Audubon, Bachman, and the quadrupeds of North America - John James Audubon and the Reverend John Bachman, environmentalists

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2000 by ROBERT McCRACKEN PECK

They were the most unlikely friends: the hard-living, hard-drinking bastard of a French sea captain and the quiet, teetotaling pastor of a conservative Lutheran Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Yet John James Audubon (Pl. I) and the Reverend John Bachman (Pl. III) were united by a passion for natural history that overrode their differences and resulted in one of the great scientific and artistic achievements of the nineteenth century. Their collaborative book, The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America, published in three imperial volumes (without text) between 1845 and 1848, and in an octavo edition (with text) between 1851 and 1854, featured 150 and 155 hand-colored lithographs, respectively, that at their best matched the scientific accuracy and visual strength of Audubon's more famous Birds of America (1827-1838).

The two men first met by chance when Audubon made a research and bookselling trip to Charleston in 1831. Hearing of his need for accommodations, Bachman invited Audubon to stay at his house for as long as he wished to study the birds of the region. What started as a courteous gesture of hospitality led to a lifelong friendship and the permanent interweaving of the two men's lives. When they were introduced by a mutual friend on Pinckney Street on a warm October day neither could have foreseen that within less than a decade they would be partners in a major publishing venture and that Audubon's two sons, Victor Gifford and John Woodhouse, would be married to Bachman's daughters Mary Eliza (1818-1841) and Maria Rebecca (1817-1840). [1]

When Audubon's many years of exhausting work on The Birds of America and Ornithological Biography (the multivolume text that accompanied it) came to a close in 1839, his wife, Lucy Bakewell Audubon (1788-1874), and others urged him to rest. But the energetic Audubon was eager to challenge his artistic skills, further bolster his reputation as a naturalist, and help ensure the financial security of his family. Having already achieved international renown for his work in ornithology, he decided to create what he hoped would be the definitive book on North American mammals. "I know a good deal about our Quadrupeds and have many valuable notes about them in my various journals," he wrote to a friend in 1839.

I think that the work will do well in America and perhaps tolerably well too in Europe as nothing worth looking at exists at present, and I prefer doing something new rather than tread in old shoes upon people's heels! [2]

The paucity and poor quality of America's zoological literature at the time he embarked on his project encouraged Audubon to think that he could easily enter and dominate the field with his proposed book. [3] Bachman had no such illusions. He appreciated Audubon's formidable abilities as a naturalist and artist, but he cautioned

The animals are not numerous but they have never been carefully described & you will find difficulty at every step. The [existing] books cannot aid you much. Long journeys will have to be undertaken--several species remain to be added-their habitats ascertained. [4]

Mammals, Bachman reminded Audubon, are for the most part "nocturnal and living in concealment land] not so easily obtained as birds." [5] "Don't flatter yourself that this book is child's play" he wrote, "the birds are a mere trifle compared to this." [6]

Although reluctant to acknowledge that he might need assistance with his book, Audubon was ultimately convinced by Bachman that if the book were to have academic depth, it would require the kind of detailed research that Audubon had neither the time nor the inclination to undertake. After pointed comments from Bachman, such as "You cannot do without me in this business," [7] Audubon invited the clergyman to be his coauthor: In 1840 Audubon wrote to his new partner:

I believe that such a publication will be fraught with difficulties innumerable, but I trust not insurmountable, provided we join our names together, and you push your able and broad shoulders to the wheel. I promise to you that I will give the very best figures of all our quadrupeds that ever have been thought of or expected, and that you and I can relate the greatest amount of truths that to this time has appeared connected with their dark and hitherto misunderstood histories! [8]

The overly academic title chosen for the book was probably intended to give it credibility in the scientific community. The viviparous quadrupeds--literally means four-footed mammals bearing living offspring. [9]

Despite occasional friction, the collaboration between the two men was remarkably successful, for each brought something to the project that the other could not have provided. It was agreed from the start that Audubon would create the illustrations, find the subscribers, assume the publishing costs, manage the project, and reap what profit and glory the enterprise might bring. Bachman, the academic, would work in the background, incorporating Audubon's lively anecdotes and his own meticulous research into a scientific text that would be both "original & creditable."[10]