John James Audubon Part 5

Probably most of the seventy-five or eighty copies of "Birds" which were taken by subscribers in this country are still extant, held by the great libraries, and learned inst.i.tutions. The Lenox Library in New York owns three sets. The Astor Library owns one set. I have examined this work there; there are four volumes in a set; they are elephant folio size--more than three feet long, and two or more feet wide. They are the heaviest books I ever handled. It takes two men to carry one volume to the large racks which hold them for the purpose of examination. The birds, of which there are a thousand and fifty-five specimens in four hundred and thirty-five plates, are all life size, even the great eagles, and appear to be unfaded. This work, which cost the original subscribers one thousand dollars, now brings four thousand dollars at private sale.

Of the edition with reduced figures and with the bird biographies, many more were sold, and all considerable public libraries in this country possess the work. It consists of seven imperial octavo volumes. Five hundred dollars is the average price which this work brings. This was a copy of the original English publication, with the figures reduced and lithographed. In this work, his sons, John and Victor, greatly a.s.sisted him, the former doing the reducing by the aid of the camera-lucida, and the latter attending to the printing and publishing. The first volume of this work appeared in 1840, and the last in 1844.

Audubon experimented a long time before he hit upon a satisfactory method of drawing his birds. Early in his studies he merely drew them in outline.

Then he practised using threads to raise the head, wing or tail of his specimen. Under David he had learned to draw the human figure from a manikin. It now occurred to him to make a manikin of a bird, using cork or wood, or wires for the purpose. But his bird manikin only excited the laughter and ridicule of his friends. Then he conceived the happy thought of setting up the body of the dead bird by the aid of wires, very much as a taxidermist mounts them. This plan worked well and enabled him to have his birds permanently before him in a characteristic att.i.tude: "The bird 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 perfectly observed."

His bird pictures reflect his own temperament, not to say his nationality; the birds are very demonstrative, even theatrical and melodramatic at times. In some cases this is all right, in others it is all wrong. Birds differ in this respect as much as people do--some are very quiet and sedate, others pose and gesticulate like a Frenchman. It would not be easy to exaggerate, for instance, the flashings and evolutions of the redstart when it arrives in May, or the acting and posing of the catbird, or the gesticulations of the yellow breasted chat, or the nervous and emphatic character of the large-billed water thrush, or the many pretty att.i.tudes of the great Carolina wren; but to give the same dramatic character to the demure little song sparrow, or to the slow moving cuckoo, or to the pedestrian cowbird, or to the quiet Kentucky warbler, as Audubon has done, is to convey a wrong impression of these birds.

Wilson errs, if at all, in the other direction. His birds, on the other hand, reflect his cautious, undemonstrative Scotch nature. Few of them are shown in violent action like Audubon's cuckoo; their poses for the most part are easy and characteristic. His drawings do not show the mastery of the subject and the versatility that Audubon's do;--they have not the artistic excellence, but they less frequently do violence to the bird's character by exaggerated activity.

The colouring in Audubon's birds is also often exaggerated. His purple finch is as brilliant as a rose, whereas at its best, this bird is a dull carmine.

Either the Baltimore oriole has changed its habits of nest-building since Audubon's day, or else he was wrong in his drawing of the nest of that bird, in making the opening on the side near the top. I have never seen an oriole's nest that was not open at the top.

In his drawings of a group of robins, one misses some of the most characteristic poses of that bird, while some of the att.i.tudes that are portrayed are not common and familiar ones.

But in the face of all that he accomplished, and against such odds, and taking into consideration also the changes that may have crept in through engraver and colourists, it ill becomes us to indulge in captious criticisms. Let us rather repeat Audubon's own remark on realising how far short his drawings came of representing the birds themselves: "After all, there's nothing perfect but _primitiveness_."

Finding that he could not live in the city, in 1842 Audubon removed with his family to "Minnie's Land," on the banks of the Hudson, now known as Audubon Park, and included in the city limits; this became his final home.

In the spring of 1843 he started on his last long journey, his trip to the Yellow-stone River, of which we have a minute account in his "Missouri River Journals"--doc.u.ments that lay hidden in the back of an old secretary from 1843 to the time when they were found by his grand-daughters in 1896, and published by them in 1897.

This trip was undertaken mainly in the interests of the "Quadrupeds and Biography of American Quadrupeds," and much of what he saw and did is woven into those three volumes. The trip lasted eight months, and the hardships and exposures seriously affected Audubon's health. He returned home in October, 1843.

He was now sixty-four or five years of age, and the infirmities of his years began to steal upon him.

The first volume of his "Quadrupeds" was published about two years later, and this was practically his last work. The second and third volumes were mainly the work of his sons, John and Victor.

The "Quadrupeds" does not take rank with his "Birds." It was not his first love. It was more an after thought to fill up his time. Neither the drawing nor the colouring of the animals, largely the work of his son John, approaches those of the birds.

"Surely no man ever had better helpers" says his grand-daughter, and a study of his life brings us to the same conclusion--his devoted wife, his able and willing sons, were his closest helpers, nor do we lose sight of the a.s.sistance of the scientific and indefatigable MacGillivray, and the untiring and congenial co-worker, Dr. Bachman.

Audubon's last years were peaceful and happy, and were pa.s.sed at his home on the Hudson, amid his children and grandchildren, surrounded by the scenes that he loved.

After his eyesight began to fail him, his devoted wife read to him, she walked with him, and toward the last she fed him. "Bread and milk were his breakfast and supper, and at noon he ate a little fish or game, never having eaten animal food if he could avoid it."

One visiting at the home of our naturalist during his last days speaks of the tender way in which he said to his wife: "Well, sweetheart, always busy. Come sit thee down a few minutes and rest."

Parke G.o.dwin visited Audubon in 1846, and gives this account of his visit:

"The house was simple and unpretentious in its architecture, and beautifully embowered amid elms and oaks. Several graceful fawns, and a n.o.ble elk, were stalking in the shade of the trees, apparently unconscious of the presence of a few dogs, and not caring for the numerous turkeys, geese, and other domestic animals that gabbled and screamed around them.

Nor did my own approach startle the wild, beautiful creatures, that seemed as docile as any of their tame companions.

"'Is the master at home?' I asked of a pretty maid servant, who answered my tap at the door; and who, after informing me that he was, led me into a room on the left side of the broad hall. It was not, however, a parlour, or an ordinary reception room that I entered, but evidently a room for work.

In one corner stood a painter's easel, with the half-finished sketch of a beaver on the paper; in the other lay the skin of an American panther. The antlers of elks hung upon the walls; stuffed birds of every description of gay plumage ornamented the mantel-piece; and exquisite drawings of field mice, orioles, and woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, were scattered promiscuously in other parts of the room, across one end of which a long, rude table was stretched to hold artist materials, sc.r.a.ps of drawing paper, and immense folio volumes, filled with delicious paintings of birds taken in their native haunts.

"'This,' said I to myself, 'is the studio of the naturalist,' but hardly had the thought escaped me when the master himself made his appearance. He was a tall thin man, with a high-arched and serene forehead, and a bright penetrating grey eye; his white locks fell in cl.u.s.ters upon his shoulders, but were the only signs of age, for his form was erect, and his step as light as that of a deer. The expression of his face was sharp, but n.o.ble and commanding, and there was something in it, partly derived from the aquiline nose and partly from the shutting of the mouth, which made you think of the imperial eagle.

"His greeting as he entered, was at once frank and cordial, and showed you the sincere true man. 'How kind it is,' he said, with a slight French accent and in a pensive tone, 'to come to see me; and how wise, too, to leave that crazy city.' He then shook me warmly by the hand. 'Do you know,'

he continued, 'how I wonder that men can consent to swelter and fret their lives away amid those hot bricks and pestilent vapours, when the woods and fields are all so near? It would kill me soon to be confined in such a prison house; and when I am forced to make an occasional visit there, it fills me with loathing and sadness. Ah! how often, when I have been abroad on the mountains, has my heart risen in grateful praise to G.o.d that it was not my destiny to waste and pine among those noisome congregations of the city.'"

Another visitor to Audubon during his last days writes: "In my interview with the naturalist, there were several things that stamped themselves indelibly on my mind. The wonderful simplicity of the man was perhaps the most remarkable. His enthusiasm for facts made him unconscious of himself.

To make him happy you had only to give him a new fact in natural history, or introduce him to a rare bird. His self-forgetfulness was very impressive. I felt that I had found a man who asked homage for G.o.d and Nature, and not for himself.

"The unconscious greatness of the man seemed only equalled by his child-like tenderness. The sweet unity between his wife and himself, as they turned over the original drawings of his birds, and recalled the circ.u.mstances of the drawings, some of which had been made when she was with him; her quickness of perception, and their mutual enthusiasm regarding these works of his heart and hand, and the tenderness with which they unconsciously treated each other, all was impressed upon my memory.

Ever since, I have been convinced that Audubon owed more to his wife than the world knew, or ever would know. That she was always a reliance, often a help, and ever a sympathising sister-soul to her n.o.ble husband, was fully apparent to me."

One notes much of the same fire and vigour in the later portraits of Audubon, that are so apparent in those of him in his youthful days. What a resolute closing of the mouth in his portrait taken of him in his old age-- "the magnificent grey-haired man!"

In 1847, Audubon's mind began to fail him; like Emerson in his old age, he had difficulty in finding the right word.

In May, 1848, Dr. Bachman wrote of him: "My poor friend Audubon! The outlines of his beautiful face and form are there, but his n.o.ble mind is all in ruins."

His feebleness increased (there was no illness), till at sunset, January 27, 1851, in his seventy-sixth year, the "American Woodsman," as he was wont to call himself, set out on his last long journey to that bourne whence no traveller returns.

V.

As a youth Audubon was an unwilling student of books; as a merchant and mill owner in Kentucky he was an unwilling man of business, but during his whole career, at all times and in all places, he was more than a willing student of ornithology--he was an eager and enthusiastic one. He brought to the pursuit of the birds, and to the study of open air life generally, the keen delight of the sportsman, united to the ardour of the artist moved by beautiful forms.

He was not in the first instance a man of science, like Cuvier, or Aga.s.siz, or Darwin--a man seeking exact knowledge; but he was an artist and a backwoodsman, seeking adventure, seeking the gratification of his tastes, and to put on record his love of the birds. He was the artist of the birds before he was their historian; the writing of their biographies seems to have been only secondary with him.

He had the lively mercurial temperament of the Latin races from which he sprang. He speaks of himself as "warm, irascible, and at times violent."

His perceptive powers, of course, led his reflective. His sharpness and quickness of eye surprised even the Indians. He says: "My _observatory nerves_ never gave way."

His similes and metaphors were largely drawn from the animal world. Thus he says, "I am as dull as a beetle," during his enforced stay in London. While he was showing his drawings to Mr. Rathbone, he says: "I was panting like the winged pheasant." At a dinner in some n.o.ble house in England he said that the men servants "moved as quietly as killdeers." On another occasion, when the hostess failed to put him at his ease: "There I stood, motionless as a Heron."

With all his courage and buoyancy, Audubon was subject to fits of depression, probably the result largely of his enforced separation from his family. On one occasion in Edinburgh he speaks of these attacks, and refers pathetically to others he had had: "But that was in beloved America, where the ocean did not roll between me and my wife and sons."

Never was a more patriotic American. He loved his adopted country above all other lands in which he had journeyed.

Never was a more devoted husband, and never did wife more richly deserve such devotion than did Mrs. Audubon. He says of her: "She felt the pangs of our misfortune perhaps more heavily than I, but never for an hour lost her courage; her brave and cheerful spirit accepted all, and no reproaches from her beloved lips ever wounded my heart. With her was I not always rich?"

"The waiting time, my brother, is the hardest time of all."

While Audubon was waiting for better luck, or for worse, he was always listening to the birds and studying them--storing up the knowledge that he turned to such good account later: but we can almost hear his neighbours and acquaintances calling him an "idle, worthless fellow." Not so his wife; she had even more faith in him than he had in himself.

His was a lovable nature--he won affection and devotion easily, and he loved to be loved; he appreciated the least kindness shown him.

He was always at ease and welcome in the squatter's cabin or in elegantly appointed homes, like that of his friends, the Rathbones, though he does complain of an awkwardness and shyness sometimes when in high places. This, however, seemed to result from the pomp and ceremony found there, and not because of the people themselves.

"Chivalrous, generous, and courteous to his heart's core," says his granddaughter, "he could not believe others less so, till painful experiences taught him; then he was grieved, hurt, but never embittered; and, more marvellous yet, with his faith in his fellows as strong as ever, again and again he subjected himself to the same treatment."

On one occasion when his pictures were on exhibition in England, some one stole one of his paintings, and a warrant was issued against a deaf mute.

"Gladly would I have painted a bird for the poor fellow," said Audubon, "and I certainly did not want him arrested."