Illustration courtesy Smithsonian Institution Archives.
Try to imagine a context that will accommodate the following montage: hundreds of mallards flying south above the finest rainbow a man ever beheld; a male eagle storming in out of the clouds like a torrent; two men and a woman asleep on the damp earth beside the river, availing themselves only of raccoons and muddy water for sustenance; a dog named Dash who fetches her master such mussels and periwinkles as he has never seen before; and a color drawing of a bald eagle about to eat a catfish that summons up all that can be summoned up about predation and fierceness.
An outdoorsman’s vision of Heaven and Hell? Nope. The images were all recorded by John James Audubon in the fall and winter of 1820, as he floated on a keelboat down the Mississippi River, en route to New Orleans, gathering new specimens of birds for his drawings. During the trip, Audubon kept a journal, and these particular images are all from entries made while he was in the vicinity of Memphis.
Illustration by Dreamstime.
The entry below is dated December 1, 1820. Audubon’s command of the brush and pen was considerably better than his command of the English language (which, in fairness, was his second tongue; America’s most famous naturalist was actually born in Haiti, of French parentage). But since his own peculiar way of saying things gets lost in editing, the excerpts that follow are reproduced exactly as they were written:
I went a shore to a House about 5 Miles above Wolf River in a sharp running Bend, saw 2 beautifull Trees the Pride of China here the High Land is within 2 miles of the River and the spot on which the Plantation stands never overflows, these are remarkable spots.
We are Landed immediately at the foot of Old Fort Pickering. We Walked up to it through a very narrow crooked path, and found in a very decayed situation; the Position a Beautiful one the Land Rich about it — and were told that the Spaniards own it. it was an agreable spot to live at — about 2 miles above this, the Mouth of Wolf river came in from the East, and is the Landing place of a Town Called Memphis — have runned 24 miles — Saw some Towe Buntings and Many Sparrows —
That is okay, you are thinking; this Memphis stuff is okay — the rich land, the chinaberry trees, all that — but what about birds? Your curiosity is not so limited that it stops at the city-limit signs. Here then is Audubon’s description of what else he saw on that day, December 1st, not too many miles upriver from Memphis in 1820:
I saw this afternoon Two Eagles Coatiting — the femelle was on a Very high Limb of a Tree and squated at the approach of the Male, who came Like a Torrent, alighted on her and quakled shrill untill he sailed off the femelle following him and zig zaging herself through the air — this is scarce proof I have had the pleasure of witnessing of these and all of the Falco Genus breeding much Earlier than any Other Land Birds —
Local partisans, in fact, might be tempted to advance the argument that it was this heady experience very near Memphis that ultimately informed and shaped the vision that Audubon called on in completing the original version of his famous watercolor of the bald eagle, reproduced here. Though Audubon finished his drawing of the eagle upriver, just before landing “at the foot of Flour Island, opposite the first Chickasaw Bluff,” we know for a fact that the watercolor was later revised. A green-winged teal, which had earlier been the eagle’s prey, was replaced by the less noble catfish, perhaps in order to throw into stronger relief the eagle’s glory.
The eagle which Audubon used as his model for this famous engraving was one that he shot on the Mississippi River at Little Prairie Bend, near Tiptonville, a few miles west of Reelfoot Lake. Proof of that model eagle’s origin can be found in Audubon’s journal entry for November 23, 1820:
As soon as we had eat our Common Breakfast fried Bacon and Soaked Biscuits — Joseph [Audubon’s assistant] went to his station and I to Mine, i.e., he rowed the skiff and I steering it — Went to the Little Prairie …
I shot a Beautifull White headed Eagle Falco Leucocephalus — probably 150 yards off, My Ball Went through its body —
Returned to our Boats immediately and began My Drawings — it is a Handsome Male —
Audubon was still working on the drawing three days later, November 26th, on which day he noted that the thermometer was down to 22 degrees. That might explain the glint of ice the viewer can still detect in that eagle’s eye.
The drawing was finished the next day, Audubon noting that the “Noble Bird weighed 8½ lb.” At the time of this journal entry Audubon was on Flour Island, opposite the first Chickasaw Bluff, between what is now Fulton and Golddust, Tennessee.
As he went down the Mississippi to New Orleans, Audubon observed with a sharp eye all that passed before him. He watched the birds along the riverbanks in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana, stopping sometimes to go inland if either his artistic vision or his thin pocketbook required increase.
He was a man possessed. Earlier that year, he had become enthralled with what he called the “Great Idea” of completing a portfolio of drawings of all the birds of America and publishing that collection. What he had in mind was a double elephant folio (29½” x 39½”) of color engravings. At the time, his collection of color drawings was random and incomplete, he was bankrupt, without patron or publisher, and was virtually unknown as an artist. His various business ventures in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Ohio had proven him ill-suited to the world of commerce.
It was not that he had not wanted to be successful in business. He had tried to be a gentleman farmer, a merchant, and a sawmill owner, among other things. But his true calling was elsewhere, he came to realize, and he decided to act on the growing conviction that he wanted more than anything to find new specimens of birds and make likenesses of them with his black chalk and watercolors.
To that end, he boarded a flatboat in Cincinnati on October 12, 1820, bound for New Orleans. He had other extensive travels in mind, but the journey down the Ohio and Mississippi to New Orleans would be the most important of his career, if for no other reason than that it set him free to follow his vision.
His freedom, it should be obvious, was not without severe costs. Here is part of the first entry in his journal on the day he embarked:
Without any Money My Talents are to be My Support and My enthusiasm my Guide in My Difficulties, the whole of which I am ready to exert to keep, and to surmount.
Thus began the journey that brought Audubon a month and a half later to Little Prairie Bend, and the bald eagle whose likeness he would eventually leave us as part of a wonderful and enduring gift. The fullness of that total gift owes in no small measure to the human experiences that came to him and the plentiful wildlife he witnessed as he made his way down the river:
- Toward Memphis: “Immediately below us is a family of Three people in Two Skiffs a Woman & 2 men; they are Too Lazy to Make themselves Comfortable, and Lie on the Damp Earth, near the Edge of the Watter, have Racoons to Eat and Muddy Watter to help that food down, are from the Mouth of Cumberland and moving to a Worst Part of the Worst Without Doubt —”
- Past Buck Island in Mississippi: “Here I saw with the setting sun hundreds of Malards … and the Finest rainbow I ever beheld”
- Then inland a few miles to a lake (Beaverdam Lake?): “This Lake about 2 Miles from the River, contains some of the Largest Muscles I ever saw, and Vast Many perewinkles that appear to be of a Peculiar Species”
- New Moon Lake, Mississippi: “Mr. Aumack Winged a White headed Eagle, brought it live on board, the Noble Fellow Looked at his Ennemies with a Contemptible Eye … I am glad to find that its Eyes were Coresponding with My Drawing”
- Down near Tallulah, Louisiana, across from Percy and Panther Burn and Nitta Yuma: “Drawing nearly all day I finished the Carion Crow, it stunk so intolerably, and Looked so disgusting that I was very glad when I through it over Board.” (Speaking of Panther Burn, Mississippi, Audubon writes of two wood-cutters near there who “reported that a few weeks passed a Youth of about 12 Years having Met a Large Brown Tiger, or Cougar called here, a Painter was so frightened that he died after reaching his Parents’ house.”)
- Then to Natchez: “a Little before Dusk I saw from our Boat Roof the Magnolia & Pines that ornement the Hills above this Place.”
On Sunday, January 7, 1821, “At New Orleans at Last,” Audubon set about trying to advance his cause. About a week later he noted, “I walked to Jarvis the Painter and shewed him some of my Drawings — he overlooked them, said nothing then Leaned down and examined them minutely but never said they Were good or bad — Merely that when he drew an Eagle for Instance, he made it resemble a Lyon, and covered it with Yellow hair and not Feathers — some fools who entered the room, were so pleased at seeing my Eagle that they prised it, and Jarvis whistled —”
The lot of the destitute though proud and talented artist is all that we have heard it is. Whether or not we would have played the role of a Jarvis or one of the “fools” who appreciated Audubon’s eagle is hard to say. With the benefit of historical perspective, however, it is easy to know that Audubon’s instinct to put feathers rather than yellow hair on his eagle was pre-eminently good and true.
Five months later, free of New Orleans’ condescension (though far from the fame and financial security he would one day achieve), John James Audubon could be found opening up a rattlesnake’s mouth and describing what was in there, teeth and fangs and ligament, and how it all worked. A dead rattlesnake, to be sure, but a rattlesnake nonetheless — and one that the August heat in Bayou Sara, Louisiana, was working on: “My Drawing I Hope Will give you a good Idea of a Rattle Snake although the Heat of the weather Would not permit me to Spend More than 16 hours at it —”
It is a pretty good “Idea of a Rattle Snake”; you can see it today in Plate XXI of The Birds of America in as cold-blooded an attack on a mockingbird nest as you will ever witness in a work of art.
Fame, of course, came to Audubon eventually, and he was able to enjoy some of its financial rewards. Not to the degree, however, enjoyed by present-day art dealers owning editions of The Birds of America. A 1984 ad in The New Yorker offered prints from that collection, which consists of 435 plates, depicting a total of 1,065 birds. The prints — “magnificent hand-colored engravings … in excellent condition,” according to the ad — are priced from $1,200 to $38,000 apiece.
In 1820, Audubon would gladly have put your name on his list of subscribers for considerably less. He was, after all, “on Board a Keel Boat going to New Orleans the poorest Man on it.”
Our world is all the richer because Audubon was willing to make that venture.
