Page:In brightest Africa.djvu/201

 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