Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2003 10:57:34 -0500 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Henry Armistead <74077.3176@COMPUSERVE.COM> Subject: James Bond MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Recent commentary about James Bond prompts me to write about some of my own experiences and thoughts, since he lived about 100 yards from us in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia. In my limited contact with him he seemed to be a private, reserved, even shy person. The story of how Ian Fleming met him and decided to use his name for his 007 character is well known and the subject of a book by his wife, Mary Wickham Bond, "How 007 Got His Name" (Collins, 1966). It is also expanded on somewhat in one of Mrs. Bond's other books "To James Bond With Love". Bond was the leading authority on birds of the West Indies and Caribbean. The fact that none of his writing is cited in "A Guide to the Birds of the West Indies" by Herbert A. Raffaele, James Wiley, et al. (Princeton U. Pr., 1998) is something of a curiosity, if not outrage. At least Don L. Eckelberry, the superb artist who did some plates for later editions of Bond's guide (along with Arthur B. Singer), refers to Bond and his book, first published in 1936, in the foreword of Raffaele (p. 9). After all, Bond was elected a Fellow of the A.O.U. in 1946 and was awarded its very prestigious Brewster Medal in 1954. Earl L. Poole, whose fine illustrations add so much to Bond's books, remains an underappreciated bird artist. Bond was especially fond of Mt. Desert Island, Maine, and its birds. His book on the birds of Mt. Desert is rather charming in its insularity. Bond was in the same boarding school class as my father - the class of 1918 at St. Paul's School (SPS) of Concord, New Hampshire, a wonderful WASP enclave from which I, too, graduated in 1958 (Fully 25% of my classmates were so-and-so the II, III, IV, or, in one case, the V, and this doesn't even count the 24 "juniors" who would raise the total of this nomenclatural legacy to nearly 50%). Since my parents named their children after grandparents we suffered no such encumbrances, were less of the "one in a series" syndrome. Some of my friends from SPS and Philadelphia had (or have) associations with Mt. Desert Island, which is fondly known in some circles as Philadelphia-on-the-rocks, the cocktail allusion being fairly appropriate (How many WASPS does it take to change a light bulb? Two. One to make the martinis, another to call the electrician). [My other favorite WASP joke is: How do you tell the bride at a WASP wedding? She's the one hugging the golden retriever.] Mt. Desert Island is also distinguished by having a book on its history by the great historian Samuel Eliot Morison, SPS class of 1903. SPS, now with a much more diverse student body, was and is a wonderful place to bird and may have nurtured Bond's interests as it perhaps did other naturalist graduates: S. Dillon Ripley, John Hay, Will Russell, Nathaniel Wheelwright, William W. Warner et al., even if John Kerry, Archibald Cox, John V. Lindsay, and Gary Trudeau didn't end up with binoculars around their necks. My favorite birding memory from there is of a male Mourning Warbler singing outside the splendid old gothic chapel one late May morning. Bond's obituary appears in "the Auk", vol. 106, no. 4, October 1989, pp. 718-720, written by Kenneth C. Parkes, long-time ornithologist at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. Unrelatedly I once found and captured (in August !!!) an Evening Grosbeak that had been hanging around Bellevue, Talbot County, MD, that had been banded by Parkes. In his tribute to Bond Parkes wrote: "He lived in England for eight years, and his vocal inflections remained an amalgam of New England, British, and upper-class Philadelphian all his life" (P. 718). This patois is what some refer to as "Locust Valley lockjaw". "Both Bond and his colleague Meyer de Schauensee held appointments on the scientific staff at ANSP, but they were among the last of a traditional museum breed, the independently wealthy, nonsalaried curator, who lacked advanced university degrees." de Schauensee's own fascinating obituary also appears in "the Auk" in vol. 103, no. 1, Jan. 1986, pp. 204-206, written by S. Dillon Ripley. Son of a Swiss Baron, de Schauensee is best remembered for his pioneering books on South American birds. He was fluent in four languages. Arguments have raged over whether his surname was de Schauensee or Meyer de Schauensee. In various directories as well as the spines of his own books it was listed either way, one of the reasons for the confusion. Something happened and most of James Bond's legacy ended up at the Smithsonian Institution instead of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP). Bond spent his career associated with ANSP, which honored him with its Leidy Medal in 1975. He was of the generation or so of naturalists, some of whom were "dollar-a-year men" but who nevertheless made huge contributions to natural history before the more modern, academically trained ornithologists, many with Ph.D.'s, began to come into control as museum curators, many of them with adjunct academic appointments at neighboring universities. Mary Bond's books capture in an evocative way the life of her husband and some of his colleagues, full of adventure, glamor, honors, sometimes a life of privilege, and yet with people who spent countless hours wrestling with and tweaking their professions (or avocations), formulating theories, doing the important work of collecting, classifying, corresponding, and writing, a sort of last hurrah of the Victorian love of exploration and amateur science. Many of these people were free to do as they pleased, unburdened with having to apply for an NSF grant, do committee work, dream up fund-raising events, or participate much in other, mundane housekeeping chores. Consider the 1960 cruise of the 65-foot ketch "Ornis" of the William H. Phelpses with the James Bonds and the Dillon Ripleys aboard among the islands off the north coast of Venezuela. What a way to be an ornithologist, all in the name of science! Others, however, were not "of the realm" and depended on patrons and their own hard work to make a living. The current political correctness against collecting birds, so unfortunate, was something they did not have to contend with. In view of the sophisticated chemical analyses that can now be done to address complex biological problems (and unknown future analyses and methods that promise to make specimens even more important) the distaste for collecting is even more troubling in our age which has seen the rise of DNA as a primary tool of taxonomists. [I know this smacks of the "Now that I am in you can close the door" syndrome, but please don't clutter up MDOSPREY with a blitz of messages on collecting.] I have a letter from Bond pasted into one of his field guides that Dick Kleen and I and some others took to Haiti in 1958 with suggestions for what to look for in the mountains there, including the La Selle Thrush, written in a tortuous, almost illegible hand, perhaps symbolic of the quiet, remarkable man I wish I had visited more often and known better. Some of the Bonds' books, just the ones I happen to have, are listed below from my library catalog. Bond, James. Birds of the West Indies. "first American edition." HM. 1961. 256p. illus. by Earl L. Poole & Don R. Eckelberry. hb. $6.00. @ R.F. WEST INDIES. ____. A field guide to birds of the West Indies. Macmillan. 1947. 257p. illus. by Earl L. Poole. hb. contains letter from James Bond to HTA dated June 22, 1958. @ R.F. WEST INDIES. ____. A field guide to birds of the West Indies. 5e. HM (Peterson field guide series 18). 1993. 256p. illus. by Don R. Eckelberry, Arthur B. Singer & Earl L. Poole. hb. gift of LJ. $24.95. WEST INDIES. ____. Native and winter resident birds of Tobago. Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. 1970. 30p. pb. source: the Frigate, Feb. 20, 1971, $1.50. WEST INDIES. ____. Native birds of Mount Desert Island. ANSP. 1967. 26p. pb. NEW ENGLAND. Bond, Mary Wickham. Far afield in the Caribbean: migratory flights of a naturalist's wife. Livingston Publ. Co. 1971. 142p. illus. by Elizabeth R. Leydon. hb. $4.95. WEST INDIES. ____. To James Bond with love. Sutter House. 1980. 209p. hb. gift of William Pepper. ag. inscribed: "For William Pepper from Mary Wickham Bond." $10.95. BIOGRAPHY. Mary also wrote: Ninety Years "at home" in Philadelphia (Dorrance, 1988) and 5 other titles, these latter literary and poetic. Best to all.-Harry Armistead, 523 E. Durham St., Philadelphia, PA 19119-1225. 215-248-4120. Please, any off-list replies to: harryarmistead@hotmail.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================