My Travels With Clara, the Indian Rhinoceros, by Mary Tavener Holmes

Clara’s story elucidates the heartwarming tale of an Assam-born, month-old orphaned calf who perfects, at the Calcutta-area estate of the first -- Dutch East India Company director Jan Albert Sichtermann -- of two owners:

• eating from plates;
• moving around furniture;
• sleeping indoors.

It then finds Clara experiencing six or seven landless months by departing from Calcutta in northeastern India and disembarking at Rotterdam in northwestern Holland on July 22, 1741. The voyage generates such fun facts as Clara’s daily needs for:

• bowl of beer;
• 14 to 15 buckets of fresh water;
• orange peels;
• 60 pounds of hay;
• skin lotions of fish oil-enriched mud against parasites, sunburns, and ticks;
• sniffs of Douwe’s tobacco pipe;
• 20 pounds of bread.

We have no surviving writings by the 36-year-old Dutch East India Company sea captain on the life cycle and natural history of Clara, whose cause of death in London and place of burial remain unknown. But it is clear that Douwe’s posters of town viewings from 9:00 a.m. to noon and 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and tours of eighteenth-century cities inspired others to preserve Clara’s mature description and image as:

• 5’7” (1.74 meters) tall, shoulder to three-toed feet;
• 5,000 pounds;
• 12’ (3.66 meters) long, head to rump (excluding tail).

Posterity indeed judges as accurate:

• depictions in bronze, marble, and porcelain;
• models as statues and teapots and on clocks;
• portraits in beaded textiles and on continental coins. 

Clara’s memory keeps getting re-honored through:

• engravers Elias Baeck (1679 - 1747) and Jan Wandelaar (1690 – 1759);
• miniaturists of Archduke Charles Joseph of Austria (1745 – 1761);
• painters Pietro Longhi (1701 – 1785) and Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686 – 1755);
• writers Denis Diderot’s (1713 - 1784) and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert’s (1717 - 1783) Encyclopédie, Oliver Goldsmith’s (1730 - 1774) History of the Earth and Animated Nature, Georges Louis Leclerc’s (1707 - 1788) Histoire Naturelle, and Samuel Richardson’s (1689 - 1761) Clarissa.

It leaves posterity happier impressions than Europe’s acclaimed but nameless seven rhinoceros super-stars of:

• Lisbon, 1515, 1579 – 1583;
• London, 1684 – 1686, 1739, 1790 – 1792, 1799;
• Versailles, 1790 – 1813.

Clara’s story indeed memorializes the world’s longest surviving rhinoceros in captivity. 

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Clara's first owner, Jan Albert Sichterman (September 19, 1692-January 15, 1764), officer in the East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie), gave the tyke free access to his opulent house on VOC property in paradisical city of Chinsurah.
Jan Albert Sichterman with his son Jan; 1745 oil on canvas by Philip van Dijk (January 10, 1683 – February 2, 1753)
Groninger Museum, Groningen, northeastern Netherlands: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Philip_van_Dijk_-_Jan_Albert_Sichterman_met_zijn_zoon_Jan_Albert.jpg

After rescue from snare in Assam, where her mother was killed, 1-month old Clara was welcomed into resplendent home of Jan Albert Sichterman on grounds of VOC Chinsura Trading Post overlooking Hooghly River.
"The Trading Post of the Dutch East India Company in Hooghly, Bengal"; 1665 oil on canvas by Hendrik van Schuylenburgh (ca.1620-1689), commissioned by Pieter Sterthemius (1618-April 24, 1676) in year he became director of VOC Hooghly-Chinsura Trading Post
Rijksmuseum, Room 29; Museum Square, Amsterdam South, Amsterdam, North Holland Province, northwest Netherlands: Public Domain, via Rikjsmuseum @ https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-4282; Public Domain via Rijksmuseum @ https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/SK-A-4282

souvenir of Clara, with brief biography, sold by her second owner, Douw Moot van der Meer, for exhibitions; also included in souvenir is portrait of Douw Moot van der Meer (bottom, center).
1747 etching by H. Oster, after print by Johann Georg Schmidt (1685-September 15, 1748), after drawing by Anton August Beck (August 27, 1713-March 17, 1787)
"De neushoorn Clara, komt dat zien!" ("Clara the rhinoceros, come and see!"), object no. RP-P-OB-75.362; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Public Domain, via Rijksmuseum @ https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-P-OB-75.362

Clara in Venice, where she arrived in January 1751: Spectators in carnival costumes are bedazzled by Clara while showman holds whip and Clara's horn, removed or rubbed off in 1750 in Rome.
"Exhibition of a rhinoceros at Venice"; ca. 1751 oil on canvas by Venetian genre painter Pietro Longhi (November 15, 1701 – May 8, 1785)
National Portrait Gallery, Room 39; north Trafalgar Square, City of Westminster, Central London: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pietro_Longhi_1751_rhino.jpg

Clara visits Paris
"Clara the rhinoceros in Paris in 1749"; 1749 oil on canvas by Jean-Baptiste Oudry (March 17, 1686–April 30, 1755)
Staatliches Museum Schwerin (State Museum Schwerin), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state, northeastern Germany: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clara_1749_Oudry.jpg

Clara in Venice
ca. 1751 oil on canvas by Circle of Pietro Longhi (November 15, 1701 – May 8, 1785)
Banca Intesa Collection, Vicenza, Veneto Region, northeastern Italy: Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pietro_Longhi_Rhinoceros_1751.jpg

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