The controversy thus started did not reflect much credit on Audubon's detractors, but reverberations of the charge were heard at a much later day.
Robert Bakewell, the geologist, who was a relative of Mrs. Audubon, then living at Hampstead, entered this controversy, and in June, 1833, replied[84] to one of Waterton's fulminations, which he attributed to envy and jealousy, saying that posterity would regard Audubon as "the most distinguished ornithologist of the present age."
Charles Waterton began his travels at eighteen, but early settled down to a life of leisurely independence on his ancestral estate in Yorkshire, where he studied birds to little purpose and wrote extensively on natural-history subjects; he is best known for his Wanderings,[85] which has passed through numerous editions and is still read. From youth Waterton enjoyed exceptional advantages, and according to one of his biographers, "lived to extreme old age without having wasted an hour or a shilling." He was the twenty-seventh "lord of Walton Hall," the manor house of the family, which stood on an island in a lake; the estate of 260 acres was mainly converted into a preserve for wild birds. His young wife died in 1829, after having given birth to a son, and he lived on his paternal acres in semi-retirement ever after. It was said that Waterton would never don evening clothes or a black coat, but insisted on wearing a blue frock with gold buttons until an anxious policeman in the neighboring village of Wakefield persuaded him to make a change; he told the Reverend J. G. Wood in 1863 that he had been bled 160 times, mostly by his own hand. When, in his sixty-ninth year, he had the misfortune to fall from a pear tree and break an elbow joint, the first remedy tried was the extraction of thirty ounces of blood; shortly after this a careless servant withdrew a chair as he was seating himself at table, and thirty more ounces were immediately required. The wage of one of his laborers is said to have sufficed for his personal needs, and his sleeping apartment had neither bed, chair, nor carpet; he lay on bare boards, wrapped in a blanket, with an oaken block for pillow; and he is said to have never tasted fermented liquor and to have eaten but sparingly of meat. His daily habit was to retire at eight and rise at three o'clock in the morning, and he was always dressed by four; an ardent Roman Catholic, he would spend an hour at devotion in his private chapel; he then read Latin and Spanish authors, wrote his polemics against Audubon or any others with whom he came in conflict, and received the reports of his bailiff, all before breakfast, which was at eight o'clock; the remainder of the day was mostly devoted to his birds and other animals, to preserve which he surrounded his entire estate with a high rampart of stone, said to have cost, all told, $50,000.
Though a devout Romanist, as someone has remarked, Waterton never hesitated to adopt the same mode of reasoning which Hume had employed in his argument against miracles. Thus he rejected with scorn Edward Jenner's account of how the young parasitic Cuckoo, when but a day old and hardly able to stand, turned out of their nest its rightful occupants. This account, which was generally accepted then, and has been repeatedly verified and recorded by the camera since, "carries," said Waterton, "its own condemnation, no matter by whom related, or by whom received." Trusting to analogy again, he maintained that Audubon's description of the Ruby-throated Hummingbird gluing bits of lichen to the surface of its nest with saliva was false, because "the saliva of all birds immediately mixes with water," and the first shower of rain would immediately undo the work of the bird. No account was taken of the Chimney Swift, which not only glues together the twigs of its nest but secures the whole to a support through an abundant salivary secretion, although this habit had long been known. In the instance of this hummingbird, however, both Audubon and Waterton were partly right and partly wrong, as a careful examination of the nests of five species of hummingbirds, including the Ruby-throat, has clearly shown.[86] It proved that saliva was only casually used on the surface of the nest, the lichens in the case referred to being adherent by means of spiders' silk and fine vegetable fibers of various sorts; the saliva of the Ruby-throat, when dry, moreover, was found to be practically insoluble in cold water, even after an immersion of several days; but more interesting than this is the fact that the nest itself is glued to its supporting twig by a large salivary wafer, which represents this hummingbird's first step in the work of nest construction.
Shortly after his arrival at Edinburgh, and before he had published anything, Audubon wrote in his journal on November 5, 1826: "I returned home early and found a note from Mr. John Gregg, who came himself later, bringing me a scrubby letter from Charles Waterton," so it would appear that the lord of "Walton Hall" had been warned to keep an eye on the dangerous American, and Waterton's American correspondent was Mr. Ord, of Philadelphia. Later on Waterton wrote to Swainson an extraordinary letter of some four thousand words,[87] afterwards published in his Essays on Natural History, which for petty vanity and personal animosity has seldom been surpassed, but with this effort his ammunition seems to have been exhausted.
Charles Waterton, who lived to his eighty-third year, and who wrote nineteen polemics against Audubon and his friends, was probably sincere in his attacks upon the American Woodsman, whom he seems to have regarded as a dangerous charlatan. Waterton was a curious compound of fearless independence, kindness, credulity, pedantry, vanity, and intolerance. He should be given credit, however, for having done much to spread abroad a love of natural history and for his attitude towards an artificial system of classification, then much in vogue, which, though only an amateur, he had the good sense to reject.
CHAPTER XXIX
SIDELIGHTS ON AUDUBON AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES
What was a Quinarian?—Controversy over the authorship of the Ornithological Biography—Audubon's quaint proposal—Swainson's reply—Friendship suffers a check—Species-mongers—Hitting at one over the shoulders of another—Swainson as a biographer—His career—Bonaparte's grievance—A fortune in ornithology—Labors of John Gould and his relations with Audubon—The freemasonry of naturalists.
Few, probably, ever attain marked success in their chosen field without exciting jealous rivalry or misrepresentation on the part of some of their contemporaries. Audubon was no exception to the rule, but in this respect he has been subject to so much misunderstanding that the reader is entitled to know the truth, whenever it can be ascertained. An instance of this sort was furnished by the English naturalist, William Swainson, whose relations with Audubon have been touched upon in earlier chapters.