Book Review: Tracking the Major

There were some very nice things on offer: at least three Mannlichers, one with the famous rotary magazine, all with the ‘double set trigger’ mechanism, that can both aid accuracy and render the consumption of roughage unnecessary. For me the star of the show was a rather scruffy and well used Rigby take-down [obvs chambered in .275]. 

As you can imagine it’s been about a bit. The stock has some scratches, while in two pieces it’s been dropped onto something hard denting one mating plate where the two parts meet, it had been re-barreled in the 90′s and had a chamber sleeve added sometime after. One of the more lived-in Rigbys.
Like a wand in your hands, the stock’s semi-pistol grip worthy of the name, super petite, and svelte at 7 lbs 2oz. Now 115 years old the bolt’s travel has worn as smooth as a smooth thing’s smooth bits. Not, perhaps one for a collectors safe, but a real traveling sportsman’s rifle that would earn you a hit-tip from any aficionado, and derision from anyone with an ounce of fiscal probity.

The Victorian-Edwardian transition, the second surge of industrial revolution, must have been a great time for the rifleman. When adventurous english gents would embark on expeditions to far flung corners of the world with a realistic expectation of adding to the sum of human knowledge. For the gentleman explorer it was considered, if not an act of devotion, certainly one’s patriotic duty to record the whole escapade. As Queen Victoria passed and Prince Edward sat in the big chair. A new age of recording the moment had begun. The birth of more portable photography, cinematography, the telegraph, audio recording for broadcast, and an age of prolific taxidermy. Newsworthy moments were transmitted by Reuters and Pathe back to the public; samples and specimens were preserved and prepared for display in cabinets of curiosities and diorama, in sizes from desktop to needing to build an extension on to your house.

By the 1970s and 80s the baby had been chucked out with the bathwater. Explorers were still just about ok, fur coats and taxidermy were out, and big game hunters, unthinkable! The once heroic figure of the sunburned Englishman in a pith helmet wasn’t a passionate naturalist and ethnographer, he’d become a figure of fun to be mocked and derided. The life stories of these intrepid eccentrics were only remembered at places like Bisley, the reading rooms of moth-eaten gentleman’s clubs, and the Bambi Basher’s bookshelves.

Taking a break from leaving greasy paw-marks over the merchandise I happened to be at the right end of the room (funnily enough where the free champagne was being served) to hear someone from Holts announce that Andrew Joynes was launching his book ‘Tracking the Major – sketches from the Powell-Cotton Museum’. Then he mentioned Quex Park the major’s estate. Theres a street not too far from where I grew up called Quex Rd, which is an unusual sounding place name, my ears pricked up.

Such was the scale of his collecting that some of the skins he shipped across the world didn’t get incorporated into his museum for more than 30 years. 

The most famous taxidermist of the day, Rowland Ward, wanted to mount Powell-Cotton’s elephant, which has the second largest tusks ever recorded, and mount it life-size. This would mean raising the height of the roof at Quex Park. Powell-Cotton felt there had to be an end to the expenditure somewhere and declined. Rowland Ward was adamant, perhaps guessing correctly that the days of the really big elephants were at an end, and made his case that the mount could be life-size if he did the work for free, and Powell-Cotton paid for the raising of the roof. They shook hands and the elephant is still there today.

Andrew Joynes has done a great job of sifting through the major’s meticulously notated stories behind many of the exhibits. A favourite anecdote: