The Autobiography of Daniel Mannix

by Daniel P Mannix

 

Chapter 1

Curled up in my lap while I write this is Macho, a tiny squirrel monkey who is one of the gentlest, most affectionate pets I have ever known. Macho does not belong to me; he is the property of my eighteen-year-old daughter Julie, but although for seven years Julie lavished endless attention on Jupo, a spider monkey who had the disposition of King Kong and the strength of Gargantua, Julie does not like Macho. The little fellow cries bitterly when left alone, so taking care of him has been relegated to me. As Julie sadly told me, "Daddy, I'm sorry about Macho, but he just doesn't have a real personality like Jupo."

Jupo certainly had a personality. She bit everyone in the household (except Julie); my son Danny still carries the scar where Jupo ripped open the side of his leg when he was playfully wrestling with his sister. Jupo ran loose about the farm in the summer and established a blockade of the house; no one was allowed in or out without bribing her with fruit. Deliverymen arrived at the house carrying their offerings like ancient priests assuaging the wrath of a vengeful deity. When some guests arrived one day with a little boy who attempted to bypass Jupo's outstretched paw and as a result had to have seven stitches taken in his forearm, Jupo went to the zoo — the first animal I have ever consigned to a life behind bars. Julie visits her there once a week with a present of fruit. Jupo now has a husband, a male spider monkey even bigger and tougher than she. It is amazing and somewhat pitiful to see the once all-powerful Jupo sitting humbly in one corner of the cage while Butch takes the fruit, selects the best pieces for himself, and passes on what is left to his meek consort. "But Jupo seems to admire him for it," Julie told me in bewilderment. "She won't come to me any more; she just goes and sits beside that horrid bully of a Butch whenever he'll let her."

Jupo, the spider monkey, raiding the refrigerator.

Admittedly, after Jupo anything short of a tyrannosaurus would be an anticlimax, and Macho presents no problem. Poor gentle little Macho! Unlike Jupo, who went through the house like an unguided missile, Macho is perfectly willing to sit in my lap watching the typewriter keys clicking away, only occasionally putting out a hand to tug softly at my arm so I will stop long enough to stroke his head and convince him that he's not been forgotten. I must be getting old because, frankly, I prefer Macho to Jupo — but still I can see what Julie means. Macho is almost like a domestic kitten or puppy.

Domestic animals have been bred by man to accept a position of subservience. Wild animals are themselves. Astonishingly little is known about them — how they live, what they eat, above all how they think. Yet for thousands of years keeping wild animals was regarded as an invaluable skill, combining the extrasensory perception of the psychic with the practical knowledge of the scientist. Sir Henry Layard found a bas-relief in the ruins of Khorsabad carved three thousand years ago depicting Persian falconers with their hawks. Alexander the Great was astonished to find rajahs hunting with cheetahs that could outrun his fastest greyhounds; Friar Odoric, who went to China thirty years after Marco Polo, described fishing with trained cormorants; and in sixteenth-century Sweden an entire family would often be supported by a pet otter catching fish. Until recently it was a rare English youngster who didn't have a pet ferret or an American country boy without a pet 'coon. Today all this is fast becoming a lost art.

 

I have always had wild animal pets. My father was a captain in the Navy and during the many years he spent on active service, he and Mother were often away, so I was brought up in my grandparents' home on the Philadelphia Main Line — then largely open country. I didn't have many playmates; the estates were large and seemed inhabited mainly by regal dowagers and grim old gentlemen who lived in savage seclusion among their horses, formal gardens, and shooting preserves. We had only one car, a venerable Pierce Arrow which no one could drive except the chauffeur and which was only produced on formal occasions such as going to church or an occasional wedding. To employ this stately vehicle for such frivolous purposes as driving a boy to a friend's house was virtually unthinkable. Nor did the boy particularly want to be driven. By the time I was fourteen I was six feet two inches tall; gangling, a wretched athlete who had no interest in sports, and a nonconformist — or, as it was called in those days, not regular. From the end of school in June until September I seldom saw another youngster my own age.

My grandparents never worried over my inability to "adjust to a group situation". It was part of the tradition of the Main Line to take eccentricities for granted — they were even considered a sign of good breeding. Across the street from us lived a happily married couple in an old Charles Addams mansion; as the lady was insane, her husband kept her locked in the attic when fits were upon her. As a child I saw nothing unusual in this — after all, Rochester in Jane Eyre kept his insane wife locked in a thirdstory room, and I regarded it fairly standard domestic practice.

Occasionally I would pass the lady's husband on my way to the little village of Bryn Mawr, where I occasionally went to get an ice cream cone. I only spoke to him once; that was to tell him that his wife was running around our lower garden in her nightgown. He thanked me and said he'd attend to it after getting the morning paper.

Although my grandparents had strong ideas about interfering in other people's affairs, they did feel that a mild protest was in order this time. Grandfather prepared a note for the lady's husband suggesting that possibly he might exert more control "over the affected member of your family". Grandfather went over to deliver it and the door was opened by the lady in question, still in her nightgown, who snatched the note out of his hand and read it. She screamed "Affected yourself!" and burst into a string of profanity to which Grandfather listened politely while leaning on his silverheaded cane. When she had finished, Grandfather removed his hat and bowed; the lady curtsied. They parted with mutual expressions of esteem, and Grandfather returned and looked her up in the Social Register under Married Maidens. "Ah yes, she was Emma Gould," he remarked with satisfaction. "Very old family. Every member of it has either gone insane or committed suicide for the last hundred years."

Grandmother was not able to take quite such a broad-minded view of our neighbors, but she never dreamed of questioning Grandfather's authority in such matters. After all, Grandfather was Old Philadelphia and Grandmother was not, although the money came from her side of the family. Grandmother's father had been an Irish immigrant who, according to Grandmother, had been the surveyor for the Pennsylvania Railroad when it ran its tracks to Altoona. Actually, from what I could gather it would have been more correct to say he had carried the implements of the actual surveyors — but he had unquestionably been an excellent businessman. When the railroad came to lay their tracks, it was discovered that the Irishman had quietly obtained a lien on most of the property along the right-of-way and was asking a substantial sum for it. As a result his daughter had been able to advance herself socially by marrying Grandfather who, as a distinguished Main Liner, had not the slightest intention of having to work for a living.

Unlike Grandfather, who was as slender as his cane, Grandmother was amply built, but she was so tall and carried herself so majestically she gave the impression of grandeur rather than plumpness. She always moved at a slow, dignified pace and I doubt if even the sudden appearance of a maneating lion could have caused her to break her carefully paced stride.

Looking back, I realized that Grandmother must have been a very lonely woman even though she had a small coterie of friends, mainly elderly maiden ladies most of whom seemed to be selling homemade lace, handpainted vases, or similar useful articles which Grandmother occasionally bought. Her household duties could not have been too irksome since we had a highly efficient housekeeper named Mary Clark, who ran the establishment with the authority of a Prussian drillmaster.

In these days when both parents and grandparents are pals to their children, it is hard to conceive of an era when children were not only not heard but also — as much as possible — not seen. I was brought up by a nurse until I was six and seldom saw my grandparents except in the evening, when I was taken to the "grown-ups' part of the house" to say good night, a solemn and somewhat scary ritual. The rest of the time I spent either in the nursery or in the garden. When I entered school, the nurse was dismissed in a tearful and hysterical scene I still vividly remember. It was thereafter my responsibility to get myself up at seven, dress, and go down stairs to the dining room where the maid served my breakfast. I then walked to the railroad station half a mile away and took the train to school, returning home just in time for supper (the school had an elaborate athletic program which lasted until dark). I saw my grandparents at supper and, after answering politely and formally some equally polite and formal inquiries as to how things had gone at school that day, ate my meal in silence. After supper, I did my homework and went to bed. It never occurred to either my grandparents or to me that any other sort of relationship was possible between us. We lived in different worlds and had nothing to say to each other. Of what possible interest could it be to me that Mary Clark had reported a napkin missing in the week's wash or that Grandfather had decided to read Anthony Trollope's The Warden for the third time? Or to my grandparents that I had been kept in at recess for not having been able to name the capital of Idaho?

I suppose most of my contemporaries grew up under much the same conditions except that — because their parents were at home, there was not the same gap in years between them and their elders. Certainly at school the other boys never mentioned their parents or even seemed conscious that they existed. But my schoolmates found their social contacts among each other while I was not regular. For me, winter was a miserable time, endurable only because of the Saturdays and Sundays when I could get away from the strict routine of school and spend my time tramping through the country. But summer was heaven.

I would get up shortly after dawn and be out in the garden all day, returning reluctantly only for meals. As I grew older, I extended my explorations gradually year by year. I had plenty of territory to explore. My grandparents' place bordered on the Ashbridge farm, Rosemont, which then covered over two hundred acres. At one time, the two Misses Ashbridge had owned the entire district which was — and still is — called Rosemont. They had sold the rights to lay tracks through the property to the Pennsylvania Railroad at the turn of the century, keeping only this small section. They still lived in their Colonial mansion on a hill near the old barn where Hessian troopers had stabled their horses during what the two old ladies always referred to when speaking to English visitors as "the late unpleasantness". Next to the Ashbridge farm was the Johnson estate, also covering several hundred acres and completely surrounded by an ornamental wrought-iron fence ten feet high. A convent has since purchased this property and the mother superior recently told me that it costs five thousand dollars a year just to keep this fence painted. But the fence was merely meant to shield the dozens of gardens — rose gardens, Japanese gardens, fruit gardens, Greek-temple gardens, swamp gardens, and many more. Each garden was surrounded by high boxwood hedges and connected by a series of waterfalls and fountains. It was magnificent — but it was a heck of a place to find a lost l0-foot alligator, as I'll explain later.

Bordering both the Ashbridge and Johnson estates was the Austin property, even larger and more elaborate. The Austins owned a tract of woods which I gradually came to know as well as I knew our own garden. Beyond the woods stretched out great lawns as green and smooth as billiard tables where flocks of peafowl wandered, the cocks spreading their incredible trains — displaying them not only for the hens but even to any small boy who stood in admiration of them. I swore then that I would someday own a peacock. There was also a gamekeeper who had the habit of shooting at the same small boy with a shotgun loaded with rock salt. He only got me once, but that was enough; rock salt stings like a hive of hornets. I suppose that shooting small boys is illegal even when they are trespassing, but it never occurred to me to complain. In these more enlightened times, property owners must fence in farm pools to keep trespassing children from falling in, remove the doors of discarded refrigerators to prevent children from locking themselves inside, and take care to remove ladders in case a trespassing child should climb up one and fall off. But in those days it was taken for granted that if a child were caught trespassing he had to take the consequences.

On rainy days, I sat in our library and read. During their 200-year residence in Pennsylvania, my family had managed to build up a library containing at least one volume devoted to virtually any conceivable subject. By going over the shelves, I could trace the interests of my ancestors back to the time when the first of them had set foot in Mr. Penn's Woods, although I had no idea of their names. One had operated a forge, several had been ministers, another had been involved in the French Revolution (I did know about him; he'd been a member of the Swiss Guard who'd held the Tuileries against the mob), several had been sea captains (this was on my father's side), and one had had the happy thought of collecting pornography. I never knew who that one was, but his collection helped me to while away many a rainy afternoon — although it gave me an impression of the Facts of Life that would have fascinated Krafft-Ebing and outraged modern exponents of a sensible approach to this delicate subject. It never occurred to my grandparents to forbid me to look at these books. After all, they were part of The Library.

For many years, my favorite reading was fairy tales, from Thornton W. Burgess' Quaddy books to The Arabian Nights (Richard Burton translation with the famous Terminal Essay). To me, and perhaps to the authors of the tales too, wild animals were the Little People; disliked, despised, but also feared and regarded with awe. True, not all wild animals were so regarded and for that reason I was more drawn toward animals capable of defending themselves against humans than those who are helpless. I was far more attracted to hawks than to pheasants, to snakes than to butterflies, to skunks rather than to rabbits. I had no interest in domestic animals. I never wanted to own a dog or a cat. The cows and workhorses on the Ashbridge farm, although I knew them well, were merely pleasant acquaintances but entirely lacking glamour.

If I had only known it, there were plenty of wild animals in the Austin woods and even on the Ashbridge farm — raccoon, opossum, woodchuck, skunk, weasels, and even a few white-tailed deer, but at eight I had never seen any of them and had no idea of their existence. Still, in that year I got my first pets.

One of the books in our library concerned the adventures of a Mr. du Chaillu on the West Coast of Africa (circa 1860) and his adventures with gorillas. When I was five years old, I was so fascinated by the pictures that my nurse read the book aloud to me. From that time on, I was determined to get a pet gorilla. I don't suppose I've ever wanted anything quite as much as I wanted that gorilla. When I was eight, I could read the book for myself and, since my birthday was coming up, I dared to ask my grandparents for a gorilla. They were mildly amused but promised me great things if I did well in school. I slaved over my books and spent my spare time arranging part of my room to accommodate the gorilla — my technique being to hang string from one chair to another so the gorilla would have something to swing on.

No gorilla arrived. Instead, I was given two Angora rabbits covered with long, white fur. I still think that my dear grandparents could have presented me with a monkey, but older people can't tell how much a seemingly inane desire can mean to a child. Nevertheless, the rabbits were alive and sufficiently exotic-looking to fascinate me.

The rabbits lived in a hutch with a wire runway that could be moved from one spot to another, and every evening I went out to move the hutch to a fresh, uncropped bit of lawn. Once I went out on a clear, warm spring evening with everything shining soft and silver instead of bright and golden as it does during the day. I followed the line of the privet hedge until I came on the rabbit hutch. There were two wild rabbits with their noses against the wire, talking to my pets.

They were only rabbits, but the contrast between the wild cottontails and the domestic rabbits was the contrast between a Mohawk — lean, alert, mysterious, and romantic — and a fat, uninteresting bourgeoise. A soon as they saw me, the wild rabbits were gone in two great bounds, but I never forgot them. It was not that I loved my own pets less; I simply loved the wild ones more. I determined that someday I would own wild animal pets.

The hutch was so constructed that it could not be opened, so I only saw the rabbits when they emerged for food or to hop around the wire runway. What went on inside the hutch remained a mystery — but I did notice that the female was growing progressively more nervous. After a while she would not leave the hutch until I had gone away, and if I returned while she was feeding, she would dart back in panic. Finally she seemed to disappear entirely and only the male ever came out. I began to wonder if she had escaped, so one evening after putting in the food and walking off as usual, I doubled back behind the privet hedge and, lying on my stomach, watched to see what would happen.

The male was already busy with the lettuce leaves when I took up my position, but for a long time there was no sign of his wife. Then I saw her emerge cautiously. Behind her came six white balls of fluff. So far as I was concerned a miracle had happened.

I burst through the hedge shouting with excitement. The male gave a terrified thump with his hind legs — the traditional rabbit alarm signal — before bolting for the hutch. The female didn't bother thumping. She dove for the doorway with the babies after her. There was an instant's frantic congestion at the narrow opening with thrashing hind legs and writhing bodies. I stopped horrified at what I'd done; I was sure some of the babies would be crushed in the panic — as, indeed, might easily have happened — but all got through safely.

I couldn't believe that the rabbits would regard me as an enemy. I knelt down outside the runway and pleaded with them to come out. Like most children and even many adults, I was convinced that animals could understand human speech and would respond to logic. Unfortunately, the mother rabbit continued to cower inside the hutch and refused to let me see her babies. I was forced to admit that, Beatrix Potter notwithstanding, rabbits were not small human beings wearing fur coats. They were animals whose thought processes differed basically from mine.

This realization did not disillusion me with rabbits. Instead, it made them far more interesting than they had been before. Until then, the rabbits had been little more than attractive automata. They ate, moved about their runway, had to be cleaned — and that had been all. Now for the first time they were doing something interesting. Not only had they produced these incredibly wonderful little miniatures of themselves; but they had also suddenly developed personalities. The female was looking after her offspring, taking them out only when no danger threatened. The male had stopped long enough to signal his family of danger before making a dash for safety himself.

I was utterly unable to understand why neither my grandparents nor the maids showed any interest in this marvelous event. They seemed to consider it only natural that rabbits should reproduce. The behavior of the male and the devotion of the mother, although I described both in detail, won only kindly smiles and "Yes, dear, I'm sure they're very cute little pets." Somewhat dampened, I returned to my own studies of the rabbit family.

The babies prospered. Grandmother, somewhat apprehensive that we would be overrun with rabbits, called the pet store to see if the proprietor would take the young off our hands and reported, considerably surprised, that the pet store owner would not only take them but pay five dollars each for them, Angora rabbits being rather rare and valuable. This meant that I was owner of thirty dollars' worth of rabbits, a fabulous sum. Even my grandparents now regarded the rabbits with more respect. After supper, Grandfather rummaged through the bookcases and produced a volume on rabbits. There I discovered the existence of such exotic varieties as the Old English Lop-eared, the New Zealand Red, and the Flemish Giant. I decided to go into the rabbit business.

The only trouble was that I would have to sell the babies to obtain capital. I would rather have parted with a couple of fingers — at least if the fingers could have been amputated painlessly. So in spite of my grandparents' arguments, I decided to keep the babies.

One morning I went out to the pen with the usual offering of lettuce, carrots, and rolled oats. As the babies had grown older the mother had lost much of her protective nervousness and the family had grown quite tame. I would start calling to them when I left the house, and by the time I rounded the privet hedge they would all be standing with their forepaws against the wire, waiting for breakfast. I called as usual, but there was no answering fury of excitement as the family hurried to take their position. Apprehensively I burst into a run.

The pen had been torn apart. Even the heavy hutch was broken open. Scattered on the grass were the dead bodies of the rabbits: the two parents lying side by side, the smaller corpses of the babies flung around the lawn.

I picked the babies up one after another — it was the first time I had ever handled them — still sure that they could not be really dead. Then I gathered up what was left of the parents. There were footprints of dogs everywhere in the soft earth of the pens — and I knew what dogs they were. One of our neighbors kept a pair of German shepherds and allowed them to run loose at night.

Still in a trance, I went to the garage, got a spade, and buried my first pets. Then I returned to the house. The routine of two years still lay heavy upon me and I sat down at table as I always did after feeding the rabbits. The maid brought me the usual two soft boiled eggs in a cup. I thanked her and put my spoon in the cup. Suddenly I was taken violently ill. Then I began to cry.

I remember Mary Clark putting me to bed and hearing Grandmother hurry from her bedroom, calling "What has happened, Mary? Has he been hurt?" For a while I must have been delirious. Later the doctor came. By that time, I was able to gasp out what had happened. Grandmother exclaimed, in exasperated relief, "Really, Danny, I thought it was something serious." Grandfather sat down on the bed and said gently "We'll get you some more rabbits, boy. Some of the ones we read about in the book." The doctor took a more practical view. He snapped, "Get out of that bed at once and get to school. You're not a baby any more."

Kennedy, our old Irish chauffeur, was notified that the Pierce Arrow had to be called into emergency service. Kennedy had been coachman before he was forced to abandon his beloved horses and associate with motor cars. He had been with us for years and the entire family trusted his judgment implicitly. I heard Grandmother say in despair, "But Thomas, if he behaves like this over the loss of a pair of rabbits, what will he ever do when he has to go out into the world?" Kennedy cleared his throat, a trick he had before answering an embarrassing question, and gently replied, "He's like the old gentleman, Ma'am." Kennedy always referred to Grandfather by that term. "Very sensitive. Real gentlemen, both of them. Thank God neither will ever have to work for a living."

Before leaving for school, I managed to see Grandfather and begged him not to get me any more rabbits. "I'll never have another pet as long as I live," I told him. "I couldn't go through anything like this a second time." Grandfather said he understood.

 

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