Time travel at the Merry Museum of Unnatural History
by Maya Naunton on
One of the pleasures of working in the archive of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology here at the American Museum of Natural History is the occasional discovery of humorous writings and drawings whose artists and authors created in the spirit of poking fun at themselves. One such unexpected find was a hand-drawn tribute to Henry Fairfield Osborn on his 30th anniversary of working in the Museum in 1920.
Henry Fairfield Osborn was the man who created the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology and went on to be the president of the Museum from 1908 to 1933. At first glance, he does not strike one as a person who would be open to light humor. Osborn was a scion of a prominent upper-class New York family and the impression one gets at this distance of time is of a person who was acutely conscious of his exalted position in society and scientific circles. Nevertheless, two artists working for the department, Elizabeth M. Fulda, and Christina D. Matthew, felt comfortable enough to present him with this humorous accolade.[1]
The bound volume is titled "As it was in the Beginning: the Horsebone Expedition of the Merry Museum of Unnatural History".
The tribute is full of illustrations and puns (see the "Merry Museum of Unnatural History" and Osborn being referred to as "Horsebone" in the title). At the risk of proving that the joke that needs to be explained is not funny, one must note that Osborn was engaged in and published on the evolution of horses for many years.
The text describes an expedition conducted with the help of a time machine constructed from the specifications as laid out in H.G. Well's "pseudo-fiction entitled 'The Time Machine'".
The conceit is that Osborn (Horsebone) succeeded in getting the financial support of "three of our Benny Factors" who provided 1 million dollars apiece. The Benny Factors desired to remain anonymous out of a very modern desire for privacy . You can see them peeking out from behind the bags of money (below image).
Some of the nicknames given to the expedition participants (the department members) are easy to decipher.
It didn't take long to guess that "the unfortunate Dr. Would-be King Groggery who, in spite of a lifetime devoted to the evolution of vertebrates, has never yet been able to evolve sufficient backbone to say 'No!' when desired to act as secretary for any old society" refers to William King Gregory and "Mr. Barney Pink, a distinguished dinosaur charmer" is Barnum Brown. Others present a more challenging problem. We have not been able to figure out who "Professor Rob Roy of Calumny Loonyversity" (Columbia University) is.
Another person we could not identify is "a well-known Doctor of Science W.I.H. Ballyhoo", "a voluminous contributor to the 'Greatest American', the 'Bamboozler', and the 'Daily Scream'" who was left behind. When Dr. Horsebone addressed a note to "W.I.H. Ballyhoo, Doctor of Science" he murmured "And God help the Science that he doctors!"
Then the time machine took off and "dashed back toward the Eocene Epoch at the rate of 1000 years a minute" and then to the Oligocene.
While visiting the Oligocene the expedition was "rudely interrupted" by a huge windstorm that blew away the expedition's tents, cook stove, pots, and pans, as well as Dr. Horsebone's tin tub and Mr. Barney Pink's feather duster. The expedition was delighted to later find that the tub became "an unexpected instance of the adaptation of the individual to its environment". It transpired that "Poebrotherium, the Oligocene camel" alarmed by the arrival of "man, creation's greatest enemy, with his rifle", found the tub and adapted it as a protective armor, an adaptation it was able to pass on to 4 of its 6 offspring.
Another consequence of the windstorm was the opportunity of "studying the operation of Darwin's law of sexual selection". "Shortly after the hurried departure of Mr. Pink's feather duster, a fine male Diatryma bird was observed pluming himself on a magnificent addition to his tail feathers. The innovation took like wild fire, and the progressive creature found courtship made easy". However, the rejected suitors murdered him in "their jealous frenzy". Which in turn led to the females of the species taking revenge by exterminating every last male, and that "sounded the death knell of their race".
Then the party "started for the Cretaceous to gather in Mr. Barney Pink". There they witnessed as "a huge Brontosaurus lumbered down an intersecting valley and sniffed suspiciously". Mr. Pink managed to lasso the beast and the time machine lifted "hoisting with it many tons of nervous excitable dinosaurity, loudly protesting the abduction".
Unfortunately, later in the journey while the time machine was over the valley of the Congo, "and having already come to within a year of the present time", the Brontosaurus "had a severe attack of hysteria and finally kicked loose, fell into a tropical rain forest which gently broke its fall, and scuttled away into the jungle in a state of extreme coyness".
Other adventures along the way included an unsuccessful visit to the Heidelberg Man (Homo heidelbergensis an extinct species or subspecies of archaic human that existed during the Middle Pleistocene) who refused to sit for a clay bust by Professor Rob Roy.
After that disappointment, the team decided to visit Mrs. Quiltdown (Piltdown man, (Eoanthropus dawsoni), a proposed species of extinct hominin whose fossil remains were proved to be fraudulent) in England during the Second Interglacial State of the Pleistocene. The machine "winged its way across the broad valley of the English Channel River, our adventurers delighting in the vision of this majestic stream waving with palms and spluttering with hippopotamuses".
They succeeded in locating Mrs. Quiltdown and Professor Roy convinced her to give him a sitting for a portrait followed up by a cup of afternoon tea. Regarding the surprising appearance of tea at that prehistoric time, the explanatory note states "This plant seems to have been indigenous to England and to have flourished there during the warm interglacial climate of the Pre-Chellean".
The expedition ends rather anti-climactically when the participants "alighted once more in the President’s office" "about a twelvemonth later" and "unanimously voted that 'a good time was had by all'".
This volume brought delight to the staff of the project and of the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology who were not aware of its existence prior to its rediscovery.
As we continue our work on processing the material in the archive, we look forward to more such happy findings in the future.
[1] Elizabeth M. Fulda and Christina D. Matthew were just 2 out of a group of female paleoartists who worked with the department. The museum library staff and the staff of the Archives at the Department of Vertebrate Paleontology have been working to uncover and bring to light their contributions to the field. See Beyond Charles Knight: Women paleoartists at the American Museum of Natural History in the early twentieth century by Reitmeyer, Morgan, and Baione and a poster presented at the Research Forum of Society of American Archivists