Free The Duchess Who Wouldn't Sit Down by Jesse Browner Page A

could not help but laugh out loud at his "ridiculous exhibition." He also lied
     outright to the exhausted Rafinesque by assuring him that their worst difficulties were nearly over, knowing full well that
     they still had miles to go. "I kept my companion in such constant difficulties, that he now panted, perspired, and seemed
     almost overcome by fatigue . . . I kept him tumbling and crawling on his hands and knees." Audubon secretly exulted when they
     were drenched in a downpour; Rafinesque had apparently left his umbrella in Henderson. In an effort to lighten his load, the
     naturalist abandoned all of the valuable plant specimens he had collected along the way. They eventually emerged onto the
     riverbank and were ferried back to town.
    Rafinesque remained with the Audubons for a full three weeks, "but never again expressed a desire of visiting a cane-brake."
     Then one night he disappeared. He was sought high and low, to no avail, and the Audubons feared the worst. His evaporation
     remained a mystery for several weeks until the Audubons received a thank-you note from him, presumably sent from Lexington.
    Some thirteen years after the encounter, Audubon included a six-page account of this visit in the first volume of his Ornithological Biography, the textual accompaniment to his Birds of America. By the time of its publication, Audubon was well established on the path that was to lead to international fame, while Rafinesque
     was already deep into his professional decline, having been hounded in the most humiliating fashion from his post at Transylvania
     University in 1826. "The Eccentric Naturalist" is written in such a way as to shed the utmost possible ridicule on its subject,
     quite cruelly in view of the broad professional readership that Audubon could anticipate. Although he disguises Rafinesque
     under the pseudonym "M. de T.," no one was fooled. Everyone was able to recognize, in the words of one anonymous observer,
     the "genius with many peculiarities and not much dignity." Oddly enough, Rafinesque praised "The Eccentric Naturalist" when
     it was published, calling Audubon "my friend," but by that time he was probably grateful for recognition of any sort.
    If so, he was almost certainly unaware of the even greater injustice Audubon, in his role as trusted host and intellectual
     peer, had inflicted on him thirteen years earlier. Audubon makes no mention of the prank in "The Eccentric Naturalist" and
     seems, presumably for shame, to have shared it with very few. It only came to light some fifty-five years later, retailed
     by David Starr Jordan in a paper read before the Indiana Academy of Sciences on December 30, 1885, and subsequently published
     in The Popular Science Monthly. Jordan had received the story from one Dr. Kirtland, who had heard it directly from John Bachman, Audubon's great friend whose
     daughters were married to Audubon's sons.
    When Audubon claims in "The Eccentric Naturalist" that "M. de T. although a highly scientific man, was suspicious to a fault,
     and believed such plants only to exist as he had himself seen," he was being entirely disingenuous. In fact, he was concealing
     the trail of a miserable fraud that he himself had perpetrated. It seems that, during the course of Rafinesque's stay in Henderson,
     Audubon had given him some ten drawings of fantastic and imaginary fish that he claimed to have personally observed in the
     Ohio. Although these creatures are entirely implausible, Rafinesque - ever in thrall to his impatience, excitability, and
     childlike enthusiasms - fell for them hook, line, and sinker, as Audubon must have known he would.
    Even if it had gone no further, it would have been a cruel enough trick to play on anyone who was such an easy mark and so
     far out of his element. But it did go further. Rafinesque subsequently named and published these findings in his Ichthyologia Ohiensis, declaring the discovery of such new genera as Pogostoma, Aplocentrus,