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Authors: Jesse Browner
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believe that hospitality arose as an adjunct to long-distance trade. Long before xenia even, Mesopotamian traveling merchants were compelled to rely on strangers for shelter in a world without hotels. Brillat-Savarin
claimed that hospitality began as protection for travelers who brought news from other lands, a sort of primordial diplomatic
immunity. However it may have begun, reliance on strangers for hospitality was ubiquitous in ancient and medieval Europe.
It was also a prominent feature of life on the American frontier - such as Henderson, Kentucky, in 1818 - where white settlements
were few and far between, inns and other amenities scarce, and currency either unavailable or unreliable as a means of exchange.
You had little choice: if you were planning to travel west, beyond the States, you had better line up your letters of introduction
well in advance, because you were going to be sleeping in the homes of strangers. You would need to feel comfortable that
you could trust them, as they would you.
The traveler in yellow and the grocer had much in common, though they didn't know it. Both were native French speakers, the
sons of successful merchants, who had fled to the United States in their youth to escape being drafted into Napoleon's armies.
Both had arrived in calamitous circumstances - the traveler in a near fatal shipwreck, the grocer with a near fatal case of
yellow fever. Neither had a formal higher education. Both had spent arduous years of wilderness trekking throughout the vast
country. Both were ambitious and driven men, yet neither was able to make any sort of a living at his chosen calling. Both
were considered to be exceedingly unconventional by those who knew them, and both were naturalists. The grocer was John James
Audubon, who twenty years later was to be the most celebrated artist and ornithologist in the New World. The traveler was
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz, a prolific autodidact with a modest but growing reputation as a discoverer of new
species, who twenty-two years later would die alone, penniless, and unmourned in a garret on Race Street in Philadelphia.
Their encounter in Henderson was, in some measure, to contribute to the fates of both.
Whatever Audubon and Rafinesque had in common was essentially superficial, but their differences were critical. Whereas Audubon
was consistently characterized as "simple" (in the sense of unaffected), Rafinesque could never shake "eccentric." Audubon
was charming, handsome, and well-groomed, a born storyteller and talented musician at a time when and in a place where home
entertainment was pretty much the only entertainment. Although the next few years were to prove extremely difficult for him
following a painful bankruptcy, he was always able to get what he needed out of people, especially women. He had a devoted
and doting family willing to put up with years of absence and penury for the sake of his professional advancement.
Rafinesque, on the other hand, was perennially unkempt, physically unimposing, socially awkward, absentminded, and the object
of some ridicule and contempt among his peers. In the 1890s, Richard Ellsworth Call interviewed several people who had known
him in their youth: "Careless of his style of dressing, indeed, his clothes never fitted him and appeared to have been made
for some one e l s e . . . an eccentric man"; "a man of peculiar habits and . . . very eccentric"; "He was a stranger . .
. all the young people made jokes at his expense . . . he knew none of the arts that make a man popular"; "A small, peculiar
looking Italian . . . very scientific, absorbed in his books and his bugs, his researches and his writings . . . an innocent,
inoffensive sort of man."
Naturalism in the United States was then in its infancy and anyone who wanted to make a name for himself in the field had
to be ready to head into the wilderness to seek new species. He also had to be able to
claimed that hospitality began as protection for travelers who brought news from other lands, a sort of primordial diplomatic
immunity. However it may have begun, reliance on strangers for hospitality was ubiquitous in ancient and medieval Europe.
It was also a prominent feature of life on the American frontier - such as Henderson, Kentucky, in 1818 - where white settlements
were few and far between, inns and other amenities scarce, and currency either unavailable or unreliable as a means of exchange.
You had little choice: if you were planning to travel west, beyond the States, you had better line up your letters of introduction
well in advance, because you were going to be sleeping in the homes of strangers. You would need to feel comfortable that
you could trust them, as they would you.
The traveler in yellow and the grocer had much in common, though they didn't know it. Both were native French speakers, the
sons of successful merchants, who had fled to the United States in their youth to escape being drafted into Napoleon's armies.
Both had arrived in calamitous circumstances - the traveler in a near fatal shipwreck, the grocer with a near fatal case of
yellow fever. Neither had a formal higher education. Both had spent arduous years of wilderness trekking throughout the vast
country. Both were ambitious and driven men, yet neither was able to make any sort of a living at his chosen calling. Both
were considered to be exceedingly unconventional by those who knew them, and both were naturalists. The grocer was John James
Audubon, who twenty years later was to be the most celebrated artist and ornithologist in the New World. The traveler was
Constantine Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz, a prolific autodidact with a modest but growing reputation as a discoverer of new
species, who twenty-two years later would die alone, penniless, and unmourned in a garret on Race Street in Philadelphia.
Their encounter in Henderson was, in some measure, to contribute to the fates of both.
Whatever Audubon and Rafinesque had in common was essentially superficial, but their differences were critical. Whereas Audubon
was consistently characterized as "simple" (in the sense of unaffected), Rafinesque could never shake "eccentric." Audubon
was charming, handsome, and well-groomed, a born storyteller and talented musician at a time when and in a place where home
entertainment was pretty much the only entertainment. Although the next few years were to prove extremely difficult for him
following a painful bankruptcy, he was always able to get what he needed out of people, especially women. He had a devoted
and doting family willing to put up with years of absence and penury for the sake of his professional advancement.
Rafinesque, on the other hand, was perennially unkempt, physically unimposing, socially awkward, absentminded, and the object
of some ridicule and contempt among his peers. In the 1890s, Richard Ellsworth Call interviewed several people who had known
him in their youth: "Careless of his style of dressing, indeed, his clothes never fitted him and appeared to have been made
for some one e l s e . . . an eccentric man"; "a man of peculiar habits and . . . very eccentric"; "He was a stranger . .
. all the young people made jokes at his expense . . . he knew none of the arts that make a man popular"; "A small, peculiar
looking Italian . . . very scientific, absorbed in his books and his bugs, his researches and his writings . . . an innocent,
inoffensive sort of man."
Naturalism in the United States was then in its infancy and anyone who wanted to make a name for himself in the field had
to be ready to head into the wilderness to seek new species. He also had to be able to
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