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An Introduction to Architectural Conservation
Philosophy Legislation and Practice 1st Edition Nick Lee Evans (Author)
School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University
Andrew J. Marshall
Department of Anthropology, Program in the Environment, and School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom
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Acknowledgements
This book never would have come to fruition without the hard work of many people.
We would like to thank Erin Vogel for initial discussions on a book about primate conservation that helped shape the current volume. We are very grateful to the five anonymous reviewers of our initial book proposal for providing thoughtful comments and valuable feedback that helped shape the content and structure of the volume. We hope that they will be pleased with the end result and see their input reflected in it.
We deeply appreciate all of the authors’ willingness to contribute chapters to this volume. We realize that book chapters often are undervalued by academic institutions and are therefore frequently written in outside of normal working hours. We thank all of the authors for their hard work and excellent contributions.
We are extremely grateful to the external reviewers who provided extensive, constructive comments on one or more individual chapters: Marc
Ancrenaz, Ralph Buij, Gail Campbell-Smith, Tim Caro, Colin Chapman, Guy Cowlishaw, Todd Disotell, Amy Dunham, Alejandro Estrada, Katie Feilen, Agustin Fuentes, Katie Gonder, Sandy Harcourt, Tatanya Humle, Simon Husson, Ian Singleton, Tony King, Fiona Maisels, Erik Meijaard, John Oates, Unai Pascual, Stuart Pimm, Ian Redmond, Johannes Refisch, Sadie Ryan, Chris Shepherd, Karen Strier, Matt Struebig, and Jessica Walsh. All were generous with their time and expertise, and their contributions improved this volume immensely.
We appreciate the support of our academic institutions: Liverpool John Moores University (SW) and the University of California, Davis and the University of Michigan (AJM).
We thank Oxford University Press and particularly Lucy Nash for their cheerful assistance and sound guidance through all phases of this project.
Finally, we thank our families, Tine, Amara, and Lenn (SW) and Raven (AJM) for their love, support, and encouragement.
Genevieve Campbell, Josephine Head, Jessica Junker, and K.A.I. nekaris
6.3.3
6.5.8
6.5.9
Mitchell Irwin
7.1
7.4.1
8
7.5
7.4.3
7.5.1
7.6
7.7
9
Vincent nijman
8.1
8.2
8.4
8.5
10.7
Amanda H. Korstjens and Alison P. Hillyer
D.L.A. Gaveau, Serge A. Wich, and Andrew J. Marshall
14
13.2 What is primate habitat?
‘Novel ecosystems’ and ‘new
tatyana Humle and Catherine Hill
14.1
14.4.3
14.5.1
15 The role of translocation in primate conservation
Benjamin B. Beck
15.1
15.3
15.3.1 Conservation-motivated
15.3.2 Economic, political, aesthetic, religious, scientific, and accidental translocations
15.3.3 Translocations intended to enhance animal welfare or as an alternative to death
15.3.4 A successful welfare-motivated translocation of olive baboons
15.3.5 An unsuccessful welfare-motivated translocation of gorillas
15.4 Case studies of successful translocation as a primate conservation tool
15.4.1 Ruffed lemurs
15.4.2 Golden lion tamarins
15.4.3 Golden-headed lion tamarins
15.4.4 Howler monkeys
15.4.5 Chimpanzees
15.4.6 Chimpanzees
15.4.7 Chimpanzees
15.4.8
15.5.1
15.5.3
15.5.4
17.4.2 The assessment of conservation efforts in preventing African great ape extinction risk: a study at the continental scale
18 Some future directions for primate conservation research
Andrew J. Marshall and Serge A. Wich
List of contributors
Benjamin B. Beck Newark, MD, USA.
Jean P. Boubli School of Environment and Life Sciences, University of Salford, Salford, UK.
Genevieve Campbell The Biodiversity Consultancy, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK.
Lounès Chikhi Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, Portugal, and Laboratoire Evolution & Diversité Biologique, UMR 5174, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France.
Fay Clark Bristol Zoological Society, Bristol, UK.
John E. Fa Division of Biology and Conservation Ecology, School of Science and the Environment, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK, and Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia.
John Garcia-Ulloa Institute of Terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland.
D.L.A. Gaveau Center for International Forestry Research, Bogor, Indonesia.
Thomas R. Gillespie Departments of Environmental Sciences and Environmental Health, Emory University & Rollins School of Public Health, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Benoit Goossens Danau Girang Field Centre, Sabah, Malaysia and Danau Girang Field Centre, School of Biosciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.
Colin Groves School of Archaeology & Anthropology, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.
Catherine Hill Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.
Alison P. Hillyer School of Applied Sciences, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK.
Tatyana Humle Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
Mitchell Irwin Department of Anthropology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, USA.
Jessica Junker Mack Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Lian Pin Koh Environment Institute and School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia.
Amanda H. Korstjens School of Applied Sciences, Bournemouth University, Poole, UK.
Andrew J. Marshall Department of Anthropology, Program in the Environment, and School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
Erik Meijaard Borneo Futures, Jakarta, Indonesia.
K.A.I. Nekaris Oxford Brookes University, Nocturnal Primate Research Group, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Social Sciences, Oxford, UK.
Vincent Nijman Department of Anthropology, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.
Charles L. Nunn Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA.
Milena Salgado Lynn Danau Girang Field Centre, Sandakan, Sabah, Malaysia; Sabah Wildlife Department, Sabah, Malaysia; Wildlife Health, Genetics and Forensics Laboratory, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia; and School of Biosciences, and Sustainable Places Research Institute, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.
Christopher Schwitzer Bristol Zoological Society, Bristol, UK.
Pierfrancesco Sechi Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto per lo Studio degli Ecosistemi, Sassari, Italy.
Nikki Tagg Centre for Research and Conservation, Royal Zoological Society of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium.
Sandra Tranquilli Centre for Biocultural History, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Serge A. Wich School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK, and Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Dynamics, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
CHAPTER 1
An introduction to primate conservation
Serge A. Wich and Andrew J. Marshall
1.1 Introduction
Primate conservation is a discipline that aims to develop the scientific understanding necessary to implement actions that will ensure long-term preservation of non-human primates and their habitats (Cowlishaw and Dunbar 2000). Interest in primate conservation has grown substantially in recent decades, reflected in substantial increases in the numbers of publications related to the topic (Figure 1.1). There are likely many reasons for this increase, including the growing threats to primates and an increased awareness of their biological, intellectual, economic, and ecological importance (Marshall and Wich, Chapter 2, this volume).
The last systematic treatment of primate conservation, Cowlishaw and Dunbar’s widely read Primate Conservation Biology, was published a decade and a half ago (2000). At that time, 200 to 230 species of primates were recognized (Groves 1993), 31% of which were classified as threatened by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (Baillie and Groombridge 1996). Since then, both the number of primate species recognized (479) and the proportion classified as threatened (48%) have risen sharply (Mittermeier et al. 2013). The increase in the number of threatened taxa is due to a variety of threats, especially important among these being hunting and the loss, fragmentation, and degradation of primate habitats
Wich, S.A. and Marshall, A.J., An introduction to primate conservation. In: An Introduction to Primate Conservation.
the forest edge in north Sumatra, Indonesia. Copyright: conservationdrones.org.
Figure 1.1 the number of scientific publications on primate conservation published annually from 1970 to 2012. Data reflect the number of publications returned using a keyword search in Scopus (http://www.scopus.com) for publications that contained both the keywords ‘primate’ and ‘conservation’ in each year. the data search was conducted on 11 november 2013.
(Bennett et al. 2002; Fa et al. 2005; Hansen et al. 2008; DeFries et al. 2010; FAO 2010; Meijaard et al. 2011; Wich et al. 2012; Hansen et al. 2013). While only one primate species is thought to have gone extinct over this period (Procolobus badius waldroni; McGraw and Oates (2007)), the threats to most primate populations are increasing and the survival of many populations and several species is severely in doubt (Mittermeier et al. 2013). In this edited volume we provide an overview of the current state of primate conservation, incorporating much of the information on primate behaviour, ecology, species distribution, conservation challenges, and conservation solutions that has emerged in the time since publication of Cowlishaw and Dunbar’s influential book.
1.2 The primate order
Primates are an order of mammals. Recent analyses of molecular data indicate that primates diverged from other placental mammals roughly 75.8 million years ago (Steiper and Seiffert 2012). This date is considerably more recent than previous estimates (Tavaré et al. 2002) and comports more closely with the estimated divergence time based on the earliest
known primate fossils (Smith. 2006). Although humans are primates, in this book, we use the term ‘primate’ to refer only to non-human primates. The primate order is commonly divided into either Prosimians and Anthropoids (Fleagle 2013) or Strepsirhines and Haplorhines (e.g. Disotell 2008). The difference between these classifications depends on whether gradistic or phyletic information is used and as a result the position of the tarsiers differs (Figure 1.2). Traditionally, Tarsioidea were classified together with Lemuroidea (lemurs) and Lorisoidea (lorises) in the suborder Prosimii, but recent taxonomies based on phylogenetic relatedness have classified the tarsiers with the traditional members of the suborder Anthropoidea (Ceboidea, Cercopithecoidea, and Hominoidea) to form the new suborder Haplorhinii. Modern taxonomies typically follow this classification, with the lemurs and lorises grouped in Strepsirhinii and the monkeys, apes, and tarsiers forming Haplorhinii. The IUCN currently recognizes 16 primate families, 77 genera, 479 species, and 681 taxa (Mittermeier et al. 2013). They occur mainly in the tropical and subtropical areas of South America, Africa, and Asia (Figure 1.3).
Lemuroidea Lemuridae
Cheirogalidae
Daubentoniidae
Indriidae
Strepsirhines
Lorisoidea Lorisidae
Galagonidae
Taxonomic overview
Tarsioidea Tarsiidae
Primates
Cebidae Ceboidea
Haplorhines
Cercopithecoidea Hominoidea
Cercophithecidae
Colobinae
Cercopithecinae
Hylobatidae
Ponginae
Homininae
Prosimians
Anthropoids
Figure 1.2 overview of primate taxonomy illustrating the two alternative classification systems. Under one system the tarsioidea are grouped with Ceboidea, Cercopithecoidea, and Hominoidea as Haplorhines (and Lemuroidea and Lorisoidea comprise the Strepsirhines); under the other tarsioidea are grouped with Lemuroidea and Lorisoidea as Prosimians while the Ceboidea, Cercopithecoidea, and Hominoidea comprise the Anthropoids. After Stanford et al. 2013.
Primates exhibit tremendous variation in size from male gorillas (Gorilla sp.) that can weigh over 200 kg (Harcourt et al. 1981) to mouse lemurs (Microcebus berthae) that can weigh as little as 30 g (Dammhahn and Kappeler 2005). There is no single trait that unambiguously distinguishes primates from other mammals; instead they are generally identified by a shared suite of characteristic traits (Stanford et al. 2013). Primates have a fairly generalized mammalian body plan, with the exception of distinct anatomical adaptations for specialized locomotion (Fleagle 2013). Primates also generally exhibit opposable thumbs, which permit precision grasp and sensitive tactile manipulation—although in some strepsirrhines this trait is less fully developed. In contrast to humans, other primates also
have an opposable big toe that allows them to use their feet as hands (Stanford et al. 2013). Most primates are also characterized by having flattened nails instead of claws or hooves, but in the family Callitrichidae these have evolved into claw-like nails on all digits except the big toe, presumably as an adaptation to their diet and arboreal lifestyle (Garber et al. 1996). Primates also have forwardfacing eyes with overlapping fields of view, permitting stereoscopic vision that, often in combination with their grasping hands, is thought to have initially evolved as an adaptation to ancestral life in the trees (Elliot Smith 1924), catching small prey (Cartmill 1992), foraging on small objects in an arboreal environment (Sussman 1991), or avoiding predation by snakes (Isbell 2009).
Most primate species consume a diverse diet, which is reflected in their rather unspecialized teeth compared to other mammals, although variation in dental characteristics such as incisor length, structure of molars, and enamel thickness has been linked to diet (Swindler 2002; Lucas 2004), particularly the components of the diet that are most difficult to process (Rosenberger 1992; Marshall and Wrangham 2007). In the past it was argued that all primates could be distinguished from other mammals due to their possession of a small part of the inner ear called the petrosal bulla (Szalay Frederick and Eric 1979), but it is now unclear whether the earliest primates possessed this trait (MacPhee et al. 1983). Another anatomical feature that has been of considerable interest is the bony postorbital bar that completely or almost completely encloses the eyes of primates, but is absent in most other mammals (Fleagle 2013). The function of this trait is under considerable debate, but a recent hypothesis suggests that it protects the eye from the mechanical strains of chewing (Heesy 2005).
Primates also have unusual life histories. Compared to other mammals, primates in general have slower life histories, living longer, maturing more slowly, and producing smaller numbers of offspring (Charnov and Berrigan 1993). Proposed explanations for the slow life history exhibited by primates include their relatively large brains (Harvey et al. 1987), social complexity (Dunbar and Shultz 2007), cooperative breeding (van Schaik et al. 2012), arboreality (Shattuck and Williams 2010), and low levels of daily energy expenditure (Pontzer et al. 2014).
Most primate species live in permanent groups with complex social interactions (Mitani et al. 2012). These groups can be as large as a few hundred at the sleeping sites of gelada baboons or very small as in the case of one-male, multi-female groups of some langur species. There are, however, notable exceptions such as orang-utans (Pongo sp.) that do not live in permanent groups (Wich et al. 2009) and primate species that live in pairs (Palombit 1996). There are also species that exhibit fission–fusion
Primate distribution
Figure 1.3 Global primate distribution. Based on the IUCn Red List Primate Distribution Layer: http://www.iucnredlist.org.
social systems (Pan spp., Ateles spp.) where individuals reside in a large community but spend their time in smaller subgroups that frequently change in composition as individuals move among them. The evolution of group living in primates is typically considered to have been shaped by food distribution, feeding competition, predation, and infanticide (Wrangham 1980; Schaik 1983; Schaik and Hooff 1983; Sterck et al. 1997). Socio-ecological models aim to explain the diversity of primate social systems on the basis of those factors (Kappeler and van Schaik 2002). Although these models have shed light on many aspects of primate socio-ecology, they have yet to explain the full range of variation seen in extant primates (Kappeler and van Schaik 2002; Clutton‐Brock and Janson 2012). In addition, while typical socio-ecological models imply great flexibility in sociality in response to ecological conditions, there is clearly substantial phylogenetic inertia in primate social systems as well (Schultz et al. 2011).
Although some primate species are found in colder areas in countries like China, Nepal, and Japan, most species live in warmer tropical climates (Figure 1.3). Within the tropics, primates occupy a large variety of habitat types that range from tropical evergreen rainforests to arid savannahs. Within forests, primates can often be found at all heights, with some species being exclusively arboreal and others almost exclusively terrestrial. In contrast to many other mammals, the majority of primate species are active during the day (diurnal), although there are a substantial number of primate species that are active at night (nocturnal) and some that are active around dawn or dusk (crepuscular).
Most primate species consume a broad diet that consists mostly of fruit, leaves, flowers, and other vegetative materials. Often protein-rich foods such as insects, and occasionally meat, are also added. Perhaps the most well-known primate meat eaters are the chimpanzees, who hunt colobus monkeys on a regular basis in many populations (Boesch 1994; Stanford 1996; Watts and Mitani 2002). Other primates, such as mandrills, have also been observed catching duikers (Kudo and Mitani 1985), while orang-utans have been witnessed to feed on a small nocturnal primate, the slow loris (Nyctecebus coucang) (Utami and van Hooff 1997; Hardu et al. 2012). Some primates also feed on gum from trees.
1.3 Threats to primates
A key goal of primate conservation is to determine and quantify the nature and magnitude of threats to primates. Below we note the most widely discussed threats to primates, most of which are considered in greater detail in subsequent chapters.
1.3.1 Habitat loss
There are three main threats to primate habitats: (1) total loss of habitat (e.g. due to clear cut logging or conversion to agriculture); (2) degradation of habitat (e.g. due to logging or mining); and (3) fragmentation of habitat (e.g. due to loss of surrounding habitat or roads). Habitat loss is the most severe of these because it reduces the total amount of suitable habitat available to a species and often results in the loss of all individuals contained in the destroyed habitat patch. Habitat loss is straightforward to quantify in the field because it is a complete replacement of natural vegetation by something else (e.g. agriculture, timber plantations, roads, houses). Despite this, assessments of habitat loss from satellites can be more complex because some mature timber plantations are difficult to distinguish from forest (Hansen et al. 2013). Forests in the tropics, with the exception of Brazil, are declining at faster rates in recent years (Hansen et al. 2013); a worrying trend because most primates disappear once their habitat is cleared (e.g. chimpanzees; Campbell et al. (2008)).
1.3.2 Habitat degradation
Habitat degradation most often occurs due to legal or illegal logging. The effects of such degradation on primates differ greatly, depending on the species, logging intensity, the methods used, and the time since degradation (Johns and Skorupa 1987; Thomas 1991; Peres 1993; Chapman et al. 2000; Cowlishaw et al. 2009; Husson et al. 2009). An important unanswered question for research on primate survival in altered habitats is whether primates can survive in areas that are under continuous, albeit well-managed logging, or whether a period of recovery between logging bouts is required (Chapman et al. 2000; Ancrenaz et al. 2010). Although the effects of habitat degradation on primates have been studied for decades
and knowledge continues to accrue, we have yet to develop a predictive model of primate persistence under varying logging intensities.
1.3.3
Habitat fragmentation
The effect of habitat fragmentation on primate survival depends on a variety of factors, including fragment size, species’ home range size and diet, inter-patch distance, and the nature of the matrix in which the habitat fragments are embedded (Chiarello 1999; Michalski and Peres 2005; Boyle and Smith 2010; Meijaard et al. 2010).
1.3.4
Drivers
of habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation
A main cause of habitat loss and fragmentation is conversion to agricultural lands (Gibbs et al. 2010). During the 1980s and the 1990s more than 55% of new agricultural land in the tropics was created by replacing primary forest, while another 28% came from conversion of logged forests (Gibbs et al. 2010). Other proximate drivers of habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation are wood extraction and infrastructure development (Geist and Lambin 2002). Ultimate drivers of deforestation include economic factors such as the demand for timber; institutional factors related to land-use policies; and demographic factors such as population growth (Geist and Lambin 2002). A recent analysis of the drivers of tropical deforestation showed that it is driven by urban population growth and urban and international demands for agricultural products; perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, rural population growth was not associated with deforestation (DeFries et al. 2010).
1.3.5 Hunting
Hunting occurs both within forests, when people hunt primates for either their own consumption or for trade, and at the interface between forests and agricultural lands, when primates raid crops (Peres 2001; Fa and Brown 2009; Meijaard et al. 2011). For many species hunting is not sustainable and can lead to local extinctions (Fa and Brown 2009). Killing also often occurs in the context of the pet trade because
collection of live primates for trade often entails killing of other individuals, especially mothers (Malone et al. 2002; Shepherd et al. 2004; Nijman et al. 2011; Stiles et al. 2013). Although the trade in live primates is difficult to quantify, estimates are that tens if not hundreds of thousands of primates are caught for the pet trade per year (Nijman et al. 2011).
1.3.6 Disease
The threat of disease to primates is perhaps best understood in the African great apes. It is well documented that the Ebola virus has decimated gorilla and chimpanzee populations in Gabon and Congo (Walsh et al. 2003; Bermejo et al. 2006). In addition, the increasing contact between humans and great apes through hunting, encroachment into ape habitat, research, and tourism has led to numerous cases where primates have been negatively affected by diseases acquired from humans (Wallis and Lee 1999). Recent research on chimpanzees in Ivory Coast has unequivocally established that disease can directly spread from humans to apes (Koendgen et al. 2008).
1.3.7 Climate change
There is increasing concern that climate change will negatively affect primates, through altering their time budgets, changing their food supplies, or reducing their habitats (Lehmann et al. 2010; Gregory et al. 2012). There has to date been little research conducted on the potential impact of climate change on primates, and the effects of climate change are unlikely to be easy to predict. This is partly due our limited understanding of the nature and rates of change in key factors such as food species distribution and phenology, primate species’ dispersal abilities, and inter-specific interactions. In addition, potential interactions among these factors, and the adaptive potential of primate species to a changing climate, are virtually unknown (Marshall and Wich, Chapter 18, this volume).
1.3.8 Roads
The global road network is expanding rapidly as a result of increased demand for natural resources
and arable land. Although the importance of this infrastructure for human health and development is clear, it is raising many problems of great concern to conservationists. Roads facilitate access for hunters and loggers, reduce forest cover, fragment primate habitats, and kill wildlife through collisions with vehicles (Laurance and Balmford 2013; Caro et al. 2014). Road construction is therefore likely to limit primate distribution and reduce primate population density (Laurance et al. 2008; Gaveau et al. 2009; Laurance et al. 2009). There is thus an urgent need for careful planning so that future roads will not be established in areas that are important for conservation (Laurance and Balmford 2013; Laurance et al. 2013). In addition, greater consultation between infrastructure developers and natural resource managers, a case-by-case examination of each proposed road, effective enforcement of traffic speed and volume, and the development of policies that make international development aid conditional upon appropriate assessments of the long-term costs of road development are also required (Caro et al. 2014).
1.4 Approaches to primate conservation
Given the magnitude and multitude of threats it is easy to despair for the persistence of primate populations; the challenges are great and the available resources are scant. Nevertheless, primate conservationists have successfully protected primate populations, sometimes despite apparently insurmountable hurdles (McNeilage 1996; Gray et al. 2013). Successes tend to be the result of a combination of multiple strategies and tactics and a careful tailoring of conservation approaches to the particular conditions and challenges on the ground. Below we briefly highlight some of the major current approaches to primate conservation. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, rather we highlight some that are well represented in the literature or are novel and might be promising for the future.
1.4.1 Protected areas
Conservation efforts for primates and biodiversity have traditionally focused on the establishment of protected areas (Terborgh et al. 2002; Chape
et al. 2005) and approximately 12% of the Earth’s terrestrial surface area carries some level of protected status (Gaveau et al., Chapter 12, this volume). Researchers have conducted various studies to evaluate the effectiveness of protected areas at preventing wildlife habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation (Gaveau et al., Chapter 12, this volume; DeFries et al. 2005; Andam et al. 2008; Joppa et al. 2008; Nagendra 2008; Newmark 2008; Joppa and Pfaff 2009). The conclusions of these studies differ, at least in part due to the use of different analytical approaches. In addition, broad conclusions are unlikely to be appropriate because conditions, threats, opportunities, resources, and implementation differ widely across protected areas. A recent large-scale study found that only half of the protected areas assessed protected biodiversity well (Laurance et al. 2012). There is an ongoing debate over why protected areas might not be as efficient as we might wish. Part of this debate focuses on the management of protected areas and the issue of whether strictly protected areas that exclude local community participation are more effective than methods in which local communities have a more participatory role in management (Bruner et al. 2001; Wilshusen et al. 2002; Hayes 2006; Hansen and DeFries 2007). Other aspects of this debate focus on how protected area management plans should interact with larger scale landscape conservation strategies for multi-use landscapes (Meijaard, Chapter 13, this volume).
1.4.2 Law enforcement
A recurrent structural problem for primate conservation is the lack of appropriate law enforcement in many of the countries that primates inhabit (Struhsaker et al. 2005; Fischer 2008; Tranquilli et al. 2012).
A recent Africa-wide review showed that law enforcement is the best predictor of ape persistence in resource management areas (Tranquilli et al. 2012). Law enforcement is necessary to prevent illegal habitat conversion in protected areas or lands where alteration is prohibited (e.g. steep areas in Indonesia; Wich et al. (2011)). It is also required to reduce the intense, illegal hunting of many primate populations (Fa and Tagg, Chapter 9, this volume; Stiles et al. 2013). Although improving law enforcement is
complicated, organizations that commit themselves to the endeavour—such as the Last Great Ape Organization (LAGA) and the Project for the Application of Law for Fauna (PALF)—appear to hold promise.
1.4.3 Payments for ecosystem services
There is a growing realization that natural areas provide a large number of services that are beneficial to human society. These benefits include reducing the impact of floods, pollination services, capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and maintaining a carbon stock (MEA 2005). Estimating the economic value of such services and explicitly incorporating their value (and the potential cost of their loss) into policy discussions may provide a valuable new approach to achieving conservation goals. Recognition of ecosystem services as financial assets can provide an incentive for their protection. For example, as a result of efforts to curb the emission of greenhouse gases, a considerable amount of attention has been paid to reducing carbon emissions through placing an economic value on sequestered carbon through efforts such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation) or more recently REDD +, which incorporates the biodiversity benefits of carbon sequestration. Despite their initial promise, establishing REDD + projects remains a challenge (Garcia-Ulloa and Koh, Chapter 16, this volume).
1.5 Overview of the book
The chapters in this book are grouped into three sections: (1) background and conceptual issues, (2) threats, and (3) solutions. In the first section, the authors consider why we should conserve primates (Marshall and Wich, Chapter 2), summarize the conservation status of primates (Cotton et al., Chapter 3), discuss species concepts and their relevance to conservation (Groves, Chapter 4), review primate conservation genetics (Salgado-Lynn et al., Chapter 5) and describe primate abundance and distributions (Campbell et al., Chapter 6). The second section includes discussion of threats from habitat destruction and degradation (Irwin,
Chapter 7), primate trade (Nijman and Healey, Chapter 8), hunting (Fa and Tagg, Chapter 9), infectious diseases (Nunn and Gillespie, Chapter 10), and climate change (Korstjens and Hillyer, Chapter 11). The third section considers solutions to primate conservation challenges from several perspectives: protected areas (Gaveau et al., Chapter 12), landscape mosaics (Meijaard, Chapter 13), human–primate conflict (Humle and Hill, Chapter 14), reintroduction (Beck, Chapter 15), ecosystem services (Garcia-Ulloa and Koh, Chapter 16), and evidence-based conservation (Tranquilli, Chapter 17). We conclude the book with a consideration of some future directions for primate conservation research (Marshall and Wich, Chapter 18).
Acknowledgements
We thank Guy Cowlishaw for reviewing the chapter.
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atone, and if accident occurs to me, be kind to her; or if she is then also nothing, to her children. For never has she acted or spoken toward you but as your friend. You once promised me this much. Do not deem the promise cancelled—for it was not a vow.
“Whatever I may have felt, I assure you that at this moment I bear you no resentment. If you have injured me, this forgiveness is something; If I have injured you, it is something more still. Remember that our feelings will have one rallying-point so long as our child lives. Teach Ada not to hate me. I do not ask for justification to her—this is probably beyond the power of either of us to give—but let her not grow up believing I am a deserving outcast from my kind, or lying dead In some forgotten grave. For the one would sadden her young mind no less than the other. Let her one day read what I have written, and so judge me. And recollect that though now it may be an advantage to you, yet it may sometime come to be a sorrow to her to have the waters or the earth between her and her father.
“Whether the offense that has parted us has been solely on my side or reciprocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased now to reflect upon any but two things—that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall never meet again.”
CHAPTER XXI
GORDON SWIMS FOR A LIFE
From London to Ostend, and through Flanders, a swart shadow trailed George Gordon slowly but unerringly. It was the man whose dark, reckless face had once turned with jealous passion to Jane Clermont as they had watched a carriage approaching Drury Lane; he who, on a later night, had pursued the same vehicle, then a mark for jeers, to Piccadilly Terrace. The question he had uttered as he saw Gordon alight alone, had rang in his brain through his aftersearch: “Where has he left her?” The London newspapers had not been long in chronicling Gordon’s arrival in Ostend, and thither he followed, making certain that in finding one he should find the other.
The chase at first was not difficult. Evil report, carried with malicious assiduity by spying tourists and globe-trotting gossip-mongers, had soon overtaken his quarry, and Gordon’s progress became marked by calumnious tales which hovered like obscene sea-birds over the wake of a vessel. Gordon had gone from Brussels in a huge coach, copied from one of Napoleon’s taken at Genappe, and purchased from a travelling Wallachian nobleman. The vehicle was a noteworthy object, and early formed the basis of lying reports. A paragraph in the Journal de Belgique met the pursuer’s eye on his first arrival in Ostend.
It stated with detail that a Flemish coachmaker had delivered to the milor Anglais a coach of the value of two thousand eight hundred francs; that on going for payment, he found his lordship had absconded with the carriage; that the defrauded sellier had petitioned the Tribunal de Première Instance for proper representation to other districts, that the fugitive might be apprehended and the stolen property seized. With this clipping in his pocket the man who tracked Gordon followed up the Rhine to the confines of Switzerland. Here he lost a month, for the emblazoned
wagon de luxe had turned at Basle, and, skirting Neufchâtel, had taken its course to Lake Geneva.
Gordon had travelled wholly at random and paused there only because the shimmering blue waters, the black mountain ridges with their epaulets of cloud and, in the distance, the cold, secular phantom of Mont Blanc, brought to his jaded senses the first hint of relief. In the Villa Diodati, high above the lake, the English milord with the lame foot, the white face and sparkling eyes, stayed his course, to the wonder of the country folk who speculated endlessly upon the strange choice which preferred the gloomy villa to the spires and slate roofs of the gay city so near. And here, to his surprise, Gordon found ensconced, in a cottage on the high bank, Shelley and his young wife, with the black-eyed, creole-tinted girl whom the Drury Lane audience had hissed.
So had chance conspired to color circumstance for the rage of tireless hatred that was following.
The blows that had succeeded the flight of Annabel with his child had left Gordon stunned. The flaming recoil of his feeling, in that fierce denunciation at Almack’s, had burned up in him the very capacity for further suffering, and for a time the quiet of Diodati, set in its grove above the water like a bird’s nest among leaves, was a healing anodyne.
From his balcony Mont Blanc and its snowy aiguilles were screened, but the sun sank roseate behind the Jura, and it lifted again over vineyarded hills which echoed the songs of vine-dressers and the mellow bells of sauntering herds. Below, boats swept idly in the sun, or the long lances of the rain marched and marshalled across the level lake to the meeting and sundering of the clouds.
There came a time too soon, when the dulled nerves awoke, when the whole man cried out. In the sharpest of these moods Gordon found respite at the adjacent cottage, where Shelley, whose bright eyes seemed to drink light from the pages of Plato or Calderon, read aloud, or Jane Clermont, piquant and daring as of old, sang for them some song of Tom Moore’s. Or in the long days the two men walked and sailed, under a sky of garter-blue, feeling the lapping of the
waves, living between the two wondrous worlds of water and ether, till for a time Gordon laid the troubled specters of his thoughts in semi-forgetfulness.
One day they drove along the margin of the lake to Chillon and spent a night beneath the frowning château walls that had entombed Bonnivard. On the afternoon of their return, sitting alone on the balcony with the gloom of those dungeons still upon him, gazing far across the lake, across the mountains, toward that home from which he had been driven, Gordon, for the first time since he had left England, found relief in composition. He wrote of Chillon’s prisoner, but the agony in the lines was a personal one:
“I made a tooting in the wall, It was not therefrom to escape, For I had buried one and all Who loved me in a human shape; No child—no sire—no kin had I, No partner in my misery; But I was curious to ascend To my barred windows, and to bend Once more, upon the mountains high, The quiet of a loving eye.”
He wrote in the dimming luster of a perfect day. Below him rippled the long lake churning an inarticulate melody, and a tiny island with trees upon it rested the eye. As he gazed, beyond the dazzling beryl foliage, set in the sunset, a spot rivetted his look. A moment before the white sail of a boat had glanced there; now a confused flat blur lay on the water.
Gordon thrust his commonplace-book into his pocket and leaned forward, shading his eyes from the glow. The blot resolved itself into a capsized hull and two black figures struggling in the water, one with difficulty supporting the other.
The next moment he was dashing down the bank, hallooing for Fletcher, peeling off coat and waistcoat as he went.
“There’s a boat swamped,” he shouted, as the valet came through the garden. “Where is the skiff?”
“Miss Clermont has it, my lord.”
Gordon plunged in, while Fletcher ran to summon the Shelleys. They came hurrying along the vineyard lane with frightened faces, Mary to watch from the high bank, and Shelley, who could no more swim than Fletcher, to stride up and down, his long hair streaming in the wind. The excitement brought a picturesque dozen of goitred vinedressers from the hillside, who looked on with exclamations.
All were gazing fixedly on the lake, or they might have seen two men enter the grounds from the upper road. Of these, one was a Swiss with a severe, thin face and ascetic brow, the syndic of Cologny, the nearest town—a bigot functionary heartily disliked by the country people. The other was a Genevan attorney. From the road they had not seen the catastrophe, and the overturned boat, the struggling figures, and the swimmer forging to the rescue came to their view all at once.
Gordon was swimming as he had never done save once—when he had swum the Hellespont years before, and in mid-channel a strange, great piebald fish had glided near him. The lawyer saw him reach and grasp the helpless man, and, supporting him, bring him to shore. He sniffed with satisfaction.
“Only one man in the canton can swim like that,” he said, “and that’s the one you came to see. No wonder the peasants call him ‘the English fish’!”
The young man whom Gordon had aided wore a blonde curling beard, contrasting strongly with his older companion’s darker shaven cheeks and bushy black Greek eyebrows. The unseen spectators on the terrace saw him drink from his rescuer’s pocket-flask—saw him rise and grasp the other’s hand and knew that he was thanking him. As they watched, a servant ran to the coach-house, and the syndic observed:
“He’s sending them into town by carriage. They’re going indoors now. We’ll go down presently.”
“Take my advice,” urged the attorney above the terrace, “and let the Englishman alone. Haven’t we court business enough in Switzerland, that we must work for Flanders? What have we to do with the complaints of Brussels coachmakers? And how do you know it’s true, anyway?”
The syndic’s lips snapped together.
“I know my business,” he bridled. “He is a worshiper of Satan and a scoffer at religion.”
“And you’d burn him with green wood if you could, as Calvin did Servetus in the town yonder, eh?”
“He has committed every crime in his own country,” went on the other angrily. “He has formed a conspiracy to overthrow by rhyme all morals and government. My brother wrote me from Copet that one of Madame de Staël’s guests fainted at seeing him ride past, as if she had seen the devil. They say in Geneva that he has corrupted every grisette on the rue Basse! Do you think he is too good to be a thief? Murderer or absconder or heretic, it is all one to me. Cologny wants none such on her skirts. Let us go down,” he added, rising; “it will be dark soon.”
The counsellor shrugged his shoulders and followed the other over the sloping terrace.
CHAPTER XXII
THE FACE ON THE IVORY
When Gordon descended the stair he came upon a striking group at the villa entrance. Shelley, with his wife beside him, confronted the severe-faced syndic, who stood stolidly with the comfortably plump avocat. A look of indignation was on his brow, and Mary’s face was perturbed.
“Here he is,” said the functionary in his neighborhood patois, and with satisfaction.
“You have business with me?” asked Gordon.
“I have. I require you to accompany me at once to Cologny on a matter touching the peace of this canton.”
“And this matter is what?”
“You speak French,” returned the syndic tartly; “doubtless you read it as well,”—and handed him a clipping from the Journal de Belgique.
Gordon scanned the fragment of paper, first with surprise, then with a slow and bitter smile. He had not seen the story, but it differed little from scores of calumnies that had filled the columns of less credulous newspapers in London before his departure. It was a breath fresh from the old sulphur bed of hatred, brought sharply to him here in his solitude.
“I see,” he said; “this states that a certain English milord had turned highwayman and deprived an honest Fleming of a wagon? How does it affect me?”
“Do you deny that you have the wagon?” demanded the syndic curtly.
“The wagon? I have a wagon, yes. One bought for me by my servant.”
“In Brussels?”
“As it happens, in Brussels.” The paleness of Gordon’s face was accentuated now, and his eyes held cores of dangerous flame. “And because I am an English milord, and bring a wagon from Brussels, you assume that I am a robber?”
“You were driven from your own country,” menaced the other. “Do you think we hear nothing, we Swiss? This canton knows you well enough! Stop those horses!” he snarled, for the great coach, ready for its trip to the town, was rolling down the driveway. The syndic sprang to the horses’ heads.
At the same instant the two strangers who had been in the overturned boat, now with clothing partially dried, came from the house.
“There!” The syndic pointed to the ornate vehicle. “Do you deny this is the wagon described in that newspaper, and that you absconded with it from Brussels?”
The older of the two strangers turned quick eyes on Gordon, then on the wagon. Before Gordon could reply, he spoke in nervous French:
“I beg pardon. I was the owner of that conveyance, and the one who sold it.”
“Maybe,” said the functionary, “but you did not sell it to this person, I have reason to believe.”
“No, yonder is the purchaser.” He pointed to a prosaic figure at the steps.
“His valet!” Shelley thrust in explosively.
“I told you so,” grunted the man of law, and stared with the surprise of recognition, as the syndic, ruffling with anger, turned on the strangers with sarcasm: “Friends of the English milord, no doubt!”
The counsellor laid a hasty hand on his sleeve:
“Stop!” he said. “I think I have had the honor of meeting these gentlemen in Geneva. Allow me to present you, monsieur, to Prince Mavrocordato, minister of foreign affairs of Wallachia, and”—he
turned to the latter’s younger companion—“his secretary, Count Pietro Gamba, of Ravenna.”
The sour-faced official drew back. These were names whose owners had been public guests of the canton. This Englishman, evil and outcast as he might be, he had no legal hold upon. He could scarcely frame a grudging apology, for the resentment of selfrighteousness that was on his tongue, and stalked off up the terrace in sullen chagrin not consoled by the chuckles of the attorney beside him.
Gordon saw them go, his hands trembling. He replied mechanically to the grateful farewells of the two strangers as they entered the coach, and watched it roll swiftly down the darkening shore road, a quivering blur before his eyes. A fierce struggle was within him, the peace which the tranquil poise of Shelley’s creed had lent him, warring against a clamant rage.
Not only in England was he maligned. Here, on the edge of this mountain barrier, defamation had followed him. The pair riding in his own carriage knew who he was; the older had spoken his name and title. And they had not elected to stay beyond necessity. Yet for their momentary presence, indeed, he should be grateful. But for this trick of coincidence he should now be haled before a bungling Genevan tribunal, his name and person a mark for the sparring of pettifogging Swiss officials!
These thoughts were clashing through his mind as he turned and walked slowly down to the bank where Shelley’s Swiss servant had moored the stranger’s rescued boat, bailed out and with sail stretched to dry. The sunset, as he stood, flamed redly across the lake, its ray glinting from the rim of a bright object whose broken chain had caught beneath the boat’s gunwale. He leaned and drew it out.
It was an oval miniature backed with silver—the portrait of a young girl, a face frail and delicately hued, with fine line of chin and slender neck, with wistful eyes the deep color of the Adriatic, hair a gush of tawny gold, skin like warm Arum lilies, and a string of pearls about her neck. Evidently it had belonged to one of the two men with whom
the craft had capsized. It was too late now to overtake the coach; he would send it after them that evening.
He turned the miniature over On the back was engraved a name: “Teresa Gamba.” Gamba? It had been one of the names spoken by the attorney, that of the young count for whose rescue he had swum so hard.
He looked again at the ivory. His wife? No, no; innocence of life, ignorance of its passions and parades were there. His sister? Yes. The fair hair and blue eyes were alike. And now he caught a subtle resemblance of feature. She was dear to this brother, no doubt— dear as was his own half-sister to him, well-nigh the only being left in England who believed in him and loved him.
He looked up at a hail from the lake. A boat was approaching, bearing a single feminine rower. As he gazed, she looked over her shoulder to wave something white at the porch.
“It is Jane. She has been to the post,” cried Shelley from the terrace, and hastened down the bank.
Gordon thrust the ivory into his pocket as the skiff darted in to the landing.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE DEVIL’S DEAL
As he took the two missives the girl handed him Gordon caught his breath, for one he saw was directed in Annabel’s hand. For a moment a hope that overleaped all his suffering rose in his brain. Had those months wrought a change in her? Had she, too, thought of their child? Had the cry he voiced on the packet that bore him from England struck an answering chord in her? He opened its cover. An inclosure dropped out.
He picked it up blankly It was the note he had pencilled on the channel, returned unopened.
The sudden revulsion chilled him. He broke the seal of the second letter and read—read while a look of utter sick whiteness crept across his face, a look of rage and suffering that marked every feature.
It was from his sister, a letter written with fingers that soiled and creased it in their agony, blotted and stained with tears. For the thing it told of was a dreadful thing, a whispered charge against him so damning, so satanic in its cruelty, that though lip might murmur it to a gloating ear, yet pen refused to word it. The whole world turned black before him, and the dusk seemed shot through with barbed and flaming javelins of agony.
He crushed the letter in his hand, and, with a gesture like a madman’s, thrust it into Shelley’s, turning to him a countenance distorted with passion, gauche, malignant, repulsive.
“Read it, Shelley,” he said in a strangled voice. “Read it and know London, the most ineffable centaur ever begotten of hypocrisy and a nightmare! Read what its wretched lepers are saying! There is a place in Michael Angelo’s ‘Last Judgment’ in the Sistine Chapel that
was made for their kind, and may the like await them in that of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ—Amen!”
With this fearful imprecation he flung away from their startled faces along the winding vineyarded lane, on into the dusk, lost to a sense of direction, to everything save the blackness in his own soul.
The night fell, odorous with grape-scents, and the moon stained the terraces to amber. It shone on Gordon as he sat by the little wharf where the skiff rocked in the ripples, his eyes viewless, looking straight before him across the lake.
For him there was no sanctuary in time or in distance. The passage he had read at Newstead Abbey in his mother’s open Bible, beside her body, flashed through his mind: And among these nations shall thou find no ease, neither shall the sole of thy foot have rest.... In the morning thou shalt say, Would God it were even! and at even thou shalt say, Would God it were morning! He had found—should find— no ease nor rest! The captive of Chillon had been bound only with fetters of iron to stone pillars. He was chained with fiery links of hate to the freezing walls of the world’s contumely!
Footsteps went by along the shadowy lane. Shelley’s voice spoke: “He will come back soon, and we must comfort him if we can.”
The words came distinctly as the footsteps died away.
Something clutched tangibly at Gordon’s soul. In that instant his gaze, lifted, rested on a white square in the moonlight. It was a familiar enough object, but now it appeared odd and outré. He rose and approached it. It had been a sign-post bearing an arrow and the words “Villa Diodati.” Now malice had painted out the name and replaced it with new and staring characters.
“A F .” It glared level at him with a baleful malevolence that chilled the moment’s warmer softening into ice. Atheist! Without God. What need, then, had he for man? Let the moralists have it so, since they stickled so lustily for endless brimstone. Fool? He would be so, then! His brain should lie fallow and untilled—he would write no more!
With a quick gesture he drew from his pocket his commonplacebook. He laid it against the disfigured sign-board, pencilled a few words on its cover and, turning, hurled it far from him into the shrubbery.
A twig snapped. He looked around. Jane Clermont stood near him, her eyes smiling into his, fringed with intoxication and daring.
“I know,” she said; “they are hounding you still. They hated me, too!” She came quite close to him. “What need we care? What are they all to us?”
It was the Jane of the Drury Lane greenroom he saw now—the Jane whose brilliance and wit had held him then; but there was something deeper in her look that he had never seen before: a recklessness, an invitation and an assent.
“Jane!” he exclaimed. She touched his hand. “Why should we stay here? Let us go away from them all—where they cannot follow us to sting!”
Gordon stared at her, his eyes holding hers. To go away—with her? To slip the leash of all that was pagan in him? What matter? He was damned anyway—a social Pariah; why strive to undeserve the reputation? His thought was swirling through savage undercurrents of vindictive wrath, circling, circling like a Maelstrom, about this one dead center: Civilization had cast him off. Henceforth his life was his own, to live to himself, for his own ends, as the savage, as the beast of the field. To live and to die, knowing that no greater agony than was meted to him now could await him, even in that nethermost reach where the lost are driven at the end.
“We must comfort him if we can!” The words Shelley had spoken seemed to vibrate in the stillness like the caught key of an organ. He turned to where Villa Diodati above them slept in the long arms of the night shadows, listening to the contending voices within him. Comfort? The placid comfort of philosophy for him whose flesh was fever and his blood quicksilver? In this girl life and action beckoned to him—life full and abundant—forgetfulness, wandering, and pleasure, fleeting surely, but still his while it should last! And yet—
The girl’s hand was on the skiff. On a sudden a cry of fear burst from her lips and she shrank back as a disordered figure broke from the darkness and clutched Gordon’s arm fiercely.
“Where are you taking her now?”
Gordon’s thought veered. In his numbness of feeling there scarce seemed strangeness in the apparition. As he looked at the oriental, mustachioed face, haggard and haunted, his lips rather than his mind replied:
“Who knows?”
“You lie! You ruined her career and stole her away from London and from me! Now you want to take her from these last friends of hers— for yourself! But you cannot go where I will not find you! And where you go the world shall know you and despise you!”
Jane’s eyes flashed upon the speaker. “You!” she cried in contemptuous anger. “You hated him even in London; now you have followed him here. It is you who have set the peasants to spy upon us! It is you who have spread tales through Geneva! You whose lies sent the syndic to-day!”
Gordon had been staring at the Moorish, theatric face with a gaze of singular inquiry, his brain searching, searching for a lost clue. All at once the haze lightened. His thought leaped across a chasm of time. He saw a reckless youth, a deserter from the navy, whom he had befriended in Greece—a youth who had vanished suddenly from Missolonghi during the feast of Ramazan. He saw a shambling, cactus-bordered road to the seashore—a file of Turkish soldiers, the foremost in a purple coat, and carrying a long wand—a beast of burden bearing a brown sack—
“Trevanion!” he said. “Trevanion—by the Lord!”
He burst into a laugh, reëchoing, sardonic, a laugh now of absolute, remorseless unconcern, of crude recklessness flaunting at last supreme over crumbled resolve—the laugh of a zealot flagellant beneath the lash, a derisive Villon on the scaffold.
“So I stole her from you! You, even you, dare to accuse me. Out of my sight!” he said, and flung him roughly from the path.
Gordon held out his hand to Jane Clermont, lifted her into the skiff, and springing in, sent the slim cockle-shell shooting out into the still expanse like an arrow on the air.
Then he took up the oars and turned its prow down the lake to where the streaming lights of the careless city wavered through the mists, pale green under the moonbeams.
The journal which Gordon had hurled from him lay in the vine-rows next morning when Shelley, with a face of trouble and foreboding, passed along the dewy lane. He read the words written on its cover:
“And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. I will keep no record of that same hesternal torch-light; and to prevent me from returning, like a dog, to the vomit of memory, I throw away this volume, and write in Ipecacuanha: Hang up justice! Let morality go beg! To be sure, I have long despised myself and man, but I never spat in the face of my species before—‘O fool! I shall go mad!’”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE MARK OF THE BEAST
“Your coffee, my lord?”
It was Fletcher’s usual inquiry, repeated night and morning—the same words that on the Ostend packet had told his master that his wanderings were shared. After these many months in Venice, where George Gordon had shut upon his retreat the floodgates of the world, the old servant’s tone had the same wistful cadence of solicitude.
Time for Gordon had passed like wreckage running with the tide. The few fevered weeks of wandering through Switzerland with Jane Clermont—he scarcely knew where or how they had ended—had left in his mind only a series of phantom impressions: woods of withered pine, Alpine glaciers shining like truth, Wengen torrents like tails of white horses and distant thunder of avalanches, as if God were pelting the devil down from Heaven with snowballs. And neither the piping of the shepherd, nor the rumble of the storm; not the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest or the cloud, had lightened the darkness of his heart or enabled him to lose his wretched identity in the Power and the Glory above and beneath him.
In that night at Geneva the tidal wave of execration which had rolled over his emerging manhood had left as it ebbed only a bare reef across which blew cool, infuriate winds of avid recklessness; and through these insensate blasts he moved in a kind of waking somnambulism, in which his acts seemed to him those of another individual, and he, the real actor, poised aloft, watching with a sardonic speculation.
At Rome his numbed senses awakened, and he found himself alone, and around him his human kind which he hated, spying tourists and scribblers, who sharpened their scavenger pencils to record his
vagaries. He fled from them to Venice, where, thanks to report, Fletcher had found his master.
But it was a changed Gordon who had ensconced himself here, a Gordon to whom social convention had become a sneer, and the praise or blame of his fellows idle chaff cast in the wind. He ate and drank and slept—not as other men, but as a gormand and débauché. Such letters as he wrote—to his sister, to Tom Moore, to Hobhouse—were flippant mockeries. Rarely was he seen at opera, at ridotto, at conversazione. When he went abroad it was most often by night, as though he shunned the daylight. More than one cabaret in the shadow of the Palace of the Doges knew the white satiric face that stared out from its terrace over the waterways, where covered gondolas crept like black spiders, till the clock of St. Mark’s struck the third hour of the morning. And more than one black and redsashed boatman whispered tales of the Palazzo Mocenigo on the Grand Canal and the “Giovannotto Inglese who spent great sums.”
The gondolieri turned their heads to gaze as they sculled past the carved gateway. Did not the priests call him “the wicked milord”? And did not all Venice know of Marianna, the linen-draper’s wife of the street Spezieria, and of Margarita Cogni, the black-eyed Fornarina, who came and went as she pleased in the milord’s household? They themselves had gained many a coin by telling these tales to the tourists from the milord’s own country, who came to watch from across the canal with opera-glasses, as if he were a ravenous beast or a raree-show; who lay in wait at nightfall to see his gondola pass to the wide outlying lagoon, haunted the sand-spit of the Lido where he rode horseback, and offered bribes to his servants to see the bed wherein he slept. They took the tourists’ soldi shamefacedly, however, for they knew other tales, too: how he had furnished money to send Beppo, the son of the fruit peddler, to the art school at Naples; how he had given fifty louis d’or to rebuild the burned shop of the printer of San Samuele.
“Your coffee, my lord?” Fletcher repeated the inquiry, for his master had not heard.
“No; bring some cognac, Fletcher.”
The valet obeyed, though with covert concern. He had seen the inroads that year had made; they showed in the lines on the pallid face, in the brown hair now just flecked with gray, in the increasing fire in the deep eyes. The brandy sat habitually at his master’s elbow in these days.
It was two hours past midnight, for to Gordon day and night were one, and sleep only a neutral inertness, worse with its dreams than the garish day he dreaded. On the hearth a fire blazed, whose flame bred crimson marionettes that danced over the noble carved ceiling panels, the tall Venetian mirrors supported by gilt lions, the faded furnishings and the mildew-marked canvases whose portraits looked stonily from the walls.
A gust of voices and the sound of virginals, flung up from the canal, came faintly through the closed casement. He moved his shoulders wearily. Yesterday had been Christmas Day. To-night was the eve of St. Stephen, the opening of the carnival season, with every corner osteria a symphony of fiddles, when Venice went mad in all her seventy islands. What were holidays, what was Christmas to him?
Even in the warm blaze Gordon shivered. Ghosts had troubled him this day. Ghosts that stalked through the confused mist and rose before him in the throngs that passed and repassed before his mind’s eye. Ghosts whose diverse countenances resolved themselves, like phantasmagoria, into a single one—the pained eager face of Shelley. The recurring sensation had brought a sick sense of awakening, as of something buried that stirred in its submerged chrysalis, protesting against the silt settling upon it.
But brandy had lost its power to lay those ghosts. He went to the desk which held the black phial, the tiny glass comforter to which he resorted more and more often. Once with its surcease it had brought a splendor and plenitude of power; of late its relief had been lent at the price of distorted visions. As he drew out the thin-walled drawer, its worm-eaten bottom collapsed and its jumble of contents poured down on the mahogany.
He paused, his hand outstretched. Atop of the mélange lay a silverset miniature. He picked it up, holding it nearer the light. A girl’s face,
hued like a hyacinth, looked out of his palm, painted on ivory A string of pearls was about her neck.
For an instant he regarded the miniature fixedly, his recollection travelling far. The pearls aided. It was the one he had found in the capsized boat at Villa Diodati! He had purposed sending it after the two strangers. The events of that wild night had effaced the incident from his mind, as a wet sponge wipes off a slate. Fletcher, finding the oval long ago in a pocket lining, had put it in the desk-drawer for safe-keeping, where until this moment it had not met his master’s eye.
“Teresa.” Gordon suddenly remembered the name perfectly. With the memory mixed a sardonic reflection: the man who had lost the miniature that day in Switzerland had hastened away with clothing scarce dried. Well, if that brother had deemed himself too good to linger with the outcast, the balance had been squared. The sister, perforce, had made a longer stay!
He put down the miniature, found the phial of laudanum and uncorked it, but the face drew him back. It was not the external similitude now, but something beneath, unobserved the day he had found it—the pure sensibility, shining unsullied through the transparent media. A delicate convent slip, she seemed, not yet transplanted to the unsifted soil of the world! A strange portrait for him to gaze upon here in this palace of ribaldry—him, the moral Caliban, the dweller in Golgotha on whose forehead was written the hic jacet of a dead soul!
The antithesis of the picture, bold, Medea-like, tall as a Pythoness, with hair of night, black flashing eyes and passion blent with ferocity, projected itself, like a materialization in a séance, from the air. He turned his head with a sensation of bodily presence, though he knew the one of whom he thought was then in Naples. If she should enter and find him with that ivory in his hand, what a rare sirocco would be let loose!
He tried to smile, but the old arrant raillery would not come. The miniature blotted out the figure of the Fornarina. Against his will, it
suggested all the pure things that he had ever known—his youthful romance, his dreams, Ada, his child!
Holding it, he walked to a folded mirror in a corner of the wall and opened its panels. There had been a time when he had said no appetite should ever rule him; the face he saw reflected now wore the lines of incorrigible self-indulgence, animalism, the sinister badge of the bacchanal.
