They reached Louisville, and were kindly received by a relative. How could he support his family? The outlook was not hopeful. He would try making crayon portraits. He succeeded so well that a farmer came in the middle of the night to request a picture of his mother before she died, and the work was done by candle-light.
Invited to Cincinnati to become curator of the museum, Audubon accepted, and opened a drawing-school in that city. But very little money resulted, and he resolved to seek a new field of labor. Getting letters of recommendation from General, afterwards President, Harrison, and from Henry Clay, he started, October 12, 1820, for New Orleans. Stopping for a time at Natchez, he and a companion found themselves destitute of shoes. Going to a shoemaker, he asked to sketch a crayon portrait of himself and his wife in return for two pairs of boots. The offer was accepted, and Audubon and his friend found themselves again in suitable condition for travelling. How different all this from the former easy life at Mill Grove!
Arriving at New Orleans, what little money he possessed was stolen, he could find no work, and he was obliged to live on the boat in which he had come thither. He writes in his journal: "Time passed sadly in seeking ineffectually for employment. I was fortunate in making a hit with the portrait of a well known citizen of New Orleans. I showed it to the public; it made a favorable impression, and I obtained several patrons. A few orders for portraits relieved my necessities, and, continuing my work of painting birds, the time passed more pleasantly."
He was always planning for wider opportunities to study birds for his book. In the midst of his dire poverty, he did not forget this. Now he hoped to join the expedition which surveyed the boundary line of the territory ceded to the United States by Spain, and he says, "Saw nothing but hundreds of new birds in imagination within range of my gun." But this, like other plans, came to naught, for poverty binds with strong cords, and it requires almost superhuman strength to break them.
At last, in the family of Mrs. Perrie, who owned a plantation at Bayou Sara, in Louisiana, he obtained a situation. He was to teach drawing to her daughter for sixty dollars a month, having his afternoons for his work. Her desire was, under the guise of employment, to help the poor naturalist.
After fourteen months since leaving Cincinnati, during which time, he says, "I have finished sixty-two drawing of birds and plants, three quadrupeds, two snakes, fifty portraits of all sorts, and have subsisted by my humble talents, not having had a dollar when I started," he sent for his family to come to him. A house was rented on Dauphine Street, at seventeen dollars a month. Now if they starved, they would starve together. Being asked to join in painting a panorama of the city, he said, "My birds, my beloved birds of America, occupy all my time, and nearly all my thoughts, and I do not wish to see any other perspective than the last specimen of these drawings." He was now forty-two, and life was none too long, at the best. No wonder he was anxious about his book.
During the first months of 1822, after his family came, there are no records of his life. He was too poor to buy a journal. Mrs. Audubon had found a situation as governess in a family. Audubon was depressed in spirits, and poor health was the result. If some person with wealth had only been wise enough to have helped the man of talent! We build colleges and churches, and this is well; but often neglect the brilliant man or woman near our own door, who might bless the world. Brains do not always win pecuniary success. We sometimes go to extremes in America by advocating self-dependence, and let a refined and sensitive soul break because it cannot breast the world. We forget that on earth we are to be our brother's keeper. Perchance we shall remember it beyond!
Finally Audubon left New Orleans, procuring passage on a boat to Natchez, by a crayon portrait of the captain and his wife. In the family of a Portuguese gentleman in that city, he taught drawing, music, and French, and also drawing in a college nine miles from Natchez, but he was still depressed. "While work flowed in upon me," he says, "the hope of my completing my book upon the birds of America became less clear; and, full of despair, I feared my hopes of becoming known to Europe as a naturalist were destined to be blasted."
To feel within one's breast the aspiration which is God-given, and know that one has genius, and yet be bound hand and foot by circumstances,—what is harder?
Poor Audubon! with his lessening hope of "becoming known to Europe." His wife had come to Natchez and obtained a position as teacher, similar to the one she had held in New Orleans. Poverty had tested their love, but it had stood the test. Audubon had made a copy of the "Death of Montgomery;" and for this friends raffled, and gave him the proceeds, three hundred dollars, and the picture also.