6 Imagine you are Professor Challenger. Write a diary entry
describing how you were captured by the apemen, how they
treated you and your companions, and what you witnessed in
the ape-town. (100-120 words)
71
Answers
Answer:
George Edward Challenger, FRS, MD, DSc, was born in Largs, Ayrshire in 1863 and educated at Largs Academy before studying at the University of Edinburgh.[3] Dr Challenger was appointed to an assistant position at the British Museum in 1892 and was promoted within a year to assistant keeper in the Comparative Anthropology Department. He held a professorship in Zoology and was elected President of the Zoological Institute in London. Several of his inventions were successfully applied in industry and brought him additional income.[4]
Edward Malone, the narrator of The Lost World, the 1912 novel in which Challenger first appeared, described his first meeting with the character:
His appearance made me gasp. I was prepared for something strange, but not for so overpowering a personality as this. It was his size, which took one's breath away – his size and his imposing presence. His head was enormous, the largest I have ever seen upon a human being. I am sure that his top hat, had I ventured to don it, would have slipped over me entirely and rested on my shoulders. He had the face and beard, which I associate with an Assyrian bull; the former florid, the latter so black as almost to have a suspicion of blue, spade-shaped and rippling down over his chest. The hair was peculiar, plastered down in front in a long, curving wisp over his massive forehead. The eyes were blue-grey under great black tufts, very clear, very critical, and very masterful. A huge spread of shoulders and a chest like a barrel were the other parts of him which appeared above the table, save for two enormous hands covered with long black hair. This and a bellowing, roaring, rumbling voice made up my first impression of the notorious Professor Challenger.[5]
Challenger was also a pretentious and self-righteous scientific jack-of-all-trades. Although considered by Malone's editor, Mr McArdle, to be "just a homicidal megalomaniac with a turn for science", his ingenuity could be counted upon to solve any problem or get out of any unsavoury situation, and be sure to offend and insult several other people in the process. He was also seen as extremely vain by his colleagues: Edward Malone says that "he is convinced, of course, that he is destined for Westminster Abbey"[6], and later speculates that "in his fancy, may he see himself sometimes, gracing the vacant pedestal in Trafalgar Square".[7]. Challenger was, in many ways, rude, crude, and without social conscience or inhibition. Yet he was a man capable of great loyalty and his love of his wife was all-encompassing.[citation needed]
Challenger married Jessica - ‘Jessie’ - and the couple settled at 14 Enmore Gardens, Enmore Park, Kensington, London.[8] After his adventures in South America Challenger and his wife purchased The Briars, in Rotherfield, Sussex, as a second home.[9] Later, following his wife’s death from influenza, Challenger sold his London home and rented an apartment on the third floor in Victoria West Gardens, London.[10] Challenger’s friend and biographer, the journalist Edward ‘Ted’ Dunn Malone married Enid Challenger, the Professor’s daughter, in the summer of 1927. Malone had been born in Ireland and achieved some fame in rugby football at international level for Ireland before a career in journalism at the Daily Gazette. Enid Challenger was a freelance reporter at the same newspaper.[11]
In July 1908 Malone joined Challenger, the 66 year-old Mr Summerlee (c.1842-1925), Professor of Comparative Anatomy, and the explorer and mountaineer Lord John Roxton, third son of the Duke of Pomfret and then in his mid-forties, on an expedition to the Amazon Basin, where Challenger claimed to have observed creatures from the Jurassic Age two years previously. On reaching the mouth of the Amazon River in Pará state the expedition hired local guides and servants Mojo, José, Fernando, Gomez, Manuel and Zambo.[12] From Manaus the expedition continued up-river to reach an unnamed tributary, which they followed by canoe until by late August the explorers arrived in the Guiana Highlands and the great table-top mountain (tepui) that was The Lost World. The expedition camped at the foot of the basalt cliffs of the tepui, which they named Maple White Land in honour of the plateau’s discoverer some four years earlier.[13] The isolated plateau was home to numerous prehistoric animals, previously known only from the fossil record, including pterodactyls, allosaurids, iguanodon and an early species of hominid. A group of indigenous people also occupied the plateau and the explorers aided them to subjugate the predatory ‘ape-men’. The expedition returned to London, bringing with them diamonds worth £200,000. Professors Challenger and Summerlee presented their findings to the Zoological Institute on 7 November 1908 at the Queen’s Hall, Regent Street, London. They claimed to have discovered over 150 new species, some dating from the Early Jurassic.
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