Audubon and his Journals Volume II Part 25

The better I understood my subjects, the better I became able to represent them in what I hoped were natural positions. The bird once fixed with wires on squares, I studied as a lay figure before me, its nature, previously known to me as far as habits went, and its general form having been frequently observed. Now I could examine more thoroughly the bill, nostrils, eyes, legs, and claws, as well as the structure of the wings and tail; the very tongue was of importance to me, and I thought the more I understood all these particulars, the better representations I made of the originals.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AUDUBON.

FROM A PENCIL SKETCH AFTER DEATH, BY JOHN WOODHOUSE AUDUBON.

January 28, 1851.]

My drawings at first were made altogether in water-colors, but they wanted softness and a great deal of finish. For a long time I was much dispirited at this, particularly when vainly endeavoring to imitate birds of soft and downy plumage, such as that of most Owls, Pigeons, Hawks, and Herons. How this could be remedied required a new train of thought, or some so-called accident, and the latter came to my aid.

One day, after having finished a miniature portrait of the one dearest to me in all the world, a portion of the face was injured by a drop of water, which dried where it fell; and although I labored a great deal to repair the damage, the blur still remained. Recollecting that, when a pupil of David, I had drawn heads and figures in different colored chalks, I resorted to a piece of that material of the tint required for the part, applied the pigment, rubbed the place with a cork stump, and at once produced the desired effect.

My drawings of Owls and other birds of similar plumage were much improved by such applications; indeed, after a few years of patience, some of my attempts began almost to please me, and I have continued the same style ever since, and that now is for more than thirty years.

Whilst travelling in Europe as well as America, many persons have evinced the desire to draw birds in my manner, and I have always felt much pleasure in showing it to any one by whom I hoped ornithological delineations or portraitures would be improved.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOWIE KNIFE.

Presented by Henry Carleton.]

FOOTNOTES:

[47] This was in 1810 or 1811.

[48] This was written in 1835.

[49] Vincent Nolte, in "Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres," gives an account of his meeting on this occasion with Audubon, part of which is as follows: "About ten o'clock I arrived at a small inn, close by the falls of the Juniata River. The landlady showed me into a room and said I perhaps would not mind taking my meal with a strange gentleman, who was already there. This personage struck me as an odd fish. He was sitting at a table before the fire, with a Madras handkerchief wound around his head, exactly in the style of the French mariners of a seaport town.... He showed himself to be an original throughout, but admitted he was a Frenchman by birth, and a native of La Roch.e.l.le.

However, he had come in his early youth to Louisiana, had grown up in the sea-service, and had gradually become a thorough American. This man, who afterwards won for himself so great a name in natural history, particularly in ornithology, was Audubon." It is needless to say that the personal history of Audubon as here given is entirely erroneous; but as the meeting was in 1811, and the book written _from memory_ in 1854, Mr. Nolte must be pardoned for his misstatements, which were doubtless unintentional.

[50] This was on the journey made by Audubon and his partner, Ferdinand Rozier, from Louisville to St. Genevieve, then in Upper Louisiana. They left Louisville in the autumn of 1810, and Audubon returned in the spring of 1811.

[51] This incident occurred during Audubon's return trip to St.

Genevieve in the early spring of 1812.

[52] _Sylvia parus_, Hemlock Warbler; Ornith. Biog. vol. ii. page 205.

[53] Audubon and Mr. Irish met many times afterwards, the last being, I believe, in Philadelphia, on the eve of Audubon's departure for his Missouri River trip.

[54] Then Philadelphia.

[55] The name given by the wreckers and smugglers to the "Marion."

[56] Plate cclx.x.xi., ed. 1827-1839; plate ccclxviii., ed. 1843.

[57] The "Moose Hunt" was communicated to me by my young friend, Thomas Lincoln, of Dennysville in Maine.

[58] The last Episode in vol. ii. of the "Ornithological Biographies."

[59] "On the 16th [June, 1778], before sunrise, I departed in the most secret manner, and arrived at Boonesborough on the 20th, after a journey of 160 miles, during which I had but one meal." (Letter of Daniel Boone, who was then forty-three.)

[60] This bird [the White Ibis], to procure the Cray-fish, walks with remarkable care to the mounds of mud which the latter throws up while forming its hole, and breaks up the upper part of the fabric, dropping the fragments into the deep cavity that has been made by the animal.

Then the Ibis retires a single step, and patiently waits the result. The Cray-fish, incommoded by the load of earth, instantly sets to work anew, and at last reaches the entrance of its burrow; but the moment it comes in sight the Ibis seizes it with his bill. (The White Ibis, _Ibis Alba_, Plate CCXXII., Ornith. Biog., vol. iii., p. 176).

[61] Audubon's drawings have been criticised for their _flatness_. Of this, Cuvier says: "It is difficult to give a true picture of a bird with the same effect of perspective as a landscape, and the lack of this is no defect in a work on Natural History. Naturalists prefer the real color of objects to those accidental tints which are the result of the varied reflections of light necessary to complete picturesque representations, but foreign and even injurious to scientific truth."

[62] This was in 1838; they have since been destroyed by fire, or, at least, the greater number.