Without the sale of his pictures in the summer of 1827, Audubon felt that he must certainly have become a bankrupt, yet he was periodically displeased with the results of his efforts in oil colors, and resolved to "spoil no more canvas" but to draw "in my usual old untaught way, which is what God meant me to do"; "I can draw," he continues, "but I shall never paint well." In the fall of 1828, however, he was again working in oils, and produced four large pieces, one of which was called "The Eagle and the Lamb," and two others which were doubtless variations of his "Pheasant" and "Otter" pictures. "It is charity," said the artist, "to speak the truth to a man who knows the poverty of his talents, and wishes to improve; it is villainous to mislead him, by praising him to his face, and laughing at his work as they go down the stairs of his house." Sir Thomas Lawrence had praised some of these pictures and had promised to select one for exhibition at Somerset House. As regards "The Eagle and the Lamb," which Audubon hoped would go to Windsor Castle, William Swainson would give no opinion; the same canvas, or else a replica, was in possession of the Audubon family in 1898.[350]
On December 14, 1827, Audubon wrote that, acting upon the advice of Mr. Maury, the American consul at London, he had presented a copy of his Birds to John Quincy Adams, the President of the United States, and another, through Henry Clay, to the American Congress; in order that the latter should be as perfect as possible, Havell was asked to do the coloring himself, but these proposed gifts do not appear to have been executed.[351]
New Year's, 1828, found the naturalist in Manchester, where but a few days before he had received the fifth and last number of his plates for 1827 and expressed himself well pleased with it. While returning to London by coach, he consented to take a hand at cards to accommodate his fellow passengers, but declined to play for money; "I never play," he confessed, "unless obliged to by circumstances; I feel no pleasure in the game, and long for other occupation." "I missed my snuff," he added, and whenever his hands went into his pockets in search of the box, he "discovered the strength of habit thus acting without thought"; but he remembered a resolution he had formed to give up the habit and stuck to it for a time at least; doubtless, like his later friend, John Bachman, he reformed more than once, for in a letter to Victor Audubon, of November 5, 1846, Bachman added this postscript: "To Audubon: The snuff—the snuff, it is here! I have just taken a pinch, and the ladies have blown you up—sky-high, for teaching me such a bad practice; I say, however, that you beat me all to pieces in that art."
The first winter in London dragged heavily for the naturalist, who exclaimed in January, 1828: "How long am I to be confined in this immense jail"; when Daniel Lizars reported from Edinburgh the loss of four of his subscribers, he writes, "I am dull as a beetle. Why do I dislike London? Is it because the constant evidence of the contrast between the rich and the poor is a constant torment to me, or is it because of its size and crowd? I know not, but I long for sights and sounds of a different nature," such, we might add, as the flocks of wild duck which were occasionally seen from Regent's Park as they passed over the city and made him more homesick than ever. Audubon hated the city quite as cordially as Charles Lamb ever affected to detest the country, and when leaving it, afoot or by stage, it seemed as if he could never be rid of it. "What a place is London," he would say, but naïvely add: "many persons live there solely because they like it."
On February 4, 1828, Audubon was elected to membership in the Linnæan Society, and in November he presented it with a copy of his work, which was then well under way. This was noticed in a letter to Swainson, written on November 7, when no acknowledgment of the gift had then been received; and he mentioned also the sale of his picture of "Blue Jays" for ten guineas. At a meeting of the Linnæan Society not long after his election, copies of Selby's Illustrations of British Ornithology and of his own work were placed side by side for inspection, and "very unfair comparisons were drawn between the two"; had Selby, Audubon reflected, been given "the same opportunities that my curious life has granted me, his work would have been far superior to mine"; "I supported him," he added, "to the best of my power."
Revision of his older drawings demanded much of Audubon's attention during these years. On February 10, 1828, he began the Whiteheaded Eagle (No. 7, Plate xxxi), the original of which had been procured on the Mississippi, where the bird was represented as dining on a wild goose; now, he said, "I shall make it breakfast on a catfish, the drawing of which is also with me, with the marks of the talons of another eagle, which I disturbed on the banks of the same river, driving him from his prey." On the 16th of that month he was engaged with this drawing from seven in the morning until half after four, stopping only to take the glass of milk which his landlady would bring to him. This plate was engraved in the following April, and on May 1, 1828, a first proof was sent to the Marquis of Landsdowne, president of the Zoölogical Society, as a mark of appreciation by its author, who had become a member of that body in the preceding winter.
A striking characteristic of Audubon's work was its diversity, produced not only by attractive embellishments of many kinds, but by the moving force and action with which he ever sought to vitalize his subjects. It is therefore not surprising that he was nettled by an incident like this:
February 28. To-day I called by appointment on the Earl of Kinnoul, a small man, with a face like the caricature of an owl; he said he had sent for me to tell me all my birds were alike, and he considered my work a swindle. He may really think this; his knowledge is probably small; but it is not the custom to send for a gentleman to abuse him in one's house. I heard his words, bowed, and without speaking, left the rudest man I have met in this land.
Audubon had not yet visited the great university towns of England, the support of which he knew would be a valuable asset, and on March 3, 1828, he set out by stage for Cambridge. His driver, he remarked, "held confidances with every grog-shop between London and Cambridge, and his purple face gave powerful evidences that malt liquor [was] more enticing to him than water." His reception at Cambridge was hearty; he was entertained by Professors Sedgwick, Whewell, and Henslow, dined repeatedly "in Hall" with the dons, and received the subscription of the librarian of the University. It is interesting to recall that young Charles Darwin, "the man who walks with Henslow," as some of the dons called him, was then an undergraduate at King's College, and that thirty-one years were to pass before modern biology was born in 1859, the year of the appearance of the epoch-making Origin of Species.