migrate across mountains, but along rivers, such as the Mississippi, and from that geographical perspective he pointed out that “it is reasonable to conjecture, that many birds annually migrate over this country which do not visit the Atlantic states, and might, therefore, have escaped the notice of their greatest ornithologist in the single excursion which he made to the Ohio.” That “single excursion” was, of course, the one that took Wilson to Louisville and Audubon’s store in 1810. Without making any explicit reference to the touchy-seeming situation between Audubon and Wilson at the time, Drake quietly sided with his erstwhile employee Audubon, “one of the excellent artists attached to the Museum,” as the more comprehensive of the two: Audubon “has drawn, from nature, in colored crayons, several hundred species of American birds, [and] has, in his port folio, a large number that are not figured in Mr. Wilson’s work, and many which do not seem to have been recognized by any naturalist.”87
Although Audubon was no longer in Drake’s employ at the time of this talk, he could have taken two encouraging notes from Drake’s remarks. First, he had to enjoy being called an excellent artist and, better still, receiving public recognition that he had a more extensive and comprehensive collection of avian images than Wilson had. Second, he could readily agree with Drake’s argument that the limitations of Wilson’s ornithological reach stemmed in large part from his spending almost all of his time in the East and only once venturing toward the West. Audubon knew that the millions of birds migrating in regions beyond the eastern mountain ridges represented fair game for dozens of new discoveries, and those could be his, not Wilson’s.
With his prospects in Cincinnati seemingly at a dead end, with no interesting new work in sight, he decided to look downriver to find his future. From his current perch in the Ohio River Valley, no place seemed more immediately promising or proximate than the Mississippi Valley, which could in turn give him access to an even greater territory for exploration. On August 12, 1820, just two months after Drake’s oration to the patrons of the Western Museum, Audubon bravely, perhaps brazenly, appealed to an even more prominent patron, Henry Clay of Kentucky, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Audubon wrote that he had spent “the greater part of Fifteen Years in procuring and Drawing the Birds of the United States with a view of Publishing them,” he wrote his fellow Kentuckian, but his collection of specimens were those that “usually resort to the Middle States only.” Wrapping himself in the expansive nationalism he no doubt knew would appeal to an ambitious political leader like Clay, he spoke of his “desire to complete the Collection before I present it to My Country in perfect order.” To do so, he continued, “I intend to Explore the Territories Southwest of the Mississippi … Visiting the Red River, Arkansas and the Countries adjacent.” A few good words of introduction “from one on whom our Country looks up to with respectfull Admiration” could be enormously “Necessary to a Naturalist,” and Audubon thus solicited the Speaker’s support.88 Within two weeks, Clay responded with a letter that recommended Audubon as “a Gentleman of Amiable and Excellent qualities, Well qualified, as I believe, to execute the object which he has undertaken.”89 Audubon now had just what he needed: a piece of paper that could open doors all along the Mississippi.
And that’s where he headed next, now fully focused on making his living as an artist after all—and a bird artist at that.
Chapter 3
Making an Odyssey for Art and Ornithology
Without any Money My Talents are to be My Support and My anthusiasm My Guide in My Dificulties, the whole of which I am ready to exert to keep, and to surmount—
—John James Audubon, “Mississippi River Journal”
“The Watter is Low,” Audubon observed as the boat moved into the Ohio River’s slow current, and so were his spirits. He knew what he wanted to do: “to Acquire a true knowledge of the Birds of North America.” He also knew he had to get beyond Cincinnati to do it: “I Concluded that perhaps I Could Not do better than to Travel, and finish My Collection or so nearly that it would be a Valuable Acquisition.”1 He had big enough ambitions; he just hadn’t fully figured out a way to fulfill them.
In the meantime, the future must have seemed far overshadowed by the recent past: Audubon’s career had gone nowhere but down. The retail business had eventually been a bust, bankruptcy had been an embarrassment, and even his two interrelated loves, art and ornithology, held out precious little promise for financial support, much less success. Making quick portraits of people for five dollars a head seemed like hack work, and not very lucrative at that. Stuffing birds and animals as a museum taxidermist could hardly boost his imagination or reputation, and anyway, once the specimens went on display, that was the end of that. But for all the disappointments he had had to face, Audubon also had to face the reality that he had obligations to his wife, Lucy (who, with him, had suffered the recent loss of an infant daughter), and two young sons, eleven-year-old Victor and eight-year-old John. Even though Audubon’s family would have to stay behind, they stayed very much on his mind. As he made ready to head downriver, “the feelings of a Husband and a Father, were my lot when I Kissd My Beloved Wife & Children with an expectation of being absent for Seven Months.” Still, he stiffened his resolve and reminded himself that missing them would be a temporary loss in a longer-term process: “If God will grant us a safe return to our fammillies Our Wishes will be congenial to our present feelings Leaving Home with a Determined Mind to fulfill our Object.”2
Those brave words came on the first page of a journal Audubon kept on his trip down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, with fairly regular entries from the day he left Cincinnati, October 12, 1820, until the end of December 1821. He wrote primarily for his sons—“My Journal gives you a rough Idea of My Way of Spending the tedious Passage … to New Orleans”—but the preserved journal also serves the modern reader quite well. While some passages seem sketchy and uneven, others are almost eloquent in their descriptions, giving us an ornithologically detailed list of the hundreds of birds Audubon watched (and shot) on the trip, the landscape he saw along the riverbanks, and the ordinary (and sometimes extraordinary) people he encountered both on the boat and on shore. In the end, Audubon’s 1820–1821 journal offers much more than a “rough Idea” of what he might have considered a “tedious Passage.” At its best, it can take its place alongside the more professionally polished travel narratives of the early nineteenth century.3
At its heart, however, the journal takes us into the unfolding inner journey of this mid-thirties man on a mission. In all of Audubon’s writings, his most significant subject is almost always himself, and even in his most successful written work, Ornithological Biography, he puts himself in the picture, right beside the birds. But in the case of the Mississippi River Journal, Audubon had not yet conceived, much less achieved, the sense of celebrity that would later shape his more self-conscious narrative of his life. Instead, he recorded the uncertain hopes and underlying vulnerabilities of a man whose commitment to a challenge far exceeded his confidence in its outcome.
The anxieties and frustrations that came to the surface in his Mississippi River Journal in 1820–1821 remained enduring concerns that would recur in Audubon’s writings throughout the rest of his life. He fretted, first of all, about his financial situation, knowing that he never bore the burden of poverty alone, but also laid it heavily on Lucy and his sons, left behind with no assurance of support in his absence. Money worries in turn had an effect on his sense of self-identity as an artist-naturalist. Before he could make his collection of avian art big enough and good enough to become a “Valuable Acquisition,” he would have to make a concession to other people’s notions of what it meant to be an “artist,” painting appealing portraits of whoever would pay the price and giving art lessons, largely to ladies and young girls.
And no
