III.
Finally, Audubon gave up the struggle of trying to be a business man. He says: "I parted with every particle of property I had to my creditors, keeping only the clothes I wore on that day, my original drawings, and my gun, and without a dollar in my pocket, walked to Louisville alone."
This he speaks of as the saddest of all his journeys—"the only time in my life when the wild turkeys that so often crossed my path, and the thousands of lesser birds that enlivened the woods and the prairies, all looked like enemies, and I turned my eyes from them, as if I could have wished that they had never existed."
But the thought of his beloved Lucy and her children soon spurred him to action. He was a good draughtsman, he had been a pupil of David, he would turn his talents to account.
"As we were straightened to the very utmost, I undertook to draw portraits at the low price of five dollars per head, in black chalk. I drew a few gratis, and succeeded so well that ere many days had elapsed I had an abundance of work."
His fame spread, his orders increased. A settler came for him in the middle of the night from a considerable distance to have the portrait of his mother taken while she was on the eve of death, and a clergyman had his child's body exhumed that the artist might restore to him the lost features.
Money flowed in and he was soon again established with his family in a house in Louisville. His drawings of birds still continued and, he says, became at times almost a mania with him; he would frequently give up a head, the profits of which would have supplied the wants of his family a week or more, "to represent a little citizen of the feathered tribe."
In 1819 he was offered the position of taxidermist in the museum at Cincinnati, and soon moved there with his family. His pay not being forthcoming from the museum, he started a drawing school there, and again returned to his portraits. Without these resources, he says, he would have been upon the starving list. But food was plentiful and cheap. He writes in his journal: "Our living here is extremely moderate; the markets are well supplied and cheap, beef only two and one half cents a pound, and I am able to supply a good deal myself. Partridges are frequently in the streets, and I can shoot wild turkeys within a mile or so. Squirrels and Woodcock are very abundant in the season, and fish always easily caught."
In October, 1820, we again find him adrift, apparently with thought of having his bird drawings published, after he shall have further added to them by going through many of the southern and western states.
Leaving his family behind him, he started for New Orleans on a flatboat. He tarried long at Natchez, and did not reach the Crescent City till midwinter. Again he found himself destitute of means, and compelled to resort to portrait painting. He went on with his bird collecting and bird painting; in the meantime penetrating the swamps and bayous around the city.