In 1880 Dr. Elliott Coues examined a large collection of original Wilson and Audubon drawings and manuscripts, "owned and kept with the greed of a genuine bibliomaniac" by Joseph M. Wade, then editor of Familiar Science and Fancier's Journal. If not Wilson's portfolio itself, its contents, at least, said Dr. Coues, were then in Mr. Wade's possession, and this series of Wilson's drawings included, he thought, more than half of the originals of his famous plates. To quote Dr. Coues:[183]
In handling these drawings and paintings, of all degrees of completeness, one of sensibility could but experience some emotions he would not care to formulate in words.... I was fairly oppressed with the sad story of poverty, even destitution, which these wan sheets of coarse paper told. Some of Wilson's originals are on the fly-leaves of old books, showing binder's marks along one edge. One of the best portraits, that of the Duck Hawk, is on two pieces of paper pasted together. The man was actually too poor to buy paper! Some of the drawings are on both sides of the paper; some show a full picture on one side, and part of a mutilated finished painting on the other. Some show the rubbing process by which they were transferred. They are in all stages of completeness, from the rudest outlines to the finished painting.
I know full well that in 1804, when Wilson had fairly begun his work on birds, he was poor enough, but I hesitate to believe upon such evidence that he was too poor to buy decent drawing materials. Wilson doubtless practiced economy in these matters as in everything else, through his ingrained habit of Scotch thrift, and he was probably quite as well-to-do then as five years before, when out of his slender earnings he was able to lay money aside.[184] Later, to be sure, his modest savings were quite consumed by his Ornithology, and then William Bartram came to his aid, even giving him a home in his own house. It is also wide of the mark to conclude from his fugitive letters or from his drawings, as this critic has done, that Wilson was possessed of genius only, and "had nothing else, not even talent and ability." Wilson certainly had a talent for writing and cultivated it with marked success; even his verse was not all of a "despicable mediocrity." In the art of drawing, however, his natural gifts were of a very modest sort, and what he achieved was the result of the most painstaking effort. Of course he was not a finished scholar, as graduates from the school of adversity seldom are, but he had a passion for knowledge and the determination to excel. His genius was not fully displayed until a powerful motive, the ambition to make known the birds of his adopted land, had possessed his spirit and taxed his powers to their utmost capacity.
Shortly after he had settled at Gray's Ferry, Wilson's susceptible nature was touched by another romance, which was again unfortunate for the poet and dreamer, but was probably the making of the ornithologist. Bartram's Botanic Gardens, on the outskirts of Philadelphia, had long been famous for their large and choice collection of native plants, gathered by the indefatigable zeal of their worthy founder, John Bartram, Quaker philosopher, traveler, botanist, agriculturalist and nurseryman; but the fairest flower in the whole collection at that time is said to have been Miss Anne Bartram, daughter of John the younger, niece of William, who then superintended the "Kingsess Gardens," granddaughter of the founder, and heiress to the estate. To this Quaker maid Wilson addressed a number of his poems, and he interested her in the drawing of birds; on March 29, 1804, he wrote to her uncle: "I send a small scroll of drawing papers for Miss Nancy. She will oblige me by accepting it." This little incident would show that Wilson was no stranger to the use of good drawing materials, however frugal his habits in this respect may have been. The young lady is said to have been not indifferent to her poet lover, and some of her family were friendly; the father, however, had no notion of bestowing his daughter's hand upon a poor schoolmaster, and for the third time Wilson's dreams of domestic bliss were shattered.
Such experiences no doubt tended to chasten the sensitive spirit of this real genius, whose whole life seemed to have been a continuous and losing struggle, while he felt within him an inspiration and a power that had failed to find adequate expression in labor at the loom, in verse, or in the hated vocation of teaching rough country schools at starvation wages. Though depressed by his misadventures in love, Wilson does not seem to have been embittered, and by way of diversion, he set out in the autumn of 1804, on a long walking tour from Philadelphia to Niagara Falls and back; in the following winter the experiences of this journey were embodied in a descriptive poem of 2,018 lines which he called "The Foresters," an effort which would have been less prosaic if frankly expressed in prose. Wilson's friendship for the Bartrams continued under the changed conditions, and he was invited to make his home under their hospitable roof. He was now free to devote himself heart and soul to birds and to birds alone.
Wilson etched the first two plates of his American Ornithology before he had obtained an engraver or a publisher. In April, 1806, he resigned his school at Gray's Ferry to accept an editorial position on a New American Cyclopædia,[185] then in course of preparation, at a salary of $900 a year. Samuel F. Bradford, the publisher of this work, soon became interested in Wilson's projected American Ornithology and agreed to publish it. It became the ambition of both author and publisher to produce the work in a superior style, and to make it as perfect and complete an American product as possible. Only the pigments used in coloring some of the plates were imported from Europe.[186]
Wilson issued in April, 1807, an elaborate prospectus of his proposed Ornithology, in which he stated that the completed work would comprise ten volumes, to cost $120, and that it would be illustrated by plates, engraved and colored by hand, after the manner of a carefully prepared sample which was issued with the printed announcement. In September, 1808, as already intimated, the first volume of the American Ornithology[187] appeared in an edition of 200 copies. Wilson immediately started on a canvassing tour of New England, in the course of which he visited the principal towns and colleges, going east to Portland, Maine, and as far north as Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, where President John Wheelock and the professors received him with marked attention. On this journey Wilson did not average one subscriber a day, and he was forced to conclude that he had "been mistaken in publishing a work too good for the country"; "it is a fault," he said, "not likely to be repeated, and will pretty severely correct itself." Daniel D. Tompkins, Governor of New York, coolly said to him: "I would not give one hundred dollars for all the birds you intend to describe," not even if "I had them alive"; but a future Governor of that State, De Witt Clinton, the friend of science and scientific men, gave him the substantial encouragement he craved. When his second volume was ready for issue, Wilson wrote to Bartram: "This undertaking has involved me in difficulties and expenses which I never dreamt of, and I have never yet received one cent from it. I am, therefore, a volunteer in the cause of Natural History impelled by nobler views than those of money."
In the autumn of 1808 Wilson made a long and arduous tour of the South, in the course of which he visited every important town along the southern Atlantic seaboard, and though it cost him dear, he obtained 250 subscribers; it was then that his publishers decided to extend the original edition of his work to 500 copies. His longer and more perilous journey of 1810, when his meeting with Audubon occurred, has already been described. In 1812, after the sixth volume of the Ornithology had appeared, he again resumed his travels in the East and went as far north as Burlington, on Lake Champlain; at Haverhill, New Hampshire, he was summarily arrested and thrown into jail, the people of the town, utterly unable to comprehend the nature of his pursuits, suspecting that in his real capacity he was acting as a spy in the employ of the Canadian Government. The seventh and last volume of the Ornithology which Wilson lived to complete made its appearance in the spring of 1813. He had then been obliged to relinquish his work on the Cyclopædia, and was reduced to the pittance derived from the coloring of his own plates.
Alexander Wilson died at Philadelphia, after a brief illness, on August 23, 1813. A story was current that his end was saddened, if not hastened, by the dishonesty of his publishers, but I cannot vouch for it. Audubon may have had this report in mind when he wrote his name in the hotel register at Niagara Falls[188] on August 24, 1824; and added that he would never die, like Wilson, "under the lash of a bookseller." Even as late as 1879 Miss Malvina Lawson, daughter of Wilson's friend and engraver, left no doubt as to her belief when she wrote: "and to his other trials was added the fact that killed him,—the dishonesty of his publisher."[189]
When we consider that Wilson's entire working period on the Ornithology was not over ten years, and that at the age of forty-seven he was called to lay down his pen and brush forever; that he produced in this brief space a work of great originality and charm, which did inestimable service in promoting the cause of natural history in both America and England, and which is likely to be read and prized for centuries to come, the achievement of this man is little short of marvelous. Knowing also the disabilities under which he labored, we are more than ready to temper our judgment with sympathy, and to overlook any faults which his character may have displayed. These indeed, we believe, were for the most part of a very trifling nature; those who knew Wilson best have all testified to his kindness of heart, his liberality, and his high sense of honor.