By the summer of 1826, Lucy and John James Audubon had saved enough money to pay for Audubon to cross the Atlantic Ocean from New Orleans to Liverpool. Once in England, it was hoped that Audubon would succeed in finding a publisher for Birds of America. After disembarking from the Delos on the morning of June 21, Audubon had no difficulty attracting glances and raising eyebrows keeping his shoulder length hair combed down with bear grease, having on a black wolfskin coat and buckskin pantaloons, and carrying on his back his 100-pound “Folio Book.”
Among the most important letters of introduction that Audubon had been able to attain for his voyage to England was for Richard Rathbone. Richard and his older brother William operated in partnership a successful merchant business. The wife of Richard Rathbone was named Hannah. In 1844, Hannah Rathbone published anonymously The Diary of Lady Willoughby. The drawings that Audubon showed to Richard and Hannah Rathbone inspired them to organize a viewing at their family estate called Green Bank about three miles east of Liverpool. Among those who were invited were Basil Hall (1788-1844), Dr. Thomas Stewart Traill (1781-1862), William Roscoe (1753-1831), and other members of the Rathbone family. The gathering at Green Bank gave Audubon and his work the limelight that he and his wife, Lucy, had worked for years to gain.
On August 1, 1826, Richard Rathbone and Thomas Traill organized a three-day exhibition of the drawings of John James Audubon at the Royal Institute on Colquitt St. in Liverpool, England. The charge to meet the American frontiersman and view his drawings was one schilling. Audubon wrote his brother-in-law, Nicholas Berthoud, on Aug. 7, “413 persons entered the hall in two hours. And I had to stand on view and listen to the plaudits of each individual.”
During his one expedition into the far western United States, Audubon documented for science a new species that he discovered “in the skirts of the woods along the prairie lands of the Arkansas river.” Audubon named the bird in honor of Dr. Thomas Stewart Traill. The bird is known today as the Willow flycatcher (Empidonax traillii).