Many non-fiction books are interesting or satisfying to read; Monte Reel’s book “Between Man and Beast” is also fun.  Reel tells the story of Paul Du Chaillu, a “forgotten explorer” of Africa who was important to the discovery of the gorilla by Western science.  Paul’s story is set against “Victorian London at its Dickensian peak, New York on the verge of the Civil War, and the African interior at its most lush.”  Reel’s descriptions are as striking as anything in a novel.

Reel describes white missionaries and traders as well as Africans.  I thought it was interesting to read that everyone, whites and Africans, came to trust and like the African coastal tribes they were familiar with, but claimed inland tribes were vicious cannibals.  As Paul traveled inland, he judged the tribes he met as “fellow men worthy of respect”, but they told him the tribes further inland were vicious cannibals.  Some African tribes thought the white traders must be cannibals since they bought and sold people like cattle.

Paul has been criticized for telling exaggerated, self-serving stories of Africa.  Reel says, while he made errors and exaggerations, he “got so much correct [that] becomes more noteworthy than his shortcomings.”  Reel offers an interesting reason for some of the exaggeration:  the medicines of the time.  Paul took large amounts of quinine, opiates, and alcohol which were thought to prevent “the fever”.  “More than deadly beasts and warring tribes, [the fever] was what killed explorers”, but no one at the time knew how malaria and other illnesses were spread.  Paul was so concerned he took much higher doses than the doctors of the day recommended.  “The poisons filtering through his system were probably altering his perceptions” and “were linked to depression, obsessive behavior, and even intense spiritual experiences.”  Paul’s perceptions “flowered into surreally vivid, almost psychedelic, phantasmagoria.”

Paul collected (that is, shot and preserved) many birds and mammals, but he is best known for collecting gorillas.  The tales told by locals about gorillas put me in mind of the cryptid Bigfoot.  Given what we know about gorillas today, many of these tales can’t possibly be true, including the notion that gorillas could not be killed:  Gorillas fell in great numbers to European and American rifles.  While Western scientists initially discounted tales of gorillas, once whites began asking and paying for gorilla remains, skulls and other evidence quickly accumulated.  Eventually live gorillas were captured, often by shooting a mother with a baby so young it clung to her body instead of running away.

In this age before telephoto lenses, large numbers of animals were routinely shot as specimens.  Their skins, bones, and even entire carcasses preserved in alcohol were shipped to scientists in London and New York.  This connection brings many famous names into the story:  Livingston, Darwin, Richard Owen (“one of London’s most celebrated men of science”), Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and P. T. Barnum.  Abraham Lincoln makes a cameo appearance that is delightful enough to forgive it being off-topic.

In America, the Civil War loomed.  New York was a volatile place:  “Five Points [in New York was] one of the most vibrant, dynamic places in America… the hottest recess in a boiling melting pot.”  Reel mentions “the Irish jig and the African shuffle fused to create a new form:  tap dance.”

Scientists often behaved dreadfully, “burdened by no ethical qualms whatsoever.”  They wrote anonymous attacks on each others work, stole credit for discoveries, and engaged in petty rivalries.  For example, Paul had been promised financial support by New York scientists, but they took his specimens and never paid.  He tried to raise money by displaying some of his collection, including stuffed gorillas, on Broadway, but was outdone by P. T. Barnum.  Barnum displayed a “What Is It”:  a black man suffering from microcephaly dressed in a partial monkey suit.  “Paul and his very real gorilla… [were] thoroughly upstaged by a living, breathing hoax.”

Paul did better in London where he moved among the elite scientific class.  His lectures and displays (the stuffed male gorillas were castrated to avoid offending Victorian ladies) were well attended and his published journals, with “abrupt shifts between sensational hyperbole and dispassionate debunking”, did very well.

With greater success came greater controversy, started by fellow explorers and the science community and extending into the Victorian culture wars over evolution, prohibition, sexuality, and racism (especially significant since Paul hid his mixed-race background).  His “celebrity quickly souring to infamy”, Paul returned to Africa to repeat his travels, this time to gather the scientific data his critics demanded.

I have included many quotes from the book to give a feel for Reel’s writing.  This is a wonderful book about a romanticized era, a fascinating individual, and a remarkable animal.  The book deserves wide appeal.