In 18th century England at a time when cockfighting and bullbaiting drew large crowds, it was often the case that animals were seen as a source of entertainment. The more exotic and strange the animal – the greater the interest. Menageries of exotic animals were popular amongst notability, paving the way for the first Zoos. Whilst other strange and exotic animals would feature in travelling shows in the theatres, fairs and street entertainments.
And so it should be no surprise that the Horse & Groom Public House in Lambeth Marsh ( now know as the Horse and Stables) would be one such venue where you could see a Rhinoceros, Ms Clara.
Displayed in a tent at the Horse & Groom in Lambeth Marsh, where, having been seen by ‘the royal family, and Nobility and Gentry…with great satisfaction. On view from 8 am till 6 pm, initially at ‘2s the first place, 1s. the second, and 6d, the third’.
This was to be the location of her last public appearance, she would die whilst be exhibited and so ended her amazing grand tour of Europe.
Clara was no ordinary rhino. Born in India around 1738 and orphaned while still a calf, she was a house pet adopted by a Dutch trader Captain Douwe Mout van der Meer who for 17 years took her travelling around Europe.
She wowed the crowds wherever she was displayed and became an animal superstar. She created a sensation wherever she went, only the fifth living rhino to reach Europe.
Clara’s Grand tour of Europe
Born in India in 1738, Clara was only a month old when her mother was killed by hunters. Orphaned, she was adopted by a high-ranking official of the Dutch East India Company, who kept her as a party amusement, allowing her to walk indoors and eat from the dinner table. He soon passed the juvenile animal on to a colleague in the company, a Dutchman named Capitan Douwemout van der Meer.
Captain Van der Meer sailed for 7 months with Clara from Calcutta to Rotterdam, keeping her skin from drying out by slathering her with fish oil and feeding her what he correctly estimated as her daily nutritional requirement of 150 pounds of vegetable matter a day.
Her arrival in Rotterdam caused much interest and she became an instant attraction. Sensing a business opportunity, Van der Meer would serve as Clara’s promoter, agent, and manager for a 17-year European romp, until she died in 1758 at the age of 20 in Lambeth.
Clara then began toured all over Europe first to Germany and Austria, then to France, Italy, Poland, Denmark and England.
When over-land travel was necessary, Clara rode in a custom-built carriage, which required six pairs of oxen or 20 horses to draw it. Sometimes Clara had to be walked over difficult terrain, tempted onwards by the oranges she loved.
By the age of eight, she weighed nearly 5,000lbs.
Clara was a highly sought-after guest of European society. She had private audiences with King Frederick II of Prussia in Berlin; Francis I and Empress Maria-Theresa in Vienna; King Louis XV in Versailles; Augustus III, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland; and Frederick II, Landgrave of Hesse.
Clara-mania
In January 1749, she travelled to France, where ‘Claramania’ really took off after the French King Louis XV placed her in his royal menagerie in Versailles. She spent 5 months in Paris, creating a sensation: letters, poems, and songs were written about her, and wigs were created à la rhinocéros. She even inspired the French Navy to name a vessel Rhinocéros in 1751.
In 1749 Jean-Baptiste Oudry painted her life-size portrait (Width 4.53m/14.86 feet) at the Saint-Germain fair in Paris. and it was displayed at the Lourve at the Salon exhibition in Paris 1750, the official biennial exhibition of the French Royal Academy of Painting & Sculpture.
Clara’s popularity and the success of the tour were extraordinary and bordered on frenzy. Books, epigrams and even a lyrical poem were published about her and so the fashion for “rhinoceros” ornament began.
Natual History
Clara’s tours throughout Europe also provided scientists, or natural philosophers, as they were known, with an accurate model of the species. Clara appears in two seminal publishing projects of the Enlightenment period, Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon’s 36-volume Histoire Naturelle, and the 17-volume Encyclopédie, by Dennis Diderot and Jean Le Rond D’Alembert‘.
She also features in the Anatomical work of Jan Wandelaar’s with his illustration of Clara and an Écorché.
At the end of 1749, Clara embarked on a journey from Marseilles to tour Italy. Passing through Verona, she returned to Vienna and reached London at the end of that year, where she was admired by the British Royal family. Little is known of her travels during the period between 1752 and 1758, except that she travelled to Prague, Warsaw, Krakow and returned to Breslau in 1754 and Copenhagen in 1755. Clara returned to London in 1758, where she died.
Clara memorabilia
Captain Van der Meer made a small fortune from his travels but also did a swift trade in Clara souvenirs. He would make money by selling rhino illustrations to those who had just had a viewing: woodcuts (to the plebs) and engravings (to the bourgeois).
Everywhere there were mementoes of her unique presence. Medals were struck and portraits painted. Sculptures were made in marble and in bronze. In France, craftsmen made pendules au rhinoceros: model rhinos on elaborate ormolu bases supporting clocks.
Sotheby’s Auctions 
RHINOCEROS MUSICAL CLOCK IN THE LOUVRE COLLECTION
In Dresden the master animal modeller Johann Kändler made sketches for what would become exotic works of Meissen ware. Clara’s owner had to be paid, of course, for each sitting.
Which led to the creation of myriads of fancy decorative objects – snuff boxes, sculptures. Clocks.
An inspiration to artists across Europe
This gentle beast captivated the European imagination, at the intersection of scientific curiosity and passion for all things exotic. Artists, poets and musicians were inspired and rhinos became popular depictions in European fine and decorative art.
Clara had lived far longer, and travelled much farther than was usual for an exotic animal in the 18th century. Oddly, with all her fame, there’s no clear cause of death or record of what became of her remains. There are also no reports of public mourning for this international star. Yet through the surviving Clara memorabilia and art, we can still witness how she radically transformed Europe’s idea of what a rhinoceros could be.
“Her imprint on contemporary culture was recorded through the numerous painted portraits, life drawings, engraved profiles, ceramic and metal sculptures, prose and scientific reports. Yet, for all her familiarity in visual and printed forms, she remained a living wonder in the Age of Enlightenment.”
Charissa
Bremer-David, associate curator of sculpture and decorative arts, the J. Paul Getty Museum,
Further Reading
- Clara’s Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Glynis Ridley, 2005, ISBN 0-87113-883-2
- Clara, Emily Arnold McCully, 2016, ISBN 978-0-553-52246-4
Some Rhino Facts
- They are herbivores
- Each Rhino’s dung has a unique smell and is used as means of communication.
- After elephants, the White Rhino are the second-largest land mammal in the world
- They can run at speeds up to 30-40 mph
- Because of their size, strong armour-like skin and horn(s) there are no known natural predators
- White and Black rhinos are actually the same colour
- They are known for their awesome, giant horns that grow from their snouts – hence the name “rhinoceros’, meaning “nose horn”. Javan and Indian rhinos have one horn, whereas the white, black and Sumatran rhinos have two.
- Biblical Text suggests Rhino’s maybe Unicorns
The rhino was cast in the Bible as a Behemoth (Book of Job 40:15-24), giving Job a taste of the mysteries of divine creation where it is designated as a mysterious river-dwelling beast. Based on that description, scholars have concluded that the biblical behemoth was probably inspired by a hippopotamus, but details about the creature’s exact nature were vague.
Whilst some pre–King James versions turned rhinos into unicorns. The (Hebrew Bible – mentions re’em (Hebrew: רְאֵם) and subsequent King James Bible mentions the Unicorn on nine separate occasions.
