When Audubon had finally closed all his business affairs in Edinburgh and London, late in the summer of 1839, he returned to America, with the remaining members of his family, and settled in New York, where he purchased a house at Number 84 White Street, then in the uptown district.
An anonymous writer in the London Athenæum[161] in giving a final review of Audubon's labors in 1839, paid this interesting tribute:
It seems but as yesterday that we were walking about with a transatlantic stranger, picturesque enough in his appearance and garb, to arrest the eye of every passing gazer; a tall stalwart man, with hair sufficiently long to qualify him to serve as a model to Gray's "Bard," and trousers ample almost as petticoats of "good Harmony cloth," so absorbed in the enthusiastic prosecution of his gigantic plan—a life's labour—as to be heedless of the singularity of those meteoric locks, and those liberal nether garments. Some dozen of years, however, have elapsed since that day; the American Woodsman's hair—long since cut short—has grown white; his magnificent undertaking is completed, and he is now on the point of quitting England, to settle himself for the remainder of his days whether by the side of a bayou, in some forest clearing, or as an inhabitant of one of the American cities which have learned to know his value, report saith not.
We shake hands with the author, tendering him our hearty congratulations on the completion of a task almost as arduous as has ever been proposed to a literary man....
The confidential simplicity of Mr. Audubon's own prefaces would make yet more personal leave-takings and farewells, on the critic's part, natural and graceful,—but it must suffice to say, that few have quitted England, carrying with them a larger portion of honest regard and sincere good wishes.
Possibly it was the same writer who gave this striking picture of Audubon in the pages of the same journal, thirty years later:[162]
We can remember when his portfolio excited delight in Edinburgh, London, and Paris, rivalling in smaller circles a new Waverley novel. The man also was not a man to be seen and forgotten, or passed on the pavement without glances of surprise and scrutiny. The tall and somewhat stooping form, the clothes not made by a West-end but by a Far West tailor, the steady, rapid, springing step, the long hair, the aquiline features, and the glowing angry eyes,—the expression of a handsome man conscious of ceasing to be young, and an air and manner which told you that whoever you might be he was John Audubon, will never be forgotten by anyone who knew or saw him.
We will add to this the musings of an anonymous American writer[163] in the North American Review for the following year (1840):
It must have been with mingled and varied feelings that Audubon published his concluding volume. He was sure then that he had raised an imperishable monument to commemorate his own renown. All anxieties and fears which overshadowed his work in its beginning had passed away. The prophecies of kind but overprudent friends, who did not understand his self-sustaining energy, had proved untrue; the malicious hope of his enemies, for even the gentle lover of nature has enemies,—had been disappointed; he had secured a commanding place in the respect and gratitude of men; he had secured a treasure of rich and glowing recollections, to warm his own heart in his declining years, and to kindle enthusiasm in his children's children....
On the other hand he had lost an employment which for years had kept all the powers of body and mind in healthy though intense exertion; whatever else he might do, the great work of his intellectual life was finished.... His trumpet of victory at the result must have given an uncertain sound, partly exulting in his success, and partly lamenting that his great work was finished.