John James Audubon

Part 1

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JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

John Burroughs

TO C. B.

PREFACE.

The pioneer in American ornithology was Alexander Wilson, a Scotch weaver and poet, who emigrated to this country in 1794, and began the publication of his great work upon our birds in 1808. He figured and described three hundred and twenty species, fifty-six of them new to science. His death occurred in 1813, before the publication of his work had been completed.

But the chief of American ornithologists was John James Audubon. Audubon did not begin where Wilson left off. He was also a pioneer, beginning his studies and drawings of the birds probably as early as Wilson did his, but he planned larger and lived longer. He spent the greater part of his long life in the pursuit of ornithology, and was of a more versatile, flexible, and artistic nature than was Wilson. He was collecting the material for his work at the same time that Wilson was collecting his, but he did not begin the publication of it till fourteen years after Wilson's death. Both men went directly to Nature and underwent incredible hardships in exploring the woods and marshes in quest of their material. Audubon's rambles were much wider, and extended over a much longer period of time. Wilson, too, contemplated a work upon our quadrupeds, but did not live to begin it. Audubon was blessed with good health, length of years, a devoted and self-sacrificing wife, and a buoyant, sanguine, and elastic disposition. He had the heavenly gift of enthusiasm--a passionate love for the work he set out to do. He was a natural hunter, roamer, woodsman; as unworldly as a child, and as simple and transparent. We have had better trained and more scientific ornithologists since his day, but none with his abandon and poetic fervour in the study of our birds.

Both men were famous pedestrians and often walked hundreds of miles at a stretch. They were natural explorers and voyagers. They loved Nature at first hand, and not merely as she appears in books and pictures. They both kept extensive journals of their wanderings and observations. Several of Audubon's (recording his European experiences) seem to have been lost or destroyed, but what remain make up the greater part of two large volumes recently edited by his grand-daughter, Maria R. Audubon.

I wish here to express my gratitude both to Miss Audubon, and to Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons, for permitting me to draw freely from the "Life and Journals" just mentioned. The temptation is strong to let Audubon's graphic and glowing descriptions of American scenery, and of his tireless wanderings, speak for themselves.

It is from these volumes, and from the life by his widow, published in 1868, that I have gathered the material for this brief biography.

Audubon's life naturally divides itself into three periods: his youth, which was on the whole a gay and happy one, and which lasted till the time of his marriage at the age of twenty-eight; his business career which followed, lasting ten or more years, and consisting mainly in getting rid of the fortune his father had left him; and his career as an ornithologist which, though attended with great hardships and privations, brought him much happiness and, long before the end, substantial pecuniary rewards.

His ornithological tastes and studies really formed the main current of his life from his teens onward. During his business ventures in Kentucky and elsewhere this current came to the surface more and more, absorbed more and more of his time and energies, and carried him further and further from the conditions of a successful business career.

J. B.

WEST PARK, NEW YORK, January, 1902.

CHRONOLOGY

1780

May 4. John James La Forest Audubon was born at Mandeville, Louisiana.

(Paucity of dates and conflicting statements make it impossible to insert dates to show when the family moved to St. Domingo, and thence to France.)

1797 (?)

Returned to America from France. Here followed life at Mill Grove Farm, near Philadelphia.

1805 or 6

Again in France for about two years. Studied under David, the artist. Then returned to America.

1808

April 8. Married Lucy Bakewell, and journeyed to Louisville, Kentucky, to engage in business with one Rozier.

1810

March. First met Wilson, the ornithologist.

1812

Dissolved partnership with Rozier.

Part 2

1808-1819

Various business ventures in Louisville, Hendersonville, and St. Geneviève, Kentucky, again at Hendersonville, thence again to Louisville.

1819

Abandoned business career. Became taxidermist in Cincinnati.

1820

Left Cincinnati. Began to form definite plans for the publication of his drawings. Returned to New Orleans.

1822

Went to Natchez by steamer. Gunpowder ruined two hundred of his drawings on this trip. Obtained position of Drawing-master in the college at Washington, Mississippi. At the close of this year took his first lessons in oils.

1824

Went to Philadelphia to get his drawings published. Thwarted. There met Sully, and Prince Canino.

1826

Sailed for Europe to introduce his drawings.

1827

Issued prospectus of his "Birds."

1828

Went to Paris to canvass. Visited Cuvier.

1829

Returned to the United States, scoured the woods for more material for his biographies.

1830

Returned to London with his family.

1830-1839

Elephant folio, The Birds of North America, published.

1831-39

American Ornithological Biography published in Edinburgh.

1831

Again in America for nearly three years.

1832-33

In Florida, South Carolina, and the Northern States, Labrador, and Canada.

Part 3

1834

Completion of second volume of "Birds," also second volume of American Ornithological Biography.

1835

In Edinburgh.

1836

To New York again--more exploring; found books, papers and drawings had been destroyed by fire, the previous year.

1837

Went to London.

1838

Published fourth volume of American Ornithological Biography.

1839

Published fifth volume of "Biography."

1840

Left England for the last time.

1842

Built house in New York on "Minnie's Land," now Audubon Park.

1843

Yellowstone River Expedition.

1840-44

Published the reduced edition of his "Bird Biographies."

1846

Published first volume of "Quadrupeds."

1848

Completed Quadrupeds and Biography of American Quadrupeds. (The last volume was not published till 1854, after his death.)

1851

January 27. John James Audubon died in New York.

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON.

There is a hopeless confusion as to certain important dates in Audubon's life. He was often careless and unreliable in his statements of matters of fact, which weakness during his lifetime often led to his being accused of falsehood. Thus he speaks of the "memorable battle of Valley Forge" and of two brothers of his, both officers in the French army, as having perished in the French Revolution, when he doubtless meant uncles. He had previously stated that his only two brothers died in infancy. He confessed that he had no head for mathematics, and he seems always to have been at sea in regard to his own age. In his letters and journals there are several references to his age, but they rarely agree. The date of his birth usually given, May 4, 1780, is probably three or four years too early, as he speaks of himself as being nearly seventeen when his mother had him confirmed in the Catholic Church, and this was about the time that his father, then an officer in the French navy, was sent to England to effect a change of prisoners, which time is given as 1801.

Part 4

The two race strains that mingle in him probably account for this illogical habit of mind, as well as for his romantic and artistic temper and tastes.

His father was a sea-faring man and a Frenchman; his mother was a Spanish Creole of Louisiana--the old chivalrous Castilian blood modified by new world conditions. The father, through commercial channels, accumulated a large property in the island of St. Domingo. In the course of his trading he made frequent journeys to Louisiana, then the property of the French government. On one of these trips, probably, he married one of the native women, who is said to have possessed both wealth and beauty. The couple seem to have occupied for a time a plantation belonging to a French Marquis, situated at Mandeville on the North shore of Lake Pontchartrain. Here three sons were born to them, of whom John James La Forest was the third. The daughter seems to have been younger.

His own mother perished in a slave insurrection in St. Domingo, where the family had gone to live on the Audubon estate at Aux Cayes, when her child was but a few months old. Audubon says that his father with his plate and money and himself, attended by a few faithful servants, escaped to New Orleans. What became of his sister he does not say, though she must have escaped with them, since we hear of her existence years later. Not long after, how long we do not know, the father returned to France, where he married a second time, giving the son, as he himself says, the only mother he ever knew. This woman proved a rare exception among stepmothers--but she was too indulgent, and, Audubon says, completely spoiled him, bringing him up to live like a gentleman, ignoring his faults and boasting of his merits, and leading him to believe that fine clothes and a full pocket were the most desirable things in life.

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