Audubon settles for a time in Camden—Paints in a fisherman's cottage by the sea—With the lumbermen in the Great Pine Woods—Work done—Visits his sons—Joins his wife at St. Francisville—Record of journey south—Life at "Beechgrove"—Mrs. Audubon retires from teaching—Their plans to return to England—Meeting with President Jackson and Edward Everett.
Audubon laid his plans to visit America in 1829 with unusual care, and was fortunate in being able to entrust his publication to the competent hands of John George Children, of the British Museum. This was to be actually his third voyage to the United States, but it was the first which he made from English soil, and after he had become known as an ornithologist and animal painter. He wished to renew at least fifty of his earlier drawings and to obtain new materials of every description. Although he was naturally anxious to see his wife, from whom he had been absent for nearly three years, and his boys, the elder of whom had been left at Shippingport five years before, he felt constrained to devote to his work every moment that could be spared.
When writing to his wife of his difficulties and prospects at this period, he assured her that he would act cautiously, with all due diligence and sobriety, and continued:
Thou art quite comfortable in Louisiana, I know; therefore wait there with a little patience. I hope the end of this year will see me under headway sufficient to have thee with me in comfort here, and I need not tell thee I long for thee every hour I am absent from thee. If I fail, America will still be my country, and thou, I will still feel, my friend. I will return to both and forget forever the troubles and expenses I have had; when walking together, arm in arm, we can see our sons before us, and listen to the mellow sounding thrush, so plentiful in our woods of magnolia.[366]
A little later in 1829 he also wrote: "I have finished the two first years of publication, the two most difficult to be encountered." At that time he fully expected that fourteen years would be required for the completion of his task, owing to the many difficulties experienced, especially in securing competent workmen, as well as the necessity of distributing the expense for the benefit of his subscribers.
When Havell had been provided with all the drawings needed for the remainder of the year 1829 and the first issue of 1830, Audubon sailed from Portsmouth on the 1st of April, 1829, in the packet ship Columbia, which reached New York on the opening day of May. "I chose the ship," he said, "on account of her name, and paid thirty pounds for my passage."
He paused in New York to exhibit his drawings at the Lyceum of Natural History, of which he had become a member in 1824, but soon hurried to Philadelphia, and finally settled down for work at Camden, in New Jersey, later known to fame as the home of "the good gray poet." There, at a boarding house kept by a Mr. Armstrong, he remained three weeks, from about May 23 to June 13, hunting and painting every day. From Camden he went to Great Egg Harbor, then a famous resort of both land and water birds in great variety, and for three weeks more he lived and worked in a fisherman's cabin by the sea. It is interesting to recall that Alexander Wilson, in company with George Ord, had spent a month at this point in the spring of 1813.
The following letter[367] from Swainson was probably the one to which Audubon replied from New Jersey on September 14:
William Swainson to Audubon
My dear Mr. Audubon