Between Man and Beast Read online

  Lincoln strode into a photographic studio that was known as Broadway Valhalla. If a person wanted a photographic portrait taken of himself, he came here. Everyone from the current U.S. president, James Buchanan, to the “What Is It?” had stood in front of the cameras of the proprietor, Mathew Brady. Even Paul himself couldn’t resist putting on his best three-button jacket and waistcoat and striking a pose in front of one of Brady’s plush backdrops.

  Brady’s studio was, like Paul’s showroom, a deep and narrow room designed to impress. The walls were covered in emerald wallpaper, and both the plush carpets and the buttoned leather divans were green and gold. A glass skylight overhead bathed the walls in natural light. Hundreds of portraits, mostly of famous faces and some colored with oils or crayon, hung in gilded frames. In one corner, Lincoln could have found a recent portrait of Stephen A. Douglas, the man whom he had run against the previous year in Illinois for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Lincoln’s Republican Party in Illinois had won more popular votes during that campaign, but the Democrats won more seats in the legislature, which gave them the right to choose Douglas as the state’s senator.

  That race had thrust Lincoln into the national spotlight, and Republicans had begun talking about him as a potential candidate for the November election. But Lincoln remained little known in New York, a city that could make or break political fortunes. Almost 2.5 percent of the U.S. population lived in the city—more than lived in all but twelve of the country’s thirty-four states. If Lincoln wanted to make an impression on the electorate, he needed to get his face out in the public. In 1860, that meant he needed a Mathew Brady portrait.

  Brady welcomed Lincoln into his studio and quickly began sizing up the clean-shaven fifty-one-year-old lawyer with anthropological precision. He backed the camera away from Lincoln to turn the emphasis away from the facial details and toward Lincoln’s towering stature. To make his narrow chest appear broader, Brady instructed him to open his long black coat, exposing his dark vest and the white V of his shirt. He arranged props beside him, including a fake pillar and a table piled with books, where Lincoln rested his left hand.

  As Brady continued to examine him, he saw that something still wasn’t quite right. The photographer suggested that Lincoln pull up his collar.

  “Ah,” Lincoln said, “I see you want to shorten my neck.”

  “That’s just it,” Brady said.

  Lincoln stared into the camera with penetrating eyes and a clamped jaw. The image that Brady conjured suggested strength, learning, and purpose.

  Later that same evening, Lincoln delivered a speech at Cooper Union in which he directly challenged the views that had been aired at the Academy of Music. The next morning, the newspapers devoted hundreds of favorable column inches to the event. “No man ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New-York audience,” the Tribune concluded.

  Brady’s photograph was quickly reproduced all over the country, and it became the basis for a Currier & Ives print seen by millions. Within months, as tensions between the North and the South increased, Lincoln’s name and image had spread enough to earn him the Republican nomination for president. “Brady and the Cooper Union made me president,” Lincoln reportedly quipped later.

  Paul might have been heartened by the rise of a man who penetrated the highest realms of power despite humble origins. Lincoln’s authorized campaign biography of 1860 reported that his ancestry was shrouded in “incertitude, and absolute darkness.” To someone like Paul, who was growing adept at brushing aside inquiries about his past, Lincoln perfectly represented the romantic ideal of an American meritocracy. After the 1860 campaign, Paul, whose interest in politics was never strong, would claim until the end of his life to be a proud and loyal Republican. But as Lincoln grew into an iconic testament to the promise of self-determination, Paul’s experiences would quietly demonstrate how a deliberately shrouded past could come back to haunt a person in unexpected ways.

  ON THE rare occasions when the press took note of Paul’s collection on Broadway, the reports were at times indifferent or dismissive. The New York Post drew the conclusion that instead of inspiring wonder in the mysteries of far-off lands, Paul’s adventures underscored the benefits of a sheltered provincialism. “After viewing these monsters,” the newspaper reported, “the idea of a residence in the African continent is received with coolness, and the beholder joins with fervor in the exclamation of the persecuted Caddy [Jellyby], as, when goaded to frenzy by the duties of the [Borrioboola]-Gha mission, she cried aloud, ‘I hate Africa!’ ”

  At the same time, his continued efforts to be reimbursed by the Philadelphia academy slammed into an impenetrable wall. In February, the academy finally referred the matter to its curators. According to the academy’s internal documents, the curators decided early in 1860 that Paul’s claim “in no way concerns the Academy”—a judgment they didn’t bother to tell Paul. After he continued to inquire about the status of his reimbursement, some of the members of the academy asked the curators to outline the facts upon which they based their conclusion, perhaps in an effort to put the matter to rest once and for all.

  Enigmatically, the curators refused to give a concrete reason, saying instead that it was “inexpedient to report the facts.”

  In its letter to Paul, the academy didn’t mention the curators’ mysterious response. Instead, the members of the institution created a dubious technicality to disentangle themselves from any obligation to Paul. The letter explained that all of Paul’s agreements had been with individual members of the academy—not with the institution as a whole. Therefore, the academy owed him nothing:

  A careful examination of its records shows that the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia has never engaged Mr. Du Chaillu to explore the Camma or any other country; nor has it contracted with him to furnish specimens of Natural History; nor has it ever authorized, by enactment of resolution or otherwise, any of its officers or members to make any engagement or contract of any kind or description with Mr. Du Chaillu.… It is regretted that Mr. Du Chaillu should have erroneously supposed that he was making explorations and collections in Western Africa under the patronage and at the cost of the Academy.

  The rejection might have seemed an out-of-the-blue injustice to Paul, but whispers and rumors lay behind it. Could he have suspected that the “inexpedient” facts had something to do with his background, the details of which he had hidden so well since the day he had adopted the Wilsons as his new parents? If such suspicions had occurred to Paul, voicing them would only have drawn attention to that past. He dropped the matter, surrendering his claim to the $866.50—more than triple the annual wage of the average factory worker of the time.

  Stripped of the money that he’d been counting on, and with only a struggling showroom to support him, he turned to his journals as a possible income source. He had met a physician and naturalist named Samuel Kneeland when visiting the Boston Society of Natural History; Kneeland, who had extensive experience in writing for scientific journals, had already helped Paul tame his imperfect English when preparing his lecture. Now Kneeland helped him transform the extensive journals from his expedition into a lively travel narrative. Paul worked feverishly, compiling nearly five hundred manuscript pages by the end of 1860. Harper and Brothers, a publishing company in New York, agreed to publish his narrative as a book.

  But before that happened, Paul received an invitation from Richard Owen in London that would change his life. Wyman, the Harvard anatomist, had earlier written to his English counterpart encouraging Owen to meet with the young man and look at his specimens.

  After being largely ignored for months by a distracted America, Paul—and his gorillas—got a second chance in a country that was free to give him its undivided attention and where he could again start anew.

  CHAPTER 20

  The Inner Circle

  The London Richard Owen welcomed Paul into in early 1861 exuded magisterial confidence. Its residents had an iron certit
ude that this—a thirty-square-mile patch of soupy fog, hissing gaslights, and 2,803,921 human souls—represented the apex of civilization. Anyone new to London who might harbor the slightest doubt about the city’s perceived preeminence needed only consult the very first paragraph of The Popular Guide to London and Its Suburbs:

  London is the political, moral, physical, intellectual, artistic, literary, commercial, and social centre of the world.… Railways converge to it, and science, art, discovery, and invention seek it as their true home. Its merchants are princes, and the resolves of its financiers make and unmake empires, and influence the destinies of nations.

  A young man wishing to make a mark in the world could do no better than this. But just because it was a dominant city didn’t mean that its power was conferred on just anyone, as London’s smudged underclass—the ragpickers, costermongers, night-soil men, mud larks, shoeblacks, lamplighters, thimbleriggers—silently testified to every day. To tap into any of the city’s power, a newcomer needed connections, someone to guide him over and around the invisible barriers of class and social rank. Someone who’d made that journey up the ladder of success himself. A person with friends in high places and a motive for sharing them.

  Someone exactly like Richard Owen.

  He was ruling class all the way. But even if John Edward Gray and his other rivals saw him as a pampered child of privilege, Owen considered himself a self-made man. He’d been born in Lancaster, the son of a merchant who occupied a social position a couple of rungs below the country’s aristocratic elite. As a child, Owen discovered an interest in anatomy, and he collected the skulls of anything he could find—dogs, cats, mice, deer. As a teenager, he apprenticed with a surgeon and a pharmacist, which earned him the duty of tending to prisoners, both living and recently deceased, in the city jail and hospital. Within six months, a copy of a treatise called Varieties of the Human Race, which explored anatomical differences between the races, fell into his hands; on the same day, a black man died in the hospital. Armed with a paper bag and burdened by no ethical qualms whatsoever, Owen was determined to collect the skull, eager to measure its facial angles, the distance between ear and teeth, the brightness of the bone tissue—all details that scientists of the time believed distinguished blacks from whites. He snuck into the hospital’s morgue, snatched the skull, and ran away with it.

  Owen later studied medicine in Edinburgh before distinguishing himself as a gifted dissector at the Royal College of Surgeons. There he was given the responsibility of cataloging the college’s museum collection—undissected specimens floating in pickling alcohol that had been collected by England’s most celebrated explorers, including Joseph Banks and Captain Cook. The college’s most eminent surgeon, John Abernethy, took Owen under his wing and helped him climb to the top of Britain’s medical establishment—the kind of act of generosity that Owen’s mother had advised him to take advantage of, if it ever came his way. In a letter to her son, she said that great men shared a secret that lay at the foundations of their success. “Let them, if within their means and power, become pupils of some person already eminent and in high repute,” she explained to her son. “By such a preparatory course they obtain two great objects—a well-grounded professional knowledge, and the opportunity of becoming known to all the friends and connections of their instructor.”

  It had worked for Owen. Through Abernethy, he became personal friends with celebrated scientists, including Cuvier, the world’s foremost anatomist. One high-placed friend led to another. He worked hard, and his gifts for anatomical science impressed scientists throughout Europe. Eventually, he became the highest placed of them all.

  When Paul showed up in Owen’s life, the two men fell into instant companionship thanks to Paul’s twenty-one gorilla specimens, which were the cargo of Owen’s dreams. They formed an odd couple: one in his mid-fifties, the other in his twenties; one tall and professorial, the other a compact bundle of nervous energy; one thoroughly entrenched in England’s ruling class, the other a total stranger to high society. It didn’t matter that the young man had never set foot in England before. He had a friend.

  Owen was a little like Wilson all over again: Paul played the son, Owen the father. Owen had clear motives for encouraging the relationship, but he could reassure himself that his attentions to Paul weren’t wholly selfish. By promoting the young man’s career, Owen was repaying the favor that Abernethy had done for him when he’d sought a foothold in academia: “the opportunity of becoming known to all the friends and connections of their instructor.”

  The young gorilla hunter quickly became a fixture at Owen’s home, Sheen Lodge. The people Paul met there held the keys not only to the innermost chambers of Britain’s scientific establishment. They held the keys to Victorian culture itself.

  RODERICK MURCHISON was fresh off his most successful year ever at the Royal Geographical Society. The organization had added 233 fellows to its ranks in 1860—the greatest annual growth in its history. Its monthly meetings were more popular than ever. When Owen made the acquaintance of a young man who claimed to have traveled to parts of Africa where no white man had ever set foot, and who’d seen things none had ever lived to describe, Murchison jumped at the chance to welcome him into the fold.

  Murchison saw an opportunity to do what he’d done with David Livingstone: create a celebrity who could get London talking—about the Royal Geographical Society. Within weeks of Paul’s arrival, Murchison had cleared the decks at the RGS’s monthly meeting, announcing that the next featured speaker would be an unknown adventurer who’d recently explored Africa, and he’d be bringing his gorillas with him to the meeting.

  In the days leading up to the event, a newly elected RGS fellow named Captain William Sandbach, who ran a West Indies trading company, invited Paul to stay at his house, located at 129 Mount Street in the posh Mayfair district. Shortly after he moved in, a letter was delivered to the door. It was from the same publisher whom Murchison had contacted when he’d first encouraged Livingstone to write his book. The publisher, John Murray, had already been entrusted with a copy of the manuscript that Paul had sold to Harper and Brothers while in America.

  Dear M. Du Chaillu,

  My first impressions of your Adventures have been confirmed and strengthened by further acquaintance with it. It is a most interesting and valuable record of enterprise and discovery in geography and natural history and reflects the utmost credit upon you.

  I shall be proud and happy to be the publisher of it and will use every effort to promote its success and to extend your Fame.

  The terms which I propose are those on which I have brought out so successfully and so satisfactorily to the authors of The Travels of Livingstone, McClintock and others, viz. I will take upon me the entire cost and risque of the publication including the illustrations.…

  Whatever be the time fixed for publication I would recommend that the printing be commenced without delay—I shall be anxious to hear from you in reply to this and meanwhile I leave to return your printed sheets in the hope of suggesting a few more corrections.

  I am, my dear Sir,

  Your ally and faithful

  John Murray

  Murray, in addition to being a friend of Murchison’s and Owen’s, was the most powerful literary tastemaker in London, and the drawing room of his house at 50 Albemarle Street was considered a nucleus of nineteenth-century literature. When Murray’s father had launched the family publishing business, Lord Byron convened a literary circle that would meet at the house in the afternoons for tea, a group dubbed the “four o’clock friends.” In subsequent years the Murray house published the novels of Jane Austen and Herman Melville, as well as the signature work of specialized experts from Malthus to Darwin. It had also enjoyed commercial success in a new genre that Murray liked to call “travellers’ tales,” which included the expedition narratives of Sir John Franklin and the African adventures of Livingstone. When Murray promised to promote Paul and his book, it wasn’t empty rheto
ric. As Ármin Vámbéry, a nineteenth-century Hungarian writer and traveler, said, Murray’s house was “the literary forum of the elite,” and any dealing with him automatically “raised an author to the position of a gentleman.”

  Paul wasted no time in making an appointment to visit Murray’s place. On the same day he received the letter, he sent Murray a reply, carefully scripted in his best handwriting:

  DEAR SIR,

  Yours of this day has been received. In reply I will simply say that I accept the conditions you propose in your letter being those given to the most favored authors.

  I certainly prefer to have you as the publisher of my work than any other man for I know the high integrity of your name and feel I am in the hands of one who shall not try to wrong me.

  I am glad to hear that my work has interested you and I will feel rewarded for all the hardships I have endured if by my feeble means our knowledge of a hitherto unexplored region has been advanced either in the geography or Natural History of the country.…

  As for the time of the publication we will arrange when I shall see you; one intended to publish my work in America this spring.

  I would like to see you and I will call at your office tomorrow at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. In case you could not be there, please write me a note.

  Yours very truly,

  P. B. Du Chaillu

  Despite Paul’s agreement with Harper and Brothers in the United States, Murray fast-tracked publication of the book to ensure that it would appear in England first.

  Even before Paul had made his first public appearance in London with Murchison at the RGS, the talk began circulating among the city’s chattering classes that a new adventurer was in town and that his story demanded attention.