Audubon the Naturalist: A History of His Life and Time. Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Francis Hobart Herrick

AFTER THE ENGRAVING BY H. B. HALL OF THE PORTRAIT PAINTED BY HENRY INMAN IN 1833.

A satisfactory arrangement was made and MacGillivray set to work on Audubon's second volume. On the 16th of June he wrote from Edinburgh:

If you send me twenty or twenty-five articles, I can revise them without the books to which you refer, and without your own presence, provided your descriptions be full, and the drawings or plates sent to me. The skins and books might be consulted afterwards, when we might go over the articles in company. Should you come here for the purpose, it would not, I believe, be necessary for you to stay more than three weeks or so.... To be methodical I should like twenty-five birds, that is description of birds, by your first parcel; but I cannot state precisely at what time they might be revised, only I think were you to send them, you might make a trip to France and be back before I should be done.[120]

By the 9th of July MacGillivray had received the twenty-five descriptions of birds called for, and on the 18th of that month he wrote to report progress as follows:

I commenced my operations on the 1st of July, and have transcribed and corrected eighteen articles, one for each day, but not one on each, the work of Sunday being transferred to Monday. This volume will certainly be much richer and more interesting.... You wish to know my opinion as to the improvement of your style. It seems to me to be much the same as before, but the information which you give is more diversified & more satisfactory.

On more than one occasion MacGillivray urged Audubon to reduce the size of his text, and in the letter just quoted he said: "Had it been of the post 8vo size, in two volumes it would have gone off in style; but your imperial size and regal price do not answer for radicals, or republicans either. Could you sacrifice the first volume, reprint it of a small size and continue the series to the end?" He remarked that if twenty woodcuts or engravings were added to each volume, "it would spread over the land like a flock of migratory pigeons. Even without the embellishments it would fly, but were you to give it those additional wings, it would sweep along in beautiful curves, like the nighthawk or the purplebreasted swallow." "I have often thought," he continued, "that your stories would sell very well by themselves, and I am sure that with your celebrity, knowledge, and enthusiasm, you have it in your power to become more popular than your glorious pictures can ever make you of themselves, they being too aristocratic and exclusive."

Audubon kept MacGillivray supplied with materials, while he remained in London during the summer of 1834. On the 25th of August he wrote Bachman that he had sold bird skins to the British Museum to the amount of fifty-two pounds sterling, and again for twenty-five pounds, while Havell had disposed of a goodly number more, so that "he would not be a loser in that way"; he added: "My own double collection I have in drawers at home." Acting evidently upon Swainson's advice, Audubon began to accumulate a large and valuable collection of the skins of American birds, which he brought with him to America in 1839.[121] Though rightly criticized for not having deposited in some museum a complete series of the forms which he described, Elliott Coues certainly was not justified in remarking that his interest in a bird ceased from the moment he had made a drawing of it; on the contrary, he spent no end of time and lavished large sums of money on collections to illustrate variation in every description, as well as for anatomical dissection.

A hint thrown out by MacGillivray seems to have been well taken, for in the letter just quoted Audubon said: "This coming winter I will spend at writing my own Biography, to be published as soon as possible, and to be continued, as God may be pleased to grant me life." As already noticed,[122] this effort resulted only in a fragmentary sketch, which was not published for over half a century.

Audubon started for Edinburgh in September of 1834. He wrote to Edward Harris from Liverpool, on the 15th of that month, to inquire into the truth of a report, which had circulated in London, of the failure of the house in New Orleans "in which our friend N. Berthoud is concerned." "I wish you would have the kindness to inform me," he adds, "if he is a sufferer by this mishap, and I wish you to keep this quite entre nous."

At a slightly earlier day Audubon had entertained the idea of illustrating the birds of Great Britain on a scale commensurate with his work on those of America, but on May 1, 1828, he wrote Swainson that no one favored the project, and it was quickly given up. The subject is referred to by MacGillivray, in a letter written from Edinburgh, May 7, 1831: "As I understand your proposals respecting the Birds of Britain to have ended in nothing, and as you do not allude to the subject, I shall suppose all your ideas to have dispersed, and shall think of the matter myself." The first volume of MacGillivray's History of British Birds appeared six years later.[123] It is evident that he wished to obtain Audubon's criticism of some of the drawings subsequently used in this work when he sent the following formal note[124] to his lodgings at Edinburgh: