CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Audubon's growing fame—Experience in Paris in 1828—Cuvier's patronage—Audubon's publications—His critics—His talents and accomplishments—His Americanism and honesty of purpose—His foibles and faults—Appreciations and monuments—The Audubon Societies—Biographies and autobiography—Robert Buchanan and the true history of his _Life of Audubon_.

It is more than three-quarters of a century since Audubon's masterpiece, _The Birds of America_, was completed, and two generations have occupied the stage since the "American Woodsman" quietly passed away at his home on the Hudson River. These generations have seen greater changes in the development and application of natural science and in the spread of scientific knowledge among men than all those which preceded them. Theories of nature come and go but the truth abides, and Audubon's "book of Nature," represented by his four massive volumes of hand-engraved and hand-colored plates, still remains "the most magnificent monument which has yet been raised to ornithology," as Cuvier said of the parts which met his astonished gaze in 1828; while his graphic sketches of American life and scenery and his vivid portraits of birds, drawn with the pen, can be read with as much pleasure as when the last volume of his _Ornithological Biography_ left the press in 1839. This appears the more remarkable when we reflect that Audubon's greatest working period, from 1820 to 1840, belonged essentially to the eighteenth century, for the real transition to the nineteenth century did not begin in England before 1837; then came the dawn of the newer day that was to witness those momentous changes in communication and travel, in education, democracy and ideas, which characterize life in the modern world.

When Audubon left London for Paris on September 1, 1828, it took him four days by coach, boat and diligence to reach the French capital, a journey which in normal times is now made in less than eight hours. Mail then left the Continent for England on but four days in the week, and to post a single letter cost twenty-four sous. Writing at Edinburgh a little earlier (December 21, 1826), Audubon recorded that on that day he had received from De Witt Clinton and Thomas Sully, in America, letters in answer to his own, in forty-two days, and added that it seemed absolutely impossible that the distance could be covered so rapidly. This was indeed remarkable, since the first vessel to cross the Atlantic wholly under its own steam, in 1838, required seventeen days to make the passage from New York to Queenstown.

"Walking in Paris," said Audubon in 1828, "is disagreeable in the extreme; the streets are paved, but with scarcely a sidewalk, and a large gutter filled with dirty black water runs through the middle of each, and people go about without any kind of order, in the center, or near the houses." The Paris of that day contained but one-fourth the number of its present population. Having reaped the fruits of the Revolution, it was enjoying peace under the Restoration; moreover, it was taking a leading part in the advancement of natural science, of which Cuvier was the acknowledged dean. It was but a year before the death of blind and aged Lamarck, neglected and forgotten then, but destined after the lapse of three-quarters of a century to have a monument raised to his memory by contributions from every part of Europe and America, and to be recognized as the first great evolutionist of the modern school.

Audubon had not seen his ancestral capital for upwards of thirty years, not since as a young man he was sent from his father's home near Nantes to study drawing in the studio of David, at the Louvre. Though in the land of his fathers and speaking his native tongue, his visit was tinged with disappointment. At the age of forty-three he was engaged in an enterprise which stands unique in the annals of science and literature. But fifty plates, or ten numbers, of his incomparable series had been engraved, and this work had then but thirty subscribers. That he was bound to sink or swim he knew full well. On August 30 he wrote: "My subscribers are yet far from enough to pay my expenses, and my purse suffers severely from want of greater patronage." This want he had hoped to satisfy in France, but after an experience of eight weeks, and an expenditure, as he records, of forty pounds, he was obliged to leave Paris with only thirteen additional names on his list. Yet among the latter, it should be noticed, were those of George Cuvier, the Duke of Orleans and King Charles X, while six copies had been ordered by the Minister of the Interior for distribution among the more important libraries of Paris. Moreover, he had won the friendship and encomiums of Cuvier, which later proved of the greatest value. The savants who gathered about him at the meeting of the Royal Academy of Sciences, over which Cuvier presided, exclaimed, "Beautiful! Very beautiful! What a work!", but "What a price!", and acknowledged that only in England could he find the necessary support. Audubon concluded that he was fortunate in having taken his drawings to London to be engraved, for the smaller cost of copper on that side of the Channel was an item which could not be overlooked. Little did he dream that commercial greed for the baser metal would send most of his great plates to the melting pot half a century later. No doubt he was right also in concluding that had he followed certain advisers in first taking his publication to France, it would have perished "like a flower in October." It should be added that King Charles' subscription expired with his fall two years later, while that of Cuvier ended with his death in 1832.

Audubon was one of those rare spirits whose posthumous fame has grown with the years. He did one thing in particular, that of making known to the world the birds of his adopted land, and did it so well that his name will be held in everlasting remembrance. His great folios are now the property of the rich or of those fortunate institutions which have either received them by gift or were enrolled among his original subscribers, and wherever found they are treasured as the greatest of show books. The sale of a perfect copy of the _Birds_ at the present day is something of an event, for it commands from $3,000 to $5,000, or from three to five times its original cost. All of Audubon's publications have not only become rare but have increased greatly in price; they are what dealers call a good investment, an experience which probably no other large, illustrated, scientific or semi-scientific works have enjoyed to a like degree.

As has been said of Prince Henry the Navigator, though in different words, John James Audubon was one of those who by a simple-hearted life of talent, devotion and enthusiasm have freed themselves from the law of death. Audubon was a man of many sides, and his fame is due to a rare combination of those talents and powers which were needed to accomplish the work that he finally set out to do. His personality was most winning, his individuality strong, and his long life, bent for the most part to attain definite ends, was checkered, adventurous and romantic beyond the common lot of men.

Few men outside of public life have been praised more lavishly than Audubon during his active career. Though he had but few open enemies, those few, as if conscious of the fact, seemed to assail him the more harshly and persistently. In reading all that has been said about this strenuous worker both before and since his death, one is continually struck by the perverse or contrary opinions that are often expressed. He was not this and he was not that, but he was simply Audubon, and there has been no one else who has at all closely resembled him or with whom he can be profitably compared. One charges that he did not write the books which bear his name. Another complains that he was no philosopher, and was not a man of science at heart; that he was vain, elegant, inclined to be selfish, inconsequential, and that he reverenced the great; that he shot birds for sport; that he was a plagiarist; that he was the king of nature fakirs and a charlatan; that he never propounded or answered a scientific question; and, finally, that though at times he wrote a graphic and charming style and showed occasional glimpses of prophetic insight, he cannot be trusted; besides, he might have been greatly indebted to unacknowledged aid received from others.

These or similar charges were brought against Audubon during his lifetime, as they have been made against many another who has emerged quickly from obscurity into world-wide renown. Many attacks upon his character were assiduously repelled by his friends, though seldom noticed publicly by himself; as if conscious of his own integrity, he was content to await the verdict of time, and time in America has not been recreant to his trust. Some of these charges it may be necessary to examine at length, if found to be justified in any degree, while others may be brushed aside as unworthy of even passing consideration. Evidence of every sort is now ample, as it seems, to enable us to do justice to all concerned, to penetrate the veil that has hidden much of the real Audubon from the world, and to place the worker and the man in the fuller light of day.

The reader who follows this history may expect to find certain blemishes in Audubon's character, for the most admirable of men have possessed faults, whether conscious of them or not. The lights in any picture would lose all value were the shadows wholly withdrawn. If we blinded ourselves to every fault and foible of such a man, we might produce a sketch more pleasing to certain readers, but it would lack the vitality which truth alone can supply. The more carefully his character is studied, however, as Macaulay said of Addison, the more it will appear, in the language of the old anatomists, "sound in the noble parts, free from all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of cruelty, of ingratitude, of envy."

In this attempt to present a true and unbiased estimate of Audubon in relation to his time, we have the advantage of dealing with a well rounded and completed life, not with a broken or truncated one. He impressed many of his contemporaries in both Europe and America with the force of his contagious enthusiasm and prolific genius, and their opinions have been recorded with remarkable generosity. On the other hand, "if a life be delayed till interest and envy are at an end," said an excellent authority,[1] "we may hope for impartiality, but must expect little intelligence," because the minute details of daily life are commonly so volatile and evanescent as to "soon escape the memory, and are rarely transmitted by tradition." Such details, which often reveal character while they add color and life to the narrative, have been amply supplied, as the reader will find, by Audubon himself, not only in his journals and private letters already published but in the numerous documents of every sort that are now brought to light.

If "the true man is to be revealed, if we are to know him as he was, and especially if we are to know the influences that molded him and so profoundly affected him for good or evil, we must begin at the beginning and follow him through his struggles, his temptations, his triumphs." It might be better to start "in the cradle," or even forty years before he was born, for, as modern biology teaches us, nature is stronger than nurture and race counts for much. Certainly this man can never be understood if removed from the environment which time and circumstance gave him; he needs the historical background, furnished in part by his contemporaries, some of whom were rivals with whom he had often to struggle to make his way. In recounting this history, in many cases hitherto unwritten, we must recognize the proverbial difficulty of tracing human motives to their proper source, and endeavor to form no harsh judgments without ample basis in documentary or other evidence.

No more ardent and loyal American than John James Audubon ever lived. His adopted country, which he would fain have believed to have been that of his actual birth, was ever his chief passion and pride, and for him the only abode of sweet content. Few have seen more of it, of its diversified races, climates and coasts, its grand mountains, its noble lakes and rivers, its virgin forests and interminable prairies, with all the marvelous stores of animal and plant life which were first truly revealed to the pioneer woodsman, artist and naturalist. None has been more eager to hand down to posterity, ere it be too late, a true transcript of its wild and untameable nature while, as he would say, still fresh from the Creator's own hand. Audubon's beneficent influence during his long enforced residence abroad, as a representative of American energy and capacity, can hardly be measured, while in his own land few were more potent in bringing the nation to a consciousness of its unique individuality and power.

Audubon, as has been said, saw nature vividly colored by his own enthusiasm, and he never looked at her "through the spectacles of books." His writings, however unpolished or written with whatever degree of speed, have the peculiar quality of awakening enthusiasm in the reader, who, like the youth poring over _Robinson Crusoe_, feels within him a new ardor, in this instance, for hunting and studying birds and for leading a life of adventure in the wilderness. It would be as unjust to judge of Audubon's rare abilities as a descriptive writer from the letters, journal jottings and miscellaneous extracts given in this work, as to weigh his accomplishments as an artist from his itinerary portraits or his early sketches of animals in crayon point and pastel. Those cruder products of his pen and brush, however, as the reader will find, possess a high degree of interest from the light which they throw on the development of his character and art, as well as from their personal and historical associations. His best and only finished literary work, the _Ornithological Biography_, in five large volumes, with the revisions and additions which later appeared, abound in animated pictures of primitive nature and pioneer life in America as well as vivid portraits of the birds and other characteristic animals.

A good illustration of Audubon's habit of blending his own experiences with his biographies of birds is found in the introduction to his account of the Common Gannet:

On the morning of the 14th of June 1833, the white sails of the Ripley were spread before a propitious breeze, and onward she might be seen gaily wending her way towards the shores of Labrador. We had well explored the Magdalene Islands, and were anxious to visit the Great Gannet Rock, where, according to our pilot, the birds from which it derives its name bred. For several days I had observed numerous files proceeding northward, and marked their mode of flight while thus travelling. As our bark dashed through the heaving billows, my anxiety to reach the desired spot increased. At length, about ten o'clock, we discerned at a distance a white speck, which our pilot assured us was the celebrated rock of our wishes. After a while I could distinctly see its top from the deck, and thought that it was still covered with snow several feet deep. As we approached it, I imagined that the atmosphere around was filled with flakes, but on my turning to the pilot, who smiled at my simplicity, I was assured that nothing was in sight but the Gannets and their island home. I rubbed my eyes, took up my glass, and saw that the strange dimness of the air before us was caused by the innumerable birds, whose white bodies and black-tipped pinions produced a blended tint of light-grey. When we had advanced to within half a mile, this magnificent veil of floating Gannets was easily seen, now shooting upwards, as if intent on reaching the sky, then descending as if to join the feathered masses below, and again diverging toward either side and sweeping over the surface of the ocean. The Ripley now partially furled her sails, and lay to, when all on board were eager to scale the abrupt side of the mountain isle, and satisfy their curiosity.[2]

Audubon's accounts of the birds are copious, interesting and generally accurate, considering the time and circumstances in which they were produced. When at his best, his pictures were marvels of fidelity and close observation, and in some of his studies of mammals, like that of the raccoon (see p. 182), in which seemingly every hair is carefully rendered, we are reminded of the work of the old Dutch masters and of Albrecht Dürer; notwithstanding such attention to microscopic detail, there is no flatness, but the values of light and shade are perfectly rendered. In his historical survey of American ornithology, Elliott Coues was fully justified in designating the years 1824-1853 as representing the "Audubonian Epoch," and the time from 1834 to its close as the "Audubonian Period." "The splendid genius of the man, surmounting every difficulty and discouragement of the author, had found and claimed its own.... Audubon and his work were one; he lived in his work, and in his work will live forever."[3]

There is no doubt that Audubon regarded an honest man as the quintessence of God's works, and though he sometimes set down statements which do not square with known facts, this was often the result of lax habits, or of saying what was uppermost in his mind without retrospection or analysis. When memory failed or when more piquancy and color were needed, he may have been too apt to resort to varnish, but for everything written on the spot his mind was as truth-telling as his pictures. In considering the good intent of the man, his extraordinary capacity for taking pains, and his vast accomplishments, criticism on this score seems rather captious. On the other hand, when it came to dealing with his own early life, that was a subject upon which he reserved the right to speak according to his judgment, and in a way which will be considered later.

Audubon left England to settle his family finally in America in the autumn of 1839, when he was fifty-four years old, and since he lived but twelve years longer, probably few are now living who retain more than a childish memory of his appearance in advanced age. Many Londoners will recall an odd character, an aged print dealer who used to sit alone, like a hoary spider in its web, in his little shop in Great Russell Street, close to the British Museum, and another of similar type, who may still haunt a better known landmark, the old "naturalist's shop" in Oxford Street, not far from Tottenham Court Road and but a minute's walk from the spot where most of Audubon's _Birds_ were engraved. Both had seen the naturalist walk the streets of London and had known him in business relations. He occasionally strolled into the old naturalist's shop, which has been occupied by father and son for nearly a century. The son, then a young clerk, is now (1913) the crabbed veteran who still waits on customers but never waits long; should you hazard a question before making a purchase, he will roar like the captain of a ship and leave you to your own devices; but show him money and the change in his demeanor is wonderful; his hearing improves, his tone softens, and he may recount for you what he remembers of times long past, which is not much. Audubon in the thirties seemed to him like an aged man, an impression quite natural to a youth. He also remembered seeing Charles Waterton, Audubon's declared enemy and supercilious critic, William Swainson, his one-time friend, and William MacGillivray, his eminent assistant; that they were great rivals expressed the sum of his reflections. He recalled the time when Oxford Street was filled, as he expressed it, with horses and donkeys, and of course knew well the old Zoölogical Gallery, No. 79 Newman Street, in which for a time Robert Havell & Son conducted a shop in connection with their printing and engraving establishment. The latter, when moved by Robert Havell, Jr., to No. 77 Oxford Street, was nearly opposite the old Pantheon, which still lingers, and not far from the corner of Wrisley Street, the present site of Messrs. Waring & Gillow's large store.

We already possess several biographies of Audubon, and many of his letters of a personal or scientific interest and most of his extant journals, though but a fraction of those which originally existed, have been published. "America, my Country," has not forgotten him. Mount Audubon rises on the northerly bound of Colorado as an everlasting reminder of the last and grandest of all his journeys, that to the Missouri River in 1843. American counties and towns,[4] as well as parks and streets in American cities, bear his name. At least four of his beloved birds have been dedicated to him. In 1885, thirty-four years after his death, the New York Academy of Sciences began a popular movement through which a beautiful cross in marble was raised in 1893 above his grave in Trinity Cemetery.[5] The "one hundred and twenty-fifth anniversary"[6] of the naturalist's birth was celebrated in New York in 1905, and at the American Museum of Natural History an admirable marble bust of Audubon was unveiled on a notable occasion, December 29, 1906, when similar honors were paid to Louis Agassiz, Spencer Fullerton Baird, Edward Drinker Cope, James Dwight Dana, Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Henry, Joseph Leidy, John Torrey, and Alexander von Humboldt. On November 26, 1910, a statue of Audubon, after an admirable design by the veteran sculptor, Edward Virginius Valentine, of Richmond, Virginia, was unveiled in Audubon Park, New Orleans, where the naturalist, with pencil in hand, is represented in the act of transferring to paper the likeness of a favorite subject. He also occupies a niche in the Hall of Fame at New York University.

In recent times Audubon's name has become a household word through the medium of the most effective instrument which has yet been devised for the conservation of animal life in this or any country, the National Association of Audubon Societies for the Protection of Wild Birds and Animals. This has become the coördinating center for the spread and control of a great national movement that received its first impulse in 1886.[7] Launched anew ten years later, it has advanced with ever increasing momentum, until now it is the governing head of twenty-nine distinct State societies, as well as eighty-five affiliated clubs and similar organizations. In 1916 it counted a life membership of 356, with 3,024 sustaining members, and realized a total income of over $100,000. It should be added that during the past six years over 2,900 Junior Audubon Clubs have been formed in the schools, through which nearly 600,000 children have been instructed in the principles of the Audubon Society. Well may it be that this admirable organization, with its successful efforts for remedial legislation in state and nation; its initiative, with the aid of the National Government, in establishing Federal reservations or sanctuaries for the perpetuation of wild life; its educational activities through the extension of its influence to the pupils of the public schools; and its watch and ward over all the varied interests of its cause, will keep the name of Audubon greener to all future time than the most cherished of his works.

Of Audubon's works the public now sees but little and knows even less, all without exception having been long out of print. His admirable plates of birds and mammals have been widely copied and still serve for the illustration of popular books, but most of his publications were projected on too large and expensive a scale for general circulation, having been first sold to subscribers only and often at great cost. No complete reprint, revision or abridgment of his principal volumes has been made for half a century (see Bibliography, Appendix V). No complete bibliography of Audubon has ever been prepared, and none will remain completed long, for it is hard to imagine a time when comment on his life, his drawings, and his adventures will altogether cease.

In May, 1834, William MacGillivray, who was assisting him in the technical parts of the _Ornithological Biography_, suggested that Audubon write a biography of himself, and predicted a wide popularity for such a work. Audubon entertained the idea but was then too deeply immersed in _The Birds of America_ to give it much attention; yet in 1835 he wrote out a short sketch, entitled _Myself_, addressing it in the fashion of that day to his two sons, and then laid it aside. Mrs. Audubon evidently had access to this manuscript when the life of her husband, to be referred to later, was in course of preparation, and thus it has furnished, directly or indirectly, nearly all that has been published concerning the naturalist's early life. This fragment, which extends to about thirty printed pages, was characterized by Audubon as a "very imperfect (but perfectly correct) account of my early life," and though written with an eye to its possible publication, which was clearly sanctioned, it was evidently never revised. The manuscript was long lost but eventually was "found in an old book which had been in a barn on Staten Island for years"; it was first published by the naturalist's granddaughter, Miss Maria R. Audubon, in 1893, and again in 1898. As will later appear, this account is inaccurate in many important particulars.

Audubon expressed the intention of extending his personal history, which he promised to delineate with a faithfulness equal to that bestowed on the birds, but the task was never resumed. Yet more than most writers have done, he wove the incidents of his own career into the pages of his principal works, and this strong personal flavor added much to their charm. Unfortunately, in giving such personal or historical details he is most vulnerable to a critic, who insists first upon accuracy, for errors of various sorts and confused and conflicting statements are far too common.

Of the more formal biographies of Audubon, the first to appear was a slender volume entitled _Audubon: the Naturalist of the New World_, by Mrs. Horace Stebbing Roscoe St. John, published in England in 1856.[8] In the same year this work was expanded and reissued by the publishers who at that time had charge of the sale of Audubon's works in America.[9] The American publishers explained in their edition that inasmuch as "the fair authoress in preparing her interesting sketch of Audubon ... appears not to have been aware of the publication of his second great work, the _Quadrupeds of North America_ (which had not been advertised, we believe, in Europe) they have taken the liberty of giving some account of it and making numerous extracts from its pages."[10] Perhaps the most interesting or valuable things in this little volume at the present day are the woodcut on the title page showing Audubon's house on the Hudson as it then appeared, surrounded by tall trees, and, inserted on a flyleaf, a list of all of Audubon's published works and the prices at which they could be procured in New York just prior to the Civil War (see Note, Vol. II, p. 204).

In 1868 there appeared in England a work of combined and confused authorship, commonly referred to as "Buchanan's _Life of Audubon_," the "sub-editor," as he called himself, having since become better known as an original, skilled and prolific writer of verse, drama, fiction and literary criticism. At that time Robert Buchanan was twenty-six years old, and had published five volumes of poems in rapid succession, some of which had been received with favor by the public. A second and third edition of this _Life_ followed in 1869. Finally the work was resurrected and again sent to press, unrevised, in 1912, when it appeared in "Everyman's Library," at a shilling a copy, with an introduction which had served as a review of the work in 1869.

A recent biographer of Alexander Wilson speaks of Buchanan as "commissioned by Mrs. Audubon to write her husband's life," but the lady herself, as well as Buchanan, has told a different story. It seems that in about the year 1866, Mrs. Audubon prepared, "with the aid of a friend," an extended memoir of her husband, which was offered to an American publisher but without success. The "friend," at whose home Mrs. Audubon was then living, was the Rev. Charles Coffin Adams,[11] rector of St. Mary's Church, Manhattanville, now 135th, Street, New York. The Adams manuscript, which consisted chiefly of a transcript from the naturalist's journals, then in possession of his wife, was completed presumably in 1867. In the summer of that year it was placed in the hands of the London publishers, Messrs. Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, who without any authority turned it over to one of their hard-pressed, pot-boiling retainers, Robert Buchanan, poet and young man of genius. Buchanan boiled down the original manuscript, as he said, to one-fifth of its original compass, cutting out what he regarded as prolix or unnecessary and connecting "the whole with some sort of a running narrative."[12] Mrs. Audubon was unable to recover her property from either publishers or editor or to obtain any satisfaction for its unwarranted use. Whatever defects the Adams memoir may have possessed, this is much to be regretted, since, as her granddaughter has said, Mrs. Audubon had at her command many valuable documents, the originals of which have since been destroyed.

Buchanan, like Audubon, had been reared in comparative luxury, "the spoiled darling of a loving mother." After the failure of his father in various newspaper enterprises about four years before this time, he had gone up to London with but few shillings in his pocket and had begun life there literally in a garret. The reflection that Audubon had fought a similar but much harder battle in that same London thirty years before, and won, should possibly have awakened in him a somewhat friendlier spirit than was then displayed. It must be admitted, however, that Buchanan produced a very readable story, although there was not a word in his whole book which showed any real sympathy with Audubon's lifelong pursuits, any knowledge of ornithology, or any interest in natural science. Though expressing unbounded admiration for the naturalist, his foibles and faults seem to have hidden from this biographer the true value of his distinguished services. In respect to a knowledge of natural history it should be added that Buchanan laid no claims, and of Audubon's accomplishments in this field comparatively little was said, the book, like the Adams' manuscript from which it was drawn, being mainly composed of extracts from the naturalist's private journals and "Episodes," as he called his descriptive papers. It was here that Audubon made the strongest appeal to this literary editor, who concluded his preface with the following words of praise: "Some of his reminiscences of adventure ... seem to me to be quite as good, in vividness of presentment and careful colouring, as anything I have ever read."

Buchanan dilated on Audubon's pride, vanity and self-conceit, faults which may have belonged to his youth but which were never mentioned by his intimate friends and contemporaries except under conditions which reflected rather unfavorably upon themselves. Complaints on this score were spread broadcast by reviewers of this work, seventeen years after the naturalist's death and with the suddenness of a new discovery. They were undoubtedly based on the unconscious and allowable egotisms of such personal records as Audubon habitually made for the members of his family when time and distance kept them asunder. Vanity and selfishness could have formed no essential parts of a character that merited the eulogy which follows:

Audubon was a man of genius, with the courage of a lion and the simplicity of a child. One scarcely knows which to admire most—the mighty determination which enabled him to carry out his great work in the face of difficulties so huge, or the gentle and guileless sweetness with which he throughout shared his thoughts and aspirations with his wife and children. He was more like a child at the mother's knee, than a husband at the hearth—so free was the prattle, so thorough the confidence. Mrs. Audubon appears to have been a wife in every respect worthy of such a man; willing to sacrifice her personal comfort at any moment for the furtherance of his great schemes; ever ready to kiss and counsel when such were most needed; never failing for a moment in her faith that Audubon was destined to be one of the great workers of the earth.[13]

No one will deny, however, that Buchanan was right in saying that in order to get a man like Audubon understood, all domestic partiality, the bane of much biography, must be put aside; but it is equally important to make such allowances as the manifold circumstances of time and place demand, and to be a reasoner rather than a fancier. This work abounds in errors, but it is not clear to what extent they were due to carelessness on Buchanan's part.

It was certainly a mistake to attribute Buchanan's attitude to partiality for Alexander Wilson, who, like himself, was a Scotchman. It was a case of temperament only, for gloom and poverty had embittered his life. As his sister-in-law and biographer[14] said of him, "he was doomed to much ignoble pot-boiling.... He had few friends and many enemies," and "had received from the world many cruel blows," while "no man needed kindness so much and received so little." Perhaps the best key to the sad history of this able writer was given by himself when he said: "It is my vice that I must love a thing wholly, or dislike it wholly." His wife, we are told, was much like himself, and "like a couple of babies they muddled through life, tasting of some of its joys, but oftener of its sorrows." Undoubtedly Robert Buchanan was a genuine lover of truth and beauty; he has written numerous sketches of birds and outdoor scenes, but with no suggestion of nature as serving any other purpose than that of supplying a poet with bright and pleasing images.

It was with the purpose of correcting the false impressions created by animadversions in Buchanan's _Life_ that Mrs. Audubon, with the aid of her friend, James Grant Wilson, revised this work and published it in America under her name as editor, in 1869. The changes then made in Buchanan's text, however, were of a minor character and most of its errors remained uncorrected. The naturalist's granddaughter, Miss Maria R. Audubon, was inspired in part by similar feelings in preparing, with the aid of Dr. Elliott Coues, her larger and excellent work in two volumes, entitled _Audubon and His Journals_, which appeared in 1898. To her all admirers of Audubon owe a debt of gratitude for giving to the world for the first time a large part of his extant journals, as well as many new facts bearing upon his life and character. Other briefer biographies of Audubon which have appeared have been taken so completely from the preceding works, and have repeated and extended their errors to such an extent, as to call for little or no comment either here or in the pages which follow.

Through the discovery in France of new documentary evidence in surprising abundance we are obliged to draw conclusions contrary to those which have hitherto been accepted, and the new light thus obtained enables us to form a more accurate and just judgment of Audubon the man, and of his work.