Birder's Bookshelf 1: Joseph Kastner, "A Species of Eternity"

With this post I begin a series of reviews--though perhaps "discussions" would be a more apt term--of books from my personal library, books that I have found to be particularly influential, useful, or simply interesting. Don't look here for reviews of the latest and greatest new field guides, though that might happen at some point. Most of the works that I will be writing about will either be old, out-of-print books about birds (mostly), or newer ones that deal in some way with the history of ornithology, bird painting, and of humans' relationship with birds. I begin with a book not specifically about birds, but one that had an enormous impact on me when I read it (c. 1982). I will follow up this post with a look at a related work (that is just on birds) by the same author, Joseph Kastner, a long-time writer and editor at Life magazine. Both Kastner books played a big role in sparking the interest that led to the acquisition of many of the other books that I will be writing about.
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Joseph Kastner. A Species of Eternity. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.

It would be overly dramatic, but not entirely inaccurate, to say that this book changed the course of my life. It certainly sent me down paths that I had not previously traveled and started me on a journey that continues today, more than thirty years after I read it.

Kastner's book is a chronicle of the lives, work, and adventures of the men--and they were all men--from the Colonial Era to roughly the middle of the 19th century who laid the groundwork for the study of natural history in North America. It was a colorful cast of characters -- some rich, some poor; some with extensive formal education, others entirely self-taught; some eccentric and flamboyant, some staid and introverted; some working within the structure of an institution, others pursing their interests on their own. All were blessed (cursed?) with passionate curiosity about the natural world and had the drive to probe its mysteries.

Painter and ornithologist John James Audubon is the only one among them whose name is likely to be familiar to most people today, but the cohort included many others: Mark Catesby, an Englishman who made some of the earliest depictions of American flora and fauna; the Bartrams, John and William, a father-and-son pair known best for their contributions to the study of botany; Charles Willson Peale, painter, naturalist, and father not only to one of the first museums in America but also to a large family that included several more painters and naturalists; Alexander Wilson, a Scottish immigrant who is regarded as "the father of American ornithology" and whose own monumental collection of bird paintings preceded Audubon's by just a few years but has been forever overshadowed by it; and on and on. Their stories are invariably fascinating and Kastner relates them in engaging, eminently readable prose.

As noted in an earlier post, my own interest in the natural world extends back to my childhood growing up on a farm. Even as a youngster I had often wondered about how the plants and animals that I saw around me, and read about in guide books, had come to be named, and who had first identified them. A Species of Eternity opened the door to the world and work of those who began the task of making sense of the complexities of the natural world, those who charted the previously uncharted. How strange and wonderful and overwhelming it must have been to live at a time when so much about the world around us was unknown, when there were no books to tell people what they were seeing.

As eye-opening and fascinating as it was to read about the adventures and contributions of Catesby, Alexander Garden, Cadwallader Colden, Constantine Rafinesque, et al, what really hooked me in to wanting to find out more about some of these characters was learning that both Alexander Wilson and John James Audubon were musicians! Aha -- a link between the two worlds that I love the most! Sweet.

Audubon played fiddle and flute, and also worked as a dancing master for a time before he began work on Birds of America, his magnum opus. Through subsequent reading of his published journals I learned that he often played with local musicians on his travels--which encompassed a huge swath of territory, from New Orleans to Labrador. We know less about Wilson's musical activities. Kastner quotes a letter Wilson wrote to William Bartram in 1803 in which he says: "I have had many pursuits, Mathematics, the German language, music, drawing, etc..." (p. 163). Audubon himself gives us a glimpse into Wilson as a musician. The two men met only one time during their lives, in 1807 when the Scotsman happened to stop into the store near Louisville, Kentucky, that Audubon ran for a time. Audubon wrote of Wilson: "His retired habits exhibited a strong discontent or a decided melancholy," and further, "The Scotch airs that he played sweetly on his flute made me melancholy too." (p. 178). I will write more about both Audubon and Wilson, and what is known of their musical activities, in future posts.

The door that Joseph Kastner opened for me with A Species of Eternity has never closed. In the three decades since reading it I have continued my explorations into the history of natural history (as it were), with a focus on the development of ornithology and the activity of bird-watching. A second book by Kastner, A World of Watchers, that deals specifically with the history of (as the jacket blurb puts it) the "history of the American passion for birds," fed this interest. It introduced me to the literature of many early writers about birds and, as noted earlier, was in large measure responsible for me seeking out and acquiring many of the well-worn volumes that crowd the bookshelves in our living room. It, and the books it inspired me to collect, will be the subjects of future posts.