Natural Wonder

...Lucy, understandably, is confused by Audubon's mixed messages...

...We know, for instance, that much of the Ornithological Biography was edited by his Scottish naturalist friend, William MacGillivray, who was responsible (as Audubon acknowledged) for "smoothing down the asperities" of his somewhat rough American diction and style, the way that Thomas Wentworth Higginson "regularized" the early editions of Emily Dickinson's poems...

...There is a brief introduction, a generalized timeline of events, and occasionally a head note or bracketed identification for an essay or letter recipient...

...At the same time, despite repeated requests from Lucy for him to ask her directly and unequivocally to come to England, he always demurs, suggesting that he is not yet able to provide for her as he feels she would demand, suggesting that "what I conceive real comfort is misery to thee...

...Added to this were Audubon's self-doubts and mercurial emotions, which often led him to accuse Lucy of being ambivalent and hesitant in her affections and desires to join him...

...Though he writes well, he rarely writes memorably, the way that even minor literary figures such as Jack London or Bret Harte do...

...For ten days," he records, "I had the pleasure of this beautiful woman's company, about one hour naked and two talking on different subjects...

...The distinguishing virtue of Rhodes's collection is that the great bulk of its almost 700 pages are letters...

...He writes smoothly and without the fustian that turns most modern readers away from such contemporaries as James Feni-more Cooper and Washington Irving...

...is a very severe and painful one," she writes...

...Washington Irving...

...As Rhodes demonstrated in his 2004 biography, theirs was one of the great American love stories...

...Audubon's great work comes to fruition to great acclaim in both Europe and America...

...It is, I would say, not easy to make an argument for Audubon as a major American literary figure, though the value of the content of his prose works is beyond question, especially his Ornithological Biography (1831-1839), the five-volume series of essays that Audubon published to accompany his double-elephant folio of lifesized prints of native birds...

...Thus, in the Audubons' case, they were often read at cross-purposes: Lucy's or Aud-ubon's situation or emotions might change drastically before the other's response was received, causing unintentional (though considerable) emotional and mental pain...

...He accepts, although he confesses that "I could not well reconcile all the feelings that were necessary to draw well without mingling with them some of a very different nature...

...His appearance was well calculated to appall the bravest had we not felt assured that his strength was fast diminishing...

...And in another: "What he really means, I cannot tell...

...From some surviving original fragments, we know that these were much more personal, idiosyncratic, and "raw" in nature, yet we have only about one-fifth of the original text, and this only in a bowdlerized, Victorianized version edited and published by Maria in 1897...

...Part of the sense of mutual affection comes from Audubon's use of the Quaker "Thee" and "Thou" (which he picked up in his early days in Philadelphia) in addressing Lucy, and her use of the nickname "La Forest" in writing to him...

...Letters usually took weeks, even months, to reach their recipients, if they reached them at all...

...Certainly he was one of the most prodigious, and often under conditions that seem anything but conducive to extensive correspondence...

...Though married for 20 years, they seem more like young lovers in some Restoration farce, willfully misunderstanding one another...

...Adding to the problem of assessing Audubon's status as a writer is the fact that much of his published writing is not actually Audubon's own words, but those of his collaborators and editors...

...But the heart of the correspondence that Rhodes presents is the extraordinary exchange of letters between Audubon and his remarkable wife Lucy...

...His accounts are peppered with winning personal details, such as his confession, in the journal of his trip up the Missouri River at the advanced age of 58, that he had trouble eating buffalo meat because "we had unfortunately lost our molars long ago...

...Over and over he expresses his passionate longing for her and need of her physical presence, often in directly sexual ways: "I am tormented day & nights for the comforts thou art so well able to grant me...

...On the other hand, they also present some remarkably unromantic descriptions of the violence and casual cruelty in "Nature's arrangements...

...the next instant, however, we jumped aside, and the animal was unable to alter his headlong course quick enough to avenge himself on us...

...But at the same time there seems something wildly unnecessary in all the histrionics, for in spite of all the misunderstandings and doubts, their deep devotion and love for one another shine through...

...I primed one of the pistols, therefore, and advanced close up to the buffalo...

...But Irving's account contains an element lacking in Audubon's that I think is at the heart of why Audubon's writing, in general, falls short of being genuine literature...

...the ball must have passed through the heart, for the animal gave one convulsive throe and expired...

...there are numerous colorful narratives of the Western frontier, often told in a rough, tall-tale style that prefigures Mark Twain...

...Part of the difficulty stemmed from the nature of long-distance communication in those days...

...It is also here, more than anywhere else in his writing, that we encounter that complexity of emotion and viewpoint— what Scott Sanders calls Audubon's "fierce interplay of identities"—that we find in his greatest paintings...

...Because these letters are so revealing and essential to understanding Audubon and his life, I wish Rhodes had taken more pains in providing an adequate context for them...

...In a letter to William Swainson he even suggests (though, one feels, not seriously) that he is contemplating suicide...

...One longs to shake them both and say, "Look, stop tormenting each other...

...Bell now put a ball directly through his lungs, and with a gush of blood from the mouth and nostrils, he fell upon his knees and gave up the ghost, falling (as usual) on the side, quite dead...

...Still, in making the authentic Audubon of his letters available in a readily accessible form, Rhodes has made a major contribution to our understanding of Audubon's mind and character...

...It is strange, then, that few anthologies of his writing have included much, if any, of his correspondence...

...The most moving and revealing correspondence between them is from 1826-29, when Lucy was in Louisiana, teaching school, and Audubon was in England, overseeing the production of (and peddling subscriptions to) his magnum opus, The Birds of America...

...It became now an act of mercy to give him his quietus, and put him out of his misery...

...Things get so bad at one point that Audubon issues Lucy an ultimatum, demanding an unequivocal answer as to whether she will join him and threatening that "If a 'no' comes, I never will put the question again and we probably never will meet again...

...Still, there are limits to acceptable spousal candor, however desirous of trust we may be, and Audubon in his naiveté may have overstepped them here...

...In the letter Audubon describes a notorious episode that has come to be known as "The Fair Incognita...

...Both passages are vivid and dramatic, and Audubon is certainly willing to portray himself as anti-heroic, even foolish...

...More to the point, it is hard to imagine anyone without a special interest in Audubon or his art sitting down and reading hundreds of pages of his prose for the pure literary enjoyment of it...

...Throughout the essays in this work, there are wonderful observations, not only of birds, but also of the landscape, the characters, and the culture of young America in the early decades of the 19th century...

...She confides her anxiety and exasperation in letters to her older son, Victor: "Your Papa's last letter...

...As works of art, therefore, Audubon's writings are—like Michelangelo's poetry or D.H...

...Some of the set pieces, such as his wonderful description of the nesting of thousands of chimney swifts in a massive hollow sycamore tree in Kentucky, can hold their own with those of Gilbert White or Henry David Thoreau...

...Now that the excitement was over, I could not but look with commiseration upon the poor animal that lay struggling and bleeding at my feet...

...But, for this reader at least, it is the letters that make this collection most valuable...

...To inflict a wound thus in cold blood, I found a totally different thing from firing in the heat of the chase...

...We ourselves were a little too confident and narrowly escaped being overtaken by him through our imprudence...

...Instead, one feels he was always writing for an audience, and gave them a more externalized, and therefore less memorable, version of his experience...

...He repeatedly complains about the insincerity of English society, protesting that he loathes the life there and wishes only to return to America and to her...

...Although we do not have Lucy's response, it may be inferred from a subsequent letter he wrote her, in which Audubon appears surprised and hurt that "thou are so intent on my not returning to thee" and signs it, somewhat abashedly, "For life, your really devoted, Audubon...

...In Audubon's writings—at least those intended for publication— we miss a sense of self-reflection, of genuine interior life...

...As with all great painters, there is a personal vision in his depictions of birds that surpasses their "veracity" or "life-likeness" and makes them instantly recognizable as the work of their creator and none other...

...Perhaps the most amazing example of this is a letter Audubon wrote to Lucy in May 1821, at the age of 36, when he had gone to New Orleans to seek work drawing portraits, leaving Lucy in Kentucky to raise their two young boys...

...It represented the first extensive and accurate accounts of the behavior and habits of living birds, as opposed to mere scientific description...

...Audubon's literary style is always expansive and fresh...

...down to my drawing," name-dropping like some social-climbing parson in a Jane Austen novel...

...His very size and importance, which had before inspired me with eagerness, now increased my compunction...

...Walking the streets, Audubon is accosted by a "female of a fine form" wearing a veil, who turns out to be the young mistress of a French nobleman...

...Audubon's other major published prose work, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America (18461854), was, in fact, largely written by his American friend John Bachman from Audubon's rough notes...

...Having used up the available space, he would turn it 90 degrees and write over the text to create a kind of epistolary palimpsest that the recipient had to decode...

...But then, few if any artists (William Blake, perhaps) have achieved mastery in two totally different forms...

...In other words, there is no question that Audubon was a valuable writer, a good writer, at times an exceptional writer, and numerous anthologies of his work have been issued over the years...

...It's going to be all right...

...and for a time, at least, they reap the rewards of Audubon's unyielding perseverance and Lucy's unwavering support...

...To add to these after-qualms of conscience, the poor animal lingered in his agony...

...lively, and personal style, it set a model for writing about birds for a general audience...

...We placed ourselves directly in his front and as he advanced fired at his head and ran back, not supposing that he could overtake us...

...Lawrence's paintings—at best, adjunct items of interest to his primary achievement, which was simply that, as Rhodes puts it, "no one has ever drawn birds better...

...but he soon got within a few feet of our rear with head lowered and every preparation made for giving us a hoist...

...He was, as Robert Frost once described himself, "a unity of bursting opposites...

...For in them we see that Audubon was not only, as Rhodes terms him, America's rara avis, but also a quintessential American as well: ambitious yet full of self-doubt, passionate yet calculating, vulnerable yet resilient, both a lover and exploiter of nature, a dedicated artist, and a practical businessman, at once cultivated and proudly "rough," often highly critical of his adopted country but believing it to be "ultimately good," and though at times deeply depressed, ultimately triumphant...

...She fears that Audubon has been seduced by European flattery and fame and may not return to her...

...Still, a glossary identifying the major correspondents would have been welcome, as would more introductory material for each section, and footnotes explaining historical or biographical references, such as Audubon's use of "the Tormentor" when referring to Andrew Jackson...

...Her stated aim was to present Audubon as "a refined and cultured gentleman" rather than as the complex, contradictory, sensual, impulsive, often bawdy, vain, insecure, self-pitying, and occasionally malicious person he was...

...In the light of the latest anthology of Audubon's writings, The Audubon Reader, edited by his biographer Richard Rhodes, it seems fair to ask: How does the prose of America's premier painter of birds measure up to his art...

...For a reader not familiar with his life, The Audubon Reader is probably best savored after reading Rhodes's biography...

...Yet he is not included in most general anthologies of American literature, nor is he commonly taught in American literature courses...

...To insure that this enshrined image of her grandfather would go unchallenged, she burned most of the journal manuscripts...

...Like the Adamses, the Audubons shared an exceptional candor and trust, valuing, above all, a "sincerity between us...

...John James Audubon is, of course, best known for the majestic and unsurpassed paintings in The Birds of America (182738), the work that secured his immortality and his status as the patron saint of conservation in this country...

...Reading these letters, one's heart goes out to the separated couple...

...She asks him to call on her at her house, where she makes him the extraordinary request to paint her portrait, full-figured and naked...

...Curiously, it is precisely the presence of a subjective perspective that makes Audubon's painting great art...

...That element is self-discovery in contemplating the meaning of an experience...

...Compare, for instance, the following account of Audubon killing a wounded buffalo on the Great Plains in the 1840s with a contemporary one on the same subject by (of all people...

...As a work of natural history, written in a clear, Robert Finch is author, most recently, of Death of a Hornet and Other Cape Cod Essays and coeditor of The Norton Book of Nature Writing...

...The long separation tested their marriage nearly to its breaking point, and few correspondences let the reader so deeply into the intimacy of a relationship, and to the challenges that external circumstances and conflicting personalities can pose to the strongest bonds...

...If nothing else, the Ornithological Biography was a groundbreaking contribution to the fledgling science of ornithology...

...Taking aim, however, just behind the fore-shoulder, my pistol for once proved true...

...Audubon is nonplussed: "Had I been shot with a forty-eight pounder through the heart my articulating powers could not have been more suddenly stopped...

...She held it out freely...

...One delights, for instance, in the irony and comic observation of his accounts of his time in England, being feted by sycophantic aristocrats as a backwoods Leatherstock-ing (an image Audubon encouraged by wearing his hair long, fringed leather breeches, and carrying a gun around London...

...And of course, in the end, they do come through and are reunited...

...When he finishes the portrait, the woman kisses him and says, "'Had you acted otherwise than you have, you would have received a very different recompense, go, take this ($125), be happy, think of me sometimes as you rest on your gun, keep forever my name a secret.' I begged to kiss her hand...

...There are also many moving moments, as when Audubon witnesses the removal in 1837 of several thousand Creeks from their homeland in Alabama along the "Trail of Tears" or, when holding his first granddaughter in his arms, he describes her as "just the weight of a Loon...

...Certainly this is a remarkable letter to send to anyone, let alone to one's wife...

...I am nothing of a sportsman...

...We parted, probably forever...

...Or: "Can we not move together and feel and enjoy the natural need of each other...

...They were survivors of uncertain and hazardous journeys, and even when they did arrive, they usually crossed in passage...

...by ROBERT FINCH When the Audubon volume of the Library of America series appeared in 1999, I remember thinking that he was the only writer included in that official pantheon of American authors because of his achievement in another art form...

...In the "Episodes" that Audubon deliberately inserted among the strictly avian accounts to "avoid tedium" to his readers (would that contemporary nature writers all had such concern for their readers...

...Oddly enough, Rhodes himself presents this as a kind of default achievement, stating that in deciding what to include, "I tried to minimize overlap with selections in the Library of America Audubon," which contains only a few letters...

...Audubon's writings also reveal his prescient attitudes towards wilderness, wildlife, and Native Americans—arguing, far ahead of his time, for the right of all creatures and cultures to exist, and for nature's "wise intentions even when her laws are far beyond our limited comprehension...

...Their passions and correspondence rival those of John and Abigail Adams, and they endured longer separations and greater physical and financial hardship...

...I had been prompted to this unwonted exploit by the magnitude of the game, and the excitement of an adventurous chase...

...It is fair to say that Audubon was one of the great American letter-writers of the 19th century...

...Yet elsewhere, often in the same letter, he goes on at length about the high esteem in which the English hold him, boasting how "Lord Stanley . . . kneeled...

...Lucy was not the passive, long-suffering, self-sacrificing wife of the great artist portrayed in some of the earlier Audubon biographies, but a strong, independent, and highly talented woman, fiercely devoted to Audubon and his great enterprise, but proud, honest, and often vexed and critical of Audubon's lack of understanding and sympathy for her position...

...The letters are rife with fascinating details of the age—for instance, his description of shipping bird specimens in spirits as "swallows snoozing in rum," or the remarkable practice of "cross-writing," in which Audubon, to save postage on expensive overseas mail, would use only a single sheet of paper...

...Here is Audubon: We fired at [the buffalo] from our six-barreled revolving pistol which, however, seemed to have little other effect than to render him more savage and furious...

...Even more problematic is the treatment of his personal journals at the hands of his granddaughter Maria R. Audubon...

...If we want a full and accurate portrait of this multifaceted individual, we must go to his letters, for it is in his personal correspondence that we have the most extensive amount of unedited, authentic Audubon...

...Now here is Irving: Dismounting, I now fettered my horse to prevent his straying, and advanced to contemplate my victim...

...Often their viewpoint is that of an outsider, like Audubon's contemporary countryman, Alexis de Tocque-ville—although, of course, Audubon lacks Tocqueville's penetrating insights and analysis of American democracy and character...