In 1892, when Walter Rothschild first opened what he would always call "My Museum", some 5,000 people crowded into the new public galleries.
They came to see not only the already large collection of mounted birds, animals and insects, but also the live animals that wandered freely in Tring Park - zebra, dingoes, a stork, kiwis and a spiny anteater, to name but a few of the residents of this novel combination of museum and menagerie.
In deciding to share his lifelong passion for nature, Rothschild had understood the public's growing desire to know more about the world around them. Every year, a steady stream of about 30,000 people continue to make their way to what is now called the Natural History Museum at Tring, which is 30 miles from London and difficult to get to by public transport.
At his death in 1937 Lord Rothschild was described in a Nature obituary "as better known at home and abroad than any other contemporary zoologist".
Miriam Rothschild's detailed biography of her uncle was first released in 1983 as Dear Lord Rothschild and has now been republished as Walter Rothschild: The Man, the Museum and the Menagerie. It is painstakingly researched, charting the course of a long life, almost entirely dedicated to the study of nature, a passion shared by Miriam, herself an outstanding naturalist who died in 2005.
It's a family affair. From her birth in 1908 until her grandmother's death in 1935, Miriam and her family spent the greater part of each year at Tring. She writes from personal experience. When she speaks of her uncle's snoring resonating throughout the big house, "like the massive rollers on an Atlantic beach", you know she had heard the roar for herself.
But this intimacy shackles her, most noticeably in her failure to reveal the identity of the "charming, witty, aristocratic ruthless… blackmailing peeress", who, with her husband, nearly ruined Walter and forced the sale of his beloved bird collection to the American Museum of Natural History for £225,000.
But more benign characters are here, too. There's Emma, Walter's enormously supportive mother; Natty, his father, who regarded his eldest son with "increasing dismay and chagrin"; the team of curators at My Museum, including the distinguished ornithologist Ernst Hartert and entomologist Karl Jordan; and Alfred Minall, the joiner, whose skill as a taxidermist so fascinated the young Walter that, when aged seven he told his parents of his intention to open a museum, he added, "And Mr Minall is going to help me look after it".
And then there is Walter himself, a complex man of huge contradictions. Intensely shy and suffering throughout his life from a speech impediment that often rendered him incoherent, Rothschild was at the same time driven by "a peculiar brand of enthusiastic megalomania".
Battling to balance an expected duty to family and business and to the Rothschilds' position in the Jewish community, with a passion for the natural world, his life gave way to the latter.
The result was a collection, claimed to be the largest ever accumulated by one man. The statistics are awesome - some 2 million specimens of Lepidoptera and thousands of mounted mammals and birds. At one time Rothschild had almost 400 collectors at work on his behalf. More than 150 species and sub-species of plants and animals are named in his honour.
It was not an approach with which everyone agreed. Alfred Newton, Cambridge University's first professor of zoology and comparative anatomy and Rothschild's mentor and later rival, was far from convinced that zoology was "best advanced by collectors of the kind you employ.
No doubt they answer admirably the purpose of stocking a museum; but they unstock the world and that is a terrible consideration."
Printed in what looks like a 9pt typeface, this is a dense read in every way. But it's a fascinating tale, and with 385 pages and some great photographs, all for under a tenner, it's also value for money.
Timothy Mason is a museum consultant
They came to see not only the already large collection of mounted birds, animals and insects, but also the live animals that wandered freely in Tring Park - zebra, dingoes, a stork, kiwis and a spiny anteater, to name but a few of the residents of this novel combination of museum and menagerie.
In deciding to share his lifelong passion for nature, Rothschild had understood the public's growing desire to know more about the world around them. Every year, a steady stream of about 30,000 people continue to make their way to what is now called the Natural History Museum at Tring, which is 30 miles from London and difficult to get to by public transport.
At his death in 1937 Lord Rothschild was described in a Nature obituary "as better known at home and abroad than any other contemporary zoologist".
Miriam Rothschild's detailed biography of her uncle was first released in 1983 as Dear Lord Rothschild and has now been republished as Walter Rothschild: The Man, the Museum and the Menagerie. It is painstakingly researched, charting the course of a long life, almost entirely dedicated to the study of nature, a passion shared by Miriam, herself an outstanding naturalist who died in 2005.
It's a family affair. From her birth in 1908 until her grandmother's death in 1935, Miriam and her family spent the greater part of each year at Tring. She writes from personal experience. When she speaks of her uncle's snoring resonating throughout the big house, "like the massive rollers on an Atlantic beach", you know she had heard the roar for herself.
But this intimacy shackles her, most noticeably in her failure to reveal the identity of the "charming, witty, aristocratic ruthless… blackmailing peeress", who, with her husband, nearly ruined Walter and forced the sale of his beloved bird collection to the American Museum of Natural History for £225,000.
But more benign characters are here, too. There's Emma, Walter's enormously supportive mother; Natty, his father, who regarded his eldest son with "increasing dismay and chagrin"; the team of curators at My Museum, including the distinguished ornithologist Ernst Hartert and entomologist Karl Jordan; and Alfred Minall, the joiner, whose skill as a taxidermist so fascinated the young Walter that, when aged seven he told his parents of his intention to open a museum, he added, "And Mr Minall is going to help me look after it".
And then there is Walter himself, a complex man of huge contradictions. Intensely shy and suffering throughout his life from a speech impediment that often rendered him incoherent, Rothschild was at the same time driven by "a peculiar brand of enthusiastic megalomania".
Battling to balance an expected duty to family and business and to the Rothschilds' position in the Jewish community, with a passion for the natural world, his life gave way to the latter.
The result was a collection, claimed to be the largest ever accumulated by one man. The statistics are awesome - some 2 million specimens of Lepidoptera and thousands of mounted mammals and birds. At one time Rothschild had almost 400 collectors at work on his behalf. More than 150 species and sub-species of plants and animals are named in his honour.
It was not an approach with which everyone agreed. Alfred Newton, Cambridge University's first professor of zoology and comparative anatomy and Rothschild's mentor and later rival, was far from convinced that zoology was "best advanced by collectors of the kind you employ.
No doubt they answer admirably the purpose of stocking a museum; but they unstock the world and that is a terrible consideration."
Printed in what looks like a 9pt typeface, this is a dense read in every way. But it's a fascinating tale, and with 385 pages and some great photographs, all for under a tenner, it's also value for money.
Timothy Mason is a museum consultant
By Miriam Rothschild, Natural History Museum, £9.99
ISBN 978-0565092283
ISBN 978-0565092283
