John James Audubon. Gregory Nobles

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СКАЧАТЬ the flatboat, Audubon kept at it, combining sketches of birds with close ornithological description. One “raw & Cloudy” Sunday morning in November, for instance, he got a “beautifull specimen” of a water bird he had never seen before, which he identified as an Imber Diver (and which is now identified as the Common Loon). He had to wait a while to get started on his drawing—“the Wind rendered our Cabin smoaky I Could Not begin to Draw until after Dinner”—but he finished it over the next two days, while also recording field notes in his journal:

      It is with apparent Difficulty or a Sluggish disposition that these Birds rise out of the Watter & yet Will Not dive at the flash of a Gun—while on the wing are very Swift— … they frequently Dipp their Bill in the Watter, and I think have the power of Judging in that Way if the place Contains Fish = One I shot at; dove & raised again Imediatly as if to see Where I was or What Was the Matter.

      Audubon took careful measurements of the bird’s weight and dimensions, and he opened it up to see what it had been eating: “Contents of Gutt & Gizard Small Fish, Bones & Scales and Large Gravel—Body extremely fat & rancid.”¹³

      The day he finished his Imber Diver drawing, Audubon also “saw several Eagles, Brown & White headed,” and a few days later he shot a “beautifull White headed Eagle Falco Leucocephalus,” a male weighing eight and a half pounds and with a wingspan measuring over six and a half feet. Since his shot went through the eagle’s gizzard, he couldn’t determine its diet, but the dead specimen did give him the opportunity to make a close examination of the bird and become convinced that “the Bald Eagle and the Brown Eagle are Two Diferent Species.” (In fact, they are not, the Brown Eagle being the immature version of the Bald Eagle.) Audubon continued to observe eagle behavior, especially the mating habits and other relationships between male and female. On the afternoon of December 1, he had the good ornithological fortune to watch two eagles copulate: “The femelle was on a Very high Limb of a Tree and Squated at the approach of the Male, who came Like a Torrent, alighted on her and quakled Shrill until he sailed off, the femelle following him and Zig zaging through the air.”¹⁴

      A week later, he made another observation of a male and female eagle pair, this one with a less happy outcome. “Mr Aumack Winged a White headed Eagle, [and] brought it a live on board,” Audubon wrote, noting that “the Noble Fellow Looked at his Ennemies with a Contemptible Eye.” Audubon then undertook a harsh-seeming scientific experiment with the captive eagle, tying a string to one of its legs, then making the wounded bird jump into the water. “My Surprise at Seeing it Swim well was very great, it used its Wing with great Effect and Would have made the Shore distant then about 200 yds Dragging a Pole Weighing at Least 15 lbs.” When his assistant Joseph Mason went after it, the defiant eagle defended itself, and all the while its female partner hovered above and “shrieked for some time, exhibiting the true Sorow of the Constant Mate.” This would not be the last time Audubon would have a close encounter with a captive eagle—thirteen years later, as we shall see, the story of his eye-to-eye showdown with a caged Golden Eagle would mark one of the most dramatic episodes in Audubon’s artistic career—but it speaks to the ways that rough, even cruel treatment of live specimens could be a seemingly necessary, albeit unseemly, element of his scientific method.¹⁵

      Longing for Lucy

      Audubon’s observations of male-female eagle relations may have been especially pressing on his mind, because he, too, experienced “the true Sorow of the Constant Mate.” The farther he drifted downriver, the more his sense of separation from Lucy and his sons weighed on his mind, the more his slow-moving pursuit of an unpromising calling reminded him of his poverty—and theirs. Here he was, floating slowly toward New Orleans for a couple of months, shooting and drawing birds along the way, but really having no idea of what prospects lay before him in the longer run. In mid-November, after being afloat for five weeks, and as the boat finally left the Ohio River and turned into the Mississippi, he took sad note of the turn his life had taken. “Now I enter it poor in fact Destitute of all things … in a flat Boat a Passenger.” In a brief reverie, he made the confluence of the rivers a metaphor for his own difficult history: “The Meeting of the Two Streams reminds me a Litle of the Gentle Youth who Comes into the World, Spotless he presents himself, he is gradually drawn in to Thousands of Dificulties that Makes him wish to keep Apart, but at last he is over done Mixed and Lost in the Vortex.” Before being swept too much deeper into this emotional abyss, Audubon snapped out of it and turned his attention to a visual description of the way the “beautifull & Transparent Watter of the Ohio … Looks the More agreable to the Eye as it goes down Surrounded by the Muddy Current” of the Mississippi. Still, he could not suppress one last look at the river that had taken him away from Cincinnati, where he had left his family: “I bid My farewell to the Ohio at 2 o’clock P.M. and felt a Tear gushing involuntarily, every Moment draws me from all that is Dear to Me My Beloved Wife & Children.”¹⁶

      Audubon’s longing for his family, and no doubt the guilt he felt for leaving them, continued to hang heavily on his heart. Sundays on the flatboat were a time for renewal of sorts, when Audubon would shave and wash—“anxious to See the day Come for Certainly a Shirt worn One week, hunting every day and Sleeping in Buffaloe Robes at night soon became soild and Desagreable”—but moon over Lucy: “On Sundays I Look at My Drawings and particularly at that of My Beloved Wife—& Like to spend about one hour in thoughts devoted to My familly.”¹⁷ Sometimes those thoughts made him imagine the worst: “While Looking at My Beloved Wife’s Likeness this day I thought it was Altered and Looked sorrowfull, it produced an Imediate sensation of Dread of her being in Want.”¹⁸ He tried to write letters back home, but the river offered few opportunities for regular mail service, and letters could take six weeks or more to reach a recipient, no matter how beloved. Sometimes he could cheer up for a bit by remembering his mission, telling himself that “so Strong is my Anthusiast to Enlarge the Ornithological Knowledge of My Country that I felt as if I wish Myself Rich again and thereby able to Leave my familly for a Couple of Years.” Still, it was almost never that easy to take the long view, especially with his family so far off in the distance. By Christmas of 1820, when he had been away for two and a half months, he wrote of his “hope that My Familly wishes me as good a Christmas as I do them.… I hope to have Some tidings of them Tomorrow.”¹⁹

      As it happened, he did get some mail from Lucy the next day, a couple of letters posted in early November. Perhaps just as promising, he also happened upon, quite by surprise, his Kentucky friend Nicholas Berthoud, who was on a stopover while taking his own keelboat to New Orleans, Audubon’s anticipated destination. Berthoud invited Audubon to join him on his keelboat for the rest of the trip downriver, giving him a welcome upgrade over Aumack’s flatboat. But by New Year’s Day, any encouraging effects of Lucy’s correspondence and his improved accommodations had worn off, and Audubon could not avoid coming to terms with the dispiriting reality of his situation: “I am on Board a Keel Boat going down to New Orleans the poorest Man on it.”²⁰

      Ever the Observer

      Poor as he was, Audubon had plenty of impoverished company in the Mississippi region, and he took note of the condition of the ordinary people he encountered, forming impressions that would later find a place on the pages of his published works. When he looked at riverside society, he frequently recoiled at the low state of the people’s lives in their squalid communities. Landing at New Madrid, in Missouri Territory, one afternoon in November, he noted that “this allmost deserted Village is one the poorest that is seen on this River bearing a name,” and the inhabitants looked shiftless and slovenly: “They are Clad in Bukskin pantaloons and a Sort of Shirt of the same, this is seldom put aside unless So ragged or so Blooded & Greased, that it will become desagreable even to the poor Wrecks that bear it on.”²¹ (Audubon neglected to note in his journal the possible economic aftershocks of the massive earthquakes that devastated New Madrid in 1811–1812, which may well have rendered it still a less desirable location for residence nine years afterward. СКАЧАТЬ