Be it fish or foul, it gets a lot of attention at the Peabody Museum

By Andrea Early

Special to the Gazette

It could be Harvard's biggest fish tale.

When curator C.C. Willoughby accessioned the tiny Java Mermaid for the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in 1897, he probably had no idea that it would make such a splash. But even from its place in one of the museum's storage rooms, it's still making waves almost a century later.

-- It was referred to in an episode of the X-Files called "Humbug," when agents Scully and Mulder considered it a murder suspect.

-- Japanese tourists seek it out.

-- It can even be found on the Internet at http://www.discovery.com/DCO/doc/1012/world/nature/barnum/barnum1.1b.1.html.

And according to museum officials, it's one of the most sought-after specimens at the Peabody today.

So what could possibly be the appeal of this 16-inch, dried-out creature with a monkey-like head and torso, and the tail and fins of a fish?

"It's a curiosity in the true meaning of the word," says Rubie Watson, associate director of the Peabody.

There's also an alleged liaison with P.T. Barnum.

Legend has it that the Java Mermaid might well be the "Feejee Mermaid," the showgirl that helped establish Barnum as the notorious purveyor of all things fishy and fraudulent. And what curiosity Barnum and his "veritable mermaid" inspired! When he toured the "Feejee Mermaid" around the country in 1842, the twosome lured in plenty of gawkers who paid handsomely for the privilege.

But according to Watson, what they actually saw wasn't a mermaid at all. It was a handicraft made by Southeast Asian fishermen who mass produced the creatures and marketed them as mermaids. "They made them when they weren't

fishing and sold them to sea captains and other foreign visitors as a form of early souvenirs," she says.

For years experts believed that the "mermaids" were made by sewing together the head of a monkey and the tail of a fish. But in 1990, Peabody conservator Scott Fulton conducted a full-scale examination. Fulton ran starch tests on the Java Mermaid's front section. "We discovered that it is made of papier-mâché molded to resemble the limbs of the creature," he says. Then he showed the creature to Karel Liem, professor of ichthyology, and Karsten Hartel, curatorial associate in ichthyology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. "It was the ingenuity of the thing, the way it was put together that I remember," says Hartel, who confirmed that the creature's composure included real fish parts. According to Fulton's records, the mermaid's teeth, fingernails, and fins, are nothing more than the jaws and teeth, spines, and fins of a carp and a porgy-like fish, "placed liberally."

"The mermaids were hoaxes," says Watson. "People are still attracted to this kind of thing today. It's really part of the Victorian era where people were interested in other places and times," she says.

If the number of requests the museum receives for the Java Mermaid are any indication, this interest has held up remarkably well. Even now the mermaid is being prepared for a stint at the Australia National Maritime Museum. "She sees a lot of action," says Fulton, who keeps meticulous records of the creature's comings and goings.

For as much as the Peabody's curators know about the mermaid today, they are know only a few of the details of its provenance. They know that it probably was created in Java. And museum records indicate that the creature was donated to the Peabody in 1897 by Boston Museum curator and Barnum crony Moses Kimball's family after his death. Watson says circumstantial evidence suggests the mermaid could have come to Kimball from natural history and ethnography collector George Willson Peale whose artifacts were displayed at the Philadelphia Arcade from 1821 to 1848. According to Watson, Peale's collection was eventually sold to Kimball and Barnum, who split the collection. Barnum displayed his share of the booty in his American Museum in New York. As for Kimball's share, the artifacts were incorporated into

his Boston Museum collection which had grown substantially since the Tremont Street museum's 1841 opening.

Just whether the "Feejee" and the Java mermaids are alter egos is a confusing matter. In 1969, the Peabody's curators tried to prove the relationship and found too many discrepancies to say for sure. According to his autobiography, Barnum borrowed the "Feejee Mermaid" from Kimball for display at his American Museum and the tour of 1842 and returned it in 1856. But if the Java Mermaid was indeed part of the Peale collection, Kimball might have acquired it long after the Feejee's 1842 tour. Or maybe he acquired it earlier than the records indicate.

Does Watson believe the Java Mermaid is really the Feejee Mermaid? An article she recently published in Pacific Arts, confirms that both Barnum and Kimball did exhibit "mermaid specimens" in the 1840s and 1850s. But it is not a question that can be definitively answered. "It's possible," she says. "They did exchange a lot of the items in their collections."

As an ethnologist, Watson sees the mermaid in a context that is larger than curiosity and P.T. Barnum. "What interests me is how it was exhibited," she says. "It was displayed alongside paintings of George Washington, and systematic collections of fish, birds, and reptiles," she says. Watson points out that this style of museum exhibition was common before scientific disciplines were firmly established. "Museums were just places to keep things. Everything was under one roof," she says. "I think people would be astonished if they went to the Museum of Fine Arts today and found wax figures and mermaids and mastodons together."

In the end, the real answer to the question of the Java Mermaid's infinite appeal might have little to do with history, or ethnology, or even the Barnum connection. It may have more to do with something old Barnum knew all along. "The people love to be humbugged," he once said. He may still be right today. Consider the public's fascination with the fake aliens in Independence Day. Or the Goat Sucker in Puerto Rico. Or any of the stories we love to read in the Weekly World News or the National Enquirer when no one is looking. They make us laugh. We know implicitly that they are fraudulent. And they allow us to play a little in a world that is increasingly serious and sometimes a little too real.