Cranioklepty Read Free Page B

girl of 8.” 31 There was something captivating about Soliman, this taxidermied man in a room of frozen nature. He had lived beyond death, been broughtback from decay to defy time. It was an idea that would stay with Rosenbaum and grow in him in the years to come.
    It’s not entirely surprising that someone like Rosenbaum would be drawn to this stuffed man. Soliman’s figure was special in part because the process of taxidermy was still in its infancy— it wouldn’t come into high demand until later in the nineteenth century, when European colonialists needed a reliable way to transport hunting trophies and zoological specimens back home. In particular, very few taxidermists had found a way to stuff a human in a realistic manner. “All the efforts of man to restore the skin of his fellow creature to its natural form and beauty, have hitherto been fruitless,” Sarah Bowditch wrote in her taxidermy manual in 1820. “The trials which have been made have only produced mis-shapen hideous objects, and so unlike nature, that they have never found a place in our collections. We have only some parts of man, either dried or preserved in spirits of wine, sufficiently entire to be recognized.” 32
    Either she was unaware of Soliman or judged him to be one of those “mis-shapen hideous objects” because the lone exception that Bowditch mentioned is the work of Frederick Ruysch, who was well known for his exotic and groundbreaking preparations. A hundred years earlier Ruysch had found a way to preserve “wet” specimens using a mixture of mercury oxide, blue pigment, and clotted pig’s blood, and in 1717 he sold his uniquespecimens to Peter the Great, who built an elaborate wonder cabinet around them. Ruysch was so famous that in 1824 the poet Giacomo Leopardi composed an operetta about him titled
Dialogue between Frederick Ruysch and His Mummies
, in which Ruysch’s specimens come to life for a single night to explain the mysteries of death. “What were we?” the mummies sing,
    What was the bitter point called life?
Stupendous mystery is today
Life to our minds, and such
As to the minds of the living
Unknown death appears. As when living
From it death fled, now flees
From vital flame
Our naked nature
Not joyous but secure;

For to be happy
Is denied to mortals and denied the dead by Fate.
33
    Ruysch’s mummies, Bowditch noted, were an exception, “and since the bony part of our body is the only one which we are able to preserve entire and in its natural position,” Bowditch recommended that the best way to preserve a human was by cleaning and displaying the skull.
    R OSENBAUM’S ATTEMPTS TO
gain permission to wed were stymied at every turn. Gradually his description of the city he loved gave way to bleakness. “No day can be lived to the end without there being something distressing about it,” he wrote after a particularly bitter row with Therese’s mother. The day he turned twenty-eight years old he summed up his life thus far: “We torment and vex ourselves, and do not know why; we drag ourselves along in the chains of misery—to the grave.” 34
    Though he was constantly beset by depression, his love for Therese never wavered, and if anything he felt the most pain at having caused her so much grief. “May she become my wife soon,” he wrote at one point, “so that I may make recompense, through fidelity and love, for her having suffered so much.” 35 At no point did he think of dropping his pursuit. His only choice was to persevere and hope that his fortunes would change. But the tensions continued to mount. The longer the courtship was prolonged, the more his loathing for her mother grew, as did his enmity for the prince.
    By December 1799 Rosenbaum had grown increasingly impatient and, sensing that the time was right, finally brought the prince the marriage license for his signature. The prince took the document,