TheBanyanTree: The years go by ...

[peter macinnis]

Talking of red light districts, Nicolas Baudin left Le Havre in France 
in 1800 with two ships, intent on mapping the Australian coast, but it 
was largely a scientific expedition.  Mind you, it wasn't all fun 
carrying scientists, and he wrote to his friend, the NSW governor, also 
a naval man:

“/I must say here, in passing, that those captains who have scientists, 
or who may some day have them aboard their ships, must, upon departure, 
take a good supply of patience. I admit that though I have no lack of 
it, the scientists have frequently driven me to the end of my tether./”

One of those on board one of the ships, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, was 
an artist when he left Le Havre, but he worked with the scientists, and 
as disease knocked out most of the scientists, he shifted across and 
took on-the-job training as a biologist.

While many specimens were collected in 19th century Australia, the 
scientific work and later storage all happened in Europe. Older 
Australian type specimens are generally to be found in European countries.

We know now that for the sake of accurate science, and for the sake of 
records, collections made in Australia are better studied and stored in 
peaceful Australia, but that notion would not take hold for almost 
another century. It was still the age of the pillaging visitor-expert 
who came to fetch, rather than to study. One Scot went back to Cambridge 
in the 1880s with 1300 pickled echidnas, and having married an 
Australian heiress, did no further research on them.

Over time, that attitude to specimens would change, but it would be a 
perilously slow change, and back then, I was interested in when the 
changes happened. The Good Guys were the Germans, the Bad Guys were the 
British and the French. The Germans wanted their specimens kept in 
Australia, the French and the Brits took everything away with them.

After his voyage, Lesueur wrote up his work and then moved to New 
Harmony in Indiana in 1815 (with his specimens).  While he was there, he 
pursued his trade of naturalist-artist, but in 1837, he returned to 
France and settled in his native Le Havre, taking his collections of 
specimens with him. And so Australian specimens came to be in the 
Natural History Museum in the French port city of Le Havre in 1944.

Europe is currently experiencing its longest-ever period free from war 
in recorded history, but it hasn’t always been so. Florence, the resting 
place of French botanist Julienne Houtou de La Billardière’s Australian 
type specimens, was damaged in World War II and London’s Natural History 
Museum was badly damaged in the Blitz in 1941.

Ports are natural targets in modern warfare, and in that year, the Musée 
d’Histoire Naturelle du Havre was badly damaged by bombing and fire. 
Anyhow, for good and valid reasons, I needed to get to Le Havre, and in 
2004, Chris and I walked around Cyprus, then had a fortnight based in 
Paris, and we allowed one day to visit Le Havre.

We always set out early when we are headed for towns with unusual 
museums. This helps us avoid crowds, but the plan can have its 
drawbacks.  We expected to wander the station, take in the sights, have 
a coffee and a sweet item or two, and then take a slow train, just in 
time for the museum opening at 2 pm.

The snag was that the efficiently helpful SNCF (railway) staff at Gare 
Saint-Lazare railway station in Paris took us in hand and bundled us 
onto a speedy train earlier than the slow service we had planned to 
catch. The combined result of an early start and a fast train was that 
we arrived in Le Havre, three hours before our target museum opened.

It was a chilly, windy and rainy day in late April, more winter than 
summer.  We wandered, buffeted this way and that, through a town where 
unseen (we did not dare look up!) workers above us scrubbed a winter’s 
supply of seagull excrement from buildings and awnings.  To dodge the 
wind-blown spray of lime-rich, fish-stinking splatters, we took refuge 
in a tavern.

We were drawn to one tavern because it was on the intersection of Rue 
Lesueur and Rue Laperouse, and we decided to wait there for the museum 
to open so we could see Lesueur’s Australian collections, relatively 
unspattered. Rue Lesueur was clearly appropriate, but unless you are 
Australian, I need to explain that Laperouse was an early French voyager 
to Australia.

It was, we decided a Sign from on high. The occupants of this small 
tavern resembled the chorus of pimps and madames from 'Irma La Douce', 
but we took them just as rural folk, and they made Chris and I welcome. 
We must have seemed equally exotic to them, but we chatted in franglais, 
and got along for an hour or so, before we went out, through the drizzle 
of dilute bird-droppings that was still splashing down, to examine some 
stuffed Australian animals.

Later, I learned that our refuge was at the epicentre of the town’s red 
light district. The other customers were almost certainly professionally 
qualified for roles in the film, but they welcomed us as fellow humans 
on a cold day.

I will always recall rainy windswept, chilly Le Havre, on a spring day 
where winter struck back, as the shop awnings dripped stickily after 
their annual scrubbing to redistribute the guano deposits contributed by 
the hardy seagulls. I probably learned more at the Musée de la Marine in 
Paris, but Le Havre, the port so many French explorers departed from, 
has fonder memories for me.

And being able to say, honestly, “when we were in the red light district 
or Le Havre…” is a good way of getting attention at a dinner, almost as 
good as “when I used to light a bushfire each afternoon…”

But that’s another story…


-- 
Peter Macinnis             petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au
Chair of Aggressive Calligraphy and Competitive Pharmacognosy,
Head Keeper, Augean Stables, Centaur Division
http://oldblockwriter.blogspot.com/