A Portrait in Words
McCoy spoke and wrote ostentatiously and ornately, even for the overblown standards of the Victorian era. A long-suffering student once commented of his botany lectures, 'the only flowers exhibited in his lectures were the flowers of his own rhetoric.'1
He was a powerful man, both personally and within the hierarchy of the colonial institutions, giving McCoy a sense of omnipotence that he clearly revelled in. This physical presence, together with his institutional authority, was exploited to intimidate both employees and students.
He was a man of medium height but great muscular power, and exercised with prodigious dumb-bells every morning of his life.
He once invited me to feel his arms, and indeed, as he doubled back his muscles, the limb seemed to be nearly as thick as an ordinary man's thigh. He had a strong sense of broad humour, and one of his jokes in lecture was to pick up a huge piece of rock and pass it round the class. Lifting it easily he would hand it lightly to the nearest student, who taking it unsuspecting its weight, would drop it hurriedly with a crash, which delighted the class and the professor.
He had an assistant, Bartholomew, who drew with great artistic skill the plates for the prodromus, who served as an attendant at the lectures, and brought in the specimens. One of McCoy's jokes was to address the students, 'Gentlemen, we will now look at that strange reptile-Bartholomew!' This last in a curious falsetto voice as he half turned himself around to summon the unfortunate attendant.2
1AHS Lucas, A.H.S. Lucas Scientist His Own Story, Angus and Robertson, 1937, pp. 138-140.
2AHS Lucas, A.H.S. Lucas Scientist His Own Story, Angus and Robertson, 1937, pp. 138-140.