Read The Audubon Reader Online
Authors: John James Audubon
God bless thee.
Thine forever
.
This uncensored account of Audubon fulfilling a commission to paint a nude portrait in the days when he was down and out in
New Orleans—enclosed in a letter to his wife Lucy, whom he had not seen for months—is a rare glimpse into the private world of women in the early nineteenth century. “Mrs. André,” who lived on the rue d’Amour in the Faubourg Marigny, was probably one of the mistresses of the wealthy French nobleman Bernard de Marigny, a friend of Audubon’s who was building the suburb as an investment and who housed his mistresses there. Some biographers, and some readers, have convinced themselves that the encounter never happened and that Audubon’s narrative is fictional. Were it so, would such a proud man have depicted himself as naive, awkward and, worst of all, a less skillful artist than his subject?
I was accosted on the day of —— 1821, at the corner of Royale Street & —— Street—the former I take almost daily, not to be seen so much on Levee Street lugging my portfolio, the astonishment of many—by a female of a fine form but whose face [was so] thickly covered by a veil that I could not then distinguish it and who addressed me quickly in about the following words in French: “Pray sir, are you the one sent by the French Academy to draw the birds of America?”
I answered that I drew them for my pleasure.
“You are he that draws likenesses in black chalk so remarkably strong?”
I answered again that I took likenesses in that style.
“Then call in thirty minutes at number × in —— Street and walk upstairs; I will wait for you.”
I bowed.
“Do not follow me now.”
I bowed again and as I went from her [by] the course I had at first, took my pencil and put down the street and number; I soon reached a bookstore where I waited some time, having a feeling of astonishment undescribable. Recollecting however how far I had to walk, I started and suppose the stranger employed a carriage.
I arrived, and as I walked upstairs I saw her apparently waiting.
“I am glad you have come, walk in quickly.” My feeling became so agitated that I trembled like a leaf. This she perceived, shut the door with a double lock and, throwing her veil back, shewed me one of the most beautiful faces I ever saw. “Have you been or are you married?”
Yes, madam.
“Long?”
Twelve years.
“Is your wife in this city?”
No, madam.
“Your name Audubon?”
Yes, madam.
“Set down and be easy,” and with the smile of an angel, “I will not hurt you.”
I felt such a blush and such deathness through me I could not answer. She raised and handed me a glass of cordial; so strange was all this to me that I drank it—for I needed it—but awkwardly gave her the glass to take back.
She sat again immediately opposite me, and looking [at] me steadfastly asked me if I thought I could draw her face. Indeed I fear not, answered I.
“I am sure you can if you will, but before I say more, what is your price?”
Generally twenty-five dollars.
She smiled again most sweetly. “Will you keep my name if you discover it and my residence a secret?”
If you require it.
“I do. You must promise that to me. Keep it forever sacred, although I care not about anything else.”
I promised to keep her name and her place of residence to myself.
“Have you ever drawn a full figure?”
Yes.
“Naked?”
Had I been shot with a forty-eight pounder through the heart my articulating powers could not have been more suddenly stopped.
“Well, why do you not answer?”
I answered yes.
She raised, walked the room a few times and sitting again said, “I want you to draw my likeness and the whole of my form naked, but as I think you cannot work now, leave your portfolio and return in one hour. Be silent.”
She had judged of my feelings precisely. I took my hat, she opened the door and I felt like a bird that makes his escape from a strong cage filled with sweetmeats. Had I met a stranger on the stairs, no doubt I would have been suspected for a thief. I walked away fast, looking behind me.
My thoughts rolled on her conduct. She looked as if perfect mistress of herself and yet looked, I then thought, too young, not supposing her more than sixteen (a mistake however) and apparently not at all afraid to disclose to my eyes her sacred beauties. I tried to prepare myself for the occasion, the time passed and I arrived again at the foot of the stairs.
She again was waiting for me and beckoned to me to move quick. She shut the door as the first time, then, coming to me: “Well, how do you feel now? Still trembling a little, what a man you are. Come, come, I am anxious to see the outline you will make, take time and be sure do not embellish any parts with your brilliant imagination, have your paper sufficiently large, I have some beautiful and good chalks, the drawing will be completed in this room and you will please do it on this”—raising, she gave me a large sheet of Elephant paper out of an
armoire
.
The die was cast, I felt at once easy, ready and pleased. I told her I was waiting for her convenience. She repeated the urgency of secrecy which I again promised.
The couch in the room was superbly decorated. She drew the curtains and I heard her undress. “I must be nearly in the position you will see me unless your taste should think proper to alter it by speaking.”
Very well, was my answer, although I felt yet very strange and never will forget the moment.
“Please to draw the curtains and arrange the light to suit yourself.”
When drawing hirelings in company with twenty more I never cared but for a good outline, but shut up with a beautiful young
woman as much a stranger to me as I was to her, I could not well reconcile all the feelings that were necessary to draw well without mingling with them some of a very different nature. Yet I drew the curtain and saw this beauty.
“Will I do so?” I eyed her but dropped my black lead pencil. “I am glad you are so timid, but tell me will I do so?”
Perceiving at once that the position, the light and all had been carefully studied before, I told her I feared she looked only too well for my talent. She smiled and I begun.
I drew fifty-five minutes by my watch, when she desired I should close the curtains. She dressed in an instant and came immediately to look at what was done.
“Is it like me? Will it be like me? I hope it will be a likeness. I am a little chill, can you work any more without me today?”
I told her I could correct my sketch.
“Well, be contented and work as much as you can, I wish it was done, it is a folly but all our sex is more or less so.”
She remarked very appropriately an error and made me correct it. She pulled a bell, a woman came in with a waiter covered with cakes & wine, left it and passed through a door I had not perceived before. She insisted on my resting awhile, made me drink, asked me a thousand questions about my family, residence, birds, way of traveling or living &c., &c. and certainly is a well-informed female, using the best expressions and in all her actions possessing the manners necessary to insure respect & wonder.
I worked nearly two hours more and cast all the outlines of the drawing. It pleased her apparently very much; I soon found she had received good lessons. I begged to know her name.
“Not today and if you are not careful and silent you never will see me again.”
I assured her I would.
“I have thought well of you from hearsay and hope not to be mistaken.”
I felt now very different thoughts from those I had while she was undressing in her curtains and asked when I must return again.
“Every day at the same hour until done, but never again with your portfolio. I will manage this once through your drawings of birds.”
For ten days, at the exception of one Sunday that she went out of the city, I had the pleasure of this beautiful woman’s company about one hour naked and two talking on different subjects. She admired my work more every day—at least was pleased to say so—and on the fifth sitting she worked herself in a style much superior to mine.
The second day she desired to know what I would ask her for my work. I told her I would be satisfied with whatever she would [be] pleased [to] give me.
“I take you at your word; it will be
un souvenir
. One who hunts so much needs a good gun or two. This afternoon see if there is one in the city & give this on account if you wish to please me to the last.” She handed me five dollars. “I must see it and if I do not like it you are not to have it.”
I thanked her and told her it probably would be a high-price piece.
“Well, that probably is necessary to insure the good quality, do what I bid.”
I took the note, when gone felt very undetermined, yet I hunted through the stores, found a good one & gave the note on account with my name, telling the shopman that I did not well know when I would call for it.
She was much gratified I had found one. When I told her I was asked one hundred and twenty dollars [she said], “No more? Well, we will say nothing about it until I see how I am pleased with your part.”
I worked from day to day, drawing besides a twenty-five-dollar likeness every day, to be sure a little at the expense of my eyes at night, but how could I complain? How many artists would have been delighted of such lessons?
I finished my drawing, or rather she did, for when I returned every day I always found the work much advanced. She touched it, she said, not because she was fatigued of my company daily but because she felt happy in mingling her talents with mine in a piece she had had in contemplation to have done even before she left the country she came from—I suppose from Italy or France, but never could ascertain.
She often took my pencil to compose a device to have engraved
on the gun barrels and asked me to have one of my own, but this I declined and left to her taste and will. She at last decided on one which she said I must absolutely have done for her sake and ordered me to have it finished in a few days.
She had a beautiful frame the last morning I went, on which she asked my opinion, this of course I gave as I thought her desires inclined. She put her name at the foot of the drawing as if
her own
and mine in a dark, shaded part of drapery. When I had closed it and put it in a true light she gazed at it for some moments and assured me her wish was at last gratified, and taking me by one hand gave me a delightful kiss. “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. She held it out freely. We parted, probably forever.
It is well that I should say that she had heard of me in a circle [of acquaintances] a few days after I had taken the British consul’s likeness and of my collection of birds; that she then understood I was from France, purposely sent by the Academy of Paris, but soon was assured of the contrary by my way of living; and that she asked me to try my veracity—that she employed a servant to watch my ways and that for several nights this servant had remained very late to see if I absented from the boat [where Audubon was then living] and that in fact she knew every step I had taken since the day she had resolved on employing me. She asked me if I had not seen a mulatto man standing near the gates of Madame André two days successively; this I recollected but never supposed that anyone watched my steps. She praised the few drawings of birds I shewed her the first day and assured me that she had no doubt I would be well recompensed for such a collection.
She never asked me to go see her when we parted. I have tried several times in vain, the servants always saying Madame is absent. I have felt a great desire to see the drawing since, to judge of it as I always can do best after some time.
Here my journal takes to another subject and I leave to thee to conclude what thou may of this extraordinary female. Since, I have wished often I could have shewn that drawing to [the painter] Mr. Vanderlyn.
The lady was kind, the gun is good and here are the inscriptions on it:
Ne refuse pas ce don d’une amie qui t’est reconnaissante puisse t’il t’égaler en bonté
. [Do not refuse this gift from a friend who is in your debt; may its goodness equal yours.]
And under the ramming rod:
Property of LaForest Audubon, February 22nd 1821
.
Her name I engraved on it where I do not believe it will ever be found.
The
flight of this elegant species of Hawk is singularly beautiful and protracted. It moves through the air with such ease and grace that it is impossible for any individual who takes the least pleasure in observing the manners of birds not to be delighted by the sight of it whilst on wing. Gliding along in easy flappings it rises in wide circles to an immense height, inclining in various ways its deeply forked tail to assist the direction of its course, dives with the rapidity of lightning and suddenly checking itself reascends, soars away and is soon out of sight. At other times a flock of these birds amounting to fifteen or twenty individuals is seen hovering around the trees. They dive in rapid succession amongst the branches, glancing along the trunks and seizing in their course the insects and small lizards of which they are in quest. Their motions are astonishingly rapid and the deep curves which they describe, their sudden doublings and crossings and the extreme ease with which they seem to cleave the air, excite the admiration of him who views them while thus employed in searching for food.
A solitary individual of this species has once or twice been seen in
Pennsylvania. Farther to the eastward the Swallow-tailed Hawk has never, I believe, been observed. Traveling southward along the Atlantic coast we find it in Virginia, although in very small numbers. Beyond that state it becomes more abundant. Near the
Falls of the Ohio a pair had a nest and reared four young ones in 1820. In the lower parts of
Kentucky it begins to become numerous; but in the states farther to the south and particularly in parts near the sea it is abundant. In the large prairies of the
Attacapas and
Opelousas it is extremely common.