ax blades — all shiny and sharp. And I real- 

 ized that i. had always pictured Victorian 

 tools as rusted and dull — without ever ar- 

 ticulating to myself the obvious point that 

 they must have been gleaming and func- 

 tional when first made. I am always 

 amazed at the power of a prejudiced as- 

 sumption (however absurd, and especially 

 when backed by a mental picture, for pri- 

 mates are visual animals) to derail the log- 

 ical thinking of basically competent peo- 

 ple hke myself. 



1 remember Glasgow as the planet's 

 ugliest city upon my first visit in 1961, and 

 as one of the loveUest places I had ever 

 seen upon my return in 1991. The differ- 

 ence: Glasgow is the world's greatest Vic- 

 torian city in public and commercial archi- 

 tecture. All the major downtown 

 buildings, horribly soot-blackened and de- 

 crepit in many other ways in 1961, have 

 now been cleaned and showcased, often 

 by converting traffic orgies into pedestrian 

 malls. I was stunned by the exuberance of 

 these buildings, each different in its 

 curves, ornaments, and filigrees; each 

 vying with all the others, yet somehow 

 forming an integrated cacophony (you 

 have to see them to know why my chosen 

 description is not oxymoronic). I was re- 

 volted at my first sight of the Natural His- 

 tory Museum in London — each archway 

 of its elaborate Romanesque entranceway 

 blacker and grimier than the one within — 

 and uplifted by the subtle colors and arch- 

 ing forms of the cleaned building. The 

 Victorian secular glass of Harvard's 

 churchlike Memorial Hall passed beneath 

 my notice for twenty-five years. Now I 





force these wonderful windows, designed 

 by John La Farge and other great Ameri- 

 can glassmakers, and resplendent in their 

 newly cleaned state, upon the notice of 

 every visitor, for Memorial Hall is stop 

 number one on my personal tour of Har- 

 vard's architecture. 



I now add the Dublin museum to this 

 list of Victorian buildings uplifted from 

 squalor to glory by the simple expedient of 

 restoring them to the original intentions of 

 their architects and designers. Most of all, 

 this splendid restoration taught me some- 

 thing that 1 had never appreciated about 

 Victorian museum design. 



The display of organisms in these mu- 

 seums rests upon concepts strikingly dif- 

 ferent from modem practice, but fully con- 

 sonant with Victorian concerns. Today, we 

 tend to exhibit one or a few key speci- 

 mens, surrounded by an odd mixture of 

 extraneous glitz and more useful explana- 

 tion, all in an effort to teach (if the intent be 

 maximally honorable) or simply to dazzle 

 (nothing wrong with this goal either). The 

 Victorians, who viewed their museums as 

 microcosms for national goals of territor- 

 ial expansion and faith in progress fueled 

 by increasing knowledge, tried to stuff 

 every last specimen into their gloriously 

 crowded cabinets — in order to show the 

 full range and wonder of global diversity. 

 (In my favorite example. Lord Rothschild, 

 richest and most prolific of all great collec- 

 tors, displayed zebras and antelopes in 

 kneeling position or even supine, so that 

 one or two extra rows could be inserted to 

 include all specimens in floor-to-ceiling 

 displays at his museum in Tring.) The 



^I^Q^t-l^i^ 



standard Victorian cabinet (including 

 many in the Dublin museum) provides 

 several rows of locked wooden drawers 

 beneath the creatures on display under 

 glass — to house all the museum's addi- 

 tional specimens, which can then be 

 shown to professionals and others with 

 specialized interests. 



I realize that this tactic of displaying 

 every last specimen includes a dubious 

 side in recording the spoils of aggressive 

 and militaristic imperialism, with all the 

 attendant racism and ecological disregard. 

 But do honor and acknowledge the coun- 

 tervaiUng virtue of exhibiting such pleni- 

 tude — as best expressed in the words of 

 Psalm 104: "0 Lord, how manifold are thy 

 works!... the earth is full of thy riches." 

 You can put one beetle in a cabinet (usu- 

 ally an enlarged model and not a real spec- 

 imen), surround it with fancy computer 

 graphics and push-button whatsits, and 

 then state that no other group maintains 

 such diversity. Or you can fill the same 

 cabinet with real beeties representing a 

 thousand species — of differing colors, 

 shapes, and sizes — and then state that you 

 have tried to display each kind in the 

 county. 



The Victorians preferred this second ap- 

 proach — and 1 am with them, for nothing 

 thrills me more than the raw diversity of 

 nature. Moreover, the Victorian cabinet 

 museum thrives upon an exquisite tension 

 in conrniingling (not always comfortably, 

 for they truly conflict) two differing tradi- 

 tions from still earlier tunes: the seven- 

 teenth-century baroque passion for dis- 

 playing odd, deformed, peculiar, and 

 "prize" (largest, smaUest, brightest, ugh- 

 est) specimens — the Wunderkammer (or 

 cabinet of curiosities) of older collectors; 

 and the eighteenth-century preference of 

 Linnaeus and the Enhghtenment for a sys- 

 tematic display of the regular order of na- 

 ture within a coherent and comprehensive 

 scheme of taxonomy. (Pardon a littie toot 

 on the personal horn, but my recent book 

 with photographer Rosamond Purcell, 

 Finders Keepers, illustrates thesedifferent 

 components in notable collectors from 

 Peter the Great to Lord Rothschild.) 



1 have long recognized the theory and 

 aesthetic of such comprehensive display: 

 show everything and incite wonder by 

 sheer variety. But I had never realized how 

 powerfully the decor of a cabinet museum 

 can promote this goal until I saw the 

 Dubhn fixtures redone right. Light floods 

 flirough the glass ceiUng, creating a fasci- 

 nating interplay of brightness and shadow 

 reflecting off both specimens and architec- 



16 Natural History 1/94 



