Tag: Nondescript

The Squire & the Nondescript

Charles Waterton

I’ve been thinking about how to bring this odd couple – traveller and conservationist Charles Waterton and his apeman creation, The Nondescript – to life for a short animation. I’d like to make people smile but also to be able feel that there is something that they can do about the state of the planet, even if it’s not on the scale of exploring the upper reaches of the Essequibo and establishing a full scale nature reserve, as Waterton did.

The lockdown and the restriction of a one hour a day exercise walk, starting from home, that we were all limited to (with certain notorious exceptions!) made Barbara and I realise how much we miss on our local patch in most years by dashing off to the coast or the hills at every opportunity. There was so much to see as spring unfolded during a spell of almost uninterrupted good weather on our regular walk to the upper reaches of Smithy Brook. And the garden – including our pocket-sized nature reserve – has never received so much love and attention.

With all that’s being going on, can a Georgian Squire have any message that is relevant to us? Well, yes, loads actually:

Black Lives Matter

‘Slavery can never be defended: he whose heart is not of iron can never wish to be able to defend it . . . he wishes in his soul that the traffic had been stifled at birth’

Charles Waterton, 1825

Charles Waterton married a woman of mixed race (Anne’s maternal grandma was Arawak) and he travelled with freed slaves on his ‘wanderings’. Waterton trained a freed slave, almost certainly John Edmonstone, in the art of taxidermy. In turn Edmonstone, then based at 37, Lothian Street, Edinburgh, taught young medical student Charles Darwin and, we believe, through telling him stories of his travels with Waterton, inspired Darwin to visit the rain forests himself.

So we might not have had Darwin’s theory of evolution if it hadn’t been for Waterton’s ability to educate and inspire. I believe that he can still inspire us today.

Covid-19

Waterton was part of the first team to successfully carry out a tracheotomy under anaesthetic, not only that, but he supplied the anaesthetic, curare, which he’d collected himself in Guyana. So you could argue that he played a small part in preparing the way for a treatment that during the current epidemic has saved thousands of lives.

My animation won’t go into any of the above connections but I think that it’s important to see Waterton as more than an amiable eccentric – even though that’s the character that I’m basically sticking to in the animation!

I hope that I can suggest that there’s a backstory to my character that is worth dipping into.

Animating Waterton . . . and The Nondescript

Character sketches

I’m planning an animation with a Charles Waterton character who will be a Wallace & Gromit-style Plasticine figure in a miniature stage set based on Waterton’s study at Walton Hall. Waterton enthusiastically describes his conservation efforts which are all on a rather grand scale. This is where my second character, Waterton’s sidekick ‘The Nondescript’ comes in: he comes up with simpler, smaller and-here’s-one-you-can-make-at home projects, which we can all tackle.

My version of Waterton’s famous creation is more down-to-earth than the Squire himself. He might be from the Deepest Jungles of South America but he’s no Paddington Bear. He’s part Spirit of the Forest and part trusty retainer, like John Ogden, Waterton’s gamekeeper, but he probably also has a hint of easy going rock star charisma about him (perhaps like Francis Rossi from Status Quo?). He’s developing into an interesting character.

I like the partners-in-crime camaraderie of the pair in my first sketch. I can imagine the duo getting into all sorts of scrapes as they create ‘The World’s First Nature Reserve’ at Walton Park.

storyboard

I’ve already tackled the story of the nature reserve in one of my pocket-sized local guides, Waterton’s Park, and in Part III: The Defence of Nature in John Whitaker’s Charles Waterton, A Comic Book Adventure. When I drew the comic strip, I thought of it in terms of a storyboard for a live-action film, so this time it’s less period drama and hopefully more like Aardman’s The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, which featured Charles Darwin. That was a lot of fun, right down to the end credits. I must also try and take a look at Chris Butler’s The Missing Link, which featured a Nondescript character coming in from the wilds.

Spirit of the Woods

AFTER SPENDING several hours drawing the Nondescript in Wakefield Museum today, I feel that I’ve got more questions about it – or him – than I had before I started.

The naturalist Charles Waterton (1782-1865), who created this missing link to demonstrate his innovative method of taxidermy, wrote that the Nondescript or Itouli ‘has a placidity of countenance which shows that things went well for him in life’ but I feel that the creature is wistful rather than self-satisfied. There’s a suggestion that this zoological hoax may have been intended as a satirical portrait of the customs officer who had the temerity to charge import duty on a collection of tropical bird skins that Waterton was bringing into the country to display in his museum at Walton Hall near Wakefield. For me it goes a bit deeper than Spitting Image style satire; there’s a Sphinx-like enigma about him.

You might assume that as an ape-man, the Nondescript is Waterton’s riposte to Darwin’s theories on our origins but it dates from 1824/25, 35 years before the publication of The Origin of Species.

Waterton’s starting point for this creation was the skin of a Red Howler monkey which he collected on the last of his four Wanderings in South America in 1824.

The Nondescript is often seen as a joke that went wrong but I see him as a forerunner of characters (and hoaxes) such as King Kong, Piltdown Man and the Psammead in E Nesbit’s Five Children and It.

The Nondescript and the rest of the Waterton collection are currently not on public display because the Museum is in the process of moving to new premises in Wakefield One.