John James Audubon | Page 3

live on the Audubon estate at Aux Cayes, when
her child was but a few months old. Audubon says that his father with
his plate and money and himself, attended by a few faithful servants,
escaped to New Orleans. What became of his sister he does not say,
though she must have escaped with them, since we hear of her
existence years later. Not long after, how long we do not know, the
father returned to France, where he married a second time, giving the
son, as he himself says, the only mother he ever knew. This woman
proved a rare exception among stepmothers--but she was too indulgent,
and, Audubon says, completely spoiled him, bringing him up to live
like a gentleman, ignoring his faults and boasting of his merits, and

leading him to believe that fine clothes and a full pocket were the most
desirable things in life.
This she was able to do all the more effectively because the father soon
left the son in her charge and returned to the United States in the
employ of the French government, and before long became attached to
the army under La Fayette. This could not have been later than 1781,
the year of Cornwallis' surrender, and Audubon would then have been
twenty-one, but this does not square with his own statements. After the
war the father still served some years in the French navy, but finally
retired from active service and lived at La Gerbétière in France, where
he died at the age of ninety-five, in 1818.
Audubon says of his mother: "Let no one speak of her as my
step-mother. I was ever to her as a son of her own flesh and blood and
she was to me a true mother." With her he lived in the city of Nantes,
France, where he appears to have gone to school. It was, however, only
from his private tutors that he says he got any benefit. His father
desired him to follow in his footsteps, and he was educated accordingly,
studying drawing, geography, mathematics, fencing, and music.
Mathematics he found hard dull work, as have so many men of like
temperament, before and since, but music and fencing and geography
were more to his liking. He was an ardent, imaginative youth, and
chafed under all drudgery and routine. His foster-mother, in the
absence of his father, suffered him to do much as he pleased, and he
pleased to "play hookey" most of the time, joining boys of his own age
and disposition, and deserting the school for the fields and woods,
hunting birds' nests, fishing and shooting and returning home at night
with his basket filled with various natural specimens and curiosities.
The collecting fever is not a bad one to take possession of boys at this
age.
In his autobiography Audubon relates an incident that occurred when
he was a child, which he thinks first kindled his love for birds. It was
an encounter between a pet parrot and a tame monkey kept by his
mother. One morning the parrot, Mignonne, asked as usual for her
breakfast of bread and milk, whereupon the monkey, being in a bad
humour, attacked the poor defenceless bird, and killed it. Audubon
screamed at the cruel sight, and implored the servant to interfere and
save the bird, but without avail. The boy's piercing screams brought the

mother, who succeeded in tranquillising the child. The monkey was
chained, and the parrot buried, but the tragedy awakened in him a
lasting love for his feathered friends.
Audubon's father seems to have been the first to direct his attention to
the study of birds, and to the observance of Nature generally. Through
him he learned to notice the beautiful colourings and markings of the
birds, to know their haunts, and to observe their change of plumage
with the changing seasons; what he learned of their mysterious
migrations fired his imagination.
He speaks of this early intimacy with Nature as a feeling which
bordered on frenzy. Watching the growth of a bird from the egg he
compares to the unfolding of a flower from the bud.
The pain which he felt in seeing the birds die and decay was very acute,
but, fortunately, about this time some one showed him a book of
illustrations, and henceforth "a new life ran in my veins," he says. To
copy Nature was thereafter his one engrossing aim.
That he realised how crude his early efforts were is shown by his
saying: "My pencil gave birth to a family of cripples." His steady
progress, too, is shown in his custom, on every birthday, of burning
these 'Crippled' drawings, then setting to work to make better, truer
ones.
His father returning from a sea voyage, probably when the son was
about twenty years