After our dismal removal from Henderson to Louisville, one morning when all of us were sadly desponding, I took you both, Victor and John, from Shippingport to Louisville. I had purchased a loaf of bread and some apples; before you reached Louisville you were hungry, and by the river side we sat down and ate our scanty meal. On that day the world was with me as a blank, and my heart was sorely heavy, for scarcely had I enough to keep my dear ones alive; and yet through those dark days I was being led to the development of the talents I loved, and which have brought so much enjoyment to us all....
At Shippingport Audubon was welcomed by his brother-in-law, Nicholas A. Berthoud. Wasting no time in vain regrets, he began doing portraits in crayon, and with such success that he was able to rent a modest apartment and have his family about him again. From no charges for his tentative efforts the price was gradually raised until he received five dollars or more a head; with the spread of his fame orders filled his hands, and he was called long distances to take likenesses of the dying or even of the dead. Audubon's facility in portraiture was a valuable resource, and it kept him from the starving line at many a pinch in later years.
Through the influence of friends the naturalist was offered a position as taxidermist at a museum which had just been started at Cincinnati; here his family joined him in the winter of 1819-20, and here he remained for nearly a year. The published accounts of this Cincinnati experience are strangely confused and have led to aspersions of bad faith which were, we believe, quite undeserved. "I was presented," said Audubon, "to the president of the Cincinnati College, Dr. Drake, and immediately formed an engagement to stuff birds for the museum there, in concert with Mr. Robert Best, an Englishman of great talent," adding that his salary was large; so industrious were they, to continue his account, "that in about six months we had augmented, arranged, and finished all that we could do," but they found to their sorrow "that the members of the College museum were splendid promisers and very bad paymasters."[275] It has been stated that Audubon got nothing from Dr. Drake, but that "Mrs. Audubon afterwards received four hundred dollars, of the twelve hundred due," and that the remainder was never paid.[276] This matter can now be fully cleared up, and it will appear that the Cincinnati College was in no way involved; Dr. Drake was not its president, although he drew its charter and was one of its trustees; the Museum in which the naturalist worked was an independent foundation; and Mrs. Audubon was probably paid in full for the service which her husband had rendered.
Audubon wrote in his journal in 1820, when this experience was fresh in his mind, that owing to his talent for stuffing fishes he entered the service of the Western Museum at a salary of $125 a month; he made no complaint at that time of any lack of pay. Moreover, on the day before he started on his cruise down the Ohio River on the 11th of October of that year, the Rev. Elijah Slack gave him a letter of introduction in which he said that Audubon had "been engaged in our museum for 3 to 4 months, and that his performances do honor to his pencil." Since Mr. Slack, like Dr. Drake, was one of the managers of the Western Museum, he must have known of Audubon's term of service. We are convinced that Dr. Daniel Drake,[277] whose character was above reproach and who was a keen naturalist himself, was Audubon's good friend, and that no misunderstanding ever rose between them. In writing offhand from memory, years after the events, Audubon misstated the facts but evidently without design.
In 1818 Dr. Drake organized the Western Museum Society, of which he said: "I have drawn up the constitution in such a manner as to make the institution a complete school for natural history, and hope to see concentrated in this place, the choicest natural and artificial curiosities in the Western Country." The first meeting of the Society was held in the summer of 1819, not long before Audubon was engaged to work for it. The membership fee was $50, a considerable sum for that period, but the enterprise was well patronized. It was in charge of a board of whom Dr. Drake was the moving spirit; another member, as we have seen, was Rev. Mr. Slack, who became the first president of the Cincinnati College, which was organized in 1818-19. The collections of the Museum were placed in one of the buildings of the College in order better to serve the students and public, which would account for some of the confusion noted above.
Dr. Drake's hands at this time were more than full; in October, 1819, he wrote to a friend: "The ties which bind me to the world at large seem every day to increase in strength and numbers. The crowd of mankind with whom I have some direct or indirect concern, thickens around me, and I see little prospect of more leisure, nor any of retirement and seclusion." At this juncture also, when Audubon and Best were working for his Museum, Dr. Drake was experiencing the first disastrous check in his energetic career. In January, 1820, in spite of the opposition and intrigue of professional rivals, he succeeded in organizing the Medical College of Ohio, and Robert Best became the assistant in chemistry and the curator of the Western Museum. Opposition did not abate, but instead of strangling the College which he had founded, the marplots succeeded in expelling the Doctor from its staff. At last, feeling obliged to leave the city, Dr. Drake accepted in 1823 a position in the rival medical school of Transylvania University, and thus became a colleague of Constantine Rafinesque. It will be seen that Audubon's engagement at Cincinnati fell in a troubled era, and the annoyance which he may have felt at lack of pay was probably no fault of the harassed doctor.
While at Cincinnati Audubon was obliged to resort to his crayon portraits; and he also started a drawing school, but it required all of Mrs. Audubon's skill in management to keep the family out of debt. In 1820 he began for the first time seriously to consider the possibility of publishing his drawings, and under the spur of this incentive began to exert himself as never before. He planned a long journey through the Middle West and South, his intention being to descend the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, explore the country about New Orleans, and then proceed as far east as the Florida Keys; he wished also to ascend the Red River, cross Arkansas, and visit the Hot Springs, before returning again by river to Cincinnati. Lack of ready money was no drawback, for he was now confident of being able to live by his talents alone.
Accordingly, he left his wife to care for their two boys, and on October 12, 1820, started down river in a flatboat, bound for New Orleans. His companions on this journey were Captain Cummings,[278] an engineer who had been in the government service, to whom Audubon became much attached; Joseph R. Mason, a promising artist of eighteen, in the rôle of pupil-assistant, and his dog "Dash." Although Audubon had no funds, he was careful to provide himself with letters to or from men of mark who could be of assistance to him and this custom was followed to good effect at a much later day. On this occasion he bore recommendations from William H. Harrison, who afterwards became President, to Governor Miller of Arkansas, and from Henry Clay, as well as his letter from Rev. Elijah Slack, in which it was stated that the naturalist was traveling to complete his collection of the birds of the United States which he intended to publish at some future time. Audubon also wrote a personal letter to Governor Miller, fully outlining his plans, and asking for information; he told the Governor that he had been working fifteen years, and that his drawings of birds and plants were all from nature and life-size, showing that the idea of publication which was afterwards realized was then fixed in his mind. Audubon kept a careful journal on this journey, which extended over a year, the last entry being for the close of 1821.[279]
As their flatboat stopped at many towns and plantations on the rivers, Audubon could hunt game and birds to his heart's content. Having resolved, as he said, never to draw from a stuffed specimen, he worked at every new bird with the greatest diligence. It seems almost incredible that he should never have met with the Hermit Thrush before this journey, yet under date of "Oct. 14, 1820," there is this entry: "We returned to our boat with a Wild Turkey, a Telltale Godwit and a Hermit Thrush, which was too much torn to make a drawing of it; this was the first time I had met with this bird, and I felt particularly mortified at its condition."[280]
Their visit to Natchez furnished Audubon with materials for at least two of his "Episodes."[281] This incident of his generosity may be taken as characteristic; finding that one of his companions was down at the heel and as short of ready money as himself, he sought out a shoemaker and offered to do a portrait of the man and his wife for two pairs of boots; the proposal was accepted forthwith, and he set to work; the sketches were finished in the course of two hours, and Audubon and his companion, having selected their boots, went on their way rejoicing.