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  His name was Charles Waterton, but almost everyone knew him simply as the Squire. Various friends who struggled for the words to describe his physical aspect came up with “a person recently discharged from prison” or, more evocatively, “a spider after a long winter.” He accentuated the look by squeezing into a brass-buttoned, swallow-tailed coat that was a couple of sizes too small and a couple of decades too old. He was shriveled, desiccated, worn—but far from feeble, and he loved to prove it. As a parlor trick, he’d scratch the back of his head with the toe of his right foot; then, from a cross-legged position on the floor, he’d rise to his full height without placing his hands on the ground. Sometimes, when walking along the shore of the lake with friends, he’d hop on one foot, just for fun.

  But the Squire had always been plagued by one particularly irksome physical malady: pulmonary congestion. Every day, he rose at 3:30 a.m. to perform a ritual to relieve its symptoms.

  He would get up from the bare plank floor where he always slept and where a beech-wood block served as his pillow. Moving to a chair, he sat and balanced a bowl on his lap. He raised a cord of string to his mouth, holding one end in his teeth and using a hand to tie the length of it around his bare arm. He tied the string tight around his stringy bicep. A vein rose within the inner crook of his elbow. Discolored scar tissue shone on the creased skin. He then pressed the gleaming blade of a lancet to the vein.

  He sat up straight and tilted his head back, drawing deep breaths as the blood began to trickle darkly into the bowl. As the fluid drained from his body, sometimes a full pint of it, his breaths seemed to flow more easily. Only after this ritual, which he called “tapping the claret,” was he ready to start his day. And in the summer of 1861, those days were dominated by one activity: indulging an obsessive preoccupation with the young adventurer who’d become the talk of London.

  Once, long ago, the Squire himself had garnered a lot of press as England’s bravest jungle adventurer—the same title Paul had now seemingly captured. But Waterton didn’t tolerate rivals easily. The new kid on the block made his blood boil. And Waterton wasn’t alone in this sentiment.

  JOHN EDWARD GRAY hadn’t attended Paul’s lectures at the RGS, but he wasn’t about to miss the chance of seeing the gorillas in the display rooms at 15 Whitehall Place.

  The rest of the city might have been blinded by the supposed grandeur of those specimens, but Gray eyed them like a jeweler who’d been cheated once too often. His gut told him they were counterfeits destined to lose their luster somewhere between first glance and second thought.

  The fact that the Zoological Society—the organization that Gray chaired—hadn’t been consulted before the gorillas were put on display was a slap in the face. Worse, Gray couldn’t have helped but notice the adulation the British elite—the same ones who’d embittered him with rejections—were now heaping upon this young adventurer, who had zero previous scientific credentials. Du Chaillu’s rise had depended on patronage, and it came from two people who would have occupied spots at the very top of Gray’s “unfriends” list: Owen and Murchison.

  Paul had been placed atop a very high pedestal. Gray couldn’t resist trying to knock him off.

  CHAPTER 25

  The Gorilla War

  After Gray toured the display room at 15 Whitehall Place, he got a copy of Paul’s book and subjected the text to a kind of scrutiny that he was uniquely primed to provide: critical, exhaustive, and absolutely unforgiving.

  His first salvo against Paul was published as a response to a generally favorable book review that had appeared in the Athenaeum. Gray began his letter by declaring that the “public seem to be under a delusion,” and he proceeded to set the matter straight by venting his engorged spleen:

  Some time ago the arrival of a new African traveller was announced. He read his paper at the Royal Geographical Society. It was soon discovered that his qualifications as a traveller were of the slightest description; but some of the Fellows seem to have been so taken with his tales about Gorillas and other animals, that they have allowed him to make one of their rooms into a museum and thus a great éclat has been given to his labours, certainly not on account of his geographical discoveries, for the map appended to his work is one of the most primitive that I have seen for years. If the Royal Geographical Society had transmitted the zoological notes and the collection to the Zoological Society, it would have been seen that his qualifications as a naturalist were of the lowest order, and that he has made few, if any, additions to our previous knowledge.

  Gray implied that Paul might have collected his specimens from natives on the coast of Africa, without penetrating the interior at all. The methods of taxidermy employed by “the traveller” (a derisive label that ranked below “the explorer” and miles beneath “the scientist” in Gray’s view) suggested that “they have been preserved in or near the habitation of civilized men, and not in ‘the forest’ where ‘daylight is almost shut out.’ ” Even if they had been adequately preserved, Gray said the gorilla skins still wouldn’t have been worth the attention they were getting because Europe had received its first gorilla skeleton nearly five years earlier. He ridiculed Paul’s “improbable stories” and noted that some of the illustrations included in the book appeared to have been copied, without acknowledgment, from other sources. To underscore how undeserving Paul was of England’s reverence, Gray stated that among the specimens labeled “new and undescribed” was a hoofed quadruped that Paul had called a “white-fronted hog”; Gray had recognized it as the same kind of African pig that was currently on display and living at London’s Zoological Gardens.

  “We are overburdened with useless synonyms,” Gray concluded, “and Natural History may be converted into a romance rather than a science by travellers’ tales, if they are not exposed at the time.”

  Gray’s criticism of the book’s crude map could be answered fairly easily. Paul himself had acknowledged during his lectures that he had lacked the proper scientific measuring instruments and admitted that his cartography was flawed.

  But the other accusations were embarrassingly hard to counter. The illustrations included in his book had been prepared by artists in the United States, hired when Paul struck his original book deal with Harper and Brothers. In a few cases, including the drawing of the gorilla in the book’s foldout frontispiece, the American artists had copied the illustrations from European journals. This brand of plagiarism wasn’t illegal, because there were no copyright agreements in those days between America and Europe. Yet the accusations of cribbing stung Paul, who had earlier claimed that most of the illustrations had been drawn according to his own rough sketches.

  As for his “new and undescribed” specimens, Paul insisted he had acted in good faith. In a letter to the Times printed four days after Gray’s accusations appeared, he wrote:

  I hope that neither in my book nor in my lectures I have pretended to be infallible as a naturalist, artist or traveller; yet I maintain that I have discovered in Equatorial Africa the new mammals and birds given as such in the list at the end of my volume. All of these were described in the published proceedings of two of the most scientific societies in America (with which Mr. Gray ought to be acquainted), some of the birds as far back as 1855, and I defy him to produce specimens existing in any European museum before that time.

  My map, at which he sneers, is a mere sketch map, it is true, but it was carefully prepared from observations made on the spot with the compass, and I will vouch for its general accuracy.

  My illustrations, prepared, not in this country, as he asserts, but in America, were taken either from my own rough sketches or from the actual objects, with the exception of four or five out of a total of 74.

  Would it not have been more fair of Mr. Gray, before giving vent to insinuations that I had never visited the countries which I describe, nor collected in those countries my natural history specimens, to have applied to my friends at Corisco and on the Gaboon, whose names are mentioned in my book? Mr. Gr
ay pretends to be in communication with the missionaries and traders in those parts, and therefore this course would have been the more obvious, as he would have saved himself from the imputation of uttering mere calumnies.

  I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

  P. B. Du Chaillu

  Paul was more forceful in another letter he sent to the Athenaeum. He painted Gray as a pampered academic whose work depended on others brave enough to go where he wouldn’t dare tread.

  “This at least is certain,” he wrote, “that the naturalist who works at home, safely and luxuriously lodged in his museum, has now, through my travels in African forests, the opportunity of acquiring the knowledge of the species. The return which Dr. Gray makes me, reminds me of the ape that grins a malicious snarl at the hand that has just given it a dainty.”

  Gray wasn’t going to let Paul have the last word. He fired off another letter to the Times, with more incriminating evidence. He said that the ape that Paul called a nest-building “nshiego-mbouvé” in both his book and his exhibition was a common chimpanzee. Paul had, in fact, erred; he mislabeled it a separate species based on the fact that it lacked hair on the top of its head and lived in a shelter built in trees. In fact, baldness can occur in all subspecies of chimpanzee, and all can build nests. The mistake was helpfully exposed by his pirating illustrators. They had clearly based their drawing of the nshiegom-bouvé on a photograph of a common chimpanzee that had been kept in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris.

  Gray had Paul pinned. He knew the young man’s only defense was to plead ignorance.

  “If Mr. Du Chaillu had published his work as the ‘Adventures of the Gorilla Slayer’ I should have taken no notice of it, for readers of such works like them seasoned to their palate,” Gray wrote. “It is only as the work of a professedly scientific traveller and naturalist that I ventured any observations on it.”

  Another of the “new” species Gray cast doubt upon was an otter-like animal that Paul had dubbed the Potamogale velox. Based on the partial specimen of the animal Paul had collected, Gray claimed that the adventurer’s classification of the animal was riddled with error. He suggested that Paul’s genus and species classifications be scrapped. Gray’s allies in the press proposed a substitution: the Mythomys velox, to reflect the mythmaking propensities of its discoverer.

  AND WITH that, mistrust ravaged Paul’s credibility. Every statement of fact in his book was now vulnerable to a contagion of doubt.

  Heinrich Barth, a famous German explorer whose travels helped map much of northern Africa, amplified Gray’s attacks on Paul’s crude map. In a scathing review published in Germany’s most prestigious geographical journal, Barth said that the fact that Paul traveled without a scientific instrument of any kind nullified his claim to the title of “explorer.” What’s more, several of the few dates listed in the narrative seemed contradictory: letters published in the journal of the Philadelphia academy suggested that Paul had been on the Atlantic coast at the same time that in his book he claimed to have been in the interior. Barth concluded that Paul “deliberately falsified material” and “has forged at least a great part of his travels.” Barth suggested that the young man didn’t venture more than a few miles away from the coast, and the rivers and mountains he described deserved no geographical credence. The German assailed what many considered Paul’s most important geographical contribution: his conclusion that the Ogowé River was part of a large system that included important tributaries, such as the Ngounie River, which he’d been the first to describe. Barth deemed these “discoveries” worthless; in fact, he doubted that Paul had ever laid eyes on those rivers.

  When a new map of equatorial Africa was published in Germany after Barth’s damning verdict, geographers listed the names of several of the inland villages that Paul had claimed to visit—but placed them near the Atlantic coast.

  EARLY IN his book, Paul had written how he exploited his reliable marksmanship to impress the natives. “As we were lazily sailing along, I espied two eagles sitting on some high trees about eighty yards off,” he wrote. “Willing to give the fellows a taste of my quality, I called their attention to the birds, and then brought both down with my double-barrel.” But shortly after Gray’s letters appeared in the press, a rumor began circulating—first by word of mouth, then in the press—that Paul had been spotted at the Wimbledon Common, where the National Rifle Association maintained firing ranges. According to the story, someone asked him to take a turn with a long-range “ball” rifle, and Paul was forced to awkwardly reply that he had never used that sort of gun. Hearing the story, skeptics concluded that Paul must have used a common “fowling gun” in Africa. That sort of gun had a range of accuracy limited to about twenty yards. Viewed in this light, Paul’s stories of picking off eagles in high branches seemed ludicrous.

  Yet there was a significant flaw in the rumor: Paul had never set foot inside Wimbledon Common. He was, furthermore, a genuinely accomplished shot with a ball rifle. That didn’t stop the gossip from further eroding his credibility. Paul was suddenly famous and infamous, a modern Munchausen, a mere spinner of yarns. Those yarns seemed to be unraveling in a messy tangle.

  The man and his gorillas had united London in wonder, but now they were forcing people to take sides in what the press began to label “the Gorilla War.”

  EVER SINCE Roderick Murchison had thrown the successful farewell banquet for David Livingstone at the Freemasons’ Hall, he regularly booked the venue when he needed a little bit of pomp and a lot of space to promote the Royal Geographical Society. To celebrate the organization’s anniversary in 1861, he chose the tavern for a Monday evening banquet that promised to stretch into the wee hours of Tuesday.

  It had already been a long day for Murchison, who’d overseen the anniversary meeting of the group that afternoon at Burlington House. He’d presented the Founder’s Medal to John Hanning Speke, who after splitting with his co-explorer Richard Burton had recently discovered Lake Victoria, believed to be the long-sought source of the Nile River. But Murchison had spent much of that meeting clarifying exactly where he and his organization stood when it came to the Gorilla War. Paul, seated in the audience at Burlington House, was putting on a brave face despite the public ridicule. His spirit seemed as buoyant as ever—constantly besieged, but continually popping up like a gourd in rough water.

  He had been busy writing an updated introduction for a new edition of his book, and he was confident that it would calm his harshest critics. He told people that he had found one misprint concerning a date that he hadn’t noticed; however, that hadn’t been the cause of his conflicting chronology. In the first edition, he said, he had grouped his expeditions of the areas north of the Gabon River together in successive chapters. In reality, those northern expeditions had been interrupted by other journeys to the southern regions, which likewise were grouped together in the narrative. Livingstone had similarly organized his book’s narrative according to geography, to help reduce confusion on the part of the reader. In his new introduction, Paul admitted that he should have made it clear he had used this technique in his original preface. To make amends, he inserted into the new edition a chronological table of his journeys, listing the specific dates that he visited each place described in his book.

  His efforts put his friends at the Royal Geographical Society at ease. At the anniversary meeting in the afternoon, Murchison wanted him to know that he was among friends. At the rostrum, Murchison pronounced that not only were Paul’s explorations trustworthy, but they represented “one of the boldest ventures which man ever undertook.” The audience burst out in applause.

  “Strikingly attractive and wonderful as were his descriptions, they all carry in themselves an impress of substantial truthfulness,” Murchison continued. “Of this no one who has formed the acquaintance of M. Du Chaillu, and looked into his open countenance and met his bright and piercing eye, can for a moment doubt.”

  If Paul had been comforted by Murchison, he must have been ove
rjoyed at the tavern later that evening. The party seemed less an anniversary celebration than a concerted effort to buck up the spirits of the embattled young adventurer.

  At the head table sat knights, dukes, earls, lords, MPs, counts, aldermen, the mayor of London, and, of course, Richard Owen. After everyone had tucked into their food, Owen rose, lifted his glass, and proposed a toast: to the health of Paul Du Chaillu.

  On the spot, Owen attempted to refute Gray’s contentions, one by one. The gorilla skins Gray had inspected had clearly been prepared with arsenic near where they were killed—not on the coast. The privations Paul had endured were unimaginable, the dangers were horrific, and the fruits of his labors were a boon to science.

  “Whether one judges Monsieur Du Chaillu by personal discourse, by his material evidences, by what he appeared to have seen of the living habits of the animals he described—testing those accounts by what we know of their structure—or by the incidents and style of his narrative, he impresses one with the conviction that he is a truthful and spirited man of honor and a gentleman,” Owen said, raising his glass to the audience. “I have much pleasure in proposing his good health.”

  A hearty round of “Hear! Hear!” echoed through the hall, and a call went up for Paul to say a few words.

  He stepped to the front of the hall, enjoying the warm rush of goodwill.

  “I feel almost overwhelmed by the compliment that has been paid to me,” he began, “the more so because I have been the object of a bitter attack—I don’t know why—but relying on the truth of what I have written, I knew that in this noble-hearted country there were men who would do me justice.”

  The audience cheered loudly, but Paul had more to say.

  “If I had been in my own country, these attacks would have been rebutted by friends who knew me from my boyhood, and who knew I am incapable of being an imposter.”