He was a manly type who refused to become an invalid. One day at Peacock Point—his sixty-acre Greek-columned estate on Long Island’s North Shore that nearly formed a continuous line of property with Jack Morgan’s and George Baker’s estates—he and Dr. Frederick Tilney were watching a school of porpoises in Oyster Bay. Tilney remarked that he had always wanted a porpoise brain for his research. “Bring me the elephant rifle and tell them to have the motor boat ready for us at once,” Davison ordered a servant.35 Davison went out and shot his porpoise.
