CHAPTER X
A TAXIDERMIST AS A SCULPTOR
After I had got over my first youthful enthusiasm
about taxidermy and had seen how
it was practiced, I recognized that, as it then
was, it was not an art—that it was in fact little better
than a trade. I had moments when I felt like abandoning
the whole thing. I used to study sculpture,
particularly animal sculpture, in relation to taxidermy.
I remember that when I was twenty-eight
years old I came to New York and spent hours at
the Metropolitan Museum of Art with the itch in my
hands and brain to become a sculptor. But one thing
restrained me. I had enough common sense to know
that while I might become a sculptor and even a
fairly successful one I could never contribute to that
art what I could contribute to taxidermy. I believed
then that I could start taxidermy on the road from a
trade to an art. So I turned away from sculpture.
Nevertheless, the idea of being a sculptor kept running
in my mind. And whenever it did, it depressed
me. Finally, I gave up going near the Art Museum
altogether.
But the discipline that I inflicted on myself I could not inflict on other people. I had to make little clay groups as studies and models for the animal groups
