Alice Small BRLSI.qxp_Layout 1 21/07/2021 09:38 Page 1
MUSEUM | COLLECTIONS
Young writers: evaluating the past
Seventeen year old Alice Small, who is studying A Levels at Kingswood School, has taken four objects being used as the focus of BRLSI’s recently published Discovery Trail apps and asks the question, what are the links between them?
A
meteorite, the skull of a dinosaur, a book and a crucifix – what could be the potential links between these divided fragments of history? These four objects are currently on display at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, to celebrate the launch of BRLSI’s new Bath Discovery Trails app, offering four free trails around the city. The trails, entitled The First Meteorite, The Railway Leviathan, On the Origin of Species and The War Crosses each take roughly an hour and a half to walk and provide the opportunity to immerse yourself in Bath’s historical scenery, while learning about multiple aspects of the authenticity of the city on your way.
The four objects The First Meteorite in question is a part of the Krasnojark Pallasite, discovered in central Siberia in 1779. Being 4.2 billion years old, the extraordinary age of this extra-terrestrial object is almost incomprehensible. It sits unassumingly in its display case, gently sparkling under the lights, but otherwise looks fairly ordinary. It is therefore difficult to grasp the fact that this object has cycled back round to our modern-day world, while carrying with it the history of a practically unknown era of existence. The Railway Leviathan is actually the skull of a yet unnamed species of Steneosaurus, a marine crocodile with a similar appearance to the perhaps more familiar Indian gharial. This fossil is estimated at 160 million years old, yet it is still over 26 times younger than the meteorite! It’s impressive in its size, being around one metre long and showing us the enormity and physical strength of this creature, but I am also struck by its significance within the vast chasm of time; it is both unworldly and alarmingly familiar. Reverend Leonard Jenyns received his copy of On the Origin of Species as a gift from Darwin himself, just a few months after its publication in 1859. Jenyns was actually one of the founders of BRLSI and had a lifelong friendship with Darwin. This is shown by the letter
The first meteorite and the handwritten page from Darwin’s 1859 Origin of Species
displayed in the front of the book – Darwin revealed that he knew not everyone would accept his revolutionary ideas: “Of course it is open to everyone to believe that man appeared by separate miracle, though I do not myself see the necessity or probability.” Darwin knew from his study of fossils that his ideas provided links with a world far older than the accepted 4,000 years of the Bible. Could people accept that human existence is just a tiny part of the immense cycle of the earth’s reinvention?
❝
The dulled metal relics and glass beads embody the hundreds of thousands of lights which go out in people’s lives...
❝
Fittingly, The War Crosses are a sombre reminder of the very short existence of individuals who have lost their lives in the tragedy of conflict. Rosaries and crucifixes were gathered from the bodies of Russian soldiers, taken from where they lay on the battlefields of the Crimean War, by Dr Thomas Egerton Hale (the first field medic to be awarded the Victoria Cross). The dulled metal relics and glass beads embody the hundreds of thousands of lights which go out in peoples’ lives when they lose their loved ones. These tiny mementoes are a stern reminder of how devastating the effects of human conflict can be and how quickly life can be taken away. What can these museum objects teach us? At first glance, it would appear that these four items hold little relationship or meaning to each other. They belong to different eras or people and have lived separate lives. However, the objects seen together do challenge our concepts of modernity and human significance. For example, the crosses and the book in isolation seem old to us; they are in a museum, which gives them historic and cultural value, and the ideas and meanings they convey are discussed by historians. 52 TheBATHMagazine
|
aUgUST 2021
|
iSSUe 221
