The “Dinner in the Iguanodon Model” is the best known story involving Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. That dinner took place on New Year’s Eve 31 December 1853. It was immortalised in an illustration published in Illustrated London News, 07 January 1854, volume 24, number 662, page 22. The illustration is based on an actual dinner organised by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, the artist who created the animal statues, including Iguanodon, in Crystal Palace Park.
The famous dinner scene depicts a collection of gentlemen sitting around a table inside one of two Iguanodon models under construction during the winter 1853-54. In the scene, waiters deliver dinner and drinks. On the floor is a piece of casting used to create the sculpture. The dinner scene is surrounded by a giant canopy decorated with a chandelier and four plaques honouring famous palaeontologists (William Buckland, Georges Cuvier, Richard Owen, Gideon Mantell). Because the Iguanodon model stood several metres tall, a raised platform was required for staff and guests to reach inside.
At the time, much was made of the fact that Professor Richard Owen was placed at the head of the table – quite literally, sitting where the brain was located. Edward Forbes (a zoologist serving as consultant to the project) and Francis Fuller (Manager Director of the Crystal Palace Company) sat at the other end of the table. Some reports put Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins standing centre and facing the viewer (in this illustration, that is the person standing directly underneath the chandelier), though he later said he was placed elsewhere around the table.
Written Coverage in The Illustrated London News
The quotation in this section is a full transcription of the article that appeared in Illustrated London News together with the famous engraving.
The Crystal Palace, at Sydenham
In our Number of last week [volume 23, issue 661, page 600, published 31 December 1853] we gave a whole-page Illustration of Mr. B. Waterhouse Hawkins’s Model-room, or Studio, at Crystal Palace, Sydenham, where he is constructing his gigantic restorations of the Extinct Inhabitants of the Ancient World. We then had only the opportunity briefly to allude to this novel and great undertaking; and repeated the speculations of enthusiastic discoverers of antediluvian remains which are now, with anatomical severity, being reconstructed and restored to a state of life-like nature by Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins; to whose talents and knowledge this department of the great educational scheme of the Directors of the Crystal Palace Company is now confided; and with how much credit to their judgment was most agreeably exemplified on Saturday evening last (the last day of the year 1853), when Mr. W. Hawkins, with the concurrence of the Directors, invited a number of his scientific friends and supporters to dine with him in the body of one of his largest models, called the Iguanodon, which occupies so conspicuous a place in our Illustration of last week. In the mould of this colossal work of art – for as such it must deservedly rank very high – Mr. Hawkins conceived the idea of bringing together those great names whose high position in the science of palaeontology and geology would form the best guarantee for the severe truthfulness of his works; and, at the same time, show to the public the high tone of criticism and knowledge which the Directors of this truly national undertaking require those officers to sustain to whom they confide the carrying out of any important part of their plan which so particularly bears on the education of the people.
To carry out this extraordinary idea, cards were issued at the beginning of last week – and such cards! as startling as the invitation they bore: “Mr. B. Waterhouse Hawkins solicits the honour of Professor ____’s company at dinner, in the Iguanodon, on the 31st of December, 1853, at four p.m.” The incredible request was written on the wing of a Pterodactyle, spread before a most graphic etching of the Iguanodon, with his socially-loaded stomach, so practicably and easily filled, as to tempt all to whom it was possible to accept, at such short notice, this singular invitation. Many have to regret the rapidity of executing this novel idea, at a season when almost all have a plurality of engagements. Nevertheless, Mr. Hawkins had one-and-twenty guests around him in the body of the Iguanodon on Saturday last; at the head of whom, most appropriately, and in the head of the gigantic animal, sat Professor Owen [Richard Owen 1804-1892], supported by Professor E. Forbes [Edward Forbes 1815-1854]; Mr. Prestwick [sic: Joseph Prestwich 1812-1896], the geologist; Mr. Gould [John Gould 1804-1881], the celebrated ornithologist; and the Directors and officers of the Company.
The dinner, which was luxurious and elegantly served, being ended, the usual routine of loyal toasts were duly given and responded to – allusion being gracefully made by Mr. Francis Fuller, Managing Director, to the great interest evinced and approbation expressed by H.M. the Queen and H.R.H. the Prince, on their recent visit to the extraordinary works by which the company were surrounded.
Professor Owen then took the occasion to explain, in his lucid and powerful manner, the means and careful study by which Mr. Hawkins had prepared his models, and had attained his present truthful success; Professor Owen adding that it had been a source of great pleasure to him to aid so important an undertaking, by assisting with his instruction and direction a gentleman who possessed the rarely-united capabilities of an anatomist, a naturalist, and a practical artist, with a docility and eagerness for the truth which ensured Mr. Hawkins’s careful restorations the highest point of knowledge which had been attained up to the present period. The learned Professor then briefly commented upon the course of reasoning by which Cuvier, and other comparative anatomists, were enabled to build up the various animals of which but small remains were at first presented to their anxious study; but which, when afterwards increased, served to develop and confirm their confident conceptions – instancing the Megalosaurus, the Iguanodon, and Dinornis as striking examples.
Professor Forbes also bore testimony to the truthful care and study with which these great models were produced by Mr. Hawkins, and which would render them trustworthy lessons to the world at large in a branch of science which had hitherto been found too vast and abstruse to call in the aid of art to illustrate its wonderful truths.
After several appropriate toasts, this agreeable party of philosophers returned to London by rail, evidently well pleased with the modern hospitality of the Iguanodon, whose ancient sides there is no reason to suppose had ever before been shaken with philosophic mirth. [end]
The full citation for the article is “The Crystal Palace, at Sydenham,” The Illustrated London News, volume 24, issue 662, page 22. Published 07 January 1854.
Don’t Forget Dinornis, New Zealand Moa
The full page of The Illustrated London News also has an article and illustration relating to the discovery of moa (Dinornis) fossils in New Zealand and relating to the unravelling of their anatomy by Richard Owen in 1839 (“Gigantic Bird of New Zealand”). That unravelling had already grown into an often-told mythology about Owen’s intellectual abilities.
This appearance of this article in this place surely ties to the New Year’s Eve dinner through the event’s nominal guest of honour, Richard Owen and references he made to it through the evening. The Dinornis article contained no newsworthy information. It’s the kind of background information a journalist might have been told at the event, or might have researched when preparing the story about the dinner.
The Dinornis piece also built on content from Waterhouse Hawkins’s narrative about his plans for the attraction. He had a list of sculptures for 1854. He also had more, including a mammoth, a dodo, and some others. Crucially, he planned to included Dinornis in his sculptured zoo. Those plans, and his larger vision, certainly was a topic of conversation on the night.
Waterhouse Hawkins continued, after the park’s opening in June 1854, to create new sculptures and to start new designs. In Spring 1855, however, his work was abruptly terminated in the park. Company directors were trying to control costs. Despite protests and efforts to raise public subscriptions, the work Waterhouse Hawkins had underway abruptly stopped. He never completed the proposed Dinornis sculptures for the Crystal Palace attraction.
Full page from Illustrated London News
The full citation for the illustration is “Dinner in the Iguanodon Model, at the Crystal Palace, at Sydenham” The Illustrated London News, volume 24, issue 662, page 22. Published 07 January 1854.
Author
Written by Professor Joe Cain.