"Yes," admitted Mr. J.C. Stevens, the auctioneer, whose auks' eggs are the pride of Covent Garden, "it is quite true. We have a mermaid to dispose of."
"Is she a mermaid with a past?" asked the representative of the "Daily Graphic."
"You cannot expect me, as an auctioneer," remarked Mr. Stevens discreetly, "to say anything against her character."
"Is she young?"
"She's stuffed," said Mr. Stevens.
"Dear, dear, how sad! Beautiful in death I suppose?"
"You'd better come and inspect her for yourself." Mr. Stevens led the way to the auction room, where boomerangs and neatly fractured skulls (like cause and effect) were piled amid old china and infirm pottery. He stopped in front of something which looked like a yellow-bellied shark topped by a cocoa nut.
"There," said Mr. Stevens.
"Well, what about it?"
"That's the mermaid."
A descriptive writer suffers many disillusionments in the course of his profession, but the Covent Garden mermaid was the worse experienced by the representative of the "Daily Graphic" since January 4, 1890. The only resemblance which it bore to the mermaids in the pictures was that it had a tail; and that it made no attempt to veil its charms. The "Daily Graphic," in the interests of the truthfulness of artists, felt compelled to remonstrate.
"Are you sure it's a mermaid?" he asked.
"It's sometimes called a manatee," admitted Mr. Stevens, "but it's the same thing."
"But just look at it! Do you think any sailor - even a Lascar - could mistake that for a siren?"
"It's got a nice head."
"But where's its flowing hair?"
"Look at its sloping shoulders," pleaded Mr. Stevens.
"It's got a hide like the barrel of a musical box."
"But it has a graceful back - look at it!"
"Why," said the disappointed pressman, "its back is sewn up!"
And that, as a matter of fact, was the only feminine thing about it.
The mermaid was put up to auction on Tuesday and sold for twenty guineas.
[The Daily Graphic was launched on January 4th, 1890. A Lascar is an Indian sailor, so I suppose that's a bit of casual racism. But otherwise I like this a lot. Maybe 20 guineas is about £2000 today.]
South Wales Daily News, 8th June 1899.
Sale of a Mermaid.
Mr. J. C. Stevens sold at his rooms in King-street, Covent Garden, on Tuesday, a "very find" mermaid. Nothing could be much uglier - not even a common seal, which the "mermaid" closely resembles. This particular example is about 7ft. high. It comes from the Persian Gulf, and has been most cleverly preserved. But mermaids are apparently not yet sufficiently known to be fully appreciated, for the example sold on Tuesday only fetched 20 guineas.
Presumably the same creature:
Denbighshire Free Press, 5th August 1899.
A REAL MERMAID.-- Visitors to London should not fail, when passing through Oxford Street, to see the very fine Mermaid (Manatea), about 7 feet high, from the Persian Gulf. It is being shewn in the Entrance Hall of Messrs. A. & F. Pears, Ltd. (Pears' Soap).
Evening Express, 25th July 1900.
A Cheap Mermaid.
Some time ago a mermaid fetched twenty guineas.
On Tuesday one was sold in the historic sale rooms at Covent Garden for five shillings. The first was a real one, so far as it isi possible to get one, being a stuffed manatee. The one knocked down on Tuesday was a Japanese concoction, consisting of a monkey's head and arms and a fish tail deftly joined together.
Such supposed creatures used to be not uncommon in penny gaffs in this country, but are now pretty nearly extinct, as even the most ignorant countryman would hardly be made to believe in one at the present day.Included in the same sale was an Arizona mummy from the caves in the Del Muerto Canon. The collector carried it off under his arm.
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| Dugongs = mermaids in Yemen. Copyright the Canadian Museum of History. |
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