0:00

This is the Memory Palace. I'm

0:02

Nate DeMeo. This

0:05

specimen was approximately 1.8 meters tall,

0:08

weighing roughly 72 kilos. Hair

0:10

was thick and brown in color at the time of

0:12

observation, July of 1817, in a

0:16

field of marsh grass located north northeast

0:18

of Louisville, Kentucky. The specimen

0:20

demonstrated keen eyesight and the capacity

0:23

to move swiftly while maintaining a quiet,

0:25

stealthy bearing so as best to track

0:28

its prey.

0:29

Its vocalizations, while infrequent in

0:31

this environment, as again stealth was

0:33

a vital component in its hunting strategy,

0:36

was notable for its varied tone, pitch,

0:39

and volume, and for its French

0:42

accent, which was known

0:44

to make the ladies swoon.

0:47

So it was when the specimen, born

0:50

Jean-Jacques Adubon on a plantation

0:52

owned by his parents in Haiti in 1791, met Miss Lucy Bakewell

0:57

at her parents' estate in Pennsylvania.

1:00

He was 18, a year

1:02

her senior, and had emigrated

1:04

to the States the year before when

1:06

he changed his name to the more American-sounding

1:09

John James Audubon.

1:11

And Lucy Bakewell had never met anyone like

1:13

him before, with his long

1:15

flowing hair, with the accent, and

1:18

this fire, this thing

1:20

in his eyes. She certainly

1:23

hadn't seen that thing in the men in her own family,

1:26

not

1:26

in her stern patrician father, the

1:29

English gentleman who preached the virtues of discipline,

1:32

of a quiet home and quiet daughters, who

1:35

once caught Lucy and her sisters weeping over

1:37

the plight of doomed lovers in a romance novel,

1:41

and then tossed it in the fire.

1:46

This young visitor, this peculiar

1:49

boy with the hair and the eyes and the Frenchman's

1:51

charm, had life in him, the

1:54

kind that is undeniable, especially

1:57

when discovered by a 17 year old girl.

2:00

especially when all she knows of love is what

2:02

she had seen in her own home.

2:05

And maybe she was only 17. But

2:07

she was old enough to know how different that love

2:09

looked than what she'd seen in that novel

2:11

in the fire. Lucy

2:14

Bakewell had been told all her life what

2:17

sort of life she would lead as the daughter

2:19

of a Bakewell, as the wife of some

2:21

Bakewell-approved gentleman, as

2:23

the mother of some acceptable number of hyphenated

2:26

Bakewells. But

2:28

a life with this Audubon boy, who

2:31

knew where that would lead.

2:34

So she fell hard. He

2:36

did too. For his part, Audubon

2:38

would write in letters, would have shouted to the heavens

2:41

because he was a boy who would do things like shout

2:43

to the heavens, that he fell

2:45

in love with her in that first moment,

2:48

there in the living room of her parents' home, when

2:51

he

2:51

knew, as he wrote, that his

2:53

heart would follow every one of her footsteps.

2:57

Father wasn't happy. But

2:59

when was father ever happy? And

3:02

Lucy and John James were married. And

3:05

before long they were off to the wilds of Kentucky.

3:08

And living a life of adventure, as promised

3:10

by that thing in that boy's eyes. Lucy

3:13

was happy to learn in those first years that

3:16

John James was who he had seemed to be that day

3:18

in the living room. He was impulsive

3:21

and funny and bold, good

3:23

in bed, we read in their letters. He

3:26

loved dancing, he loved skating and

3:28

music and nature and noise. And

3:31

she loved him all the more for it. And

3:33

perhaps more than anything she learned. He

3:36

loved birds, would call out their

3:38

names, would watch them in the swinging treetops

3:40

for hours all day, would

3:43

stalk them and hunt them and

3:45

study the specimens he'd collect, and

3:47

then thread thin wire through their bodies, and

3:50

another through their tail feathers, and

3:52

another up through their heads. They'd

3:55

pin their bodies to a board just so, arranging

3:58

the spread of their wings. the delicate

4:00

lift of their beaks. And

4:03

he would draw them.

4:05

And the drawings, the drawings were phenomenal.

4:08

They just were. And

4:10

Lucy could judge. She was a bakewell,

4:12

raised to be a lady, had gone to fine

4:15

schools, had been to museums, had admired

4:17

paintings and prints, poured over pictures

4:19

in the fine volumes on the orderly shelves

4:22

in her family's exemplary library. There

4:25

was such life imbued

4:27

in these dead berets. And

4:29

they made her love him even more. And

4:33

that love was useful to fuel their lives through

4:35

hard times out in the frontier, in

4:37

lonely days when John James was on his own, or

4:40

rather out with his birds.

4:42

The couple ran a general store in Louisville.

4:45

It did fairly well for a while. And

4:47

one day a Scotsman, well-heeled

4:50

and high-collared, came in with something

4:52

to sell instead of something to buy. His

4:55

name was Alexander Wilson, and he was traveling

4:57

America. Creating an ornithology,

5:00

a comprehensive study of the new nation's birds.

5:04

It would Mr. Audubon like to take a look at samples

5:06

of the pictures of these birds Wilson had with

5:08

him in a portfolio,

5:10

and perhaps subscribed to the ornithology,

5:12

and received copies of the work upon its completion.

5:15

He had already sold many hundreds of dollars

5:17

worth of subscriptions.

5:21

Oh,

5:22

would he?

5:25

So here is Audubon, having

5:27

spent the past several years of

5:29

his life doing one very specific thing, and

5:31

into his general store, wanders

5:34

perhaps the only other man in North America

5:36

who had been doing that same thing. John's

5:40

eyes went wide. And

5:43

then he looked at the drawings, and went

5:45

wider still. He

5:47

declined to subscribe.

5:50

That night, John and Lucy must

5:52

have tittered like plovers. But

5:54

Wilson's work sucked,

5:58

like completely.

5:59

His drawings were cartoonish.

6:01

Even if you were just turning to it as a work of scientific

6:04

reference, the proportions were all wrong.

6:07

The colors, the lay of the feathers, the

6:09

shape of the claws were just wrong. In

6:12

autobons, autobons were

6:14

art. These weren't merely

6:16

specimens replicated for

6:18

study. These were creatures

6:20

reanimated, honored.

6:23

Moments in time not merely captured,

6:25

but created and perfected,

6:28

and populated with living things, bodies

6:31

with substance, with agency,

6:34

eyes with a keen intelligence that was their

6:36

own, that was avian. A creature

6:38

met on its own terms, with respect,

6:41

with wonder. That's what Lucy had seen

6:44

there on the page, there in

6:46

her husband. And she loved

6:49

her husband, and he loved her, make no

6:51

mistake. In reading their recollections

6:53

of this time in Kentucky, of young

6:55

people in a young country, skinny

6:58

dipping in the Ohio River, raising

7:00

young children, Lucy at home playing

7:02

her piano, John James and his element,

7:05

out with the birds, painting and dreaming.

7:08

You don't doubt for a moment that things were good

7:11

for a while. But

7:14

John James's business failed. Many

7:16

did then. The economy was bad for everyone.

7:19

But John James did his family no favors.

7:22

Bad move after bad move landed Audubon

7:25

in debtors prison, and then bankruptcy.

7:28

And they had to sell everything. The store,

7:31

their home, Lucy's piano.

7:33

It was terrible. And

7:35

their daughter, just two years old, died

7:37

shortly thereafter. Another

7:40

daughter died too, just

7:42

seven months old.

7:44

And they had nothing but their

7:46

two sons, and their grief, and

7:49

their love, and his

7:51

art. And they remembered

7:53

that day when the Scotsman came in with his birds

7:55

that were nothing like Audubon's, nothing like

7:57

Bird's, and remembered his book.

8:00

and that people had bought it despite that. And

8:03

they came up with a plan, a dream

8:05

really. John James would set

8:07

out to paint the birds of America, each

8:10

one. He would hunt them and pin

8:12

them and pose them and paint them, each

8:15

one life sized. In

8:17

a book unlike any the world had ever seen.

8:20

And he would return with riches, a

8:23

return on the investment of Lucy's devotion.

8:26

He would do that. And if she would just

8:28

keep faith in him. And

8:31

of course she could. This man had

8:33

this thing in his eyes, had

8:35

it still. John

8:37

James Audubon went off to paint his birds, down

8:40

to Louisiana. He took to the woods.

8:43

The couple wrote passionate letters back and forth

8:46

about how Lucy and the kids missed him but were making

8:48

do. Lucy worked as a tutor

8:50

in exchange for room and board in a wealthy

8:52

family's home. They had very little

8:54

but faith in John James's work. She

8:57

would tell him that.

8:58

How her faith in him kept her going.

9:02

How she'd be there for him until

9:04

they could be together.

9:06

Meanwhile, he was scraping by drawing chalk

9:08

portraits of wealthy men and women. He'd

9:10

write to Lucy of how his own faith was growing.

9:13

How his work was improving. He

9:15

wrote to her of his experiences out there on his

9:18

own and artists out in the world. About

9:20

a wealthy patroness who would invite him into her parlor

9:24

to paint her in the nude. And weren't

9:26

these experiences he was having just wonderful?

9:29

Still, Lucy supported him and

9:32

said she would wait for him and bear

9:34

the hardships of raising two boys on her

9:36

own with little more than a roof over their heads.

9:39

In on and on that went for years. He

9:42

writing to her about his adventures and his

9:44

art. And she writing to him

9:46

about her love. And

9:48

of unpaid bills. And a life

9:51

that no longer felt like the adventure promised in

9:53

that boy's eyes years before.

9:56

But much more lay ahead for John James.

9:59

In his adventures.

9:59

took him to England, to Liverpool, where

10:02

people took one look at this man with his long

10:04

hair, his frontiersman's clothes

10:06

and this thing in his eyes, and were smitten

10:09

in their way. Within weeks of arriving

10:11

in a new nation with no contacts, no

10:14

introductions, he was showing in

10:16

the biggest gallery in town. He was being

10:18

whined and dined and introduced to

10:20

engravers and investors. Within

10:23

months it was clear that the whole plan was going

10:25

to pay off, that the dream was going

10:27

to come true. He would write to

10:29

Lucy

10:29

about his extraordinary success. He'd

10:32

sent copies of invitations he'd received

10:34

to fabulous parties. He'd

10:36

say he couldn't wait for her to join him there. And

10:39

she'd write back of her pleasure and his success,

10:42

and how she just needed to tie

10:43

up a few loose ends at home, collect

10:46

a few debts owed to her from her music students

10:48

so she could pay her way to England.

10:51

And he'd write back and it seemed like he didn't

10:53

want her there at all. No

10:56

explanation, just that now wasn't

10:58

the right time. But

11:00

oh, he had to tell her about

11:01

the lords and the ladies, and

11:03

how into him they all were. How he

11:05

was wearing silk stockings and shaving every

11:08

morning and looking good and she

11:10

would wait for a letter. Wait

11:13

for months. Just

11:15

what did he mean now wasn't the right time. Why

11:18

wouldn't it be the right time to be together? When

11:21

would it be the right time if not this? And

11:24

back and forth they went, she increasingly

11:26

frustrated. He increasingly

11:29

increasing in wealth and

11:32

fame and ego. But

11:36

also in worry.

11:38

Worry that he had pushed Lucy too

11:40

far, that he had stretched her

11:42

patience too thin, had tested

11:44

her faith one time too many.

11:47

He instructed his engraver to leave his

11:49

signature off one of his prints, to

11:51

put Lucy's name there instead, as

11:54

a sign that the art wouldn't exist without

11:56

her, that he wouldn't be who he was

11:58

without her.

11:59

But he still seemed to be in no rush to be

12:02

with her, as Lucy would point

12:04

out in her letters back, objecting

12:06

to his plan to take another 16 years to

12:08

finish Birds of America, objecting

12:11

to his condescension. For how

12:13

must it have felt for Lucy to

12:15

know that the world was seeing in your partner

12:18

what you had seen in those very first moments

12:20

in your father's parlor long ago, and

12:22

be stuck as a border in a Louisiana

12:25

backwater,

12:26

parsing out meaning from missives sent

12:28

months before?

12:30

John James Audubon wondered the same

12:32

thing. At 41

12:35

years old, having sold

12:37

thousands upon thousands of dollars in pictures

12:39

of birds, to libraries and

12:41

lords and ladies, and the king

12:44

and queen of England themselves, he

12:46

had seen his dreams realized, but

12:49

realized he was about to lose his wife. So

12:53

he rushed home, in so

12:55

much as a trip across an ocean, across

12:57

the thousand miles of wilderness, down the Ohio

12:59

River, down the Mississippi River, through

13:02

the Louisiana bayou, can

13:04

be considered rushing. But

13:07

the last bit, the last bit

13:09

was

13:09

rushing flat out, on a borrowed

13:11

horse, to his wife's barroom,

13:15

where he found her teaching piano, and

13:18

called out her name from the doorway, and

13:20

they fell into each other's arms, and

13:23

vowed never to be apart again. And

13:29

that, for the most part, turned

13:31

out to be so. She

13:33

traveled with him to England and back again, resuming

13:36

the life of adventure promised those years ago,

13:40

the life that Lucy had to put on pause, while

13:42

John James lived his. But

13:46

their shared adventure didn't last much longer, first

13:50

as eyesight went. And

13:52

he couldn't draw anymore, but worse,

13:55

his mind went too, and his

13:57

memory, some form of. dementia,

14:01

Alzheimer's, people think now. That

14:04

thing in his eyes, that fire,

14:07

that life, was

14:09

gone years before he died, one morning

14:12

in New York, on his way out

14:14

to look for birds. Lucy

14:17

lived without him for 21 years, 21 more years. In

14:22

those 21 years she taught, one

14:24

of her sons lost all their money, the

14:27

other son was in a accident, and she

14:29

spent three years by his side until he died. She

14:32

sold John James' paintings, she

14:35

had to, in the plates from which

14:37

they printed the Birds of America. The

14:40

word people use when speaking of Lucy Bakewell

14:42

Audubon in these last years before her death

14:45

is destitute. And

14:47

that word seems fair. She

14:50

died at 87 years old, in

14:52

a bed in the home of her brother, on

14:55

a June day in 1874.

14:57

Perhaps not the worst place to end a life, but

15:01

a hard place to end a story. So

15:06

let's take Lucy Bakewell and

15:09

John James Audubon

15:12

and reposition them, and

15:14

lift their chins just so. Let's

15:18

strip away the background, the

15:20

bedroom in their brother's home. Let's

15:24

choose a setting from another time, before

15:27

the hardship, and the Alzheimer's,

15:31

and the broken promises. And

15:34

let's place them in a wagon, heading

15:37

west toward the frontier, toward

15:39

the unknown, Lucy's

15:42

father's home receding in the distance. A

15:45

young couple, newly married, in

15:48

a new nation, with

15:51

a smile on her face, and

15:53

this thing in his eyes.

16:30

This

16:56

episode was originally released

16:58

in 2015. It's produced

17:00

by me. The show currently gets

17:03

research systems from Eliza McGraw. It

17:05

is a proud member of Radiotopia, a network

17:09

of

17:10

individually owned and operated independent

17:12

podcasts from PRX, a not-for-profit

17:15

public media company. I

17:17

was hoping to have a new episode done.

17:20

In fact, I was getting really close to

17:23

a new episode and then I contracted

17:25

COVID. And I don't have

17:27

it in me this week. So

17:30

I really like that one and you'll

17:32

have a new episode before too long. Thanks for hanging

17:35

in with me. I am doing fine. COVID

17:38

is weird and I'm sure I'll

17:40

be well fine. I'm sure I'll

17:42

be well soon. See? COVID brand. Anyway,

17:45

I hope you're enjoying your summer

17:48

and new episodes are coming right down

17:50

the pike.

17:50

Thanks for your patience. Take

17:53

care.

18:30

you you

19:30

you you

20:30

you you

21:30

you