The Book of the Dead

I have always regretted a day of unlucky engagement on which I missed a delicate toast of mice; and remembered, with delight, being waited upon one hot summer morning by two graceful and polite little Carolina lizards, who kept off the flies.

Buckland senior confessed himself gastronomically defeated on only two occasions—by boiled mole and a ragout of bluebottles. Young Frank pushed it even further, making pies from rhinos (“like very tough beef”), frying earwigs (“horribly bitter”), stewing the head of a porpoise (“like broiled lamp wick”), and consuming chops from a panther that had been buried for several days (“not very good”). He did favorably surprise guests, though, with his accidentally roasted giraffe (the happy result of a zoo fire), raw sea slugs, and kangaroo ham (at least, until he told his guests what they were eating). There was a serious purpose to his hobby. In 1859, Frank founded the Society for the Acclimatization of Animals to the United Kingdom, which set out to import exotic species as alternative, high-yielding food sources. We owe the contemporary fashion for farming ostrich, water buffalo, and bison to Frank Buckland’s manic enthusiasm.

The most bizarre comestible that ever found its way into a Buckland stomach was the heart of Louis XIV. Although the consumption of this withered and leathery object is often attributed to Frank, the only firsthand account occurs in the autobiography of the English raconteur and travel writer Augustus Hare (1834–1903). He makes it clear that William was the one guilty of royal cardiophagy:

Talk of strange relics led to mention of the heart of a French King preserved at Nuneham in a silver casket. Dr. Buckland, while looking at it, exclaimed, “I have eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before,” and, before anyone could hinder him, he had gobbled it up, and the precious relic was lost for ever.

Not that this proves it actually happened, and certainly the various colorful embroideries to the tale—that it was sauteed and roasted; that it was served with a side helping of French beans; that Buckland considered its flavor would have been improved with a gravy made from marmoset’s blood; that he ate it for Christmas dinner— really don’t stand up to scrutiny. But the incident may explain Charles Darwin’s “strong prejudice” toward the older Buckland. He disliked his “coarse joking manner” and “undignified buffoonery.” The Bucklands, in turn, both rejected Darwin’s theory of evolution, maintaining a creationist line despite having been personally responsible for putting back the geological age of the earth by millions of years.

Eccentricity and good humor characterized the son’s life every bit as much as his father’s. Frank shared his rooms at Christ Church with marmots; guinea pigs; a chameleon; several snakes; a jackal; an eagle; his monkey, Jacko; and a bear called Tiglath-Pileser, named after an ancient Assyrian king. After the bear made several appearances in a scholar’s cap and gown at college drinks parties, the dean of Christ Church gave Frank the ultimatum to remove either “Tig” or himself from the college. The bear was duly rusticated; the expulsion of Jacko and the increasingly bad-tempered eagle followed in quick succession.

Frank graduated in medicine and in 1854 became assistant surgeon to the 2nd Life Guards. He served with the regiment for ten years but failed to gain promotion, probably because his real interests lay elsewhere, writing racy, readable accounts of his adventures for The Field magazine. The many reminiscences of Frank at this time make him seem thoroughly likable: He was a 4?-foot-tall, barrel-chested, cigar-smoking, ginger-haired ball of energy, the self-appointed curator of all that was odd, grotesque, or inexplicable. He was also a walking zoo. Wherever he appeared, he might be expected to produce a writhing ball of slow worms from inside his coat or a matchbox full of baby toads. Once, arriving at Southampton docks, he was charged five shillings for trying to smuggle his monkey onto a train. The clerk insisted on treating it as a dog, and issued it with a dog ticket. Buckland rallied by producing a tortoise from his pocket. “Perhaps you’ll call that a dog, too?” he asked. “No,” said the clerk, “we make no charge for them, they’re insects.”

As well as curiosities of natural history, Frank wrote up reports of mummies preserved in guano, fossilized mermaids, singing Siamese twins, unnaturally fat babies, impossibly tiny babies, the “Human Frog” (who could smoke underwater), and the man who walked on his head. His journalism is marked by a very un-Victorian sense of sympathy for his subjects. Observing the poor mummified corpse of Julia Pastrana, the Mexican bearded lady, he wrote:

Her features were simply hideous on account of the profusion of hair growing on her forehead, and her black beard; but her figure was exceedingly good and graceful, and her tiny foot and well-turned ankle, bien chaussee, perfection itself.

Unlike his father the dean, Frank Buckland can’t be counted a great scientist, but he was certainly a great popularizer of science: In his endless enthusiasm for the new and hitherto unnoticed he often reads like a one-man Fortean Times.

In 1867 his life changed. A Royal Commission appointed him inspector of salmon fisheries. This was a proper grown-up job, and within a very short time, Buckland had made himself into the UK’s “Mr. Salmon,” mastering all the intricacies of his subject, pioneering new techniques and technology for fish hatcheries, and using his great charm and energy to lead the first nationwide campaign against river pollution. He wasn’t exactly an ecologist, but he did commission firsthand research into the effect of ocean temperatures on the shoaling of fish and the importance of net mesh size in keeping fish stocks at optimum levels. He was also single-handedly responsible for the stocking of the rivers and lakes of India, Australia, and New Zealand with salmon and trout. This proved a rather more successful venture than his earlier scheme to manufacture shoes and gloves from the skin of rats.

Home life for the Bucklands always involved at least two monkeys. Frank’s study, where the monkeys lived, was called the Monkey Room and no writer has better captured the topsy-turvy madness of keeping them as pets. He considered them much superior to all other animals in terms of intelligence: “almost fit to go up for a competitive examination,” as he put it. The monkeys graced all the Bucklands’ social occasions, with outfits to match: Frank particularly liked them in green velvet dresses, trimmed with gold lace. He described them as sometimes having the appearance of well-behaved children (his only child, Frank junior, died at age five); sometimes like snoozing club bores (they loved a fire and had a taste for port and grog—one of them even smoked a pipe); but mostly they were the source of barely containable chaos. He describes his favorite pair, Tiny and “the Hag”—West African guenon monkeys—launching themselves around the house “with the velocity of a swallow.” The Hag took an irrational dislike to Mrs. Buckland’s sister and “very nearly had the dress off her back.” Food was stolen, visitors tweaked, ornaments shattered, other pets terrorized. Given ten minutes in a bedroom by themselves, wrote Frank, “the bill will rival that for the Abyssinian expedition.” Their vast cheek pouches swelled with booty (Frank estimated that the Hag could secrete twenty pieces of candy in each pouch). One afternoon he got them to disgorge “a steel thimble, my own gold finger ring, a pair of pearl sleeve links, a farthing, a button, a shilling and a bit of sweet-stuff.”

But Buckland was not averse to a little anarchy:

Although my monkeys do considerable mischief, yet I let them do it. I am amply rewarded by their funny and affectionate ways… nothing whatever would induce me to part with them. My monkeys love me, and I love my monkeys.

With the Hag, in particular, he developed a close understanding. “I could tell from her look what she wanted; and I am pretty sure she could read my thoughts in her own way.” There are, as he said, “monkeys and monkeys; no two are alike.” She was his constant companion for twelve years and “if ever an animal thought, it was the old Hag.”

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Buckland didn’t sentimentalize his relationship with animals; after all, this was the same man who had enjoyed roasting field mice while still a schoolboy. But he had a close affinity for monkeys that bordered on the inspirational: “Many an idea I have had looking into the dear Hag’s brilliant eyes.” Perhaps this explains why, given all the roasted, boiled, stewed, and pureed animals he had consumed over the years, there is no record of Frank Buckland ever eating a monkey.