In 1856 Victor Audubon published a second reduced edition of his father's Birds of America, in which the text and plates of the first octavo were reproduced with little or no change. At about that time Victor suffered an injury to the spine,[233] and after 1857 he was completely invalided; he died in his own home, August 18, 1860.
To quote the daughter of John W. Audubon:[234]
During this long period of my uncle's illness all the care of both families devolved on my father. Never a "business man," saddened by his brother's condition, and utterly unable to manage, at the same time, a fairly large estate, the publication of two illustrated works, every plate of which he felt he must personally examine, the securing of subscribers and the financial condition of everything—what wonder that he rapidly aged, what wonder that the burden was overwhelming! After my uncle's death matters became still more difficult to handle, owing to the unsettled condition of the southern states where most of the subscribers to Audubon's books resided, and when the open rupture came between north and south, the condition of affairs can hardly be imagined, except by those who lived through similar bitter and painful experiences.
In 1858 or 1859 John W. Audubon entered upon an ambitious project, which the outbreak of the Civil War, aided, it is believed, by the unscrupulous dealings of business partners, rendered disastrous. In association with Messrs. Roe Lockwood, & Son, New York, and the lithographers, Messrs. J. Bien & Company, Number 180 Broadway, with whom considerable money had been invested, a second and American edition of his father's great folio on The Birds of America was attempted. An atlas of 106 double elephant plates, reproduced in colors on stone with slight but numerous changes from the original copper plates, was completed as Volume I in 1860;[235] the war, which broke immediately afterwards, completely ruined the enterprise, so that but few copies of the work were dispersed and an immense stock of plates was rendered useless; the burden of debt was undoubtedly increased by the issue of seven octavo volumes of text.[236]
Many years later, hundreds of persons who knew of Audubon's work only through its great reputation, and who had never learned to discriminate between a hand-colored copper-plate engraving and a lithograph, were deceived by an adroit, but essentially spurious advertisement of these inferior reproductions when they were being exploited by a firm of Boston book dealers. The original bulk of these large lithographs must have been vast indeed, if the following story, which was attributed to a member of the firm in question, be true: "We bought the entire stock of those plates, many years ago," so this man is reported to have said, "and, though the sales of every succeeding year since have been sufficient to cover the original cost, the number of plates has not appreciably diminished."
When this larger venture failed, one of the publishers, who was not satisfied with the surplusage of books and plates left on his hands, is said to have placed encumbrances upon the Audubon estate. At about this time John W. Audubon's health broke down; "Worn out," as his daughter has said,[237] "in body and spirit, overburdened with anxieties, saddened by the condition of his country, it is no matter of surprise that my father could not throw off a heavy cold which attacked him early in 1862." He died at the age of forty-nine, on the 18th of February of that year.
John Woodhouse Audubon, like his brother, Victor, had inherited decided artistic abilities, and from a youth had been his father's assistant, field companion and friend. Victor Audubon, on the other hand, was never a field collector, but aided his father more in a financial and secretarial capacity. Both in adult life were fond of music and good cheer, and at one time John was probably as devoted to adventure and sport as his father had ever been in his palmiest days. One of his youthful pranks is thus guardedly referred to by the senior Audubon when writing at American Harbor, on the coast of Labrador, June 25, 1833:[238] "The young men, who are always ready for sport, caught a hundred codfish in half an hour, and somewhere secured three fine salmon, one of which was sent to the 'Gulnare' with some cod." Whether the fishermen at American Harbor, who had obstinately refused to sell, ever missed those fine salmon from their pounds, is not recorded. Another adventure has been related by Mr. Fraser,[239] whose family was on intimate terms with the Audubons and MacGillivrays at Edinburgh, when John Audubon, John MacGillivray (William MacGillivray's eldest son), and himself were caught in the Ravelston woods while shooting birds; the boys, he said "were rather roughly handled," but got off by giving up their guns.
Under his father's tuition John Audubon became an observant and self-reliant collector in the field, and an animal painter and draughtsman of no mean powers. At twenty-one, as we have seen, he accompanied his father's expedition to Labrador, was with him and Harris in Florida and Texas in 1837, made successive visits to England, and traveled again in Texas and in Mexico, all in the interests of his father's works. He painted nearly one-half of the large plates of the Quadrupeds of North America, besides reducing all the drawings for the smaller editions of the Birds and Quadrupeds, an enormous labor in itself, representing the redrawing, with numerous alterations, of 655 elaborate octavo plates. After his return from California in 1850, he began to bring out an account of his western travels, —projected for ten monthly numbers, but this never advanced beyond the first part.[240]
If not a "business man" by instinct or training, John Audubon in emergencies could turn his hand to many things. For a time he superintended the building of houses, including his own and Victor's, which were completed in 1853, as well as another that was built on the Audubon estate for Mr. Hall, a brother-in-law; he also took charge of lighting the streets, and at another time was superintendent of a quarry in Vermont. "He was a bluff, gruff, but friendly man," writes George Bird Grinnell,[241] and was always willing to talk about birds, mammals, or, indeed, any natural history object, to any boy who asked him questions." On the other hand, an ardent sportsman, who had lived with the family for years,[242] has described him as a lovable companion, "genial in speech, full of anecdote, and a capital conversationalist;... in person of more than median height, and of commanding appearance, his face told plainly of the humanity of the man; he was as tender-hearted as a girl, and his expressive voice could command any key of which the vocal organs were capable; to the last he retained the Southern habit of softly clipping the ends of words."
John Woodhouse Audubon will be remembered chiefly as his father's aid and companion, although in his Western Journal,[243] written in his thirty-eighth year but not published until forty-two years after his death, he has left a record of which anyone could be rightfully proud.