Peter Beard

By Julia Nasser

After four solid decades of inspired and obsessive documentation of the plight of East African elephants, Peter Beard was charged and trampled by a matriarch elephant on his 40-acre estate in Kenya in 1996. The cow’s tusk gorged his thigh, barely missing the femoral artery, and his pelvis was shattered under the three tons of giant. After bleeding in the parking lot and going temporarily blind, he was airlifted to a Nairobi Hospital and declared dead upon arrival. When he survived they said he’d never walk.In typical Beard style, he was carousing Montauk by springtime – 29 steel rods in his leg, happily showing off his scars and surfing the swells of Ditch Plains near his cottage.Not only did the rugged blueblood, Montauk playboy and African wildman survive to recount the tale but swears he feels no ill will towards “the maniacal cow.” In an interview on CBS News, Beard told the story:“She got me up against the anthill and I never felt more like an ant. I was a human, and that’s what it’s all about …We’re microscopically small, and doing everything wrong. It’s man getting his just desserts. It was perfect to end up there. An avalanche approaches and waving our arms won’t do any good.”Surprisingly, this impassioned eccentric comes from the upper crust of society. He originated in haute Long Island, moved to Manhattan’s Upper East Side. attended Pomfret and graduated from Yale. An heir to the tremendous fortunes of the railroad and the tobacco industry and grandson of the man who invented the tuxedo, Peter was raised among rugby shirts, yachts and frigid old-world WASP values. But he rejected it all from the start; his early journals describe the “drudgery of Monday after Monday” and a longing for “life without underpants or socks.”After his graduation in 1961 and a brief marriage to Minnie Cushing, a Newport society girl, Beard traveled to Kenya —and inspired by Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa, he chased down the writer and purchased a neighboring property at the foot of the Ngong Hills. Named for the families of warthogs who wandered into camp, Hog Camp was populated with waterbuck, suni, dik-diks, leopard, giraffe, and occasionally lion and buffalo.Here he documented the destruction of 35,000 elephants on Tsavo National Park and the “galloping rot” of the natural world became an obsession to Beard. His first book, The End of the Game, was published in 1965 and gave shrill warning that the encroachment of civilization would destroy the African wilderness. In the starving elephants, he saw the self-destruction of the human species.“The elephants are like us. They eat hard wood. They eat shit. They eat weeds. They’ll clear out every element of the habitat to get that last tree.”Dubbed the Modern Tarzan by Warhol, the always tan, muscular and wind-blown cowboy, Peter Beard was a bit of a playboy. After dating models, heiresses, and socialites, including a steamy romance with Lee Radziwill which took place “all over Montauk,” he married model Cheryl Tiegs in 1981 at Montauk Community Church. Rumor has it he passed out cocaine to all the guests. He divorced Tiegs two years later, and discovered Iman, a breathtaking, elegant African woman on the bustling streets of Nairobi that same year. He is now married to Najma Khamm and has a daughter named Zara. (His most recent book out now is Zara’s Tales, written especially for her.)But what we know him for is not the good looks but that rugged authenticity. Elephant incident aside, Peter Beard has survived near drowning, lion charges, imprisonment and drugs. He watched a friend get shredded and devoured by a crocodile, documented in an image I happened to encounter in a New York city gallery — two disembodied human legs in a cardboard box, some bones and scrawled in what might be ink, blood or mud is “The Remains of William Olsen (Cornell Graduate).”In 1969, he caught a poacher setting traps for elephants and ensnared him in a makeshift trap. There was a trial, Peter was beaten, shaved and thrown into a prison for 15 days. When he came out he was greeted with a celebratory welcome by the tribe who lived on the reservation. He used this picture as his Happy New Year card for 1970, which he sent to New York’s elite.When he wasn’t roping giant Nile crocodiles or chasing down rhinos, Beard was at Studio 54. He was painted by Francis Bacon, painted on by Salvador Dalí, and made diaries with Andy Warhol; he toured with Truman Capote and the Rolling Stones, created books with Jacqueline Onassis and Mick Jagger. As a fashion photographer, he took Vogue stars like Veruschka to Africa and brought new ones—most notably Iman—back to the U.S. with him.In 1972, he was chosen to document the Exile on Main Street Tour, which would prove to be the most decadent, momentous times in rock n roll history. He partied his way across the country with the Stones in the famous Lapping Tongue DC-7 plane; Truman Capote met them in Kansas to join the crew. He was even responsible for bringing Mick Jagger to Montauk, and to the Memory Motel.In Andy Warhol’s journals he described his friend and Montauk neighbor as one of the most attractive and fascinating men he had ever encountered, and captured Beard’s feral energy.“He jumps in and out of a snake pit he keeps in his home. He cuts himself and paints with blood. He wears sandals and socks in winter. He lived in a parked car on 13th Street for six months, and moved when he found a transvestite sleeping on the roof.”Yes, Beard’s seems a life mired in contradictions. He’s the party animal- animal activist, ladies man-bushman; fashion hating fashion icon and socialite extraordinaire who happened to get imprisoned for ensnaring a poacher and then leaving him to die. Somehow the pieces don’t seem to fit.He’s a man of extremes who embraced the untamed wilderness of Africa the way he did the glitz and debauchery of Studio 54 – full throttle and without apology or regret. The same year he tied up that poacher was the famous party after the Stones’ Exile tour, during which, thanks to Warhol, a naked girl popped out of a towering birthday cake and twirled her silicon knockers as a dozen black tap dancers provided a chorus line.In his studios and in his shows, one encounters decaying carcasses alongside pretty girls in sunglasses. His self-portrait shows a smirking charmer in the dry Kenyan landscape, oblivious to the crocodile jaws around his torso. Nearby, there’s a young girl kissing a Mau-Mau skull, a naked native in mud, Salvador Dali near a crumpled car, Liz Taylor, a lioness smeared with his own blood. Beard captures the spirit of the cocaine-riddled glam gang of the Factory days with no less depth than the ancient souls of Masai tribesmen.In Zara’s Tales (2001) Beard composed a memoir of sorts, dedicated to his daughter, Zara. He recounts the perilous adventures of the African landscape to his daughter with the playful drama of a bedtime story. These experiences, although outlandish, are true to Beard’s life and the accounts of his perils read almost as a nostalgic recollection, or perhaps an ode to a land he loved and lost.Long ago Beard left Africa and hasn’t returned. “Lost to the galloping rot of civilization, the bland land is a worn out tourist trail… all weapons and savagery.”So now he’s back in the real jungle. New York.“Once the wildlife is gone, the next biggest thrill will be found in the biggest city.”You might see him around these parts. He wears a sarong sometimes, or a Hawaiian shirt, and the same leather sandals he kicked off when he was gored by that angry elephant.