The Gentleman Zoologist

I have a friend who is one of the most well-read people that I know, to say nothing of an absolute expert on the subject of zoo and aquarium history.  I have him to blame for the overflowing "To Read" list on Goodreads; many of those are books that I have since read and reviewed on the blog.  One book that I recently finished, on his recommendation, was The Living Air, the memoir of the French ornithologist Jean Theodore Delacour.  I enjoyed it very much.

Delacour's life was a long one, but not an easy one, and it was marked with repeated tragedy and loss - not just of family and homes to the two World Wars, but also the repeated devastation of his animal collections.  Still, it's hard not to read parts of his biography and feel washes of envy.  

He describes sitting in his comfortable study, walls lined with shelves of valuable books about the natural world and curiosities from his many travels, while working on some project of personal interest at his desk - maybe a monogram on pheasants, or a treatise on waterfowl, or catching up on his vast correspondence.  Then, perhaps feeling his legs getting a bit stiff, he saunters out for a walk on the grounds of his estate and admires the animals of his private zoo, stopping here and there to hand out a treat to a particular favorite, to see how a newcomer is settling in, or check on how an ailing patient is recovering.  The zoo is his and his alone - it has only the animals that he wants, and is arranged according to his tastes, without concern for what a public might want instead, or what trouble they might cause.  For part of year, he may travel abroad, secure in the knowledge that some of his many friends will keep an eye on things for him, as well as his trained devoted staff.  Animals that are exceedingly rare in our day were more common and more easily seen in his.  While abroad, he is free to collect additional specimens, by trade or by capture, in this pre-CITES world when the world's wildlife didn't seem so scarce.

It seems idyllic.  And it probably was, assuming that you were a white man who happened to be born into the aristocracy and didn't have to worry about income or any such other piddling concern.  To be so wealthy that you could build a zoo and gardens and an estate, have it bombed into oblivion, and then be able to rebuild it... twice.

It's unattainable to all but the very richest (and some of the modern changes are for the better, particular the part about the trade in wildlife, or the colonial system which allowed him to treat foreign countries as shopping markets), but it's still easy to read his books - and those of other gentleman (and gentlelady) naturalists of the era - and not feel a pang for missing out on something (even if I suspect I would have been lucky to have been a groundskeeper back then, not lord of the manor).  So I try my best to recreate what I can.  At home, I've created a little nook for myself, centered around my desk.  I have my bookshelves of animal books, and the walls are lined with animal paintings and prints and photos of animals, and it's a few steps away to a small garden, where I can see what birds are coming in to bathe or feed.

The illusion is enhanced when I go to work.  There, when I have a chance, I like to walk through the grounds early in the day, before the gates are open and while the animals are just beginning to stir.  For a few minutes on rare, quiet days, I can sometimes pretend that they are there just for me, and that the entire world consists of the animals and me.