Mermaids-1

Years before Louis Renard, a French-born book dealer living in Amsterdam, even published a version of Fallours’ “sirenne” in his own Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes (1719), Fallours’ images had already enjoyed wide distribution. Yet, because of the unusually bright colours and fantastic creatures represented in Fallours’ drawings, many doubted their accuracy and veracity. Renard was especially worried about the validity of Fallours’ sirenne, exclaiming, “I am even afraid the monster represented under the name of mermaid . . . needs to be rectified.”11

Philosophers found both promise and disgust in Fallours’ painting and the subsequent dialogue that Renard initiated with his letters. In his preface to the 1754 version of Renard’s Poissons, ecrevisses et crabes, the Dutch collector and director of the menageries and “Natuur-en Kunstcabinetten des Stadhouders” Aernout Vosmaer called objections to merpeople’s reality “weak”, and contended that “this monster, if we must call it by this name (although I do not see the reason for it)” was simply able to avoid humans’ traps better than any other creature (because of its hybrid nature) and was thus rarely seen. Because of merpeople’s biological similarity to humans, furthermore, Vosmaer argued that they were “more subject to decay after death than the body of other fishes”. Such a lack of preservation not only diminished sightings, it also went towards explaining the lack of full specimens in cabinets of curiosities.12

By the mid-eighteenth century, a growing number of physicians not only believed in the existence of merpeople, but also began to wonder what sort of ramifications such creatures might have for understanding humanity’s origins and future. As G. Robinson noted in The Beauties of Nature and Art Displayed in a Tour Through the World (1764), “though the generality of natural historians regard mermen and mermaids as fabulous animals . . . as far as the testimony of many writers for the reality of such creatures may be depended upon, so much reason there appears for believing their existence.” The Reverend Thomas Smith took Robinson’s contention to an even more definitive note four years later, asserting that while “there are many persons indeed who doubt the reality of mermen and mermaids . . . yet there seems to be sufficient testimony to establish it beyond dispute”. But the problem remained: men like Robinson and Smith could rely only upon ancient, often ridiculed sightings or tenuous hypotheses for their “proof”. They needed scientific research to back up their claims, and they got it.13

Two especially important articles — each approaching merpeople through unique scientific methodology — appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine between 1759 and 1775. The first piece, published in December 1759, accompanied a plate image of a “Syren, or Mermaid . . . said to have been shewn in the fair of St Germains [Paris]” in 1758. The author noted that this siren was “drawn from life . . . by the celebrated Sieur Gautier”. Jacques-Fabien Gautier, a French printer and member of the Dijon Academy, was widely recognized for his skill in printing accurate images of scientific subjects. Attaching Gautier’s name to the print garnered immediate credibility, even for such a strange image; but even without Gautier’s name attached to it, the print and its accompanying text were distinguished by their modern scientific methodology. Gautier had apparently interacted with the living creature, finding that it was “about two feet long, alive, and very active, sporting about in the vessel of water in which it was kept with great seeming delight and agility”.14

Gautier consequently recorded that “its positions, when it was at rest, was always erect. It was a female, and the features were hideously ugly”. As displayed in detail by the accompanying print, Gautier found its skin “harsh, the ears very large, and the back-parts and tail were covered with scales”. According to the image, this was not the mermaid that had long graced cathedrals throughout Europe. Nor did it match the description relayed by so many other naturalists and discoverers throughout history. Where most had seen a striking female form, distinguished by flowing blue-green hair, Gautier’s mermaid was completely bald with “very large” ears and “hideously ugly” features. Gautier’s siren was also much smaller than traditional mermaids at only sixty centimetres (two feet) tall. More than anything, Gautier’s mermaid reflected the mid-eighteenth-century approach to studying the wondrous aspects of nature: the Frenchman employed well-respected scientific techniques — in this case a close inspection of the creature’s anatomy and an accurate accompanying drawing (much resembling those of other illustrated creatures at the time) — to display as reality what many still considered fantasy.15

Scholars used the Gautier publication to reflect upon the legitimacy of merpeople. An anonymous contributor to the June 1762 issue of the Gentleman’s Magazine exclaimed that Gautier’s image “seems to establish the fact incontrovertibly, that such monsters do exist in nature”. But this author had further evidence. An April 1762 edition of the Mercure de France reported that in June the previous year two girls playing on a beach on the island of Noirmoutier (just off the southwest coast of France) “discovered, in a kind of natural grotto, an animal of a human form, leaning on its hands”. In a rather morbid turn of events, one of the girls stabbed the creature with a knife and watched as it “groaned like a human person”. The two girls then proceeded to cut off the poor creature’s hands “which had fingers and nails quite formed, with webs between the fingers”, and sought the aid of the island’s surgeon, who, upon seeing the creature, recorded: