Under a Wild Sky (42 page)

Victor was caught between his feuding parents, both of whom now vented their unhappiness to him.
Audubon had learned that Lucy was disappointed in the piano he'd sent her, and this seemed to confirm his unreasonable conviction that he could never satisfy her material needs.
In fact, the rooms above the Havells' shop on Newman Street—a narrow,
quiet lane in the West End—were spacious and Audubon had even hired a young woman to clean and cook and mend his clothes. Without Lucy for company, Audubon was left to roam his apartment and stew.
He continually pored over a growing clutter of pictures, drawing equipment, and books. Looking at his own drawings, Audubon said, transported him back to America. Every bird reminded him of where he'd been and what the woods were like where he'd shot it. It's doubtful these memories improved his general outlook. Audubon had now been gone for two and a half years. In truth, his mental state had been fragile for nearly ten, ever since the collapse of his businesses at Henderson. A decade of erratic mood swings, headaches, insomnia, nightmares, financial uncertainty, and the occasional hallucination now filtered into his strained communications with Lucy. He wanted her to come but would not send for her. He told her to stay in America and then despaired when she said she would.
Just before Christmas, Audubon sent Swainson a note saying he had “the blues completely.”

Christmas came and went, the holiday a hollow, haunted misery.
Audubon had to decline the Swainsons' suggestion that he spend some time in the country with them, having accepted an earlier, less appealing invitation.
And he was angry enough when Havell Senior took an unannounced vacation that he transferred the whole job of engraving and coloring
The Birds of America
to Havell Junior.
Sometime after the first of the year, something snapped—on both sides of the ocean. Audubon decided to go home and, if she would agree, bring Lucy to England.
Lucy, devastated by Audubon's recent letters, made up her mind to go to England in hopes of saving their marriage. If she'd had enough money to leave right then, the two might well have passed each other on the Atlantic.

In mid-January of 1829, Lucy wrote to Victor, telling him that he had in effect become the man of the family—he was old enough now to be her friend and confidant. She said a recent letter she'd gotten from Audubon was his most bitter yet, “severe” and “painful” and a sorry reward indeed for all she had done for him. Had she not, after all, supported everyone in the family for the better part of the past ten years? Somehow, she said, Audubon had gotten it in his head that she would never join him in England unless he could afford a “Princely domain.” Spitefully, he'd told Lucy to let him know once and for all whether she would come over—otherwise a formal separation would be in order.
Truly, Lucy said, Audubon was “blind” to the real state of their affairs. Accordingly, Lucy said she would now act as her own agent, and would decide what was best for her and her sons. Her plan was to remain at the school at Beech Woods for another year. Then, in the spring of 1830, she would come for John Woodhouse in Louisville and take him to Europe to continue his education. Avoiding any direct mention of reconciling with Audubon, Lucy added that she felt this course of action was her “duty.” Lucy, who had a lifelong fear of ocean voyaging, told Victor that the dangers of the Atlantic crossing would be nothing next to the pain she would feel at leaving him behind in America. But they would have to “trust to providence” for their happiness. If for some reason she could never return, she hoped Victor would go over to Europe and bring John Woodhouse home someday. She begged Victor not to say a word of any of this to anyone—especially because “circumstances may change.” This included not so much as a whisper to Audubon. “Do not write to your Papa anything about it my Dear Son,” Lucy said. “Leave it to me to settle with him.”

At virtually the same moment, Audubon was writing to Lucy from London. No longer able to stand the uncertainty of her coming to England, he had decided to come to America for her. He said he expected to leave around the beginning of April. Although he had known he would someday have to go to America to continue his work, this was much sooner than he had hoped. But—evidently unaware of how odd this sounded in view of his repeated insistence that Lucy delay coming to him—he told her now that this was the only way he could “persuade” her to come over.

It's impossible, after more than a century and a half, to fathom exactly what was happening between Audubon and Lucy. The long, uncertain lines of communication between them surely made it hard for them to understand one another. But there was also an obtuseness on both sides of the ocean, two complicated halves of a relationship that were entrenched in positions fortified against one another—a husband and wife at loggerheads and perversely determined to remain so. Audubon's letters, brimming with erratic assessments of his finances and grim hints of his anxious mental condition, careen between professions of endless love for Lucy and an unfeeling effort to keep her away. Many contained worrisome references to Miss Hannah Rathbone. It seems obvious that Hannah and Audubon were smitten with one another, though how far the
attraction progressed can't be known. Audubon thought about Hannah a lot, but he did not see her often after his first months in Britain. If there was a liaison between the two, it was short-lived.

But the Audubons' transoceanic spat went on and on. Lucy's letters, many of them from this time long lost, betray her stubbornness, her fear of ocean travel, and her concern for what was to become of Victor and John Woodhouse. Lucy still thought in terms of the family, whereas Audubon focused on himself. What she seemed to want—and most need—was a clear signal from Audubon in place of his vague and oft-delayed plan for her to join him. She never got one.

Audubon was also seriously worried about the effect his leaving London might have on the progress of
The Birds of America
. He had every confidence in young Havell to keep the job going, but doubted that everyone else would be so sanguine. John Children had agreed to oversee the project in his absence—a comfort, but only a partial one. Audubon feared that if word circulated among his subscribers that he wasn't personally supervising the engraving, many would back out. He was concerned enough that he initially planned to travel under an assumed name—after putting out a cover story that he was going to the European continent to sell subscriptions. But he eventually dropped the idea of going incognito, and instead considered notifying the papers in America of his arrival, since he would be traveling with copies of
The Birds of America
in the hope of landing some American subscribers.

For some time after Audubon announced his intention of coming to America, Lucy was quite unaware of it.
The mail was so slow that in February she was still receiving letters he'd written the previous summer.
Unsure if he was getting her letters on the other end, Lucy repeated her wish to join him in England—
if
that was what he wanted. But she could not tell. His letters were angry, she thought, not to mention ambiguous. Though she tried to dismiss his moodiness as a continuing “fit of the blues,” this was not always easy. Transatlantic communications seemed to produce more misunderstanding than affection. Did he think she cared not for the piano he'd sent? It wasn't true, Lucy insisted. The piano was fine, she said, once she had it repaired. More important, Lucy still loved Audubon, but could not be sure that he loved her. She explained again and again that she could not leave for England immediately—that she had to see to the boys by finishing out her current contract so she could leave them enough money to get by. Being both father and mother to them,
Lucy admitted, was a trying occupation. Otherwise, she felt in quite good health. Lucy was forty, she reminded her absent husband. Actually, she was forty-two.

Audubon imagined that Lucy would be much surprised at his coming home.
But he told her it was really the only way now. “I want and must talk to thee,” he wrote to her. “Letters are scarcely of use at this great distance when 5 months are needed to have an answer.” He would have much work to do in America, Audubon cautioned. Lucy should anticipate that he would spend all of his time drawing. Also, she would have to meet him halfway, as he did not wish to come any farther south than Louisville. This, he said, would be his only trip to America until the day came when he returned for good, ready to retire from “public life.” Of course, he said, there could be no question but that she would go back to England with him. That would be settled, he said, when at last “our lips will meet” again. Sounding genuinely happy for the first time in a very long time, Audubon said that now that it was decided, he felt in “great spirits.”

Sitting alone in his room, Audubon looked over the letter. Smiling, he signed it “God Bless thee Dearest Friend—thy Husband for Life, John James Audubon.” Folding the letter carefully, Audubon closed it with a daub of red sealing wax, pressing it with the seal bearing the image of a turkey cock.

15

MY GREAT WORK

Turdus mustelinus
: The Wood Thrush

[H]ow fervently . . . have I blessed the Being who formed the Wood Thrush, and placed it in those solitary forests, as if to console me amidst my privations, to cheer my depressed mind, and to make me feel, as I did, that never ought man to despair, whatever may be his situation, as he can never be certain that aid and deliverance are not at hand.

—Ornithological Biography

A
udubon, now in his mid-forties, believed he had grown an inch taller during his lonely sojourn in Britain. Perhaps he was only feeling larger than life.
On April 25, 1830, the sailing ship
Pacific
entered the Mersey River after a rough passage of twenty-five days from New York. Audubon and Lucy stood on the deck as Liverpool came into view and the pungent spring air of England drifted through the rigging.

Audubon had spent nearly a year in America, having reached New York in early May of 1829. Of the twin purposes he had in going home—to collect more birds and to reconcile with Lucy—the birds had taken a decided priority.
Rather than rush to Bayou Sara, Audubon instead stopped in New York, then Philadelphia, sending letters west and south to Victor and Lucy.
Apparently still convinced that Lucy needed a full accounting of his situation before she would join him, Audubon wrote to say that his net worth was now more than £1,500—nearly $7,000. A close reading of this total revealed that only about $1,500 of this was cash. The rest was mainly in subscription fees due him, plus the value of the coppers and prints thus far completed. Audubon mentioned that he also owned a watch he said was worth $450, a gun worth $90, plus “plenty of clothes.”
In an odd, quasi-legal plea, he told Lucy that he now
pledged to her “myself with my stock, wares and chattels and all the devotedness of heart attached to such an enthusiastic being as I am.”

Lucy was not to regard this as an attempt at persuasion, Audubon insisted. Rather, she was to “consult with thy ownself.” He said he needed a yes or a no, and soon. Audubon asked now that Lucy come to Philadelphia, or at least as far as Louisville, as he had already suggested. He could not risk going to Louisiana for fear of missing important communications from Havell or Children. Much as he would love to see the magnolias and the mockingbirds, Audubon said he doubted he ever would do so again.

Audubon again turned to Victor for help. He wrote to his elder son that while Lucy seemed to want him to come to Bayou Sara as a proof of his affections, he needed to work on drawings of birds that were plentiful near Philadelphia. Victor's mother could not or would not understand how important it was for him to remain “east of the mountains.” If she had to meet him by ascending the Mississippi and Ohio, she insisted it could not be for months yet. This caused Audubon anxiety, as he had hoped to sail back to England in the fall. Audubon also told Victor that he doubted he could visit him in Kentucky. Much as he wanted to see his sons, Audubon said he no longer had friends in Kentucky and had his hands full enough with critics and skeptics as it was. Word from England was that production of
The Birds of America
was progressing nicely, but that more and more subscribers lagged in their payments or had stopped paying entirely.
Apparently there had been something like a revolt among the subscribers in Manchester. Every day away from England, Audubon felt, increased his financial risk, though he by now thought that he could always find new subscribers or coax back some who had deserted.
When Havell wrote a troubled letter about the decline in subscriptions, Audubon quickly wrote back telling him not to worry. Havell was particularly concerned about a less-than-full payment he'd received from agents representing Charles-Lucien Bonaparte. Havell had given them the latest Numbers anyway. Audubon assured him this had been the right thing to do.
Bonaparte was certainly good for the money, and when he got back to England Audubon would restore order among the other subscribers.

He was less confident about prospects in America.
Audubon's friend Dr. Richard Harlan arranged for
The Birds of America
to be exhibited at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, but the academy itself declined to subscribe. Still, Audubon's spirits perked up considerably as he
once more spent his time in the woods of America, shooting and drawing birds.
He passed most of the month of August and some of September in Pennsylvania's Great Pine Swamp, finding it more forest than swamp and alive with birds.
By October, though he'd found not a single new subscriber in America, Audubon had completed more than forty new drawings, including large, medium, and small species.
He'd also found a new partner, a Swiss painter named George Lehman whom he'd met in Pittsburgh on his way back to Louisiana from Philadelphia five years before. Lehman was contributing backgrounds and botanical elements for the drawings. The work had gone well enough that Audubon was now willing to come as far as Louisville to meet Lucy. He planned to travel by way of Baltimore and Washington, where he hoped he might get in to see President Andrew Jackson.
Audubon said he would be at Louisville by the beginning of December.