Bird man of Edinburgh
ON the morning of July 21, 1826, a striking figure stepped off the Delos, a cotton schooner that was docked in Liverpool following a lengthy voyage from New Orleans. With his aquiline profile, unfashionable dress, strange accent and flowing locks of chestnut-brown hair, John James Audubon must have drawn curious stares from onlookers. The self-styled "American woodsman" — the son of a French slave trader and his illiterate mistress — had ventured across the Atlantic hoping to realise an ambitious dream: to publish a book containing his life-sized, colour portraits of every North American bird. By the time the project was completed more than a decade later, he and his collaborators had produced 435 exquisite, hand-coloured engravings in a format known as double-elephant folio (that is, on sheets measuring a hefty 29.5 by 39.5 inches). Praised by the famed French naturalist Georges Cuvier as "the most magnificent monument that has yet been raised to ornithology", The Birds of America (1827-38) remains one of the most celebrated accomplishments in the annals of printing. A complete first edition of the book recently fetched a tidy $8.8 million.
While countless reprints of Audubon's work have appeared since the first edition of Birds of America, relatively few studies of his life and art have been undertaken. We owe much of what we know about Audubon to pioneering biographies by Francis H. Herrick, Alice Ford and Shirley Streshinsky, or to more bibliographically oriented studies by Waldemar Fries and Susanne Low. Now, quite suddenly, we are faced with not one, but two copiously illustrated, full-scale Audubon studies: Audubon's Elephant by Duff Hart-Davis and John Chalmer's Audubon in Edinburgh. Both books concentrate on the years that Audubon, a naturalised American citizen, spent in Europe, struggling to finish his grand opus.
Given their common focus, it is no surprise that these two books cover much of the same territory, recount the same anecdotes and even quote many of the same passages from Audubon's journals and letters. Both document how the impecunious artist survived his early years abroad by mounting exhibitions of his work, producing oil paintings and relying on the kindness of admiring strangers. While Audubon relished the opportunity to hobnob with Europe's high society, he felt much more at home in Edinburgh, which he referred to as his fair "Edina" — than in 19th-century London, with its "bustle, filth, and smoke". Wherever he went, though, he suffered from periodic bouts of loneliness, insecurity and depression. He was ecstatic when Edinburgh's leading engraver, William H. Lizars, agreed to take on his project, but that initial excitement soon turned to disappointment, when Lizars's colourists went out on strike, forcing him to withdraw after issuing only 10 plates. Fortunately, Audubon soon found the London engraver Robert Havell, who, along with his son of the same name, saw the project through to completion.
There were numerous difficulties to meet during the 11 years between the publication of the first and last plates. Finding and keeping subscribers for the expensive book, which cost two guineas for each separately issued number of five prints, occupied much of Audubon's time abroad. Many of those who initially joined the project deserted or died before receiving all of its numbers, so fewer than 200 complete sets of the first edition ever saw the light of day. Locating the birds needed to finish the enterprise became increasingly difficult, despite repeated trips back home to collect and draw his subjects. For many of his later drawings, Audubon was forced to rely on museum specimens rather than the freshly killed birds posed on wire armatures — a hallmark of his work. Authoring the text for the book that Audubon issued separately from his engravings also proved to be time-consuming and difficult. Since he lacked much formal education and French was his native language, Audubon sought out a suitable ghost writer, the British naturalist William MacGillivray, to help him to polish his prose and contribute technical details. The result of their collaboration was a charming five-volume Ornithological Biography (1831-9) from the Edinburgh firm of Charles and Black.
Duff Hart-Davis and Chalmers are to be congratulated for producing engaging accounts of the triumphs and travails that Audubon experienced in Europe. Though Hart-Davis has crafted a more satisfying narrative, both studies represent important contributions to our understanding of a remarkable artist and naturalist whose work continues to resonate with modern audiences.
Audubon's Elephant: The Story of John James Audubon's Epic Struggle to Publish The Birds of America, Duff Hart-Davis, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p.288, £18.99. 0 297 82967 X
Audubon in Edinburgh and His Scottish Associates, John Chalmers, Edinburgh: National Museum of Scotland, p.228, paperback, £30. 1 901663 79 5
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MARK V. BARROW, Jr.
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