Abstract
Rosalià Abreu (1862–1930) was a wealthy amateur collector and keeper of primates, including apes. She was the first person to keep orangutans and chimpanzees alive in captivity for their natural lifespans, and the first to breed chimpanzees. Although not a scientist, she made her animals available for scientific study, and it was on her animals that the first published observations of chimpanzee mating, birth, and development were made. The system of husbandry that she designed for apes, with an emphasis on spacious cages, vegetarian diet, cleanliness, and social contact (preferably conspecific, but heterospecific where conspecifics were not available), were groundbreaking in their time. Through her extensive correspondence, her methods of husbandry spread and formed the basis of captive ape practices around the world. Though much of Abreu’s work was forward-looking, other aspects, such as her belief that chimpanzees were monogamous and had psychic abilities, strike modern readers as eccentric. Nonetheless primatologists today may be helped to see the cultural assumptions that underlie today’s research by noting those that guided research in the past.
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Notes
Much Abreu correspondence is held in the Yerkes archives at Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library in numbered boxes and folders. Hereafter material in the Yerkes archives will be cited as YA (Yerkes Archives) followed by the box and folder number; e.g., YA 1/7 for Box 1, Folder 7).
Lilita went on to be the muse of two famous French poets: Jean Giradoux and Saint-John Perse (who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1960). Indeed, one of St.-John Perse’s most famous poems, “Poem à la Etrangere” (Poem to a foreign lady) is directed at Lilita Abreu.
Rosalià, la hermana menor, cuenta ahora veintiún años de edad. De alta estatura y algo delgada, puede llamarse una mujer bella. Ataviada siempre con costosos trajes traídos para ella expresamente de Paris y Nueva York, lugares que visita con frecuencia, es ella una de las jóvenes de la sociedad habanera que impone siempre la ultimata moda. No queda mas remedio que rendirse al imperativo de sus trajes y sombreros. (Camacho 1995, p. 108).
Le constant hurlement des singes, des perroquets, des domestiques qui s’appellent entre eux [qui] me met les nerfs en pelote. (Giraudoux 1989, p. v).
Autour de cette dame singulièrement intelligente, active et sensible, l’élite des Cubains s’assemble volontiers dans ce domaine où furent réunis les végétaux des tropiques, toutes les essences rares, tous les arbres magnifiques, toutes les plantes étranges, tous les palmiers [ 311]que chargent de leur repos les petits vautours noirs particuliers au pays. Les galeries du palais, par des larges arcades, ouvrent sur ce parc des Mille et Une Nuits, et le surplombent de leur terrasse. Là causent volontiers les personnes qui jouent, à la Havane, un rôle politique ou diplomatique. On peut y comprendre l’esprit cubain, son latinisme fin et perspicace, son vif sentiment de l’honneur, sa science inquiète de mettre en valour le plus rapidement les richesses incluses dans le sol fécond de la grande Antille. Cette aristocratie étonne par son erudition, par une facilité parfaite à concevoir des idées genérales et positives. Les meilleurs cercles de Boston, de Londres, de Paris, de Rome ne cultivent pas plus do phi¬losophies ingénieuses, plus de sciences alertes, plus de littératures très comprises. Hommes et femmes rivalisent d’esprit et de connaissance. Eduqués par un jeune philosophe polonais, les deux fils de madame Abreu, qui n’ont pas encore atteint l’adolescence, parlent de toutes choses sérieuses avec la sagesse instruite d’hommes mûrs ayant beaucoup lu, beaucoup vu. Cette précocité mentale surprend et enchante, comme celle de leur soeur qui, dans la nuit splendide des tropiques, rappelle les [312] vers de nos poètes, avec un sens extraordinaire du rythme. (Adam 1906, pp. 310-312).
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Acknowledgement
Grateful thanks to Don Dewsbury for much guidance in this project, to Gabriela Delacruz for help in translating Spanish, and to the Archives of the History of American Psychology, Akron, OH, Yale University Archives, New Haven, CT, and the interlibrary loan office of the University of Florida library for assistance in locating materials.
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Wynne, C.D.L. Rosalià Abreu and the Apes of Havana. Int J Primatol 29, 289–302 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-008-9242-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-008-9242-0