John James Audubon. Gregory Nobles
well-organized display of natural history specimens—plants, stuffed birds and mammals, even a mastadon skeleton—along with portraits of prominent Americans, Peale had created a site for both entertainment and instruction, a place where people could gaze about the gallery and behold some of the wonders of the American wilderness without even going outdoors. In the process, Peale gave his visitors a way to understand the connection between nature and nation, and he confidently expected that a museum of this sort could be a credit to its founder, to its city, and to the country as a whole.81
So did Drake, and he sought to create something similar in Cincinnati. Incorporated as a city only in 1819, Drake’s Cincinnati seemed a pale reflection of Peale’s Philadelphia, with just under 10,000 inhabitants in 1820, compared to almost 64,000 in the Quaker City. Like Philadelphia, though, Cincinnati had a hodgepodge population, with a combination of New England Yankees, Pennsylvanians, Virginians, and Kentuckians, not to mention a growing number of Germans and other European immigrants. Like Peale, Drake saw the new museum as a means of providing a civilizing influence over such a diverse society.82 “As the arts and sciences have not hitherto been cultivated among us to any great extent,” he observed, speaking the obvious truth, “the influence they are capable of exerting on our happiness and dignity is not generally perceived.” But rooted in a foundation of scientific method, the Western Museum could be a place of celebration of the arts and sciences, where the eclectic collection of items “will rise from it in order and beauty, like those which start from the prepared canvass into imitative life, under the creative pencil of the painter.”83
Audubon needed money more than he needed such lofty pronouncements about the rise of order and beauty, even with a positive word about the “creative pencil of the painter.” Unhappily, he apparently didn’t make as much as he had hoped in working for Dr. Drake, and he later complained that “the members of the College museum were splendid promisers and very bad paymasters.” Anyway, his work for the Western Museum came to a fairly quick end, because he and his colleague Robert Best, the British-born curator of the collection, were “so industrious,” he wrote, “that in about six months we had augmented, arranged, and finished all we could do for the museum.”84 Drake laid Audubon off at the end of April 1820, and even though he promised to pay Audubon for the work he had done, the money never materialized. Audubon and Lucy stayed on in Cincinnati, both teaching to make ends meet, both no doubt wondering what they might be able to do next.
Still, the time spent working at the Western Museum proved valuable in ways other than monetary. Audubon got additional experience in taxidermy, he found time to consult the museum’s copy of Wilson’s American Ornithology and other ornithological works, and he had the good fortune to display his bird drawings to prominent visitors to the museum—most notably Major Stephen Long, the expedition leader; Thomas Say, the naturalist; and Charles Willson Peale’s son Titian, himself a budding artist-naturalist, all of whom “stared at my drawings of birds.”85 He also gained some valuable recognition for the useful work he had done. Elijah Stack, the president of Cincinnati College, wrote a letter of recommendation for Audubon, noting that “he has been engaged in our Museum for 3 or 4 Months & his performances do honor to his Pencil.”86
Daniel Drake also put in a good word in a public venue. On the evening of June 10, 1820, in his formal address just before the opening of the Western Museum, Drake gave both Audubon and his profession a positive plug in his formal remarks before an audience of the museum’s patrons. When speaking specifically about the field of ornithology, he made the obligatory bow to Alexander Wilson, acknowledging that to “this selftaught, indefatigable and ingenious man we are indebted for most of what we know concerning the natural history of our Birds.” No sooner had he given Wilson this compliment, though, than he compromised it with an ornithological qualification based on his regional devotion to “that portion which we inhabit,” the Ohio River Valley and the territory closer to the Mississippi River. While Wilson had “nearly completed” the study of birds of the Middle Atlantic states, Drake noted, he “must necessarily have left that of the Western imperfect.” He went on to explain that birds don’t typically migrate across mountains, but along rivers, such as the Mississippi, and from that geographical perspective he pointed out that “it is reasonable to conjecture, that many birds annually migrate over this country which do not visit the Atlantic states, and might, therefore, have escaped the notice of their greatest ornithologist in the single excursion which he made to the Ohio.” That “single excursion” was, of course, the one that took Wilson to Louisville and Audubon’s store in 1810. Without making any explicit reference to the touchy-seeming situation between Audubon and Wilson at the time, Drake quietly sided with his erstwhile employee Audubon, “one of the excellent artists attached to the Museum,” as the more comprehensive of the two: Audubon “has drawn, from nature, in colored crayons, several hundred species of American birds, [and] has, in his port folio, a large number that are not figured in Mr. Wilson’s work, and many which do not seem to have been recognized by any naturalist.”87
Although Audubon was no longer in Drake’s employ at the time of this talk, he could have taken two encouraging notes from Drake’s remarks. First, he had to enjoy being called an excellent artist and, better still, receiving public recognition that he had a more extensive and comprehensive collection of avian images than Wilson had. Second, he could readily agree with Drake’s argument that the limitations of Wilson’s ornithological reach stemmed in large part from his spending almost all of his time in the East and only once venturing toward the West. Audubon knew that the millions of birds migrating in regions beyond the eastern mountain ridges represented fair game for dozens of new discoveries, and those could be his, not Wilson’s.
With his prospects in Cincinnati seemingly at a dead end, with no interesting new work in sight, he decided to look downriver to find his future. From his current perch in the Ohio River Valley, no place seemed more immediately promising or proximate than the Mississippi Valley, which could in turn give him access to an even greater territory for exploration. On August 12, 1820, just two months after Drake’s oration to the patrons of the Western Museum, Audubon bravely, perhaps brazenly, appealed to an even more prominent patron, Henry Clay of Kentucky, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Audubon wrote that he had spent “the greater part of Fifteen Years in procuring and Drawing the Birds of the United States with a view of Publishing them,” he wrote his fellow Kentuckian, but his collection of specimens were those that “usually resort to the Middle States only.” Wrapping himself in the expansive nationalism he no doubt knew would appeal to an ambitious political leader like Clay, he spoke of his “desire to complete the Collection before I present it to My Country in perfect order.” To do so, he continued, “I intend to Explore the Territories Southwest of the Mississippi … Visiting the Red River, Arkansas and the Countries adjacent.” A few good words of introduction “from one on whom our Country looks up to with respectfull Admiration” could be enormously “Necessary to a Naturalist,” and Audubon thus solicited the Speaker’s support.88 Within two weeks, Clay responded with a letter that recommended Audubon as “a Gentleman of Amiable and Excellent qualities, Well qualified, as I believe, to execute the object which he has undertaken.”89 Audubon now had just what he needed: a piece of paper that could open doors all along the Mississippi.
And that’s where he headed next, now fully focused on making his living as an artist after all—and a bird artist at that.
Chapter 3
Making an Odyssey for Art and Ornithology
Without any Money My Talents are to be My Support and My anthusiasm My Guide in My Dificulties, the whole of which I am ready to exert to keep, and to surmount—
—John James Audubon, “Mississippi River Journal”
“The Watter is Low,” Audubon observed as the boat moved into the Ohio River’s slow current, and so were his spirits. He knew what he wanted to do: “to Acquire a true knowledge of the Birds of North America.” He also knew he had to get beyond Cincinnati to do it: “I