196 



TJic Character of John James Audubon, 



difficulties so huge, or the gentle and guile- 

 less sweetness with which he throughout 

 shared his thoughts and aspirations with his 

 wife and children." 



Of the first of these encomiums it may be 

 said that it was mainly true, but not the 

 whole truth; of the second, that it was true 

 in detail but faulty in perspective. These 

 opinions give us the impression of a strong 

 man entering in youth upon a definite pur- 

 suit with settled aims, and striving steadily 

 toward the goal, calm in his self-reliance, 

 sustained by the confidence in his own 

 powers to command success. There are 

 such men, but to class Audubon in this 

 category would be to miss the great lesson 

 of his life. Audubon was endowed with 

 a pure and lofty nature, but his was not a 

 strong character. He displayed traits which 

 command our admiration and love, but his 

 was not a whole, well-rounded nature, em- 

 bracing even the essential conditions of 

 success. One es.sential characteristic at 

 least was wanting — the capacity for self- 

 denial; and of Audubon it may be asked 

 as justly as of any man, "To whom was he 

 indebted for his success?" for the great 

 lesson of his life lies in our recognition of 

 the fact that he triumphed in the strength 

 of another, who moulded his character, 

 shaped his aims, gave substance to his 

 dreams, and finally, by the exercise of that 

 self-denial which he was incapable of as a 

 long-sustained effort, won for him the pub- 

 lic recognition and reward of his splendid 

 talents. Who shall measure Audubon's 

 indebtedness to the lofty character of his 

 gentle, loving wife? 



Evidences of the correctness of this esti- 

 mate are to be found thickly scattered 

 through Audubon's note book, and we can- 

 not do better than take up the study of the 

 man as he has pictured himself during the 

 few months preceding his introduction to 

 Lucy Bakewell, the gentle, revered " Min- 

 nie" of later days. 

 . "I had no vices," he writes in his jour- 



nal, "but was thoughtless, pensive, loving, 

 fond of shooting, fishing and riding, and 

 had a passion for raising all sorts of fowls, 

 which sources of interest and amusement 

 fully occupied all my time. It was one of 

 my fancies to be ridiculously fond of dress, 

 to hunt in black satin breeches, wear pumps 

 when shooting, and dressed in the finest 

 ruffled shirts I could obtain from France." 

 * * * * "All the while I was fair and rosy, 

 strong as any one of my age and sex could 

 be, and as active and agile as a buck." 



Here we have a picture of a cultivated 

 young man of fine physique, good health, 

 good looks, trained in habits of self-indul- 

 gence and without other object in life than 

 their gratification; attached to the wild life 

 of the woods, in which he shot and painted 

 and dreamed; an artist, but in no sense of 

 the word a worker, a dreamer in love with 

 nature and with himself; with undeveloped 

 capacities, and conspicuous for nothing so 

 much as for the amiable vanity which found 

 its expression in the display of himself in 

 black satin breeches, imported ruffled shirts 

 and pumps, as a shooting costume. 



But in accepting this sketch as a true 

 picture of Audubon in his youth, we con- 

 sciously or unconsciously render homage to 

 the simple truthfulness of the artist who in 

 attempting to present a picture of himself 

 delineated his own chatacter as far as he 

 knew it, with the same rare fidelity to nature 

 that characterized his paintings and descrip- 

 tions of birds. Here we have something 

 solid to build upon. An unswerving, simple 

 adherence to truth is one of the prime ele- 

 ments of human greatness, a characteristic 

 which cannot co-exist with anything mean 

 or ignoble; and every phase of the man's 

 after life and work indicates clearly that 

 simple truthfulness was a leading character- 

 istic of his nature. 



A second characteristic portrayed in the 

 picture is his craving for admiration. Some 

 of Audubon's critics have charged him with 

 inordinate vanity, while his admirers have 



