Posted by Clare Paterson on October 19th, 2022

The large, round walrus with its little head and big whiskers is a star attraction at London’s Horniman Museum. I can recall as a child charging into the Natural History Gallery and rushing up to the giant fiberglass mount on which he sits, and checking to see if the scales were working to be able to compare my weight to his. They were always broken. Since then, the scales have been removed but the walrus continues to sit unperturbed. Apart from a brief holiday in 2013 at the Turner Museum in Margate when the hall was being refurbished, the walrus has sat where he is since the 1890s. A taxidermist visits occasionally to spruce up his coat.

The walrus is an enigma. Very little is known for sure about him. No one can remember now exactly what the scales said he weighed. It is not even clear what sex s/he is. Walruses have extremely large penis bones, sometimes over a meter long. The baculum is prized as a token of fecundity and male strength and would be sold separately at auction. The Principal Curator of Natural Science, Jo Hatton, made a judgment call on the baculum-free Horniman walrus and thought it likely/possible/acceptable to consider him a young male.

The man responsible for the acquisition of the walrus was Frederick Horniman, founder of the eponymous museum. He was an inveterate collector but not an explorer. In fact most of what he bought came from shops or exhibitions. In 1886, London hosted the Colonial and Indian Exhibition in South Kensington, a grand PR exercise for the British Empire. 128,077 visitors poured through its doors in the first week alone. Liberty and Co. had a shop there selling Indian fabrics, but Frederick’s buying ambitions were much bigger. When the exhibition closed, the contents were put up for auction and Frederick’s excitement at what was on offer led to a frenzy of buying. He was like a child let loose in a sweet shop. The sales were divided up into the different exhibition sections so in December Frederick bought thirty-two lots from the Hong Kong Court and at another auction he bid for sixteen lots from the Staits Settlement Court. In January 1887 he bought 500 more objects. His bonanza included Peshawar specimens of fur, cotton printed in gold, Bombay prayer mats, camel reins, lacquered trays and Queensland butterflies in a case. And, of course, the walrus.

The walrus featured in the Canada section. It has often been thought (and indeed newspapers at the time wrote) that he had been shot by the celebrated hunter James Henry Hubbard who had a section of his own in the show. The walrus was in fact exhibited nearby but according to the catalogues, seems not to have been part of Hubbard’s catch. He was in the company of seals, a polar bear, buffalo heads and deer. The centerpiece of the Canadian section, which even outshone the walrus, was a spectacular moose. Queen Victoria visited the exhibition and must have marveled at these giant beasts.

But the Horiman walrus, as everyone knows is not like other walruses. Queen Victoria, and the taxidermists who were landed with the job of mounting the great swathe of skin and the few bones that had accompanied it to London, had never seen a walrus in the wild. They did not know that walruses have big wrinkles. When the walrus was heading to Margate, the opportunity was used to try to x-ray him to find out what the taxidermists were dealing with. The resulting pictures are dark and not easy to read but they show that the walrus has his own toe bones in his flippered feet and his own skull. A wooden plank runs through the centre of his body with wooden struts to the sides to form a basic frame. A steel rod runs along the spine for additional support. A rough body shape was probably created using plaster or clay with woodwool to fill the gaps. Nails and tacks show up on the x-ray, holding everything together. The taxidermists (and it would have taken more than one to cope with his size) stretched his skin over their mould, and as it dried the walrus became even less wrinkled. The result was a smooth, crease-free unique specimen not resembling his living self at all.

When Frederick bought the walrus, he gave no thought to it habitat, its rarity, or the right to kill it. He wanted to bring the world to Forest Hill and give a glimpse to the working people in the neighbourhood of the world beyond and no doubt Britain’s superior place in it. He has since become an icon of the museum and a much-loved feature of it. But in the middle of the last century, he faced eviction. Taxidermy had fallen out of favour and along with a large part of the stuffed collection, he was sold to a Deptford antique dealer who had found a market among seaside photographers. Victorian families could delight in having their picture taken astride a polar bear or mammal of their choice.

It was the walrus’ mighty girth that was his saving grace. He was on the sale list but never taken. It takes five or six hefty people to lift him so he was left behind. He earned himself a reprieve. We may not know his precise weight for sure, but every pound of it has helped keep him in position on his static iceberg in South London.

Mr Horniman’s Walrus: Legacies of a remarkable Victorian Family by Clare Paterson was published on September 29th 2022 by MOM Books.