Part 8

"January 22, Monday. I was painting diligently when Captain Hall came in, and said: 'Put on your coat, and come with me to Sir Walter Scott; he wishes to see you now.' In a moment I was ready, for I really believe my coat and hat came to me instead of my going to them. My heart trembled; I longed for the meeting, yet wished it over. Had not his wondrous pen penetrated my soul with the consciousness that here was a genius from God's hand? I felt overwhelmed at the thought of meeting Sir Walter, the Great Unknown. We reached the house, and a powdered waiter was asked if Sir Walter were in. We were shown forward at once, and entering a very small room Captain Hall said: 'Sir Walter, I have brought Mr. Audubon.' Sir Walter came forward, pressed my hand warmly, and said he was 'glad to have the honour of meeting me.' His long, loose, silvery locks struck me; he looked like Franklin at his best. He also reminded me of Benjamin West; he had the great benevolence of William Roscoe about him and a kindness most prepossessing. I could not forbear looking at him, my eyes feasted on his countenance. I watched his movements as I would those of a celestial being; his long, heavy, white eyebrows struck me forcibly. His little room was tidy, though it partook a good deal of the character of a laboratory. He was wrapped in a quilted morning-gown of light purple silk; he had been at work writing on the 'Life of Napoleon.' He writes close lines, rather curved as they go from left to right, and puts an immense deal on very little paper. After a few minutes had elapsed, he begged Captain Hall to ring a bell; a servant came and was asked to bid Miss Scott come to see Mr. Audubon. Miss Scott came, black haired and black-dressed, not handsome but said to be highly accomplished, and she is the daughter of Sir Walter Scott. There was much conversation. I talked but little, but, believe me, I listened and observed, careful if ignorant. I cannot write more now. I have just returned from the Royal Society. Knowing that I was a candidate for the electorate of the society, I felt very uncomfortable and would gladly have been hunting on Tawapatee Bottom."

It may be worth while now to see what Scott thought of Audubon. Under the same date, Sir Walter writes in his journal as follows: "January 22, 1827. A visit from Basil Hall, with Mr. Audubon, the ornithologist, who has followed the pursuit by many a long wandering in the American forests. He is an American by naturalisation, a Frenchman by birth; but less of a Frenchman than I have ever seen--no dust or glimmer, or shine about him, but great simplicity of manners and behaviour; slight in person and plainly dressed; wears long hair, which time has not yet tinged; his countenance acute, handsome, and interesting, but still simplicity is the predominant characteristic. I wish I had gone to see his drawings; but I had heard so much about them that I resolved not to see them--'a crazy way of mine, your honour.'"

Two days later Audubon again saw Scott, and writes in his journal as follows: "January 24. My second visit to Sir Walter Scott was much more agreeable than my first. My portfolio and its contents were matters on which I could speak substantially, and I found him so willing to level himself with me for awhile that the time spent at his home was agreeable and valuable. His daughter improved in looks the moment she spoke, having both vivacity and good sense."

Scott's impressions of the birds as recorded in his journal, was that the drawings were of the first order, but he thought that the aim at extreme correctness and accuracy made them rather stiff.

In February Audubon met Scott again at the opening of the Exhibition at the rooms of the Royal Institution.

"Tuesday, February 13. This was the grand, long promised, and much wished-for day of the opening of the Exhibition at the rooms of the Royal Institution. At one o'clock I went, the doors were just opened, and in a few minutes the rooms were crowded. Sir Walter Scott was present; he came towards me, shook my hand cordially, and pointing to Landseer's picture said: 'Many such scenes, Mr. Audubon, have I witnessed in my younger days.' We talked much of all about us, and I would gladly have joined him in a glass of wine, but my foolish habits prevented me, and after inquiring of his daughter's health, I left him, and shortly afterwards the rooms; for I had a great appetite, and although there were tables loaded with delicacies, and I saw the ladies particularly eating freely, I must say to my shame I dared not lay my fingers on a single thing. In the evening I went to the theatre where I was much amused by 'The Comedy of Errors,' and afterwards, 'The Green Room.' I admire Miss Neville's singing very much; and her manners also; there is none of the actress about her, but much of the lady."

Audubon somewhere says of himself that he was "temperate to an intemperate degree"--the accounts in later years show that he became less strict in this respect. He would not drink with Sir Walter Scott at this time, but he did with the Texan Houston and with President Andrew Jackson, later on.

In September we find him exhibiting his pictures in Manchester, but without satisfactory results. In the lobby of the exchange where his pictures were on exhibition, he overheard one man say to another: "Pray, have you seen Mr. Audubon's collection of birds? I am told it is well worth a shilling; suppose we go now."

"Pah! it is all a hoax; save your shilling for better use. I have seen them; the fellow ought to be drummed out of town."

In 1827, in Edinburgh, he seems to have issued a prospectus for his work, and to have opened books of subscription, and now a publisher, Mr. Lizars, offers to bring out the first number of "Birds of America," and on November 28, the first proof of the first engraving was shown him, and he was pleased with it.

With a specimen number he proposed to travel about the country in quest of subscribers until he had secured three hundred. In his journal under date of December 10, he says: "My success in Edinburgh borders on the miraculous. My book is to be published in numbers containing four [in another place he says five] birds in each, the size of life, in a style surpassing anything now existing, at two guineas a number. The engravings are truly beautiful; some of them have been coloured, and are now on exhibition."

Audubon's journal, kept during his stay in Edinburgh, is copious, graphic, and entertaining. It is a mirror of everything he saw and felt.

Among others he met George Combe, the phrenologist, author of the once famous Constitution of Man, and he submitted to having his head "looked at." The examiner said: "There cannot exist a moment of doubt that this gentleman is a painter, colourist, and compositor, and, I would add, an amiable though quick tempered man."

Audubon was invited to the annual feast given by the Antiquarian Society at the Waterloo Hotel, at which Lord Elgin presided. After the health of many others had been drunk, Audubon's was proposed by Skene, a Scottish historian. "Whilst he was engaged in a handsome panegyric, the perspiration poured from me. I thought I should faint." But he survived the ordeal and responded in a few appropriate words. He was much dined and wined, and obliged to keep late hours--often getting no more than four hours sleep, and working hard painting and writing all the next day. He often wrote in his journals for his wife to read later, bidding her Good-night, or rather Good-morning, at three A.M.

Audubon had the bashfulness and awkwardness of the backwoodsman, and doubtless the naiveté and picturesqueness also; these traits and his very great merits as a painter of wild life, made him a favourite in Edinburgh society. One day he went to read a paper on the Crow to Dr. Brewster, and was so nervous and agitated that he had to pause for a moment in the midst of it. He left the paper with Dr. Brewster and when he got it back again was much shocked: "He had greatly improved the style (for I had none), but he had destroyed the matter."

During these days Audubon was very busy writing, painting, receiving callers, and dining out. He grew very tired of it all at times, and longed for the solitude of his native woods. Some days his room was a perfect levee. "It is Mr. Audubon here, and Mr. Audubon there; I only hope they will not make a conceited fool of Mr. Audubon at last." There seems to have been some danger of this, for he says: "I seem in a measure to have gone back to my early days of society and fine dressing, silk stockings and pumps, and all the finery with which I made a popinjay of myself in my youth.... I wear my hair as long as usual, I believe it does as much for me as my paintings."

He wrote to Thomas Sully of Philadelphia, promising to send him his first number, to be presented to the Philadelphia Society--"an institution which thought me unworthy to be a member," he writes.

About this time he was a guest for a day or two of Earl Morton, at his estate Dalmahoy, near Edinburgh. He had expected to see an imposing personage in the great Chamberlain to the late queen Charlotte. What was his relief and surprise, then, to see a "small, slender man, tottering on his feet, weaker than a newly hatched partridge," who welcomed him with tears in his eyes. The countess, "a fair, fresh-complexioned woman, with dark, flashing eyes," wrote her name in his subscription book, and offered to pay the price in advance. The next day he gave her a lesson in drawing.

On his return to Edinburgh he dined with Captain Hall, to meet Francis Jeffrey. "Jeffrey is a little man," he writes, "with a serious face and dignified air. He looks both shrewd and cunning, and talks with so much volubility he is rather displeasing.... Mrs. Jeffrey was nervous and very much dressed."

Early in January he painted his "Pheasant attacked by a Fox." This was his method of proceeding: "I take one [a fox] neatly killed, put him up with wires, and when satisfied with the truth of the position, I take my palette and work as rapidly as possible; the same with my birds. If practicable, I finish the bird at one sitting,--often, it is true, of fourteen hours,--so that I think they are correct, both in detail and in composition."

In pictures by Landseer and other artists which he saw in the galleries of Edinburgh, he saw the skilful painter, "the style of men who know how to handle a brush, and carry a good effect," but he missed that closeness and fidelity to Nature which to him so much outweighed mere technique. Landseer's "Death of a Stag" affected him like a farce. It was pretty, but not real and true. He did not feel that way about the sermon he heard Sydney Smith preach: "It was a sermon to me. He made me smile and he made me think deeply. He pleased me at times by painting my foibles with due care, and again I felt the colour come to my cheeks as he portrayed my sins." Later, he met Sydney Smith and his "fair daughter," and heard the latter sing. Afterwards he had a note from the famous divine upon which he remarks: "The man should study economy; he would destroy more paper in a day than Franklin would in a week; but all great men are more or less eccentric. Walter Scott writes a diminutive hand, very difficult to read, Napoleon a large scrawling one, still more difficult, and Sydney Smith goes up hill all the way with large strides."

Having decided upon visiting London, he yielded to the persuasions of his friends and had his hair cut before making the trip. He chronicles the event in his journal as a very sad one, in which "the will of God was usurped by the wishes of man." Shorn of his locks he probably felt humbled like the stag when he loses his horns.

Quitting Edinburgh on April 5, he visited, in succession, Newcastle, Leeds, York, Shrewsbury, and Manchester, in quest of subscribers to his great work. A few were obtained at each place at two hundred pounds per head. At Newcastle he first met Bewick, the famous wood engraver, and conceived a deep liking for him.

We find him in London on May 21, 1827, and not in a very happy frame of mind: "To me London is just like the mouth of an immense monster, guarded by millions of sharp-edged teeth, from which, if I escape unhurt, it must be called a miracle." It only filled him with a strong desire to be in his beloved woods again. His friend, Basil Hall, had insisted upon his procuring a black suit of clothes. When he put this on to attend his first dinner party, he spoke of himself as "attired like a mournful raven," and probably more than ever wished himself in the woods.

He early called upon the great portrait painter, Sir Thomas Lawrence, who inspected his drawings, pronounced them "very clever," and, in a few days, brought him several purchasers for some of his animal paintings, thus replenishing his purse with nearly one hundred pounds.

Considering Audubon's shy disposition, and his dread of persons in high places, it is curious that he should have wanted to call upon the King, and should have applied to the American Minister, Mr. Gallatin, to help him to do so. Mr. Gallatin laughed and said: "It is impossible, my dear sir, the King sees nobody; he has the gout, is peevish, and spends his time playing whist at a shilling a rubber. I had to wait six weeks before I was presented to him in my position of ambassador." But his work was presented to the King who called it fine, and His Majesty became a subscriber on the usual terms. Other noble persons followed suit, yet Audubon was despondent. He had removed the publication of his work from Edinburgh to London, from the hands of Mr. Lizars into those of Robert Havell. But the enterprise did not prosper, his agents did not attend to business, nor to his orders, and he soon found himself at bay for means to go forward with the work. At this juncture he determined to make a sortie for the purpose of collecting his dues and to add to his subscribers. He visited Leeds, York, and other towns. Under date of October 9, at York, he writes in his journal: "How often I thought during these visits of poor Alexander Wilson. Then travelling as I am now, to procure subscribers he, as well as myself, was received with rude coldness, and sometimes with that arrogance which belongs to parvenus."

A week or two later we find him again in Edinburgh where he breakfasted with Professor Wilson ("Christopher North"), whom he greatly enjoyed, a man without stiffness or ceremonies: "No cravat, no waistcoat, but a fine frill of his own profuse beard, his hair flowing uncontrolled, and his speech dashing at once at the object in view, without circumlocution.... He gives me comfort by being comfortable himself."

In early November he took the coach for Glasgow, he and three other passengers making the entire journey without uttering a single word: "We sat like so many owls of different species, as if afraid of one another." Four days in Glasgow and only one subscriber.