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.