The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (38 page)

It was, reported the
Sun,
“the most unique and beautiful spectacle ever beheld.”

Among the many avid readers of the moon series was Caleb Weeks of Jamaica, Long Island, who shortly afterward embarked on a ship bound for Cape Town. Weeks was locally prominent as the owner of a menagerie—a traveling collection of animals, something of a precursor to the modern-day circus. In the 1830s, menageries were a highly competitive but flourishing business; they enjoyed a near-universal appeal, as they were at once unabashedly showy (a menagerie would often make its entrance into town as a long caravan of brightly painted wagons, its arrival heralded by a
– 223 –
0465002573-Goodman.qxd 8/25/08 9:57 AM Page 224

the sun and the moon

marching band) and at the same time unassailably educational, introducing their patrons to the wonders of the natural world. By 1835 sixteen traveling menageries were competing for the public’s attention, including James and William Howe’s New York Menagerie, which boasted an elephant, two leopards, a camel, a gnu, two ostriches, a pelican, several guinea pigs, and an albino raccoon. The rival Boston and New York Menagerie had much the same brood (not, it seems, the albino raccoon), along with a polar bear, a tapir, an ichneumon, and a display of wax figures. Another menagerie had a rhinoceros said to have been purchased from the Crown Prince of Cal-cutta. Caleb Weeks’s own menagerie had been the first to exhibit a giraffe, perhaps the most astonishing of all the African mammals. (The giraffe proved to have an unforgivingly delicate constitution, for it soon died; its skeleton, however, was carefully preserved and displayed for many years afterward.) The proprietor of a menagerie had always to be scouring the world in search of never-before-seen creatures to capture the public imagination—and so Caleb Weeks had set out to Cape Town, in the hopes that in the jungles of southern Africa he might find an animal that was as remarkable as the giraffe, but also more durable.

At his hotel, Weeks inquired at the front desk about where he might find Sir John Herschel, the eminent British astronomer. He was delighted to learn that Sir John was in that very hotel, and would cordially agree to meet him. The name of that hotel is no longer known, but it would have been one of the few grand hotels that Cape Town could then offer, the type that attempted to re-create at the farthermost tip of Africa the splendor of English club life, with thick draperies and plump chairs and side-boards groaning with decanters of brandy and Madeira: grand enough that John Herschel visited nearly every afternoon (his observatory was some five miles away), sitting in a cozy back parlor where he smoked his daily pipe and read the journals newly arrived from Europe and America.

Much like his fellow showman P. T. Barnum, Caleb Weeks was a man who enjoyed nothing better than a jest. (His obituary described him as

“a person possessed of a fund of humor and merriment rarely met with.”) Entering the parlor where the world-famous astronomer awaited him, he identified himself and solemnly announced that he had the honor of presenting Sir John with the American report of his “great astronomical discoveries.”

Surprise passed across John Herschel’s face, his large pale eyes growing briefly larger. He was certainly flattered by the attention, he said

– 224 –

0465002573-Goodman.qxd 8/25/08 9:57 AM Page 225

Moonshine

after a moment, but he could not conceive how there might be an American report of his activities, as he had not yet written a report on the subject himself.

That might well be, Weeks answered, but the information must have gotten out somehow, because here was the full account in print—and with that he presented Herschel with the issues of the
Sun
containing installments of the moon series, and the pamphlet
A Complete Account of the
Late Discoveries in the Moon.
Then, with a bow, he excused himself and left the astronomer to his reading.

Weeks rejoined the other members of his expedition in the hotel’s public room; no more than a few minutes later John Herschel strode into the room in a state of great excitement. “This is a most extraordinary affair!”

he exclaimed. “Is this really a reprint of an Edinburgh publication, or an elaborate hoax by some person in New York?”

He could not say for certain, Caleb Weeks replied; all he knew was that every word of the articles was believed in New York—and, as the well-known maxim had it, “what everybody says must be true.”

Sir John laughed at this, and invited Weeks and his party back to his private room, where he peppered them with questions about the story.

Weeks related the events in as much detail as he could provide—he was, by every account, a skilled raconteur—and Herschel listened with mounting surprise and amusement. For the duration of Weeks’s stay, Sir John sought him out to ask him new questions about the series, at one point good-naturedly remarking that he feared the actual results of his observations at the Cape would be considered very humble compared to those ascribed to him in the American account.

That was the first time that John Herschel heard about Locke’s moon series, but it was by no means the last. Not long after Caleb Weeks’s visit, Herschel received the letter from the royal hydrographer, Sir Francis Beaufort, asking if he knew about the discoveries claimed in his name; it was in his reply to Beaufort that Herschel recounted the anecdote about the American clergyman who anticipated raising funds from his congregation to send Bibles to the moon. Months later, on August 21, 1836—as it happened, one year to the day from the
Sun’
s first announcement of the forthcoming series—Herschel wrote another letter on the subject, this one addressed to the editor of the
Atheneum,
the respected London journal of science, literature, and the arts. The letter seems to have been provoked by a recent English publication of the moon series, very likely the pamphlet
– 225 –
0465002573-Goodman.qxd 8/25/08 9:57 AM Page 226

the sun and the moon

Some Account of the Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir
John Herschel at the Cape of Good Hope,
published in 1836 by the prominent London bookseller and publisher Effingham Wilson.

As I perceive by an Advertisement in one of the London Newspapers now before me that the nonsense alluded to in the heading of this letter after running the round of the American and French journals has at last found a London Editor, it appears to me high time to disclaim all knowledge of or participation in the incoherent ravings under the name of discoveries which have been attributed to me. I feel confident that you will oblige me therefore by inserting this my disclaimer in your widely circulated and well conducted paper, not because I have the smallest fear that any person possessing the first elements of optical Science (to say nothing of Common Sense) could for a moment be misled into believing such extravagancies, but because I consider the precedent a bad one that the absurdity of a story should ensure its freedom from contradiction when universally repeated in so many quarters and in such a variety of forms. Dr. Johnson Indeed used to say that there was nothing, however absurd or impossible which if seriously told a man every morning for breakfast for 365 days he would not end in believing— and it was a maxim of Napoleon that the most effective figure in Rhetoric is Repetition. Now I should be sorry, for my own sake as well as for that of truth, that the world or even the most credulous part of it, should be brought to believe in my personal acquaintance with the man in the moon—well knowing that I should soon be pestered to death for private anecdotes of himself and his family, and having little intention and less inclination to humour the hoax, should come to be looked on as a very morose and uncommunicative sort of person when it was found that I could or would say no more about him than what is already known to all the world—vis that he “drinks claret”

“Eats powdered beef turnip & carrot”

and that “a cup of old Malaya Sack”

“Will fire the pack at his back.”

John Herschel was not an especially vain man, not the sort who worried overmuch about prestige or reputation. Still, he was the preeminent astronomer of his time, recipient of all the scientific honors the Crown had

– 226 –

0465002573-Goodman.qxd 8/25/08 9:57 AM Page 227

Moonshine

to offer; he had traveled to the other side of the world to honor and extend his father’s valuable research, and it would only be natural if at a certain point he became angry that, through no fault of his own, his good name had been inextricably linked with these “incoherent ravings.” Despite his jocular allusion to the old English verse about the claret-drinking man in the moon, the tone of his letter was unmistakably harsh and revealed, perhaps, more of the great man’s distress than he might have wished: for, having written it, Herschel reconsidered and decided not to send the letter.

He did, however, send a different letter—a private one, not meant for public consumption. It was dated January 10, 1837; by then nearly a year and a half had elapsed since the first publication of the moon series, during which time John Herschel had clearly been asked more about it, not just on a few occasions but again and again, from correspondents around the world. At the end of an otherwise cheerful letter to his Aunt Caroline, Herschel added an exclamatory postscript, describing a situation he surely had not envisioned on that pleasant afternoon with Caleb Weeks: “I have been pestered from all quarters with that ridiculous hoax about the Moon—in English French Italian & German!!”

English, French, Italian, German: by the time John Herschel sent his complaint to his aunt, the series about his supposed lunar discoveries had been published in those languages and many more besides. Within months of its publication, leading newspapers in London, Edinburgh, and Paris had received copies of the
Sun’
s pamphlet and reprinted it without reference to its New York origins. While the newspapers’ editors had likely read about the moon series in the American papers, the pamphlet provided the story whole and complete—and even if the editors personally believed the lunar discoveries to be a hoax, it made a far more interesting story for their readers if the account were presented just as it had been received, as a “supplement” to the
Edinburgh Journal of Science.
Even the newspapers of Edinburgh, which undoubtedly recognized the story as not emanating from their city, published it, as William Griggs recounted, “with all the gravity and reserve of a synod or council of sages.” Before long the series had spread across Europe, appearing in newspapers in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. In some of the interior parts of Germany, Griggs claimed in his 1852 account, the story had not yet been contradicted, and nearly two decades later was still taken by much of the populace as gospel.

– 227 –

0465002573-Goodman.qxd 8/25/08 9:57 AM Page 228

the sun and the moon

Portrait of a man-bat, from an edition of the moon series published in Naples.

(Courtesy of the New York Public Library.)

In 1836 a complete German edition of the story was published in Ham-burg under the title
Neueste Berichte vom Cap der guten Hoffnung über
Sir John Herschel’s astronomische Entdeckungen.
In Italy two editions were published, one in Naples and one in Milan; the Naples edition, entitled
Delle scoperte fatte nella luna del Dottor Giovanni Herschel,
featured a large illustration of a Vespertilio-homo; this man-bat, though, bore little resemblance to Locke’s description, as he had shoulder-length hair and a full beard, and for some reason balanced himself on one foot, arms raised gracefully above him, as though preparing for a grande jeté. A less fanci-

– 228 –

0465002573-Goodman.qxd 8/25/08 9:57 AM Page 229

Moonshine

A busy lunar landscape, as depicted in a Welsh edition of the moon series. Note the plume of
smoke issuing from the hut of the biped beavers.

(Frontispiece of
Hanes y Lleuad
© The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.) ful illustration could be found in the pamphlet
Hanes y Lleuad; yn gosod
allan y rhyfeddodau a ddarganfyddwyd gan Syr John Herschel,
published in the Welsh town of Llanrwst. That delightful pen-and-ink drawing, its lines as thick and sturdy as those of a medieval woodcut, depicted four of the Vespertilio-homo in animated conversation in the shade of a tree, the group framing a seated mother man-bat cradling her baby; elsewhere, other man-bats frolic at the water’s edge among various shore birds, in the background a hairy bison and several of the biped beavers, their hut issuing a plume of smoke, just as was described in the text.