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Elizabeth Gould Melissa Ashley ELIZABETH GOULD MELISSA ASHLEY n the morning of May 16, 1838, the hazy Lon- don skyline in darkness, Elizabeth Gould went O into the bedroom of her daughters, Louisa, six Elizabeth months, and Eliza, a toddler, and kissed them in their sleep. She crept into the adjacent room to farewell her son, Charles, aged four, who in the following week would be Gould sent to boarding school. Downstairs, drinking tea at the kitchen table and waiting to wish Elizabeth well, chatted A Natural History her mother and a cousin. During the next couple of years, these women would be entrusted with the care of Eliza- beth’s children while she studied the birdlife of Australia with her husband, John Gould. The Goulds were motivated to voyage to the colonies by the prospect of making ornithological history. John re- Cape petrel signed his position as keeper and stuffer of birds with the showing Zoological Society to become a corresponding member, the coveted title given to explorers like Alfred Russel Wallace, blood from William Swainson, Johann Natterer, and other far-fung feeding. adventurers. Despite more than ffty years of settlement, a Watercolor comprehensive inventory of Australia’s birdlife had not been and pencil attempted. For almost a decade Elizabeth and John had study by worked as a publishing team, producing seven collections of superbly illustrated hand-colored lithographs of birds Elizabeth from India, South America, Europe, and the South Pacifc. Gould. Elizabeth depicted the famous Galápagos fnches Charles Darwin had collected during his voyage on hms Beagle and “curious” novelty species like the toucan and trogon. Two thousand pounds, the equivalent of forty years of a naturalist’s annual salary, and all of the Goulds’ sav- ings, were funnelled into the expedition. A cabinetmaker ftted the two cabins they booked with customised shelv- ing and writing desks. Rifes and ammunition were pur- chased and oiled, taxidermy tools selected, a camp stove bought to make hot chocolate, along with hogs-hair and sable paint brushes; watermarked paper, quills with nibs of lark, goose, and swan; pencils and crayons; expensive glass bottles to store wet specimens; and tins of many sizes to pack the dried skins. Personal effects and luxuries like chocolate and novels were organised. And wages set aside for the three assistants the Goulds’ hired, John Gilbert, an Spectacled experienced naturalist; James Benstead, a manservant; and Mary Watson, a lady’s maid with experience working in petrel study India. Elizabeth and John also brought along their eldest by Elizabeth son, John Henry, aged seven. Gould. CATAMARAN 41 Despite Elizabeth’s composure in farewelling her chil- The Parsee dropped anchor on the island of Tenerife for a longitude, important information for ornithologists who, On the other hand, the bird’s plumage, morphologi- dren, at the commencement of the carefully prepared ven- night. John and his men disembarked to explore the hot as far back as the 1830s, were concerned with questions of cally detailed on the sketches to show their outline and ture, her thoughts were troubled. A letter to one of John’s interior of Santa Cruz, leaving Elizabeth and Mary to the range and distribution. feather groupings, is uncolored. It’s possible to add color correspondents reveals her state: cooler conditions of their berth. Sails unfurled, the barque Picture Elizabeth, her bonnet tied on, paper clamped detail later; the plumage on a taxidermied specimen does skirted France and Spain, tacking the east coast of Africa to her easel. Her skirt reaches to her ankles, the sleeves of not fade as dramatically as the “soft parts,” as long as it’s It was Mr Gould’s intention to have written to you where hundreds of medusas, or Portuguese man-of-wars, her blouse cover her wrists. With one hand she mops at her protected from sunlight. again before leaving England but unhappily he was were seen foating in the waves, incandescent in the ship’s sweating brow, with the other she sketches the outline of a John wrote to the zoological society that Elizabeth prevented from so doing by the sudden and severe evening lights. The adventurers marvelled at fying fsh, pair of Cape petrels, foating near the rowboat. Blood drips enjoyed drawing and sketching on the Parsee. indisposition of Mrs Gould which inducing the which moved across the ocean’s surface in a series of long from the foregrounded bird’s partially open bill. Pelagic utmost fears for her safety, rendered it very doubtful leaps, like locusts. John wrote home that they were enter- species, such as petrels, spend most of their lives on the One of the fnest examples I possess [of the silver- up to the last moment whether they would be able tained by schools of porpoise and a pod of whales, mostly wing, excreting salt from a tube above their bills. They grey petrel] was captured with a hook and line and to go or not and incapacitated him from attending the black species, but a single sperm whale was discovered can smell blood from great distances. The Cape petrels thus afforded Mrs Gould an opportunity of making to any but the most urgent matters of business. among the group, scars on its side from battling a giant were a gregarious tribe, venturing within several yards of a beautiful drawing from life. I accompanied them as far as the Downs by which squid. They observed the crew fsh, hauling up nets full the ship’s deck to take pork fat, their cries like the bleat- time Mrs Gould was very much better.1 of shark and turtles and enormous, exquisitely patterned ing of new lambs as they fought for morsels to eat. As a He told of his discovery, using what can only be described molluscs and bivalves. The sharks were hung upside down defense mechanism, their young squirted “foul-smelling as an early tagging method of winding a band around cer- The author was Edwin Prince, the couple’s secretary, who on the foredeck and drained of their fat, which was used oil” from their beaks. For the frst time in her artistic career, tain species’ feet and releasing them back to sea, stunned stayed behind in England to oversee the Goulds’ business as lamp fuel. After doubling the Horn of Africa the trade Elizabeth had the chance to make studies of living birds when, day after day, the tagged birds few alongside the affairs. Elizabeth was not being squeamish in her fears, winds died back and the party lounged on deck, slapping in their natural environments. According to an American ship, travelling many hundreds of miles. He described an there were endless risks in voyaging: mast-splitting storms; at mosquitoes and making fans of their novels, while above naturalist, Charles Pickering, who visited Elizabeth while albino giant petrel that followed the Parsee for three weeks. collisions and hull breaches; encounters with buccaneers; the sailors crawled about the rigging like crabs taking their she stayed at her brother’s farm, Yarrundi, near Scone, she Sadly, many of the pelagics John captured were not re- mortal fevers caught in foreign ports; and deteriorating afternoon exercise. worked quickly at her sketches: leased back to the skies—particularly “novel” or “curious” health from limited exercise and a diet of fsh, pork jerky, Near the islands of Amsterdam and Saint-Paul John species that hadn’t been encountered by science. Rather, and hard biscuit. Once they reached their Australian des- convinced Captain McKellar to allow him to lower a row- Mr. Coxen received us very politely and introduced they were bagged or netted by John and his team to be tination, the party could hardly relax, as countless opportu- boat into the becalmed sea. Gilbert and Benstead climbed us to his sister Mrs. G., to whose talent and transformed into study specimens. Due to the mosquitoes nities for misadventure awaited—bushfre, snakebite, dehy- aboard, raising their frearms to the focks of frigatebirds, industry the world is indebted for the celebrated and fies brought by the humidity of the tropics, the bodies dration, fever, losing one’s bearings, falling off a mountain, fulmars, albatross, storm petrels, petrels, and shearwaters Ornithological Illustrations. I had the pleasure of had to be converted into skins as quickly as possible. drowning, to name just a few. Elizabeth, who had survived that drew near the ship, attracted by a tasty berley of offal seeing the lady at her pencil, and was surprised at Benstead and Gilbert transferred the bagged speci- several advanced-term miscarriages and buried her frst and fat. On the foredeck, John utilised a system of knotted the rapidity of her execution. mens to the makeshift stuffng room belowdecks. The and third sons, knew there was a very real possibility she hooks and fshing line to capture the more inquisitive spe- specimen, say a sooty shearwater, was placed on its back might not see her children again. cies. At that frst musket crack Elizabeth lowered her book Elizabeth illustrated the spectacled petrel with blood pour- on a cloth, its wings tucked back. The downy belly feathers Their vessel, the Parsee, a triple-masted 350-tonne of verse and gathered up her drawing materials. She tied ing from the lower mandible of the foregrounded subject, were parted to reveal the skin so than an incision could be barque, was held up by extreme winds for eleven days in on her painting apron and selected pencils and brushes, its mantle and wings positioned to highlight the shape of made, from the middle of the breast all the way down to the Bay of Biscay, forty miles out of British waters, forcing venturing above deck for the opportunity to draw from life.
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