The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York (29 page)

“If This Account Is True, It Is Most Enormously Wonderful”

hills plunging down to a fringe of trees and the lush greensward of the plain, a sliver of lake glimmering beyond it: the telescope’s reflectors had transformed the viewing wall into a kind of artist’s canvas, the scene it displayed as vivid and dramatic as any of the great Turner landscapes, one that set the group’s hearts racing with the prospect of someday showing it to their countrymen back in England.

The astronomers could have long stood in silent appreciation, but the lateness of the hour compelled them to move on with their observations.

Soon they had discovered a new variety of animal life, this one a quadruped to which even the mythical gryphon might defer, its body brindled with white and brown patches like a deer but having a head much like a sheep’s, except for its two spiral horns, as smooth and white as ivory. Still the telescope continued its steady passage, and before long another animal had come into view. Seeing it, the astronomers could not help but laugh: in that lunar meadow, contentedly grazing, stood a flock of sheep. Even under the closest scrutiny the sheep exactly resembled those of their home country, and appeared to be such large and healthy specimens that, as Grant remarked, they “would not have disgraced the farms of Leicestershire, or the shambles of Leadenhall market.”

From the grassy plain Herschel and his party next explored the opening to the lake, where the valley dramatically narrowed, seeming to give itself over to the authority of the cliffs, the dark crags jutting out like medieval ramparts, crested on top by trees that formed a kind of forest in the sky, making a tableau almost gothic in its stark, brooding beauty. For several moments all was still; then, suddenly, four flocks of large winged creatures could be seen descending in a slow, even motion from the cliffs to the plain, where they landed and, their wings disappearing behind them, began walking, erect and dignified, toward a nearby forest. (“Now, gentlemen,” exclaimed Herschel, “we have here something worth looking at.”) To enable closer inspection, the telescope was fitted with the strongest available lens, the H.
z
., which provided a viewing distance of eighty yards. Some of the winged creatures had disappeared from the telescope’s sight, but a cluster of six remained, allowing the wonderstuck astronomers to examine them. They stood about four feet tall and were covered with short copper-colored hair. Their faces were simian in feature, something like that of an orangutan, though with a larger forehead and a more gracefully formed jawline. In their general symmetry, the relationship between body and limb, they were far superior to the orangutan—so
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much so, joked one of Herschel’s assistants, a Lieutenant Drummond, that if it were not for their wings, “they would look just as well on a parade ground as some of the old cockney militia!”

The next view obtained by the astronomers was even more revealing. A group of the creatures had crossed the lake and were lying along the opposite shore. The astronomers could now see that their wings resembled those of a bat, composed of a semitransparent membrane formed into curvilineal segments and attached to the back of the animal. The structure allowed for impressive expansion and contraction; some of the creatures entered the lake to bathe, and in returning to the shore spread their wings to shake off the water, much as ducks do, and then just as quickly closed them again, whereupon the wings rested snugly on their backs. Several of the creatures were observed making emphatic gestures with their hands and arms, clearly engaged in conversation.

These were, then, rational beings; on the moon, that perennial object of earthly wonder, intelligent life had at last been discovered. For some moments the astronomers scarcely breathed, observing the startling scene, but eventually the import of what they had found began to sink in, and what Grant called “our paralyzing astonishment” began to subside, and together they denominated this unexpected new creature Vespertilio-homo, or man-bat.

The recumbent man-bats apparently engaged in other activities beyond bathing, but these were not specifically described for the readers of the
Edinburgh Journal of Science
. Dr. Grant was a scientist but he was also an Englishman, and he carried out his duties with a propriety that would have met the approval of the young princess who, two years hence, would assume the British Crown: Our further observation of the habits of these creatures, who were of both sexes, led to results so very remarkable, that I prefer they should first be laid before the public in Dr. Herschel’s own work, where I have reason to know they are fully and faithfully stated, however incredulously they may be received.

Here a series of asterisks was inserted into the text, indicating expunged material, followed by an additional observation by Andrew Grant, sounding a bit shaken by the scenes he had witnessed: “They are doubtless innocent and happy creatures, notwithstanding that some of

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their amusements would but ill comport with our terrestrial notions of decorum.”

The editors of the
Edinburgh Journal of Science
now interrupted the narrative to affirm that they had faithfully obeyed the injunction of their Cape correspondent, and had omitted the indicated passages, which they acknowledged were “highly curious.” They assured their readers, however, that this and other prohibited material would one day be published by Dr. Herschel, accompanied by certificates of authenticity furnished by the civil and military authorities of the Cape colony, as well as several ministers, who, under the strictest secrecy, had been permitted to visit the Herschel observatory and would attest to the wonders they had seen.

With that the editors returned their columns to Andrew Grant, though only long enough for him to report that the following night proved to be hazy and not conducive to close observation. Shortly after midnight, however, the last mists dissipated and the astronomers resumed their work, orienting themselves to the crater called Tycho, where, noted Grant, “they added treasures to human knowledge which angels might well desire to win.”

By Friday the rain had stopped and the heat returned; New York’s damp houses stood baking in the sun like bricks in a kiln, its streets once again filling with the sounds of commerce. “Ice! Rockland ice!”

was a much-anticipated cry in the summer, heralding the arrival of the heavy blocks hauled in covered wagons from Rockland and other counties up the North River, so that the city’s residents—those who could afford it—might relieve the heat with a glass of iced water; and “Here’s cherries!” from the women with their children alongside, peddling the fruit for twelve cents a pound, making their rounds with their baskets and scales; and from the ice-cream men and the hot-corn girls, and those selling sand or matches, buying rags or grease, looking to sweep chimneys or mend locks or sharpen knives, everything that might be required for the proper running of the city’s households. In the morning hours, especially, the streets were alive with a medley of cries, but this week the ones most avidly awaited were those of the highest pitch, made by the newsboys with their papers, proclaiming the latest discoveries from the moon.

The boys sold as many papers as they could carry, the pockets of their trousers growing heavy with pennies; and then they returned to the
Sun

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office for more and more copies until by the middle of the day there were no more papers to be had. The
Sun
building, William Griggs recalled,

“was besieged by thousands of applicants from dawn to midnight,” who stood waiting in noisy clusters for more newspapers to arrive. In their size and raucous good cheer, the crowds resembled those P. T. Barnum had produced just a few weeks earlier in front of Niblo’s Garden, drawn together by the prospect, however improbable it might seem, of something strange and new. In their excitement, the crowds were also prone to what Griggs referred to as “spontaneous mendacity”—tale-telling that, in retrospect, seems befitting of its subject. Griggs, a close friend of Richard Adams Locke, heard of many such incidents, and personally witnessed two. In the first, a man announced to the skeptics in the crowd that he owned a copy of the
Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science
from which the
Sun
had been publishing excerpts, and so far he had found no errors or lapses in the newspaper’s reprint. A rather more elaborate story was supplied by an elderly gentleman dressed in “a fine broadcloth Quaker suit,” who asserted that he himself had seen the great telescope described in the
Sun
. He had been in London the year before, he explained, and his business had taken him to the East India docks, where he watched as the seven-ton lens and the rest of the enormous telescope apparatus was loaded onto a ship bound for the Cape of Good Hope. Of course, he hastened to add, he had high hopes even then for this powerful instrument in the hands of such a capable astronomer as John Herschel; still, he could never have dreamed that Sir John would produce anything like the astonishing discoveries recently revealed in the pages of the
Sun
.

Among those listening to the man in the Quaker suit was Richard Adams Locke, who was out in front of the
Sun
building with a group of friends, smoking a cigar and surveying the scene. Locke did not reply to the elderly gentleman but simply regarded him, Griggs noted, with “a look of mingled astonishment and contempt.”

Richard Adams Locke had little time those days to witness the effects of his work; he was too busy writing the articles for which the crowds outside hungered, even as he continued to perform his regular editorial duties—duties that had now grown enormously as a consequence of those very articles. The
Sun
office was being deluged with letters from outside the city, some of which contained money, from correspondents who had heard about the
Great Astronomical Discoveries
series and wanted to
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purchase back copies. The daily editions of the papers were all gone, having long since sold out; Locke, however, was now able to inform them that the entire series would soon be available in pamphlet form.

The pamphlet,
A Complete Account of the Late Discoveries in the
Moon,
was issued on Saturday morning, August 29. The haste with which it had been produced was evident—simply printed, it had no illustrations, just the title followed by eleven dense pages of text. The pamphlets sold for twelve and a half cents apiece in the
Sun
office, but the demand quickly became so great that before long they could also be purchased in bookstores and from enterprising newsboys. Twenty thousand copies sold almost instantly in New York (even though the series had already been published there), and soon the
Sun
was producing another edition for national circulation. In all,
A Complete Account of the Late Discoveries in
the Moon
would sell, by one estimate, more than forty thousand copies.

Benjamin Day himself put the number at sixty thousand: equivalent, in today’s population, to over one million copies.

In Locke’s first installment of the moon series, published the previous Wednesday, the editors of the
Supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of
Science
had referred to “engravings of lunar animals and other objects”

produced by a Herbert Home, Esq., who had accompanied Dr. Herschel from London to the Cape. Immediately the
Sun
began receiving requests for those engravings from readers, ideally engravings produced in lithograph form, so they might display them at home, alongside their looking glasses and mourning pictures.

Lithographs to accompany a news story: this was a venture that Benjamin Day had not considered before, and one that instantly appealed to him. Day himself was occupied in supervising the
Sun’
s overworked printing press, as well as with various other business matters, so he entrusted the job to Locke, who hurried down to the offices of Norris & Baker, the Wall Street lithographers. The drawings, it was agreed, would be executed by Mr. Baker, one of the principals of the firm, whom the
Sun
extolled as “the most talented lithographic artist in the city.” Baker applied himself to the job with relish, working on it around the clock, so that on Saturday morning—just twenty-four hours after the first appearance of the man-bats—the
Sun
was able to offer, for twenty-five cents, a lithograph entitled
Lunar Animals and Other Objects, Discovered by Sir
John Herschel in His Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope and
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