 "Consul, the Almost Human" would have been familiar to many of Wodehouse's original readers as the chimpanzee famous for a vaudeville act in which he wore human clothing, dined at table, smoked cigars, rode a bicycle, used a typewriter, roller-skated, and so on.During the last decade of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth century, Consul appeared so often in Europe and the United States that it seems likely that there was more than one "Consul," and/or that several chimpanzees in succession were pressed into the role.The final Consul died of pleurisy while on tour in Berlin, after which his stuffed body was placed on display at the American Museum of Natural History.