Still Life by Melissa Milgrom (best ebook reader TXT) 📕

was a form of endearment. They were obsessed with knowing, for instance, whether animals were happy. They wanted to discuss the very goodness of animals. For Morris, the transference of human characteristics onto birds and mammals is "the basis for much of what we recognize as the British love of animals."

I wandered around, as disturbed by the two-faced lamb as I was captivated by the dealers sizing it up. "It's a shame that [the collection is] being broken up, because we're never going to have the opportunity to see it again," one trader remarked. And in the next breath: "But there's plenty to go around. We don't intend to go home empty-handed." Downstairs, auctioneer Roger Tappin registered Peter Blake (the artist who designed the Beatles' Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover) and dozens others. During the lulls, Tappin was composing lines to "sing" for each lot. The pitch style the auctioneers used to sell the Alfa Romeo the week before, for instance, would never move the 111-pound conger eel (lot 252). This one was catchy: "The wandering albatrosses will fit onto the roof rack." "There's a good one for the lion," he said, grinning. "But you'll have to wait until tomorrow. An auctioneer always tries to save some of his gold."

Nearby, head auctioneer Jon Baddeley was in between television interviews when I went up to him and repeated the words of the trader upstairs: "It's a shame that it has to be broken up." I tried not to sound indignant.

"Collections are living things," he explained. "All these things will end up in international museums and institutions. As you break up one collection, you form other collections."

The phone rang and rang, people asking if Bonhams was prepared to handle the complicated transactions that are required when endangered species cross international borders. In England, any specimen collected before 1947 is considered an antique and can be freely bought and sold within the United Kingdom (although some species such as parrots require special licenses). But in the United States, the same species can't be traded without proper certificates, permits, and inspections administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Species protected under the 1900 Lacey Act, the 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and the 1973 Endangered Species Act are scrupulously monitored by Fish and Wildlife Service agents, and an extensive paper trail and inspections are required for every importation. For instance, whereas magpies are like rodents in England, in the United States they are protected species, which can't be traded. The same rigorous laws used to prevent animal smuggling apply to 125-year-old antique specimens. Nearly six months after the auction, several Potter cases arrived in Port Elizabeth, New Jersey. They were transported to a bonded warehouse in Kearny, New Jersey, where Fish and Wildlife Service agents dismantled them, confiscating several illegal specimens (a loon, a snipe, and others). After a complicated process of signed wavers, ownership of the birds was transferred to the U.S. government.

Emma Hawkins, a dealer of"all sorts of wonderful things," mostly Victorian taxidermy, arrived at the Jamaica Inn from Edinburgh, Scotland, and had a look around on preview day. She needed to inspect the condition of items (mostly the large tableaux) before she committed herself to certain lots for her clients. The dealers who buy and sell taxidermy for other people provided me with yet another perspective of this eccentric world. On the one hand, they seemed to recognize the historic value of the collection. On the other hand, they were most eager to buy and sell it off. Still, I was grateful to hook up with Hawkins, because she was meeting two hard-core taxidermy dealers that night to strategize over dinner, and she invited me to join them.

A year earlier, Hawkins had heard that Potter's was for sale, and she offered the Wattses a significant sum for the entire collection. She wanted to relocate Potter's to Edinburgh and had a building in mind in which to house and maintain it, but her offer wasn't accepted. Hawkins typically avoids auctions, but Potter's was unique. According to Christopher Frost's A History of British Taxidermy, 95 percent of all taxidermic mounts from the Victorian era have disintegrated or are of poor quality: moth-eaten, lumpy, scraggly, threadbare. Potter's mounts, preserved with a secret arsenical formula that died with Potter (typical!), hadn't lost a patch of hair or feathers. They were, in the rarified world of taxidermy collectors, remarkable.

"To have and to hold," she chirped, a British Holly Golightly. At thirty-one, Hawkins was far younger than the seasoned traders at the Smugglers Bar, but she posed a serious threat because of her unusual tastes, shrewd tactics, and ample resources. "I won't drink tonight so I can keep my eye on the ball," she said without the hint of a smile. Hawkins learned the art of the deal from her father, a jeweler. She discovered the love of taxidermy at home, under a horse-hoof candelabra. Her grandfather was a big-game hunter, and over the years her relatives have given her taxidermy as gifts: at twelve, a giraffe head and neck from the 1890s ("I still have it, and it's in fantastic condition!"); at fifteen, a polar bear head on a shield (to hang above her bed). Ever since she was a child, she has seen the "true delight" in taxidermy.

Typically, when Hawkins shows up at a client's door, the person is expecting "a mad old woman on the verge of death," not a vivacious brunette with a Prada handbag, a silver necklace strung with seashells, and gold Chinese slippers. "Everybody thinks I'm strange," she said. "I prefer to be strange than normal. I saw a card once that said, 'I was normal until it drove me crazy.'"

Hawkins scanned the museum, annotating her catalog. Then we climbed into her red Mercedes van and drove to Fowey, the nautical village where Daphne du Maurier lived and wrote. The drive wound past picturesque harbors and lush rolling hills. For Hawkins it was all