Page 74 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #05

Walter Rothschild, bound
for Buckingham Palace
aboard his carriage
pulled by three
zebras and a horse.

erhaps the most famous painfully shy. Yet he had a brilliant brain. looks after many of the natural treasures he
photograph of Walter Rothschild By the end of his life, Lionel Walter amassed over the course of his life. “I feel
is the one shown above, of him Rothschild, the Second Baron Rothschild, so grateful to him for having the drive and
driving a carriage harnessed Baron de Rothschild and Fellow of the Royal generosity to create his amazing collections
to three plains zebras. In Society, had spent time working in both and then leave them to the nation.”
another picture he can be seen banking and politics.
Pastride a Galápagos tortoise But it was in the field of zoology that A growing menagerie
called Rotumah that he found living in the Walter, as he preferred to be called, made Walter Rothschild was born on 8 February
grounds of an Australian lunatic asylum. his greatest contribution. “I think he 1868, in London. He was the eldest of the
Given such behaviour, one might question certainly would’ve been an interesting, three sons of Nathan Rothschild, the First
whether Walter himself should have been entertaining and exacting person to work Baron Rothschild, an extremely affluent
sectioned. He was, in short, a great British with!” says Alice Adams, interpretation and banker of the global Rothschild financial
eccentric. He was also six foot three inches learning manager at the Natural History empire and the first Jew in Britain to receive
tall, afflicted by a speech impediment, and Museum at Tring, Hertfordshire, which a hereditary peerage. Walter was thought
74 BBC Wildlife Spring 2018