John James Audubon | Page 4

old, was not well pleased with the progress that the
boy was making in his studies. One morning soon after, Audubon
found himself with his trunk and his belongings in a private carriage,
beside his father, on his way to the city of Rochefort. The father
occupied himself with a book and hardly spoke to his son during the
several days of the journey, though there was no anger in his face. After
they were settled in their new abode, he seated his son beside him and
taking one of his hands in his, calmly said: "My beloved boy, thou art
now safe. I have brought thee here that I may be able to pay constant
attention to thy studies; thou shalt have ample time for pleasures, but
the remainder must be employed with industry and care."
But the father soon left him on some foreign mission for his
government and the boy chafed as usual under his tasks and
confinement. One day, too much mathematics drove him into making
his escape by leaping from the window, and making off through the

gardens attached to the school where he was confined. A watchful
corporal soon overhauled him, however, and brought him back, where
he was confined on board some sort of prison ship in the harbour. His
father soon returned, when he was released, not without a severe
reprimand.
We next find him again in the city of Nantes struggling with more
odious mathematics, and spending all his leisure time in the fields and
woods, studying the birds. About this time he began a series of
drawings of the French birds, which grew to upwards of two hundred,
all bad enough, he says, but yet real representations of birds, that gave
him a certain pleasure. They satisfied his need of expression.
At about this time, too, though the year we do not know, his father
concluded to send him to the United States, apparently to occupy a
farm called Mill Grove, which the father had purchased some years
before, on the Schuylkill river near Philadelphia. In New York he
caught the yellow fever: he was carefully nursed by two Quaker ladies
who kept a boarding house in Morristown, New Jersey.
In due time his father's agent, Miers Fisher, also a Quaker, removed
him to his own villa near Philadelphia, and here Audubon seems to
have remained some months. But the gay and ardent youth did not find
the atmosphere of the place congenial. The sober Quaker grey was not
to his taste. His host was opposed to music of all kinds, and to dancing,
hunting, fishing and nearly all other forms of amusement. More than
that, he had a daughter between whom and Audubon he apparently
hoped an affection would spring up. But Audubon took an
unconquerable dislike to her. Very soon, therefore, he demanded to be
put in possession of the estate to which his father had sent him.
Of the month and year in which he entered upon his life at Mill Grove,
we are ignorant. We know that he fell into the hands of another Quaker,
William Thomas, who was the tenant on the place, but who, with his
worthy wife, seems to have made life pleasant for him. He soon
became attached to Mill Grove, and led a life there just suited to his
temperament.
"Hunting, fishing, drawing, music, occupied my every moment; cares I
knew not and cared naught about them. I purchased excellent and
beautiful horses, visited all such neighbours as I found congenial spirits,
and was as happy as happy could be."

Near him there lived an English family by the name of Bakewell, but
he had such a strong antipathy to the English that he postponed
returning the call of Mr. Bakewell, who had left his card at Mill Grove
during one of Audubon's excursions to the woods. In the late fall or
early winter, however, he chanced to meet Mr. Bakewell while out
hunting grouse, and was so pleased with him and his well-trained dogs,
and his good marksmanship, that he apologised for his discourtesy in
not returning his call, and promised to do so forthwith. Not many
mornings thereafter he was seated in his neighbour's house.
"Well do I recollect the morning," he says in the autobiographical
sketch which he prepared for his sons, "and may it please God that I
never forget it, when for the first time I entered Mr. Bakewell's
dwelling. It happened that he was absent from home, and I was shown
into a parlour where only one young lady was snugly seated at her work
by the fire. She rose on my entrance, offered me a seat, assured me of
the gratification her father would feel on his return, which, she added,
would be in a few