GIRAFFE, n. This word, referring to the long-necked, spotted African mammal, comes to English through French, where it used to be spelled “giraffe” but is now spelled “girafe,” and in either case its origin is Arabic zarāfa. Before English settled on “giraffe,” we used to call these animals camelopards, gerfaunts, and orafles, but I guess it makes sense that Middle English speakers were confused about an animal they’d never seen except in pictures of varying accuracy. Honestly, even if you see one in real life, they’re still pretty confusing.
I arrived at the OED entry for “giraffe” because I was looking at this 1826-7 painting by Charles-Marie Dubufe. This presumed portrait of a man named Hassan, the giraffe keeper for Charles X, hangs in the Louvre and is an absolute knockout—both because its subject is a babe and because it’s a hell of a painting. Just an arresting, incredibly sensitive handling of light.
Image from the Louvre.
I wanted to know more about Hassan. Partly because I was wondering if he could have a cameo in my novel, but partly just because “giraffe keeper for the king” has got to be a good story. He proved a little bit elusive. There’s a lot more information about the giraffe, who was so famous and singular that she just went by “la girafe” for all of her life. (Now she is often referred to as “Zarafa.”)
She was a gift to Charles X from Muhammad Ali Pasha, the Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt, and represents a fairly complicated bit of political maneuvering on the Viceroy’s part. For extra complexity: Muhammad Ali was not Egyptian, but ethnically Albanian and born in Greece. He was trying to maintain good relations with European powers (he also sent giraffes to London and Vienna) while he was leading the Ottoman military effort to crush Greek independence; Britain and France aided Greece in that conflict, probably more because they feared Ottoman expansion than because they believed in the cause. Staying in the good graces of Britain and France was important to the Viceroy because he also had his eye on independence from the Ottomans, and he was hoping for help if he decided to go to war. (He tried it in the late 1830s. Britain and France sided with the Ottoman Empire to maintain the status quo. The giraffes were not enough.)
It was enormously difficult to transport a giraffe from the wilderness of Sudan (which at the time was part of Egypt, as the Viceroy had conquered it) or possibly from the Ethiopian highlands—I found sources saying both—all the way to Paris. Born and captured in 1825, only two months old, the giraffe traveled up the Nile to Alexandria in the company of human handlers and cows who provided the milk she needed to survive since the hunters had killed her mother, which is a particularly affecting cruelty in this story that unfortunately contains many cruelties to humans and animals alike. That part of the trip took two and a half years.
She crossed the Mediterranean in a ship that had a special hole cut in the deck to accommodate her long neck.
A tarpaulin shielded her head from the elements and she wore an amulet stuffed with Koran verses, tied at the base of her neck with red ribbon, to keep her safe. She rode that way—stuck in place like a fireman’s pole, but guarded like a treasure—for twenty-five days. (Elena Passarello, The Paris Review)
She landed in Marseille, where it was determined that the safest way to get her to Paris was on foot. It was a distance of 885 kilometers (550 miles). On her walk, she was accompanied by Hassan and her other handler, Atir, a Sudanese man who appears in some drawings and watercolors of the giraffe, but not, as far as I can tell, in any portraits in oil.
They were joined by one of the foremost naturalists in France, Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, whose name I know because Balzac’s 1835 novel Le Père Goriot is dedicated to him, but contemporary biology classes are unlikely to mention him; he was one of many people trying to figure out evolution who didn’t quite get it right. Much like science today is negotiated, communal work—often hotly debated in ways that regular folk never see—the early nineteenth century is full of naturalists who were not Charles Darwin but nevertheless contributed a lifetime of research.
Saint Hilaire was famous, but he was way outclassed by the giraffe, who drew a crowd of 30,000 people when she showed up in Lyon. When she finally made it to Paris in the summer of 1827, 600,000 people came to see her in her first six months living in the Jardin des Plantes. The whole city was caught up in giraffomania: women were styling their hair in horns and wearing spotted yellow dresses.
And what about Hassan? I enlisted the help of my mother, retired art historian, and she found this video of Will Elliott, of Colnaghi Gallery in London, speaking about the portrait. Elliott is the only person I’ve found who gives Hassan a full name: Hassan El Berberi. Based on that last name, Hassan was probably Amazigh, but he seems to have lived in Alexandria, excepting his nine-month stay in Paris with the giraffe.
Hassan departed, but Atir stayed with the giraffe until 1838:
Atir remained in Paris with Zarafa, becoming renowned as the Arab who lived with the giraffe in her enclosure at le Jardin des Plantes. Two ladders took him up to a mezzanine, where he slept within scratching reach of her head. Grooming her was his daily public performance. By night, he was also famous as a neighborhood ladies' man. (Michael Allin, NPR)
And a bonus etymology from French!
Finally, the expression “to comb the giraffe” (peigner la girafe) comes from this era, meaning “to do useless work for a long time, to do something inefficiently.” This is what Atir did, as he never hesitated to brush Zarafa to make her more beautiful. (Jacques Rigoulet, translation mine)
Honestly, this expression seems a little rude in light of the fact that the giraffe was both famous and famously beautiful, and it was Atir’s actual job to comb her. But maybe it’s a reflection on the uselessness of beauty? (Probably not.)
The giraffe lived until 1845, long past the end of Charles X’s reign in 1830. This being a story from the nineteenth century, she was, of course, taxidermied, and you can see her at the Museum of Natural History in La Rochelle.
This newsletter would pair so well with some romance novels festooned with the best of history’s marginalia, like politically important giraffes, but as longtime readers of this newsletter doubtless already know, thematic cohesion is a rare treat around here. I read chaotically, and always will, and my best friend the Boston Public Library should be absolved of all blame.
Anyway, this time, I have only one small-r romance novel to tell you about. Happily, it’s wonderful.
Mickey Chambers Shakes It Up (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary) by Charish Reid. This is the second romance I’ve read lately about a Black woman in academia who is not being treated right by her institution (my other recent read is Katrina Jackson’s Office Hours, discussed here). Mickey is an adjunct, so she’s not salaried and doesn’t have health insurance, which is an urgent problem for her because she has a chronic illness and doesn’t have enough courses in the summer to pay for her medication. So she gets a job at a bar. In a delightful romance-novel coincidence that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, her grumpy, sexy new boss at the bar, Diego Acosta, also happens to be a 42-year-old widower who is finally returning to finish his college degree—starting with Mickey’s online summer course. So this book is both a boss/employee romance and a teacher/student romance, but they’re both grownups, and they mostly manage to act like it. Kissing in the bar’s back office is totally understandable. I loved both of them and their opposites-attract dynamic and thought all the supporting characters were richly drawn. I also loved that Mickey’s happy ending involved quitting the academic job that was exploiting her love of teaching, because sometimes that is the answer. And most of all I loved that there is a scene where Mickey and Diego go grocery shopping together, and because this is set in the southern U.S., the supermarket chain in question is Piggly Wiggly. (For readers who don’t live in a place with this brand name, I promise it’s real. There used to be one in my hometown. RIP.) Anyway, they get to assure each other that “nothing sexy happens at the Piggly Wiggly,” which is a superb line of dialogue—though in this case, it turns out not to be true.
That’s all for this one. See you… in a couple of weeks, probably! Time is fake and it’s fakest in August.