The Memory of an Elephant
Essay | Zoe Grace Marquedant
An Loxodonta africana—African bush elephant—dominates the rotunda of the museum. Trumpeting silently with his trunk raised over the room as if guarding the information desk at his base. Giving the stately room a touch of life.
Standing thirteen feet and two inches high at the shoulder, the elephant is a reminder of how colossal the natural world can be. Even for a member of his species, the animal is titanic in size. When he was shot in 1955, the elephant was the largest to ever be killed by man.
His creation was no minor task. It was an act of almost witchcraft by the mid-century taxidermists to take the some four thousand pounds of salted skin, preserving the hide as best they could be given the realities of traveling back to America from a train station in Kuito, Angola. Maintaining the flesh and with it fabricating an animal that mirrors how he had been in the wild.
Working from the skin, skull, and leg bones that were gifted to the Department of Zoology by the Hungarian-born hunter Josef J. Fénykövi, it took the team sixteen months to transform the body parts into an eleven thousand pound model. They studied captive elephants, referenced pictures, and poured over a sketch Fénykövi had made of the animal’s measurements.
To start, they built a scale model by shaping clay around a scaffolding of metal, woods, plaster, and fiber. Over this they laid the tanned skin. The hide was then covered in plaster meant to hold each wrinkle in place while the clay was meticulously removed from underneath. The clay was gradually replaced by a combination of papier-mâché, burlap, and aluminum screening, creating both the illusion of bone and muscle as well as structure to hold up the body.
Then, like excavating dinosaur bones, the outer plaster was carefully chipped and brushed away until the elephant emerged fully formed from its sarcophagus-like encasement. The hide was colored with dyed beeswax meant to bring the elephant back to a lively grey. Blown-glass eyes were set in his sockets. The ninety-pound tusks for which he was once hunted and praised were deemed too heavy for this faux skeleton to hold, so they were replaced by fiberglass casts.
The museum’s taxidermists posed him as if he were walking. Moving at no great pace, the creature appears, not charging, but simply lifting his tusks forward. It is an effective illusion. There’s nothing unnatural about the suggestion of his motion. He holds himself as any elephant would, achieving a life-like appearance.
His skin is a realistic, pencil lead grey and gently wrinkled. His tail lifts as if raised at attention. The overall bulk of his body collects where gravity would pull it down, sagging even around the eyes. When he was installed in 1959, the elephant was the largest mammal on display in any museum in the world.
Upon completion, the elephant, like a bride, took Fénykövi’s name. In the winter of 1959, the Fénykövi elephant was unveiled in the rotunda with Fénykövi himself in attendance. It has since stood as the centerpiece of the room for over half a century. Regularly inspected for deterioration, the Fénykövi elephant has undergone minor refurbishments as has the mount aged.
Recently, his setting was modernized and moved off-center to adjoin the information desk. His stand was updated from an organic-looking mound of dirt adorned with dry grass and upturned sticks to a stripped-back base of black and white marble. The base is inlaid with illuminated pictures of wild elephants moving wave-like across great grass plains. Call-outs attempt to educate the public as it passes the mammoth creature on the precarious position of land giants, like the elephant. One engraving beneath his feet reads, “Elephants in Danger: Your Choices Make a Difference.”
Fénykövi had been tracking the animal for over a year before shooting it. He had seen its enormous tracks when hunting rhinoceros in the area and organized a special expedition just to harvest the pachyderm once it wandered again onto land he owned in Angola. Such hunting is now either illegal or highly monitored and seen as socially deplorable in most circles, but back then it was an exhilarating accomplishment and the expedition was documented in a 1956 issue of Sports Illustrated.
In the magazine, readers see Fénykövi and his aide-de-camp Mario happily posing. The record-breaking elephant lays behind them. The image is captioned, “Felled at last after being hunted for hours and hit with 16 high-grain bullets, the mammoth elephant lies on its side amid broken trees and trampled bush...” The six-page spread goes on to detail the hunt, beginning with Fénykövi’s first encounter with the animal. He had been “examining the muddy shore of a lake [when he] saw an unbelievably big elephant track....three feet in length-- more than a foot larger than the world's record trophy.” After adequate preparation, Fénykövi returned, again able to find evidence of the giant's movements and begin tracking him. The journey culminated in a hail of bullets that finally brought the animal down.
After skinning it, Fénykövi thought, “my home is already crowded with trophies of all kinds— lion skins, elephant tusks and feet… I do not think this elephant belongs in a private collection. I have decided to let a big museum have him. There, reconstructed by their experts, he can stand in all the size and majesty he enjoyed in life…”
As much as this donation was an act of charity, it was also in a way a bid for immortality. Fénykövi and his accomplishment of bagging this colossus are enshrined by the elephant, his skill and generosity broadcasted by its place in the rotunda. Apart from the mount, all that remains of Fénykövi today is the article and pictures. In one photo, Fénykövi perches atop the elephant’s ribs with his legs partially crossed, gun in hand, smiling. Like a hairless Roosevelt. Looking masterful. But buried now, deep in the magazine’s archives.
In the museum, the Fénykövi elephant is one of the most memorable items on display. It is a beloved part of the museum. Visitors return just to see him, bringing friends and family with them. It serves as a meeting point for groups and tourists, who agree to gather by the behemoth at an allotted time given how singular and unforgettable he is.
Whether or not Fénykövi intended to educate and engage the public by killing the elephant, whether or not he was driven by a passion for hunting and the chance to bring down such a tremendous creature, enthusiasm and wonder still sparks in visitors. They come through the doors and stand, slaw-jawed. Inevitably, cinematically, some kid will lay eyes on him and yell,
“An elephant!” If I am passing when he does, I will correct him and say,
“We call him Henry.” Given no one remembers Fénykövi.