (159)

Elephants on average live up to 60–70 years of age.

“they are in their best strength of body at threescore, for then beginneth their youth” (164)

“the elephant… increases in height and bulk till his thirtieth year”, but “those who are taken young, and early lose their liberty, never come to their full growth” (302, 301)

“This animal is thirty years in arriving at its full growth” (159)

Adulthood starts at about 18 years of age in both sexes.

“they cannot swim by reason of their great and heavie bodies, untill they be taught.” (154)

 

“the enormous size of their bodies is rather an advantage to them in swimming, and they do not sink so deep in the water as other animals” (264)

“He swims well, and is of great use in carrying great quantities of baggage over large rivers” (155)

Elephants are capable swimmers. They have been recorded swimming for up to six hours without touching the bottom, and have travelled as far as 48 km at a stretch and at speeds of up to 2.1 km/h.

 

 

 

Buffon is proof of the enlightened eighteenth-century mind as he coolly disregards Topsell’s theory of elephants worshipping the sun and moon, and says in regards to antiquarian legend:

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.6: Extract from Buffon's Natural History, pages 261-2.

 

 

 

Buffon believed that his information was based on accurately assessing the elephant’s capabilities, as opposed to ascribing spurious marvels to it. Topsell, in a much more restricted position as a natural historian, opts to list a variety of inconsistent and incompatible antiquarian accounts, “and so leave the Reader to consider whether opinion he thinketh most agreeable to truth” (153). Knowing nobody who had ever seen an elephant, and having not seen one himself, Topsell’s text contains no authentic contemporary sources. Buffon had likewise never encountered an elephant, but after 1700, a tremendous number of official academies and societies were founded in Europe, and by 1789 there were over seventy official scientific societies. This meant that Buffon could legitimise his second-hand accounts:

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.7: Extract from Buffon's Natural History, page 306.

 

 

Bewick goes one step further by giving precise examples of where his reader might go to view the elephant teeth he has been discussing: “Specimens of these teeth and bones are deposited in the British Museum, that of the Royal Society, and in the cabinet of the late ingenious Dr Hunter” (162). Unlike Buffon, Bewick does not shy away from his readers in reporting his knowledge and using cutting-edge scientific terminology. He reveals that “The most remarkable feature of the Elephant is his trunk or proboscis, which is composed of membranes, nerves, and muscles” (Bewick 153). It is evident that Buffon had never dissected an elephant before because he avoids explaining the internal structure of the trunk entirely. He utilises the odd scientific term, such as ‘epidermis’, but ultimately likens the elephant’s proboscis to a “sort of finger” (Buffon 288). Needless to say, ‘epidermis’ is not a term that occurs in Topsell’s work. Where Buffon and Bewick use the term ‘dimension’ in the mathematical sense, Topsell uses it in the religious and philosophical sense to mean ‘a spiritual layer’ when speaking of “the first dimension of heaven and heavenly things” (706). Preceding the Enlightenment, Topsell’s belief in religion was at odds with the nature of his occupation. The History of Four-Footed Beasts is imbued in religious undertones – on average, every fifth page of his encyclopaedia contains the word ‘God’. He begins his chapter on the elephant: “There is no creature among all the Beasts of the world, which hath so great and ample demonstration of the power and wisdom of Almighty God as the Elephant” (Topsell 149). Religion and natural history clash as the reader attempts to envisage the horns of an elephant “turn[ing] upward to heaven, the fountain of truth, but the teeth of an Elephant grow downward towards the earth the mother of error”(Topsell 153).

 

We can seen how early scientists like Topsell utilised antiquarian accounts of the elephant as an interpretative framework within which to make sense of the hitherto unobserved. Denouncing validity in antiquarianism yet having never seen a live elephant, Buffon had to trust his scientific prowess in unravelling mysteries of elephant behaviour, such as mating positions. He castigates the ancients in their acceptance “that elephants couple like other quadrupeds” (Buffon 295). He deduces that as the female has the opening of the vulva “almost in the middle of the belly”, and the “male elephant has not the genital member longer than a horse“, “it is impossible for them to copulate like other quadrupeds… the female must necessarily lie on her back” (Buffon 295-6). In this case, Buffon’s anatomic induction was wrong, but his Natural History was so widely read and carried so much weight throughout Europe that in 1798, a painter envisioning two elephants copulating used the position that Buffon suggested was accurate.

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.8: Imaginary mating scene depicting two elephants in a loving embrace, page 227.

 

 

 

Lastly, let us examine the illustrations that accompany the three elephant chapters:

 

 

 


Figure 2.9: Illustration to Topsell's History of Four-Footed Beasts, page 151. 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.10: Illustration to Buffon's Natural History 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.11: Illustration to Bewick's A Natural History of Quadrupeds, page 151.

 

 

 

 

 

Topsell’s elephant illustration is a mid-sixteenth century woodcut, originally shown in Conrad Gessner's Historia animalium. The fact that Topsell was content in using an outdated image in his encyclopaedia demonstrates how little the portfolio of elephant knowledge had expanded from the sixteenth to seventeenth century. Topsell’s elephant looks like a mythical beast – as a virtually unknown creature, the illustrator fashioned the elephant from everyday materials or familiar illustrations of the fantastical. The skin around the legs looks like baggy trousers, the ears resemble the ruffled pleats of curtains or a woman’s skirt, and the trunk appears dragon-like with its scales. A century later and with Europe having come into contact with elephants, Buffon’s illustration is much more naturalistic and biologically accurate. Considering Buffon’s aversion to enslaving elephants, perhaps he employed this illustration to underscore that an elephant is most beautiful when pictured in its native land. Finally, Bewick’s illustration is a more cartoonish copy of Buffon’s elephant. In order to make the elephant look more attractive, and to emphasise its human characteristics, he gives it large and unelephant-like eyes - a constant reminder to the reader that elephants and humans are not so different, after all.

 

 

 

 

 

Dissecting and Anatomising the Elephant

 

 

 

We have discovered how, as the elephant became increasingly comprehended as an anatomical entity, naturalists were incessantly fighting with the desire to render physical the fabulous characteristics of the elephant. How could a tangible animal be forged from a mythical beast? Could anybody’s definition of the elephant be entirely severed from the effects of antiquarianism? The anatomisation of the elephant over the eighteenth century objects to the notion of the Enlightenment as anti-marvellous movement, because despite extensive anatomical mapping of the elephant by the end of the eighteenth century, it sustained its status as a strange and intriguingly complex animal.

 

When the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus generated his binominal classification for the elephant, Elephas maximus (1758), he considered the African and Asian elephants to belong to the same species. The African elephant was not granted its own, separate binominal (Loxodonta Africana) until 1797. John Hunter died in October 1793, so was unable to witness this taxonomical breakthrough.

 

John Hunter (1728-1793) was ‘Royal Surgeon’ to King George III, meaning that he had privileged access to the exotic animals that died in the royal menagerie at the Tower of London. Through his notoriety as the best surgeon in the country, he was often offered ‘first dibs’ on exotic animals that died even outside the royal circle. Menagerists and exhibitionists were delighted at the thought of having their elephant intelligently handled and preserved forever in Dr Hunter’s natural history cabinet. The Hunterian Collection houses a total of sixty-three elephant specimens, which were all prepared either by or for Hunter during the period of 1760 to 1793, but it is possible that even more were in existence in the eighteenth century. These samples include preparations of both wet and dry tissues and organs, plus osteological specimen such as teeth and tusk:

 

 

 

 

 

             Figure 2.12: A portion of elephant tusk in which an iron bullet is embedded.                Figure 2:13: A transverse section through the trunk of an Asian elephant.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                       Figure 2.14:  The skull of an elephant.                                             Figure 2.15: Dried preparation of the lymphatic vessels of the liver

                                                                                                                                                                      of an elephant, injected with red wax. 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.12 is particularly enlightening when considering the conditions under which many elephants in Britain ended up on the dissecting table. Most elephants that died in Britain did not pass away naturally; those that did not die of freak accidents principally contracted diseases, became restless, and were shot for being disobedient and uncontrollable. Of the sixteen specimens of tusks and teeth in Hunter’s collection, a few show tusk abnormalities such as abscesses or inflammation, but the vast majority are gunshot wounds. Some of these tusk and tooth specimens may be imports that Hunter stole out of the hands of the ivory trade for analysis, but some of these samples may also have come from Britain’s own elephants. It is quite possible that multiple teeth on display in the Hunterian Collection are from the same elephant that got brutally shot at. It is interesting to reflect on how Hunter must have felt when analysing teeth with lead bullets in them, whether the bullets were from Britain or farther afield. His ground-breaking research was furthering scientific knowledge, yet he was an animal-lover forced to admit that astonishing numbers of innocent elephants were dying because of selfish humans, in the name of captivity or ivory.

 

 

In 1776, a resident elephant of the Queen‘s Menagerie nicknamed ‘Elephantus Magnus’ died, and was quickly dispatched to Hunter, accompanied by his pupils:

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.16: Extract from St. James's Chronicle

 

 

 

 

Thanks to this newspaper article, we can be sure that at least some of the elephant samples in the Hunterian Collection have derived from elephants exhibited in Britain. News such as this validates that the public had an interest in the afterlife of the elephant. Under the obituary section of a newspaper, we do not expect to learn which morgue the deceased has gone to, or whether they will be buried or cremated. But the way the afterlife of an elephant is publicised and documented is drastically different. The public had a fascination in why the animal died, and where it will be available to view once fully dissected, preserved, and mounted. A dead elephant probably had wider appeal than a living one, since the admissions fee to view the specimen would not have been as costly as the price to see an elephant at a menagerie or fair. The lower classes may only have had the budget to see a dead elephant. The afterlife of ‘Elephantus Magnus’ extended to his display in the Leverian Museum, which stood opposite Hunter‘s house and anatomy school.

 

 

 

 

 

The Afterlife of the Elephant – Three Case Studies 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.17: Extract from Morning Post and Daily Advertiser

 

 

 

 

The elephant that died in 1776 was taken for dissection and preparation by Hunter, and by November the following year a model of stuffed elephant skin could be seen in Mr Lever’s Museum of Natural Curiosities. The style of this advertisement is very similar to that of a menagerie or fair – it isn’t immediately clear if the animals on show at Mr. Lever’s museum are living or dead. Dead elephants still carried currency, and often, exhibits of dead exotic animals proved just as popular as that of living ones. Public dead elephant residences such as museums or anatomy schools shows the collaboration throughout the eighteenth century between the scientific and public community. Museums were full of children, amateur naturalists, and surgeons, all discovering the elephant in the same way and at the same rate. The anatomist takes the innards of the elephant for scientific study, then gives the exhibitor the skin for commercial entertainment, producing a network of acquisition of elephant parts. During the early eighteenth century, living and dead elephants would occupy the same exhibitionary space in coffee-houses and taverns, but as the exotic animal trade blossomed, elephant remains circulated in broader circles: menageries and museums were established to accommodate living and dead animals respectively. As a result, spatial relations between living and dead specimens changed drastically over the course of the eighteenth century. 

 

 

The Dublin Elephant

 

The “strange and wonderful” elephant that docked at Whitefriars in 1675 was also the subject of the first British elephant dissection. Whilst being exhibited in Dublin in 1681, the booth in which the elephant was sleeping caught fire in the middle of the night. He burned to death in his struggle to escape. Armed guards were employed by the elephant’s owner to protect it as a crowd of souvenir hunters had gathered by the morning, and “when the fire was extinguished every one endeavoured to procure some part of the Elephant, few or them having seen him living, by reason of the great rates put upon the sight of him” (Moulin 4). The smell of the rotting corpse drifted through Dublin, reaching the windows of the Lieutenant and Mayor’s offices. The elephant’s owner, worrying about this, called the butchers in a panicked attempt to dispose of the carcass quickly. However, as soon as local physician Allan Moulin heard the news of the elephant’s death, he “made search for him”, “desirous to inform [himself] in the structure of the elephant” (Moulin 4). Under the protection of a temporary hut, he and the butchers undertook the first dissection of an elephant in the Western world.   

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.18: Extract from An Anatomical Account of the Elephant Accidentally Burnt in Dublin, page 6

 

 

 

 

Moulin, who described his observations in a booklet published the following year, explained that the dissection was not ideal because the elephant had already significantly putrefied, the smell was off-putting, crowds were trying to steal body parts, and the butchers were unruly, “their forwardness to cut and slash what came first in their way… did hinder me from making several Remarks which otherwise I would have made” (6). Surprisingly, Moulin managed to accumulate a fairly extensive account of his findings, accompanied by multiple detailed drawings that must have been sketched during the dissection.

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.19: Anatomical drawing of various parts of an elephant from An Anatomical Account, page 35.

 

 

 

 

Having been a large creature that died suddenly, Moulin knew that attempting to preserve the elephant was a futile task. He made the most of its expiring carcass, noting that its flesh tasted “like that of lean Beef season’d with Salt of Hartshorn” (Moulin 12). Although the most precious parts of the elephant like the organs could not be saved, the bones were salvaged, and the elephant was mounted and put on public display just three months after the accident. One spectator detailed: “It has become a public shew… the Sceleton, the Trunk, Toung, Gutts and Penis… with Anatomicall descriptions of some other parts not now to bee shewn. The Sceleton is suspended. That is turns around upon a Swivel fixt in the Beam of a House” (Landsdowne 103). This is an unusual outcome for such a haphazard dissection – the charred and crumbling bones were only collected because the elephant’s owner strongly desired it. Elephants that were left exposed to the elements or dissected by inexperienced hands were condemned to a short exhibitionary afterlife.

 

 

 

The Dundee Elephant

 

 

In 1706, an elephant touring Europe was making its way from Edinburgh to Dundee when it collapsed of fatigue in the road. A pit that was dug to support her weight was flooded during a torrential rain shower, and she drowned. In a similar situation to the Dublin elephant, the bulging cadaver attracted a crowd, and people tried to take the elephant’s foot:

 

 

 

Figure 2.20: Extract from Osteographica Elephantina, page 56. 

 

 

 

 

 

Practiced surgeon Patrick Blair lead the dissection, and despite circumstances for the operation not being optimum, he later constructed two models from his preservations: a mounted skeleton and a life-sized, stuffed skin dummy. The skeleton was placed in a nearby repository in Dundee, suggesting that Blair wanted to capitalise on local interest.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                        Figure 2.21: Plate 36 of Osteographica Elephantina. “Tabula II Represents                 Figure 2.22: Tabula I Represents the Stuff‘d Skin of the Elephant, as it  

                      the Sceleton of the Elephant, as it was mounted by my direction, and now                                                   now stands in our hall"

                                               stands in theRepository of Rarities”.

 

 

 

 

This is not the only eighteenth-century instance of elephants being forced to walk gruelling distances. Owners of touring fairs were often of the lower middle-class, and transporting large exotic animals was an expensive task. Elephants needed a carriage pulled by up to eight horses, and the elephant’s bulk meant that these carriages required constant maintenance. As a result, elephants of travelling fairs often toured through the country on foot. The expense of hauling an elephant across the country was even too much for a French king. An Indian prince gifted an elephant to Louis XV in 1772, and upon its arrival at the docks, the navy minister ordered that the animal be transported “in the most economical way possible.” The elephant, alongside his Indian mahout, Joumone, walked three hundred miles from Lorient to Versailles, thus saving the king the expense of a cart. The trek took somewhere between four and six weeks.

 

 

 

Figure 2.23:  Extract from "L'Approvisionnement des ménageries", page 174. 

 

Translation: On July 3rd 1773, the minister, who we haven’t forgotten, finally demanded: “There is a gentleman in Lorient with an elephant whom Monsieur Chevalier, counter officer of Chandernagor, sent to the king. You will please give your orders for him to be taken surely and with the most economy possible.” Once again, this last point was the primary concern of the minister – it was not necessary to resort to the service of driving the elephant, it was not necessary to make a cage that would otherwise have had little chance of being able to carry the animal’s weight. It was enough for the mahout to lead him on foot from Lorient to Paris.

 

 

 

Animal gifts were materialising from every corner of the ever-expanding French trading empire, but the king lacked both the funds and the inclination to give them much of a welcome. Even if he were able to afford cages for the elephants, there would have been plenty of additional maintenance costs to consider as the squashed elephant was likely to squirm about, damaging the cage and risking escape. The French brought two elephants home as spoils of war when they invaded the Dutch in 1794. The duo arrived in Paris in March 1798, two years later than all the other animals that were seized. This is because robust cages had to be built especially for their hefty proportions, and even then, the cages had to be repaired several times en route.  

 

 

 

West Smithfield Elephant

 

 

The third elephant to enter Britain arrived at West Smithfield on 2 July 1720, to much fuss and celebration from local newspapers. Just three months later, Londoners were informed that “Hans Sloane, that curious inspector into the Works of Nature, is now dissecting the young elephant that was lately shown in West Smithfield” (Daily Post). Adams and Stukely, Sloane’s helpers in the dissection, speculated the cause of the elephant’s demise:

 

 

 

Figure 2.24: Extract from "An Essay Towards the Anatomy of the Elephant", page 91. 

 

 

 

 

As unfortunately became typical during the eighteenth century, this elephant died from disease, exposure to cold, and the “ignorance of the keepers” in overlooking “the great quantities of ale the spectators continually gave it” (Stukely 91). The elephant had not been charred or drowned to death; the cadaver was in good condition compared to those of the other two elephants. This meant that it had a long afterlife in Sloane’s natural history cabinet. Years later, Sloane and Stukely were able to extract specific anatomical parts for further examination. Sloane spread onto paper the network of arteries that covered the exterior of the elephant’s brain, and Douglas took home the female genitalia.

 

 

 

Dispelling myths

 

 

We have seen how, in his Natural History, Buffon is simultaneously able to denounce antiquarian beliefs (elephants practicing religion) and renovate legend in contemporary discourse (methods of elephant copulation). What was appropriate in constituting credibility in the elephant was refuted and transformed throughout the long eighteenth century. Did people want to keep these legends alive, or quash them once and for all? The realm of literature often uses poetic license to revive popular myths, but science is an honest and exact discipline in which fabrications could hinder further scientific progress. Therefore, people wanting to indulge in elephant myth often had to close their natural history books and turn to fiction instead. As the century progresses and methodical thinking develops, scientific accounts on the elephant become increasingly emboldened, improving collective data and dispelling myths through observation.

 

Some mythological behaviours were resistant to the intrusive surveyance of eighteenth century anatomists. The myth that elephants are scared of mice because they fear that one may climb up its trunk and suffocate it was affirmed by Moulin having dissected the Dublin Elephant and discovering that it lacked an epiglottis.

 

Topsell, along with a multitude of antiquarians and naturalists active during the early eighteenth century, believed that elephants “do sometime foresee their own peril, and discover the trains and secret intentions of the Hunters, so as they cannot be drawn into the ditches and fosses by any allurements” (159). When a man named John Corse arrived in Bengal in the 1780s, he informed himself of the methods of taking wild elephants and soon recognised that “many errors, relative to the habits and manners of that useful animal, had been stated in the writings of European authors, and countenanced by some of the most approved writers” (31). Challenging Topsell’s beliefs, Corse relates a story in which he and a company of friends were journeying with an elephant employed to carry their baggage, when suddenly, the elephant “took fright [at a tiger], and ran off into the woods” (40). A search party failed to relocate the elephant, but eighteen months later the same company spotted a wild elephant that they were certain was their old labourer. Corse’s friend walked up to the elephant and “ordered him to lie down”, and the elephant “instantly obeyed the word of command” and permitted the company to tie him up (41).

 

 

 

Figure 2.25: Extract from “Observations on the Manners, Habits, and Natural History, of the Elephant”, page 41. 

 

 

 

Corse also attempts to tackle the erroneous notions entertained in respect to the height of elephants. He measures an elephants height every year up until its seventh birthday:

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.26: Extract from “Observations on the Manners, Habits, and Natural History, of the Elephant”, page 33. 

 

 

 

 

Data such as this is advanced for its time, and is a valuable contribution to the collected statistics that helped bring the average height of an elephant closer to the truth over the eighteenth century. However, Corse’s experiments and attestations are unreliable. Due to the elephant being taken away, Corse was unable to finish his height data, and never discovered whether his elephant would match the legendary height of fourteen feet as an adult. He then repeated the experiment with a fourteen-year-old elephant he acquired from hunters. Coarse acknowledges that this elephant “was supposed to be fourteen years old; but… the accuracy of the hunters cannot be depended on” (33). He does, however, shed light on the fact that many scientists incorrectly measure the elephant “at the middle of the back” rather than at the shoulder, which “makes a difference of several inches” (36) The validity of Corse’s first-hand account was apt to be doubted by scientists, because he does not back it up with eye-witness accounts, and the only other example given is by an unremarkable resident of the region. Generally, Coarse’s results are of a low sample size, run on assumptions, and feature uncreditable sources. Coarse in 1799 employs the same word-of-mouth techniques as Topsell does in 1658. Have eighteenth century scientists made any advancement in correcting elephant misconceptions?

 

In his book Animal Biography, William Bingley improves on Corse’s efforts by supporting his assertion that elephants can be recaptured with three examples of varied and legitimate sources collated in the Philosophical Transactions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.27: Extract from Animal Biography showing the introduction and conclusion to Bingley's assertion, pages 135-8

 

 

 

 

Bingley labels his sources as a “tolerably wide range of authorities” (149). He admits that some accounts may have been exaggerated and “must consequently be received with some degree of limitation”, but “it would not be right to entirely discredit any of them, without direct proof of their untruth” (149). This enlightened level of rational thinking demonstrates the progression towards logical argumentation on animal behaviours through the eighteenth century.

 

By the 1820s, newspapers such as the Caledonian Mercury were utilising their wide readership to dispel elephant myths:

 

 

 

 

Figure 2.28: Extract from the Caledonian Mercury

 

 

 

 

 

How to Catch an Elephant

 


 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.1: "The Taming of the Wild Elephant" in black ink and watercolour, c.1725-45

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.2: "Royal Hunts" in watercolour, featuring traps, pits and nets for catching tigers, lions and elephants, c.1774

 

 

 

Methods 

 

 

There are many different methods of capturing an elephant, and catching an individual is a very different business to catching a whole herd. Most of these methods at some stage involve tame, female elephants conditioning the wild elephant into subordination. These female elephants are called Koomkees, and are trained for the purpose.

 

 

 

Figure 3.3: Extract from Animal Biography, page 131. 

 

 

 

 

Animal Biography details one way that a singular elephant may be caught. In the evening, the hunter advances with four Koomkees to where the wild elephant feeds. Then, “three of the Koomkees are conducted silently and slowly, at a little distance from each other, nearly to the place where he is feeding” (Bingley 131). The elephant, sensing no danger, allows two of the Koomkees to sandwich him on either side, and a third to pen him in from behind. Unaware of the loss of his liberty, “he begins to toy with the females, and caresses them with his trunk” (132). The fourth female advances, accompanied by assistants who attach a rope around the elephant’s hind legs. “If he take no notice of this slight confinement, the hunters proceed to tie his legs with a stronger rope; which is passed alternately, by means of a forked stick, and a kind of hook, from one leg to the other, in the form of a figure of 8” (132). Six to eight ropes are employed, linked and interspersed with perpendicular ropes. “A strong cable, with a running noose” is fastened around each hind leg, and another set of six to eight ropes are applied, crossing from leg to leg above the cable (132). The Koomees retire. The elephant starts to follow them, realises that his legs are tied, and “retreats towards the jungle” (132). Hunters riding tame elephants and accompanied by several people follow the elephant from a safe distance until he passes near a stout tree. The cable is tied two or three times around the tree trunk, so that he cannot escape. “His fore legs are now tied in the same manner as his hind legs were” (132). The cables are secured onto stakes in the ground, or other trees, and two Koomkees are fastening to either side of him. Then, all ropes except one are taken from his legs. The Koomkees lead him to his station where, “treated with a mixture of severity and gentleness”, he should become tractable in around two months (133).

 

 

 

Figure 3.4: Extract from the London Chronicle

 

 

 

 

In the 1785 London Chronicle, John Christopher Wolf explains an alternative method. To catch an elephant, one must dig a pit, “some fathoms deep”, near the elephant’s feeding spot. Poles are laid over the pits, disguised by leaves and “baited with the food of which the elephant is fondest”. As the elephant goes for the bait, the poles comprising the snare fall in with the elephant, now stranded in the ditch. The elephant cries for help, and two Koomkees are sent to rescue him with ropes, where they “make him prisoner, and deliver him up into the hands of their leader”. If he refuses to be lead away by the Koomkees, he is thrashed until “he submits with a good grace” and is willing to drive his master wherever he pleases.

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.5: Extract from the London Chronicle

 

 

 

Wolf details another technique involving sparring with the elephant, a procedure “practiced by the Moors… who by these means are enabled to pay their rent to the Lords of the Manor, the Dutch East India Company”. A large party of people search the forests for a herd of elephants. They pitch up on the largest elephant and attempt to separate him from the rest. As the elephant urges these bothersome visitors away, one member of the group pulls out a long stick and initiates a sham fight. “Taking care to avoid coming to close quarters” by moving around nimbly, the sparrer angers the elephant. Two more people join the fencing match, then a third sneaks up behind the elephant and throws a noose around one of its hind legs. The elephant is so preoccupied with the sticks that the other people can drag him to a nearby tree and fasten the noose. “Two of the men run home, and bring a tame elephant, to which having coupled the wild one, they lead them together to the stable”.

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.6: Extract from Animal Biography, page 134.

 

 

 

 

Capturing a whole herd of elephants is a riskier and more tedious task. A herd of 400 elephants were captured by the English in one go in 1797. Bingley’s favourite method is a popular one, with all sorts of variations. Firstly, five hundred people encircle a herd of elephants. Using fire and loud noises, they corral the elephants into a special station called a Kedda. It consists of three enclosures, connected by narrow gateways: “The outer one is the largest, the middle generally the next in size, and the third or furthermost the smallest” (133). Though getting them through the first gateway is difficult, once the leader passes, the rest will follow. Fires are alighted near the entrance, urging them on into the second enclosure. The process repeats until they enter through the last gateway. Feeling desperate in their entrapment, the elephants attempt to charge the palisade, but fire and loud noises scare them off. After a few days of being scantily fed, “the door of the Roomee (an outlet about sixty feet long and very narrow) is opened, and one of the Elephants is enticed to enter by having food thrown before it” (134). The lone elephant advances and the gate shuts behind them. Exhausted in the attempt to break the passage bars, he is tied up with rope and secured in a manner similar to that adopted in taking the single males; “and thus, in succession, they are all secured”.

 

 

 

 

A Satirical Stance

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.7: "Catching an Elephant", satirical print published in 1812

 

 

 

 

In this satirical print, two attractive young courtesans coax an enormously obese and carbuncled 'cit' towards the door of a bagnio (right). They are under an archway inscribed 'Bagnio Court' in an arcade, suggesting Covent Garden. The lady on the left takes him by the wrist, throwing back a cloak to reveal her charms; he leers hideously at her. The courtesan on the right leads him by the shoulders and chin.

 

This satire shows that methods used to catch an elephant were so well-known to the general public by the end of the long eighteenth century that satirical prints were able to be made mocking the similarities between coaxing an elephant into servitude, and coaxing a ‘cit’ into a brothel. The renowned ease with which an elephant will succumb to dominion insinuates that a small amount of flattery is all the repulsive man needs to agree to making love to a courtesan.

 

 

 

 

Catching Other Animals

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

Figures 3.8 and 3.9: Excerpts from World and Fashionable Adviser

 

 

 

 

These excerpts from an article in the World and Fashionable Advertiser reveal that elephants are not only used to catch other elephants - they also catch buffalo and the occasional rhino.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.10: "Tiger Hunting in the East Indies", 1802. 

Lettering: “This Print represents the attack & death of the Royal Tiger, near Chandermagur, in the Province of Bengal, in the Year 1788,

by a party of Gentlemen & their Attendants mounted on Elephants according to the custom of that Country”

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.11: "Hunting a Hog-Deer: plate 24 for "Oriental Field Sports"", 1805. 

 

 

 

 

Considering elephants are not nimble or fast opponents, we can assume that they were used to hunt the fiercest of creatures, like the tiger and the rhino, because of their intimidating size and ability to follow orders dutifully.

 

 

 

 

 

Elephants on Stage

 


 

 

 

A seventeenth century edict prohibited exotic animals being exhibited in London's streets. This ban was not out of concern for public safety, but because exhibiting exotic animals was a privilege belonging to the keeper of his Majesty’s lions, at the Tower of London. However, there was such a demand amongst the eighteenth century public for novel and educative entertainment that exhibitors simply migrated with their exotic companions to London backstreets.  

 

A menagerie was established in the Exeter ‘Change in 1773, but it was not until Gilbert Pidcock bought it twenty years later and advertised it as a privately-owned menagerie that it was technically legal. Until that point, the only elephant displays the public could lawfully witness were on the stage, if an elephant had been loaned out to a theatre, and at a fair, where the underground exotica was perpetually in transit and so impossible to keep track of that the law had excused it as permissible.   

 

 

 

 

The Performing Elephant

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.1: Extract from the Morning Post, Issue 12767

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 1811, a newly-arrived elephant from Bengal was immediately enlisted to perform at the Covent Garden theatre as the principal star in the pantomime of Padmanaba, or the Golden Fish. As the Morning Post’s review of opening night validates, the poor elephant was so terrified of the foreign environment and the unruly shouts coming from the audience that he only lasted two performances. Stephen Polito, the menagerie proprietor who loaned the elephant in the first place, did not learn his lesson when he leased his elephant with stage-fright out once again to the New Pavilion Theatre to appear in a production called Baghvan-Ho mere months later.

 

The exact nature of these elephants in performance is unclear. Did they play characters? Was the play altered to accommodate them, or was an entirely new playscript devised? Were the ‘pantomimes’ targeted at children or adults? Poems like Thomas Holcraft’s Human Happiness; or the Sceptic give insight into the choreographed tricks that elephants were expected to carry out before a live audience:

 

 

          “They make It caper, simple Fool,

          Like elephant at dancing-school;

          Pain heats the floor, and flogs like Beadle,

          While Madam Pleasure plays the fiddle.” (92-5)

 

 

The dark undertones to this stanza suggest that the cheerful, child-friendly pantomime directors were choosing to ignore the cruelty that they were inflicting on their performing elephants. The Adelphi Theatre boasted a performing elephant in 1830, and a detailed review in the Morning Post of the elephant’s role in the performance gives a clearer picture of the overall nature of these ‘pantomimes’:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figures 4.2 and 4.3: Extracts from Morning Post, Issue 18452. 

 

 

 

 

All in one production, the elephant manages to multitask in playing the roles of “carpenter, housemaid, cash-taker”, and “schoolmaster”. This gives the impression that these ‘elephant plays’ were more like sketches, featuring the elephant in a different guise with each scene. This performance was likely constructed with the elephant in mind, as without one, the simplicity of the plot would make for a boring show, and the mini-scenes a disjointed narrative. Moreover, seeing as an elephant has a limited quantity of tricks in its repertoire, the sketch-like scenes were probably generated with a specific trick in mind, around which to mould the narrative. For instance, the elephant could already pick up a broomstick and sweep – what more fitting character to accommodate this skill than a housemaid? Perhaps the performance was a comedy; the reviewer jokes that “the action [of sweeping] consisted rather of raising a dust than removing it”. Many other eighteenth-century sources mention the broom as a popular prop for the elephant to use, in menageries or at fairs, so experiencing the elephant in the theatre seems much the same thing, just in a more formal guise and at a dearer price.

 

The review mentions the elephant’s “previous station of royalty”, alluding to its prior role as assistant to the Prince:

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.4:  “Scene Exhibited at the Adelphi Theatre”in 1830.

 

 

 

 

In the play’s climax, the elephant assists in the escape of the Prince and his adherents from prison, by kneeling upon its hind legs, and thus forming an inclined plane upon which its friends might safely reach the ground. By explicitly characterising the elephant in this way, royalist tricks held responsibility for keeping the legend of elephant as loyal subject alive. The utilisation of elephants as burdens of war had by the eighteenth century become obsolete; the association of deferent elephants with despotic monarchs had, in practicality, long expired. However, the myth persisted throughout eighteenth-century literature, and as more and more elephants took up residence in the Royal Menagerie and acted out royal roles on stage, witnessing a British elephant “adore and bend unto [kings], pointing to their Crowns” (Pliny the Elder) grew increasingly probable.

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.5: Poster hailing a great white elephant into Britain

 

 

 

 

On its tour of English towns and cities, this “great white elephant” was trained to take off his hat to the company and “Make[ ] reverence on his knees. His master then asking where he loves Queen Ann, then he points with his Trunk to his Heart, and he must do for her, he Sounds for her on the Trumpet; but for the Grand Turk he will do nothing but make a dreadful Noise shaking his Head”. By the end of the eighteenth century, the role of elephant as loyal subject did not seem an outmoded concept at all.

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.6: "His Majesty's Elephant". An elephant in profile, surrounded by ten smaller images of the elephant performing actions,

"He can kneel down to take up his Rider", “He carries a Man on his ear" etc. 

 

 

 

The tricks of this elephant in his natural habitat seem extremely basic compared to the tricks the elephants were concurrently performing in the British menagerie. Actions such as “He turns about to the right, and left, as he is ordered” and “He can kneel down to take up his Rider” would not have amused and astounded eighteenth-century spectators to the same degree as the following tricks:

 

 

 

Figure 4.7: Extract from newspaper True Britain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.8: Extract from Animal Biography, pages 146-7

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.9: Extract from Animal Biography, pages 147-8

 

 

 

 

In “His Majesty’s Elephant”, the elephant has no props but the man. The eighteenth century was a period of excess and indulgence. Georgians lived in an attempt to outdo one another, seeking the biggest and best thing. The sly elephant manipulates an obsession with material culture by distinguishing between different kinds of money, inspecting spectators’ hats, and teasing handkerchiefs and Watches out of affluent pockets. The irony of the elephant taking a pocket-watch only to shortly return it emphasises that although indulgence in material goods is a shallow pastime, the elephant requires the public to have a fascination in novelties to survive as an exotic spectacle.

 

Therefore, analysing an elephant’s supply of tricks reveals more about eighteenth-century society than the elephant. Many of the elephant tricks are tasks that humans perform. The public demanded to see elephants doing tasks that are difficult or cumbersome for them – such as untying knots, bolting and unbolting a door, dextrously picking up small objects, and chores like sweeping the floor. This implies that it is on a direct scale to humans that eighteenth century society ranked the elephant’s sagacity.

 

The primary purpose of all of these tricks was to amuse the public, but they also succeed in effectively underscoring to varying degrees the physiological and mental properties of the elephant. Whilst an elephant in an eighteenth-century poem or painting might trample over the populace of a tyrannical king, the elephant prancing across the Covent Garden stage or offering to fetch your hat was a more benign soul.

 

 

 

 

Spectacle over Drama?

 

 

 

 

Figure 4.10 - "The Rehearsal", 

 

 

 

 

This satire presents a parody of the Covent Garden pantomime of 1811-2. As elephants became a familiar and ever-popular presence treading the boards on London's stages, the more 'serious' dramatics were getting less and less stage time. This satire questions whether famous actors of the time chose their love for theatre over their love for money. John Philip Kemble is seen riding an elephant that crushes a bust of Shakespeare underfoot. Baron Garamb wearing a giant moustache sits on the elephant's trunk, and Sarah Siddons is seen leaving stage left when two bulging sacks of money. And in the middle of it all? The elephant; the epitome of spectacle - just following orders, unaware that he has defaced the Bard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Elephants and Fables

 

 


 

 

Whereas in the seventeenth century, many had never even heard of an elephant, in the eighteenth century, they are everywhere - in streets, menageries, and natural history cabinets, as well as in paintings, fables, and satire. Crucially, an elephant in art or literature is much less stable than a real elephant - they are shapeshifters, taking on new metaphorical meaning in each text and artwork. It is interesting to see what happens when an elephant is thrown into a fable because, thanks to antiquity, they have always been fabulous entities. We already know elephants to have a kind heart and strong moral compass, so how does an elephant fit into the didactics of fable?  

 

 

 

The Original 'Elephant in the Room'

 

 Ivan Andreevich Krylov (1769–1844) is Russia's best known fabulist. In 1814, he wrote a fable called "The Inquisitive Man":

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 5.1 - Krylov's "The Inquisitive Man"

 

 

This fable concerns a man who has just visited a natural history museum. He is astounded by the size of the collection, and lists the magnificent beasts he has seen: "flies, butterflies, cockroaches, little bits of beetles!" Whilst at the museum, he was so preoccupied by the creatures "smaller than a pin's head" that he failed to notice the giant elephant in the room. 

 

Krylov's fable is the original source for the proverb 'the elephant in the room'. The secondary character's question upon hearing that his friend has visited the museum is "did you see the elephant?", implying that of all the animals in the eighteenth-century museum of curiosity, the elephant is the most magnificent and the biggest talking point. His second question, "What did you think it looked like?", demonstrates that elephants were such a novelty that they could only be described in terms of other beings. When Krylov decided to employ an elephant in his fable, he concluded that an elephant is so strange, large, and wonderful that it simply cannot be overlooked. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Elephant and the Bookseller

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 5.2: Front illustration of Gay's "The Elephant and the Bookseller", 1746

 

 

 

 

 

 In John Gay's fable "The Elephant and Bookseller", the elephant gives an amusing commentary on the conceits of humans and the bookseller's ability to deliver the antiquarian myths of elephants word-for-word:  

 

 

The man who with undaunted toils
Sails unknown seas to unknown soils,
With various wonders feasts his sight:
What stranger wonders does he write?
We read, and in description view
Creatures which Adam never knew;
For when we risk no contradiction,
It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction.
Those things that startle me or you,
I grant are strange, yet may be true.
Who doubts that Elephants are found
For science and for sense renown’d?
Borri records their strength of parts,
Extent of thought, and skill in arts;
How they perform the law’s decrees,
And save the state, the hangman’s fees;
And how by travel understand
The language of another land.
Let those who question this report,
To Pliny’s ancient page resort.
How learn’d was that sagacious breed!
Who now (like them), the Greek can read?
As one of these, in days of yore,
Rummaged a shop of learning o’er;
Not, like our modern dealers, minding
Only the margin’s breadth and binding;
A book his curious eye detains,
Where, with exactest care and pains,
Were every beast and bird portray’d,
That e’er the search of man survey’d;
Their natures and their powers were writ
With all the pride of human wit.
The page, he, with attention spread,
And thus remark’d on what he read: 
“Man with strong reason is endow’d,
A beast, scarce instinct is allow’d:
But let this author’s worth be tried,
Tis plain that neither was his guide.
Can he discern the different natures,
And weigh the power of other creatures,
Who by the partial work hath shown 
He knows so little of his own?
How falsely is the spaniel drawn!
Did man from him, first learn to fawn?
A dog, proficient in the trade,
He, the chief flatterer Nature made!
Go, Man! the ways of courts discern,
You’ll find a spaniel still might learn.
How can the fox’s theft and plunder
Provoke his censure or his wonder?
From courtiers’ tricks and lawyers’ arts,
The fox might well improve his parts.
The lion, wolf, and tiger’s brood,
He curses, for their thirst of blood:
But is not man to man a prey?
Beasts kill for hunger, men for pay.” 
The Bookseller, who heard him speak,
And saw him turn a page of Greek, 
Thought, “What a genius have I found!” 
Then thus address’d with bow profound:
“Learn’d Sir, if you’d employ your pen
Against the senseless sons of men,
Or write the history of Siam,
No man is better pay than I am;
Or, since you’re learn’d in Greek, let’s see
Something against the Trinity.”
When wrinkling with a sneer, his trunk,
“Friend,” quoth the Elephant, “you’re drunk;
E’en keep your money, and be wise:
Leave man on man, to criticise;
For that you ne’er can want a pen,
Among the senseless sons of men.
They unprovok’d, will court the fray:
Envy’s a sharper spur than pay.
No author ever spared a brother;
Wits are game-cocks, to one another.

 

 

Gay plays on perhaps the most prevailing of elephant myths: his ability to read and write Greek. We expect the oratory elephant to give a speech pleasing to the ear, but instead we are given a tirade on the shortcomings of man. We also expect the elephant, having read so widely, to be full of wisdom, but when asked to share his with the world, he thinks it best to "leave man on man, to criticise". From the elephant's perspective, perhaps that is wise. He believes that humankind is irretrievably ruined, and by refusing to share his knowledge, he distances himself from the position of the eloquent orator. The tradition of attributing oratory qualities to the elephant derives from Pliny the Elder and his antiquarian stories of elephants competent in Greek. Given this proud legacy, it is no surprise that authors have been tempted to implant their political and moral critiques in the mouths of elephants. 

 

Mocking the bookseller's verbatim recollection confirms how well known accounts of elephant literature were in the eighteenth century. Many people read natural histories over and over because there was a fascination for a creature with such a rich history.

 

Other eighteenth century texts that are not strictly 'fables' employ the same techniques as Gay of turning a myth on its head. E. Sumpter's "A Letter From the Elephant to the People of England" is a prose text in the style of a letter. The cocky elephant speaker is quick to introduce himself as being just as eloquent as legend assumes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 5.3: Extract from "A Letter from the Elephant to the People of England", pages 1 and 4

 

 

Whereas Gay's elephant shunned his oratory reputation, this elephant is raring to have the "grandest arguments". The speaker establishes himself as well-travelled and therefore knowledgeable in all "different languages". However, he soon gets carried away:

 

 

 

Figure 5.4: Extract from "A Letter from the Elephant to the People of England", page 3.

 

 

By this point, the speaker sounds so ridiculous that we cease to take him seriously. He celebrates his oratory prowess in such excess that he manages to dispel the myth that binds him. The author is making his eighteenth century readership question whether their beliefs about the elephant make sense when taken out of the familiar, immediate context. We consider the elephant almost akin to man in sagacity, but the idea of one realistically becoming a philosopher or physician is outrageous. Why then, are eighteenth century readers so willing to believe that elephants are competent in Greek? Although Sumpter is evidently trying to quash such myths, the very act of writing about it is keeping the myth alive. A similar instance of being brought to question tradition occurs when the elephant visits Rome; the Pope and his whole body of legates kiss the elephant's trunk in respect (Sumpter 3). Elephants bowing to royalty is a familiar sight, but reversing the roles makes us consider how silly having to kiss an animal as a sign of respect would be. Sumpter prompts eighteenth-century Britain to challenge the legitimacy and necessity of their customs of respect, and their animal traditions in general. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bibliography

 


 

 

 

 

Primary Sources

 

 

 

A True and Perfect Description of the Strange and Wonderful Elephant Sent from the East Indies. London: J. Conniers, 1675. Historical Texts. Web. 20 March 2018.

     <https://data.historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/view?pubId=eebo-     ocm09062209e&terms=A%20true%20and%20perfect%20description%20of%20the%20strange%20and%20wonderful%20elephant%20sent&pageTerms=A%20true%20and%20perfect%20description%20of%20the%20strange%20and%20wonderful%20elephant%20sent&pageId=eebo-ocm09062209e-42370-1>

This chapbook was useful in gauging the excitement and anxiety surrounding the first elephant to enter Britain since the 1200s. 

 

Avant-Coureur. Paris, 14 Jan 1771, no.2. Google Books. Web. 11 March 2018.            

      <https://books.google.fr/books?id=ToQvAAAAMAAJ&hl=fr&source=gbs_navlinks_s>

This article made me question the disparities between elephant life in France and Britain during the eighteenth century. 

 

Bewick, Thomas. “The Elephant”. A General History of Quadrupeds. Newcastle upon Tyne: G.G.J. & J. Robinson, and C. Dilly, 1790. 151-62. Internet Archive.      Web. 2 Nov 2017.

     <https://archive.org/stream/generalhistoryof00beil#page/150/mode/2up>

This encyclopedia was crucial to my studies of the elephant. It exemplified the ways in which elephants were humanised. 

 

Bingley, William. Animal biography, or, Popular zoology: Volume 1. 7th ed., London, 1829. Google Books. Web. 25 Jan 2018.

<https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=zgsAAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&output=reader&hl=en_GB&pg=GBS.PA142>

I used excerpts of this natural history in the wiki to talk about a range of topics - from tricks to catching elephants. 

 

Blair, Patrick. Osteographica Elephantina: Or a Full and Exact Account of the Bones of an Elephant which Died near Dundee. London, 1710. Internet Archive. Web.      3 March 2018.

     <https://archive.org/stream/jstor-103108/103108#page/n1/mode/2up/search/tabula>

This text gave me insight into how difficult it was to dissect an elephant when the conditions were not ideal. 

 

Buffon, Georges Louis Leclerc, comte de. “The Elephant”. Buffon’s Natural History. Vol. 7. London, 1792. 255-321. Historical Texts. Web. 2 Nov 2017.           <https://data.historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/view?pubId=ecco-0254300107&terms=Buffon,%20Natural%20History%20Volume%207&pageTerms=edward%20topsell&pageId=ecco-0254300107-40>

     (Note: This text was originally published in 1758, in French. I am using the earliest English edition for ease of reading, but (Fig) is the original 1758 illustration.)

As the most popular natural history of the eighteenth century, this text was invaluable to me. It demonstrated that concerns about slavery and animal captivity initiated a lot earlier than is often believed.  

 

Caledonian Mercury. Scotland, 8 May 1820; Issue 15395. Gale Primary Sources. Web. 2 March 2018.    

     <http://gdc.galegroup.com/gdc/artemis/NewspapersDetailsPage/NewspapersDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=DVI-Newspapers&docIndex=1&source=&prodId=BBCN%3ANCUK%3AGDSC%3AAHSI%3ABNCN%3ADMHA%3AFTHA%3AILN%3AINDA%3AMOME%3ASTHA%3ATTDA%3ATLSH%3AUSDD&mode=view&limiter=&display-query=OQE+decoying+elephants&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&windowstate=normal&currPage=1&dviSelectedPage=&scanId=&query=OQE+decoying+elephants&search_within_results=&p=GDCS&catId=&u=warwick&displayGroups=&documentId=GALE%7CBB3205379768&activityType=BasicSearch&failOverType=&commentary=>

This article demonstrated that, by the 1820s, newspaper writers were confident enough to dispell the elephant myths that had been believed since antiquity. 

 

Corse, John, and Joseph Banks. “Observations on the Manners, Habits, and Natural History, of the Elephant”. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of      London, Vol. 89.1799. Jstor. Web. 2 March 2018.

     <http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/107025.pdf>

Coarse's observations made me question the validity of eighteenth-century scientific accounts when there was no physical evidence to back a point up. 

 

Daily Post. London, 7 Oct 1720; Issue 318. 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. Web. March 1 2018.         <http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/quickSearch.do?     quickSearchTerm=&stw.option=document&stw.document.option=workId&stw.fuzzy.active=&workId=17201007&publication=2AWF&collectionId=2AWF&document=2AWF&stw.contentSet=LTO&userGroupName=&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&prodId=BBCN>

This article confirmed my speculations that the majority of eighteenth-century elephants in Britain died extremely quickly due to the weather and maltreatment. 

 

E. Johnson's British Gazette and Sunday Monitor. London, January 24 1796; Issue 847. 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. Web. 11 March 2018.

     <http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/paginate.do?     qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C8%2917960124%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28jn%2CNone%2C49%29%22E.+Johnson%27s+British+Gazette+and+Sunday+Monitor%22%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28is%2CNone%2C3%29847%24&inPS=true&prodId=BBCN&userGroupName=warwick&searchType=PublicationSearchForm>

This article demonstrated that even professional publications sometimes sent out false information.

 

Houel, J.P. Histoire Naturelle des deux éléphans. Paris, 1803. Print.

The image of the two elephants mating in this text underscores how much weight the opinions of natural historians carried during the eighteenth century, to the extent that unvalidated speculation was taken as fact in the public eye. 

 

Krylov, Ivan Andreevich. Krilof and his Fables. Strahan and Company, 1871. Google Books. Web. 10 March 2018. 

     <https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=lNYGAAAAQAAJ&rdid=book-lNYGAAAAQAAJ&rdot=1>

I had read this fable earlier in life, but it took on a completely new meaning when read in light of all I know about eighteenth century elephants and museums. I was surprised but how much such a short text is saying about elephants and exotica in general. 

 

Lacroix, Jean-Bernard. "L'Approvisionnement des ménageries et les transports d'animaux sauvages par la Compagnie des Indes au XVIIIe siècle" Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer 65.1975. Print.

This text emphasised how costly elephant transportation was in the eighteenth century. 

 

London Chronicle. London, 20 September 1785; Issue 4500. 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. Web. 1 March 2018.       <http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/retrieve.do?     sgHitCountType=None&sort=DateAscend&prodId=BBCN&tabID=T012&subjectParam=Locale%2528en%252C%252C%2529%253AFQE%253D%2528tx%252CNone%252C8%2529elephant%253AAnd%253AFQE%253D%2528ba%252CNone%252C6%2529%25222BFT%2522%253AAnd%253AFQE%253D%2528da%252CNone%252C10%2529%252217850920%2522%2524&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R2&displaySubject=&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=1&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28tx%2CNone%2C8%29elephant%3AAnd%3AFQE%3D%28ba%2CNone%2C6%29%222BFT%22%3AAnd%3AFQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C10%29%2217850920%22%24&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&subjectAction=DISPLAY_SUBJECTS&inPS=true&userGroupName=warwick&sgCurrentPosition=0&contentSet=LTO&&docId=&docLevel=FASCIMILE&workId=&relevancePageBatch=Z2000583824&contentSet=UBER2&callistoContentSet=UBER2&docPage=article&hilite=y>

This article gave me a broader understanding of how elephants were caught in the eighteenth century. 

 

Morning Post. London, 27 December 1811; Issue 12767. 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. Web. 3 Jan 2018.

<http://gdc.galegroup.com/gdc/artemis/NewspapersDetailsPage/NewspapersDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=DVI-Newspapers&docIndex=1&source=fullList&prodId=BNCN&mode=view&limiter=&display-query=TX+elephant+AND+PU+%22Morning+Post%22+AND+IU+12767+AND+DA+118111227&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&windowstate=normal&currPage=1&dviSelectedPage=3&scanId=&query=TX+elephant+AND+PU+%22Morning+Post%22+AND+IU+12767+AND+DA+118111227&search_within_results=&p=GDCS&catId=&u=warwick&displayGroups=DVI-Newspapers&documentId=GALE%7CR3209700578&activityType=BasicSearch&failOverType=&commentary=>

I learned a lot from this article about the role elephants played in the theatre. 

 

---. London, 1 February 1830; Issue 18452. Gale Primary Souces. Web 3 Feb 2018.

<http://gdc.galegroup.com/gdc/artemis/NewspapersDetailsPage/NewspapersDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=DVI-Newspapers&docIndex=1&source=fullList&prodId=BNCN&mode=view&limiter=&display-query=TX+elephant+AND+PU+%22Morning+Post%22+AND+IU+18452+AND+DA+118300201&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&windowstate=normal&currPage=1&dviSelectedPage=3&scanId=&query=TX+elephant+AND+PU+%22Morning+Post%22+AND+IU+18452+AND+DA+118300201&search_within_results=&p=GDCS&catId=&u=warwick&displayGroups=&documentId=GALE%7CR3209815892&activityType=SelectedSearch&failOverType=&commentary=>

This text allowed me to piece together what exactly was meant by an 'elephant play', and what it was likely to constitute.

 

Morning Post and Daily Advertiser. London, 4 November 1777; Issue 1572. 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. Web. 26 Feb 2018.

<http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DateAscend&prodId=BBCN&tabID=T012&subjectParam=Locale%2528en%252C%252C%2529%253AFQE%253D%2528tx%252CNone%252C15%2529Leicester%2BHouse%253AAnd%253ALQE%253D%2528da%252CNone%252C23%252910%252F01%252F1777%2B-%2B12%252F01%252F1777%2524&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R3&displaySubject=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=15&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28tx%2CNone%2C15%29Leicester+House%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C23%2910%2F01%2F1777+-+12%2F01%2F1777%24&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&subjectAction=DISPLAY_SUBJECTS&inPS=true&userGroupName=warwick&sgCurrentPosition=0&contentSet=LTO&&docId=&docLevel=FASCIMILE&workId=&relevancePageBatch=Z2000935393&contentSet=UBER2&callistoContentSet=UBER2&docPage=article&hilite=y>

This article eloquently illustrated how the birth of natural history museums altered the longevity of elephant afterlives. 

 

Moulin, Allen. An Anatomical Account of the Elephant Accidentally Burnt in Dublin. London: Sam Smith, 1682. Google Books. Web. 10 March 2018.

     <https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=qG2d4OonrvMC&pg=GBS.PA1>

This book impressed me greatly; I could not believe that Moulin managed to get such plentiful and exact data from a haphazard elephant dissection. 

 

Perrault, Claude. Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des animaux. Arkstee & Merkus,1758. Internet Archive. Web. 10 Feb 2018.     

     <https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_GPwRVJHMMl4C#page/n703/mode/2up>

     (Note: This text was originally published in 1676, but I was unable to find access to that edition.)

This text changed my perceptions on France: I initially thought they lacking in knowledge of the elephant, but Claude's anatomical mappings are far superior to anything Britain produced in the late seventeenth century. 

 

Smith, John Thomas. A Book for a Rainy Day: Or, Recollections of the Events of the Years 1766-1833. London: Bentley, 1861. Internet Archive. Web. 10 Feb 2018.

    <https://archive.org/details/abookforarainyd04smitgoog>

This text thought me that elephants were accessible to everybody in the eighteenth century because they often roamed the streets of London. 

 

St. James's Chronicle or the British Evening Post. London, 25 July 1776. Issue 2400. 18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. Web. 11 March 2018.

     <http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/paginate.do?     qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C8%2917760725%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28jn%2CNone%2C51%29%22St.+James%27s+Chronicle+or+the+British+Evening+Post%22%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28is%2CNone%2C4%292400%24&inPS=true&prodId=BBCN&userGroupName=warwick&searchType=PublicationSearchForm>

Using this article, I was able to discern that John Hunter was the most prolific and sought-after anatomist in Britain. 

 

Stukely, William. “An Essay Towards the Anatomy of the Elephant, from one dissected at Fort St George Oct. 1715 and another at London Oct.1720”. Of the      Spleen, its Description and History. London, 1723. Historical Texts. Web. 10 March 2018. 

     <https://data.historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/view?pubId=ecco-0966000900&terms=Of%20the%20Spleen,%20its%20Description%20and%20History.&pageTerms=Of%20the%20Spleen,%20its%20Description%20and%20History.&pageId=ecco-0966000900-20>

This text was useful in listing all the common reasons an elephant in Britain might live a short life. 

 

Sumpter, E. "A Letter from the Elephant to the People of England". 1764. Google Books. Web. 3 March 2018. 

     <https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=Q_N7jk2GG3IC&rdid=book-Q_N7jk2GG3IC&rdot=1>

This was one of my favourite texts to read. Sumpter completely turns elephant myth on its head, but uses the voice of the elephant to disguise her motives.   

 

Topsell, Edward. “Of the Elephant”. The history of four-footed beasts and serpents. London, 1658. 149-65. Historical Texts. Web. 2 Nov 2017. 

     <https://data.historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/view?pubId=eebo-ocm12250793e&terms=edward%20topsell&pageTerms=edward%20topsell&pageId=eebo-ocm12250793e-57077-1>

This was the first text I read when undergoing this project. At first, I was stunned that seventeenth-century naturalists put elephants into the same fabulous category as dragons or gorgons. 

 

True Britain. London, 2 April 1800; Issue 2271. 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. Web. 2 Feb 2018.

      <http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DateAscend&prodId=BBCN&tabID=T012&subjectParam=Locale%2528en%252C%252C%2529%253AFQE%253D%2528tx%252CNone%252C8%2529elephant%253AAnd%253AFQE%253D%2528ba%252CNone%252C6%2529%25222CBC%2522%253AAnd%253AFQE%253D%2528da%252CNone%252C10%2529%252218000402%2522%2524&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R4&displaySubject=&searchType=AdvancedSearchForm&currentPosition=1&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28tx%2CNone%2C8%29elephant%3AAnd%3AFQE%3D%28ba%2CNone%2C6%29%222CBC%22%3AAnd%3AFQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C10%29%2218000402%22%24&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&subjectAction=DISPLAY_SUBJECTS&inPS=true&userGroupName=warwick&sgCurrentPosition=0&contentSet=LTO&&docId=&docLevel=FASCIMILE&workId=&relevancePageBatch=Z2001581846&contentSet=UBER2&callistoContentSet=UBER2&docPage=article&hilite=y

This was the breakthrough text in causing me to link elephant tricks to material culture. 

 

World and Fashionable Advertiser. London, 23 August 23 1787; Issue 100. 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers. Web. 2 March 2018.

     <http://find.galegroup.com/bncn/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DateAscend&prodId=BBCN&tabID=T012&subjectParam=Locale%2528en%252C%252C%2529%253AFQE%253D%2528tx%252CNone%252C8%2529elephant%253AAnd%253ALQE%253D%2528da%252CNone%252C10%252908%252F23%252F1787%2524&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R2&displaySubject=&searchType=BasicSearchForm&currentPosition=2&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28tx%2CNone%2C8%29elephant%3AAnd%3ALQE%3D%28da%2CNone%2C10%2908%2F23%2F1787%24&retrieveFormat=MULTIPAGE_DOCUMENT&subjectAction=DISPLAY_SUBJECTS&inPS=true&userGroupName=warwick&sgCurrentPosition=0&contentSet=LTO&&docId=&docLevel=FASCIMILE&workId=&relevancePageBatch=Z2001550008&contentSet=UBER2&callistoContentSet=UBER2&docPage=article&hilite=y>

Up until reading this article, I had no idea that elephants were used to hunt other animals. 

 

 

 

 

Secondary Sources

 

 

Mayr, Ernst. The Growth of Biological Thought. Cambridge: Harvard, 1981. Print.

Mayr informed me how popular Buffon's text was during the eighteenth century; every educated person in Europe had read his work.

 

 

 

Dictionaries

 

Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language. London, 1755.

 

Oxford English Dictionary. 

     <http://www.oed.com/>

 

 

 

 

Images

 

 

Figure 1.1: Model elephant at the Tower of London. Historic Royal Palaces. Web. 10 March 2018.

                   <https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/history-and-stories/the-tower-of-london-menagerie/#gs.tVY7LWs>

 

Figure 1.2: "Elephant". Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language. 1755. 682. Johnson's Dictionary Online. Web. 2 March 2018. 

                    <http://johnsonsdictionaryonline.com/

 

Figure 1.3: See 'Smith', 106-7. 

 

Figure 1.4: See 'Avant-coureur'

 

Figure 1.5: See 'Avant-coureur', 23.

 

Figure 1.6: Historical Texts term frequency chart for 'elephant' between 1700 and 1800. Historical Texts. Web. 9 Nov 2017. 

                   <https://historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/results?terms=elephant&date=1700-1800&undated=exclude>

 

Figure 1.7: Google Ngram mapping frequency of the term 'elephant' from 1688 to 1832. Google Books. Web. 9 Nov 2017.

                    <https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=elephant&year_start=1688&year_end=1832&corpus=18&smoothing=4&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Celephant%3B%2Cc0

 

Figure 2.1: See 'Topsell', 162. 

 

Figure 2.2: See 'Perrault', 499.

 

Figure 2.3: See 'Perrault', 500. 

 

Figure 2.4: See 'Buffon', 267.

 

Figure 2.5: See 'Bewick', 151.

 

Figure 2.6: See 'Buffon', 261-2.

 

Figure 2.7: See 'Buffon', 306. 

 

Figure 2.8: See 'Houel', 227.

 

Figure 2.9: See 'Topsell', 151.

 

Figure 2.10: See 'Buffon'.

 

Figure 2.11: See Bewick, 151.

 

Figure 2.12: “Tusks”. RCSHC/T 119. London, c.1760-93. Royal College of Surgeons of England Web. 16 Feb 2018.

                     <http://surgicat.rcseng.ac.uk/Details/collect/5715>

 

Figure 2.13: “Proboscis”. RCSHC/2082. London, c.1760-93. Royal College of Surgeons of England. Web.16 Feb 2018.

                     <http://surgicat.rcseng.ac.uk/Details/collect/2389>

 

Figure 2.14: Hunter skull: “Skull”. RCSHC/CO 2252. London, c.1760-93. Royal College of Surgeons of England. Web. 16 Feb 2018.

                     <http://surgicat.rcseng.ac.uk/Details/collect/3907>

 

Figure 2.15: Hunter liver: “Liver”. RCSHC/DP 340. London, c.1760-93. Royal College of Surgeons of England. Web. 16 Feb 2018.

                     <http://surgicat.rcseng.ac.uk/Details/collect/3953>

 

Figure 2.16: See 'St. James's Chronicle'.

 

Figure 2.17: See 'Morning Post and Daily Advertiser'

 

Figure 2.18: See 'Moulin;, 6.

 

Figure 2.19: See 'Moulin', 35. 

 

Figure 2.20: See 'Blair', 56. 

 

Figure 2.21: See 'Blair', Plate 36. 

 

Figure 2.22: See 'Blair', Plate 36. 

 

Figure 2.23: See 'Lacroix', 174. 

 

Figure 2.24: See 'Stukley', 91. 

 

Figure 2.25: See 'Corse', 41.

 

Figure 2.26: See 'Corse', 33.

 

Figure 2.27: See 'Bingley', 135-8.

 

Figure 3.1: “The Taming of the Wild Elephant”. Anonymous. C.1725-45. Black ink and watercolour. Rijks Museum. Web. 26 Jan 2018.

    <https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/nl/zoeken/objecten?q=temmen+van+een+olifant&p=1&ps=12&st=Objects&ii=1#/RP-T-1991-7,1>

 

Figure 3.2: “Royal Hunts”. Anonymous. Watercolour. Faizabad, c.1774. Victoria and Albert Museum. Web. 10 March 2018.

                   <http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O20001/royal-hunts-album-page-unknown/>

 

Figure 3.3: See 'Bingley', 131. 

 

Figure 3.4: See 'London Chronicle'.

 

Figure 3.5: See 'London Chronicle'.

 

Figure 3.6: See 'Bingley', 134. 

 

Figure 3.7: “Catching an Elephant”. Thomas Rowlandson. 1872,1012.5009. London, 1812. British Museum. Web. 2 March 2018.

                  <http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_detai       ls.aspx?objectId=1660238&partId=1&searchText=rowlandson&page=4>

 

Figure 3.8: See 'World and Fashionable Advertiser'

 

Figure 3.9: See 'World and Fashionable Advertiser'

 

Figure 3.10:  “Tiger Hunting in the East Indies”. Richard Earlom. Stipple engraving, mezzotint, and etching. 1802. Yale Center for British Art. Web.10 March 2018.

                    <http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/1667179>

 

Figure 3.11: “Hunting a Hog-Deer: plate 24 for "Oriental Field Sports"” Samuel Howitt. Watercolour. 1805. Yale Center for British Art. Web. 10 March 2018.

      <http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3660979>

 

Figure 4.1: See 'Morning Post', Issue 12767.

 

Figure 4.2: See 'Morning Post', Issue 18452. 

 

Figure 4.3: See 'Morning Post', Issue 18452. 

 

Figure 4.4: “Scene Exhibited at the Adelphi Theatre” in 1830. The Menageries: Quadrupeds described and drawn from living subjects. James Rennie, 1831. Alamy. Web. 10                     March 2018.

                    <http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-scene-exhibited-at-the-adelphi-theatre-elephant-77314905.html>

 

Figure 4.5: The Great White Elephant. Alive. Is to be seen in this Town, Single Sheet Folio. John Johnson Collection, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Print. 

Figure 4.6: “His Majesty's Elephant, From Bengall” Capt. Brook Samson, 1763. Britism Museum. Web. 10 March 2018. 

                    <http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3268412&partId=1&searchText=his+majesty%27s+elephant&page=1> 

 

Figure 4.7: See 'True Britain'. 

 

Figure 4.8: See 'Bingley', 146-7. 

 

Figure 4.9: See 'Bingley', 147-8.

 

Figure 4.10: "The rehearsal, or the Baron and the Elephant". George Cruikshank. London, 1812. British Museum. Web. 2 Feb 2017. 

                    <http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=1642235&partId=1&searchText=the+rehearsal&page=1>

 

Figure 5.1: See 'Krylov', 43. 

 

Figure 5.2: Illustration to "The Elephant and the Bookseller". John Gay. London, 1746. British Museum. Web. 5 March 2018. 

     <http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId=3058968&partId=1&searchText=the+elephant+and+the+bookseller&page=1>

 

Figure 5.3: See 'Sumpter', 1 and 4. 

 

Figure 5.4: See 'Sumpter', 3. 

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