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Elephantina

A Huge Misunderstanding

By Andrew Drummond

6 May 1706

I slept for the rest of the night, and awoke this morning to a cold haar that had crept off the Tay; it is my opinion that the streaming cold air is far healthier for the people of Dundee than the strong sun that stood in the sky in the past week – the heat and unmoving air of summer is a breeding pond for pestilence and disease, cooking up the plague from Elephant broth – while the cold haar keeps the humours in healthy balance. Many things I have chosen not to learn from Dr. Blair, but he and I were in complete agreement on this matter; as was Mr. Robertson the preacher, for different reasons entirely. I made my way to the surgeon’s house, where he awaited my arrival with some eagerness.

“Today,” he said, “I will anatomize the Head.”

I inclined my own head, an action which the surgeon took for acquiescence, sought out my pen and paper, and began to record the structure of the Elephant’s Head. One by one, the relevant pieces of bone were retrieved from the drying pile in the yard, and, under Dr. Blair’s jealous eye, were examined, labelled, and represented on paper. At last, after so many days of bestial toil, I was able to exercise my art without significant interruption. Dr.Blair had a great interest in the formation of the head – as did I; for it must be said that the most prominent features were attached to the head. Were man or woman to be furnished with such a long nose and such enormous teeth as the Elephant, then the beast itself would be no great thing to admire. Fortunately, I would argue, the trunk and the tusks are in no way common in appearance among my fellow-men; at least, not in Dundee.

Since I have not travelled, I cannot tell what may be fashionable in England.

We began with the main part of the skull, which measured some three feet in diameter, and which had two eminences at either side of the front. Mr. Menteith stood back and voiced the coarse opinion that the two eminences reminded him of “Miss Gloag’s **** – but nae sae big!”⁵⁶ I castigated him roundly, but he found support in his vulgar outburst from Dr. Blair, who laughed heartily and pointed out that “no less an authority on the Elephant than Mr. Ray has not unfitly compared them to a man’s buttocks”.⁵⁷ I know not who this Mr. Ray is, or was; but my judgement of him is poor, if his comparisons are so coarse; but never so coarse as Mr. Menteith’s. When all mirth had died down, we returned to the more sober and responsible task of study.

We proceeded from these two eminences to a thorough examination and delineation of the various other holes and protuberances in that massive skull – the holes for the eyes, for the root of the trunk, and for the tusks.⁵⁸ Dr.Blair, as we studied the tusks, told us that the Elephant of Dr. Moulins had had larger tusks than our specimen; but our surgeon was not able to conclude whether this was a result of the former being male and the latter female; or the former being older, and the latter younger; or indeed, of the tusks being broken, as appeared to be the case. And, it seems, a German philosopher named Tentzelius⁵⁹ has alleged that the tusks on some Elephants were said to be up to eight feet long, and weigh one hundred pounds, or even twice as much, that from such tusks were made door-posts. In a flight of my imagination, I wondered whether the Princes of India might perhaps build great palaces from the skulls and tusks of dead Elephants. I made the mistake of expressing this thought aloud – if I have a weakness in company, it is to say things that need not be said; Dr. Blair made no reply, but expressed his own opinion that perhaps the Lords of Scotland, when they had sold the nation into bondage, might make palaces of the buttocks of the men they had sold.⁶⁰ The mirth of Mr. Menteith was uncontrolled at this startling image. There are two kinds of men in the world: those who find everything – good or evil, comic or tragic – a subject for mirth; and those who do not.⁶¹

In all of this long day, I was pleased that my employer did not call upon me to do any more than exercise my natural talents, and so I was at liberty to make exact drawings of every aspect of the skull.⁶² It was with an uncommon sentiment of satisfaction, therefore, that I packed away my instruments at the end of that day, and made my way back to my home, stopping, on the road, to refresh the memories of several trades-men of my recent favours to them. I found that Mr. Dalrymple, the merchant of vegetables, was open to trade with me on being offered a small piece of tongue; in similar manner, and with a similar item, did I trade for cheese with Mr. Montgomery, the dairy-man. The shop of Mr. Sutherland, however, was once more closed at an early hour – a strange action indeed for a man interested in the sale of candles.

However, I preferred not to engage in idle speculation about his lack of interest in trade; and hurried on,

bearing potatoes, cheese and a small morsel of fish for my family.

Before I reached the safety of my home, I noticed that something was amiss on the streets of Dundee. There was an illness abroad. Men and women were lying on the ground, eyes staring wildly, from the depths of the closes there were shouts of insane laughter and dangerous reels were performed in and out of house-entrances. From the windows of tenements came showers of fleas, straw and feathers, as women pulled apart bedding and hurled it to the breeze. In the gutter, filthy with ordure, a respectable clerk wrestled like a lion with a broad woman of low repute, the pair of them utterly naked and silent. I beheld old Mr. Douglas, from a cough barely able to continue his trade as coffin-maker, circling energetically on one foot, while he whistled powerfully to the seagulls above. I met Mrs. Speirs, who greeted me with an embrace and a kiss full upon my lips, causing me to drop my potatoes, before she burst into tears and sat down suddenly upon the ground, lamenting that her bonny lad had left her, no more a maiden. A cart, laden with and pushed by weavers, having no horse in attendance, hurtled down the lane, while those aboard shouted “o’er the hill, o’er the sea!”,until finally cart, passengers and three accompanying dogs careered into the wall of the kirkyard and flew in among the grave-stones, screaming with laughter.

It was as if Dundee had in a day become a Bedlam. And then I met my brother Hendrie, hiding in the shadows with a broad grin upon his face. “Aye-aye, Gibby,” said he in a satisfied tone, “yon Elephant-meat has a fair kick, eh?” I hurried home, found my family unaffected, and locked my door. As I write, there is still an air of festivity in the streets outside: the night is filled with the laughter, sobs and screams of dissipation.⁶³

56. Neither Mr. Menteith – whose crude insult upon a part of a lady’s anatomy must not go unremarked – nor Orum, who would have been better not remarking upon it, emerge from this small incident with any credit. Nor is it unambiguous which part of Miss Gloag’s person is in question: we can only make a conjecture from a

distant memory.

57. For his earthy humour, Dr. Blair must not be condemned. A man of great learning must be permitted to amuse as well as educate.

58. We note that, in Dr. Blair’s Essay of one hundred pages, no fewer than six-and-twenty pages are devoted entirely to the Head – the main part of the skull, the upper and lower jaw-bones, the upper and lower teeth, the tusks, the sinus-holes, the internal parts of the ear, the mechanism of the throat, the interior of the skull, and so forth. The head of the Elephant is, we would argue, its most momentous part. We will give you only some hint of the detail to which our fellow Dundonian carried his investigation by quoting the following short passage from his lengthy description of the Jaw-bones:

“As the lower part of the Jaw in its Progress forward runs obliquely downward, so its upper part of the Root of the Teeth runs streight forward, or rather inclines a little upward so that whereas ’tis on 6½ Inches from above to below at the joining of the Teeth, now ’tis 7½ Inches streight downward […] Now we consider the inner part of the Place where we left it, and find it still more plain; where measuring from below the foresaid joining of the two Teeth streight forward, ’tis 4 Inches on each side, till both meet in a Semicircle about 3 Inches Diameter at the lower part, and somewhat nearer at the Root of the Teeth. After it has run 2 Inches upward, it runs streight forward with a convex Surface 4 Inches thick; thence it ascends 4 Inches more to the Root of the Teeth.”

With his facility of words, Dr. Blair once more brings the Elephant to life!

59. Dr. Blair advises us that Dr. Moulins and Dr. Tentzelius were the fore-most Authorities on the matters Elephantine; of course, our Dundonian Hippocrates now towers over these two by far.

60. We are much amused by this thought; clearly, Dr. Blair was in good humour this day!

61. We should not wonder at Orum’s penny-market Philosophy: he is not a man of any wisdom or morality. Mr. Orum, there are two kinds of men in this world: those who sleep well; and those who do not.

62. I t is with a heavy heart, and only from a Christian Duty, that we will acknowledge that Mr. Orum’s engravings were later incorporated into Dr. Blair’s Essay. Our apothecary-surgeon, however, has this to say about them:

“Tho’ the draughts of the Engraver be course, yet I have endeavoured what in me lay to have the Figures true and well-proportion’d”;

and further, that:

“the Copper Plates, which at my own Charges I have caused to be engraven here, I acknowledge might have been done finer in London.”

So much for our master-engraver!

63. A ccepting our responsibility as Editor with the utmost gravity, we have investigated Orum’s strange tale, and we can confirm that no document, letter or report bears witness to such an episode in the history of the sober citizens of Dundee. So much for Bedlam.