Danny Heitman - A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House (The Hill Collection)

A Summer of Birds

The Hill Collection

Holdings of the LSU Libraries

A Summer of Birds

John James Audubon at Oakley House

Danny Heitman

WITH A NEW PREFACE BY THE AUTHOR

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS BATON ROUGE

Published by Louisiana State University Press

Copyright 2008 by Louisiana State University Press

Preface copyright 2020 by Louisiana State University Press

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Louisiana Paperback Edition, 2020

designer: Amanda McDonald Scallan

typeface : Warnock Pro

printer and binder: Sheridan Books

Frontispiece portrait of John J. Audubon is by Jules Lion, lithograph, 1860. Collection of the Louisiana State Museum, loan of T. P. Thompson.

Illustrations from Audubons Birds of America are reproduced
courtesy of Special Collections, LSU Libraries.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Heitman, Danny, 1964 author.

Title: A summer of birds : John James Audubon at Oakley House / with a new preface by the author Danny Heitman.

Other titles: Hill collection.

Description: Louisiana paperback edition. | Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 2020. | Series: Hill collection | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019041544 (print) | LCCN 2019041545 (ebook) | ISBN 978-0-8071-7293-3 (paperback) | ISBN 978-0-8071-7368-8 (pdf) | ISBN 978-0-8071-7369-5 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Audubon, John James, 17851851Homes and hauntsLouisianaOakley Plantation. | OrnithologistsUnited StatesBiography. | Animal paintersUnited StatesBiography. | BirdsLouisianaOakley Plantation. | Oakley Plantation (La.)History19th century.

Classification: LCC QL31.A9 H35 2020 (print) | LCC QL31.A9 (ebook) | DDC 598.092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041544

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019041545

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

For my family

A place that ever was lived in is like a fire that never goes out. It flares up, it smolders for a time, it is fanned or smothered by circumstance, but its being is intact, forever fluttering within it, the result of some original ignition. Sometimes it gives out glory, sometimes its little light must be sought out to be seen, small and tender as a candle flame, but as certain.

EUDORA WELTY

Some Notes on River Country

Contents

Illustrations

Following page74

Preface to the Paperback Edition

When I began following John James Audubon in 2006, I didnt realize how long he would follow me. All these years later, Audubon continues to be a regular part of my life, thanks to a 2008 LSU Presspublished book I wrote about the worlds most famous bird artist: A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House .

Audubon (17851851) was depressed, destitute, and down on his luck when he came to Louisiana in 1821 to gather material for The Birds of America, his ambitious pictorial survey of the nations ornithological life. He had been an artist by avocation and a dry goods merchant by profession, and the failure of his Kentucky store and mill operation in 1819 had persuaded him to pursue art full-time.

New Orleans, then one of the wealthiest and most cultured cities in America, seemed like a good place to find patrons. Audubon hoped to hire himself out as a portrait painter and find a little time for his bird project, too. Things did not go well at first, and Audubon was about to give up when he was hired as a tutor at Oakley Plantation in nearby St. Francisville. Audubons summer at Oakley changed his life, enabling him to express a genius we now celebrate.

I thought the story of that season might make a small book, and LSU Press agreed. I researched the story in 2006, completed a manuscript in 2007, and saw it released in 2008. In my primary work as a journalist, I handle a dozen topics a week, quickly tucking them away before moving on to something else. I assumed that Audubons presence in my life would be temporary, too, soon evaporating after the book was published.

But Ive been surprisedand delightedto discover how many people are interested in Audubon. Invitations to speak about him came from all over, including a request that I lecture at a sprawling wildlife refuge outside of Vicksburg, Mississippi. It rained buckets that day, flooding the road into the refuge and forcing me to enter from atop a levee crowded by grazing cows. They were in no mood to stop their lunch and allow me passage, and as I honked the horn to nudge them along, it occurred to me that this was not the book tour I expected.

Other adventures ensued. In 2009, Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB) produced a documentary version of my book, and the film featured some historical reenactments, including a scene where Audubon visits the deathbed of an Oakley neighbor. When no actor could be found to play the corpse, I was dressed in period garb and pressed into actionor, I should say, nonaction. After a lengthy recline with my eyes closed, I almost started snoring, a problem in convincingly playing a dead man.

LPBs production, steered to completion by gifted filmmaker Christina Melton, aired statewide and in many other places across the country. It is still rebroadcast in Louisiana and elsewhere, leading to interesting emails from viewers.

A Summer of Birds opened other doors. I attended two National Endowment for the Humanities symposiums aimed at teaching elementary and high school teachers how to use Audubons writing, art, and scientific observations across the school curriculum. At one of the symposium sessions at Indiana University in Bloomington, participants from around the United States watched the Summer of Birds documentary, their jaws dropping in wonder at the beauty of Louisiana. Sitting in the back and seeing their reaction, I felt my eyes well with tears of pride for my home statea place that Audubon called his favorite state in the nation.

Other filmmakers called and asked me to participate in Audubon projects, including the late Al Reinert, the man behind the lovely 2014 documentary Rara Avis: John James Audubon and the Birds of America. At this writing, a French documentary about Audubons time in America is in the works, and Oakley is expected to feature in it.

A Wall Street Journal editor read my book and noticed its mention of Audubon Day at LSUs Hill Memorial Library, an annual affair in which patrons get to see the librarys vintage Birds of America volumes, a priceless treasure, turned page by page. Intrigued, he dispatched the inimitable arts writer Willard Spiegelman to cover the event, throwing a national spotlight on a program that underscores the abiding appeal of Audubons art.

In the years since A Summer of Birds appeared, Ive received dozens of Audubon-related writing assignments because of my modest profile as a student of his work. One Thanksgiving, for example, the Wall Street Journal asked me to write an essay on Audubons painting of the wild turkey. Ive done a magazine piece about Audubons prose style, penned reviews of many Audubon books, and published a number of op-eds about what Audubon can teach us today. Ive probably written more about Audubon outside this volume than within its pagessomething that has very little to do with my own skills as a writer, and everything to do with the eternal draw of Audubon as a subject. People cannot seem to get enough of him.