Under a Wild Sky (40 page)

Now he wrote to his “dearest friend,” picking his words more carefully than ever.
Audubon told Lucy she must wait until at least the end of the year to come across. By then, he said, proceeds from
The Birds of America
would provide for them. If by some misfortune he failed, then he would come back to America and to her. But in the meantime, it was best to be prudent. Besides, he wrote, “Thou art quite comfortable in Louisiana, therefore wait with a little patience.”

Audubon's letter, however, revealed contradictory thoughts. He had undergone a transformation of sorts in Edinburgh. While he still wrote to Lucy of his hoped-for success—and now presented it as a requirement for them to be reunited in England—he privately imagined that he had, in fact, already succeeded. This message, too, drifted through the lines he sent to Lucy. Perhaps she could see how his confidence ebbed and flowed. In low moods his thoughts invariably turned to other ideas for earning his living. Most of the time Audubon's head seemed more in the clouds than in tune with his wife. Lucy, scraping by as a teacher and piano instructor, must have felt the pangs of envy and desertion as she received Audubon's continuing reports of the social whirl that enveloped him—dinners and parties, nights out at the theater or off to some nobleman's grand estate. He had already decided against sending Lucy a copy of his journal, with
its candid accounts of his frazzled nerves—and sent it instead to the lovely Miss Hannah Rathbone. Now, in the same message in which he insisted Lucy stay put until he was ready for her, Audubon referred to
The Birds of America
as “this Great work of mine.”

Though he complained of being lonely, Audubon never concealed from Lucy the busy social life he led in London.
One of the first persons he'd met on his arrival in the city was a man named John Children. Children had been an officer of the Royal Society, one of the oldest scientific institutions in the world, and doubtless the most influential. Children now worked in the antiquities department of the British Museum.
He invited Audubon to show his drawings at a meeting of the Royal Society and escorted him to one.
A proper gentleman, Children never quite got used to seeing Audubon carrying his large portfolio himself. But Audubon, forever recalling the loss of his drawings at Natchez, insisted on it.
On May 24, Audubon and Children made their way to Somerset House, a vast complex of majestic buildings standing alongside the Thames River.
The doorway to the society was just inside and to the left of the entryway off the Strand. Beyond was a courtyard so large that it looked as if all of Edinburgh University might have occupied but one small corner of it. Somerset House was the headquarters of the British Royal Navy. From these buildings, the power of Europe's mightiest military force was projected across the world.

The Royal Society, organized informally by a group of London scholars in the 1640s, had been granted its official charter by King Charles II in 1662. Christopher Wren, Edmond Halley, Isaac Newton, and Joseph Banks had all served as presidents of the society. In the 1700s, much of the debate over the strange, immense bones unearthed in America had taken place here.
The society took an interest in all of the sciences, though as part of its charge as an advisory to the Navy it devoted special attention to practical studies of things like navigation and food preservation.
The society had nearly seven hundred members, some of whom had started to grumble that election to the society had become entirely too easy. Even so, Audubon—who just a few months earlier had made his first nervous visit to the Wernerians—now found himself an honored visitor at the epicenter of the learned world.
As the meeting progressed, Audubon listened politely to two numbingly technical presentations. One concerned the use of “chloride of lime” in abating the noxious or explosive gases that sometimes collected in the holds of ships. The second
was a study of the relative cooking speeds of black versus shiny cookware. At the close of business, Audubon had a chance to mingle and show off his portfolio.
He may have relaxed a little when someone mentioned that his friend Charles-Lucien Bonaparte had visited the society only five months before.

While Audubon was still wondering whether his command that Lucy remain in Louisiana would reach her before she showed up on his Bloomsbury doorstep, he got distressing news from Edinburgh.
In mid-June, Lizars informed him that his colorists—the team of mostly young women art students who hand-painted the prints, one color at a time—were on strike. And they seemed determined to remain so.
Lizars confided that all this was partly because of a competing project—Selby's book on English birds. The colorists, it turned out, were much better paid by Selby. This may have surprised Audubon after his recent happy stay with Selby at Twizel House. Now it seemed the second Number of
The Birds of America
could be engraved but would have to wait indefinitely to be colored.
Lizars pleaded with Audubon to see if he might find colorists in London who could do the work.

Audubon, full of swagger only weeks earlier, betrayed his frustration when he again wrote to Lucy.
In one letter, Audubon said he had no doubt that their friends and relatives in America thought he was living extravagantly in England while his poor wife slaved to stay alive in Louisiana. But he insisted that it was he who should be envious of her. Lucy, he said, was fortunate to be where she was, to have steady employment, and to be close to John Woodhouse. In another letter, he seemed vexed by his loss of control over his own family.
Here in such a “Civilized Country,” he wrote, it was really a terrible thing to have one's talents appreciated but to enjoy none of the comforts of domestic life. He lamented that although he was married, he now had no wife—and that everyone could see it. Audubon could only add that nobody in America really knew what was happening to him. He wasn't sure himself.

Audubon asked Lizars to send down some finished as well as some uncolored prints from the second Number, hoping he could find someone to complete the work or possibly take it over altogether. In Edinburgh, the colorists stayed out on strike as the summer wore on. One day Audubon called at a printing and engraving shop on Newman Street, just a few blocks from his apartment. Audubon may have been intrigued by the natural artifacts, including bird skins, that were also for sale in a zoological
gallery connected to the shop.
A questionable version of what happened next arose after the fact. What is certain is that of all the steps on Audubon's uneven road to immortality, none was more important than the one he took through the doorway of the shop owned by Robert Havell.

Havell belonged to a well-known family of painters and engravers.
For years he'd worked in partnership with his father, Daniel Havell, on a series of much-admired illustrated books depicting local scenes. Robert Havell's work was distinguished by his skill with a relatively new engraving technique called
aquatinting
, which produced prints with remarkable gradients of shading and texture—similar, in a way, to the halftones later used in reproducing photographs. First introduced in Britain in the 1770s, aquatinting was a demanding process that only a few engravers attempted and even fewer mastered. William Lizars, good as he was, did not use aquatint.

Aquatinting was a refinement of the engraving process—which typically involved very little actual engraving. Strictly speaking, “engraving” means cutting the lines into a metal plate with a pointed tool. In Audubon's time, though, engraving had become a generic term for a printing technique called
intaglio
, in which an image is cut or etched into the surface of a metal or stone. Copper engravers like Lizars and Havell used engraving tools sparingly in their work—usually for captions or an occasional hard, deep line in the image. Most of the image was instead etched into the copper. Etching involved coating the copper plate with a layer of wax called a “ground.” The image was traced onto the ground, and this tracing was then gone over with a sharp tool that cut through the ground to the copper—but not into the metal. When the plate was then immersed in a bath of acid, the acid would “bite” into the copper where it was exposed through the ground, etching the lines of the image onto the metal. When the ground was removed, the etched plate was inked, wiped, and run through a press where the black-and-white outline was transferred onto paper. Colorists then painted the image to match the original.

In the aquatinting process, the ground was manipulated to enhance the image. The plate was coated with a clear rosin dust that was then heated from beneath. As the rosin warmed, it coagulated and hardened, forming small dimples across the surface of the plate and exposing a fine, honeycombed pattern through to the copper. The engraver next applied varnish to “stop out” the areas he did not want etched. The plate was then
put into a bath of nitric acid—or aqua fortis, as it was called; hence the term
aquatint.
After the initial etching, additional areas could be stopped out and the process repeated to achieve a deeper acid bite in the portions still exposed. When this was done multiple times, an almost seamless range of shading was achieved, in which the image transitioned from black through gray to white. When an aquatint was colored, it exhibited a depth and shape unmatched in other forms of engraving.

Looking over samples of Havell's aquatint prints, Audubon was no doubt impressed. And the feeling was mutual, as Havell at once recognized how extraordinary Audubon's drawings were. But when Audubon explained that there were more than four hundred to be engraved, Havell's face darkened.
He was fifty-eight, he said, too old to take on a project that would take many years to complete.

Here the story blurs.
Supposedly, Havell suggested that they visit a competitor who might have a young engraver up to the task. When the competitor showed them a finely aquatinted plate just completed by one of his engravers, they eagerly asked to meet him. To Havell's consternation, the engraver turned out to be his estranged son, Robert Havell Jr. The younger Havell, who was thirty-four, had lately been living away from London in order to pursue his artistic interests—contrary to his father's desire that he take up one of the professions. But in this moment, so the myth goes, Audubon brought father and son back together. Audubon asked them to try a sample plate, the prothonotary warbler. Two weeks later it was done, and Audubon, thinking it much better than Lizars's version, begged them to take over production of
The Birds of America
. The Havells agreed. Havell Senior would lead the coloring team, while Havell Junior and his assistants would do the engraving. Audubon danced a jig as the Havells congratulated each other on the launch of their new firm, Robert Havell & Son.

There's reason to doubt a lot of this.
The firm of Robert Havell & Son was listed in the London business directory as early as 1823. If father and son had been apart, it seems they might have reconciled before Audubon came on the scene.
Similarly, there's no evidence that a copper engraving of the prothonotary warbler was produced by the Havells, since the only one ever used in making any of the prints was the one engraved by Lizars. It is improbable that Audubon would not have insisted on using the better of the two engravings if such a thing existed.

However this meeting between the Havells and Audubon unfolded, Audubon soon enough decided to abandon Lizars. Had the only issue been the colorists in Edinburgh, Audubon might have stayed with Lizars, to whom he owed almost all of his recent good fortune. But the Havells offered additional advantages.
Because Havell Junior would have help with the aquatints, he could complete the engravings faster than Lizars, perhaps saving Audubon several years in production.
The Havells also had more ready access to paper and coppers, which Lizars had to order from London.
Amazingly, the Havells sweetened the deal by undercutting Lizars's price by about 25 percent. Audubon could not pass on the opportunity. The Havells could produce
The Birds of America
faster, better, and cheaper.
In early August he wrote to Lucy, telling her he had retrieved the copper plates from Lizars. The Havells had commenced the completion of the second Number and would soon begin the third. Not satisfied with the condition of all the plates from Edinburgh, the Havells eventually added aquatint retouches to several of Lizars's plates.

Audubon now told Lucy he imagined he would have to remain in England “as long as I will have Drawings to keep my work going on.” He estimated five more years, at least. This was yet another wrinkle in his thinking, which to Lucy seemed to change from one letter to the next. Was Audubon saying that he anticipated returning to America at some point to paint more birds? One thing he was saying quite clearly was that the time when Lucy could join him continued to move further into the future. Now he told her—pretty unconvincingly—that if he were “substantially settled” by January he would then send for her. But he added that London was very expensive.

Audubon was also increasingly concerned about the supervision of his sons. Victor, still working as a clerk in Shippingport, didn't bother to answer his father's letters. Or maybe he didn't even get them. Who could be sure? Audubon continued to envision his elder son—Victor was now eighteen—as a partner in the business end of
The Birds of America
.
Meanwhile, he repeatedly insisted that Lucy make sure John Woodhouse, who was not yet fifteen, practiced his drawing and his violin. Audubon was awed by the educated manners and social graces he saw all around him in England, and he dreamed of his boys' talents flourishing there someday.
Early that fall, Audubon wrote to Victor and said that once Lucy and John Woodhouse had come to England and were comfortably settled there he
would send for him, too—just as soon as he had another one hundred subscribers. Audubon said he thought he could help Victor find a position in a countinghouse in Liverpool. In a fatherly gesture, he sent along a little five-hole flute.