JOHN JAMES AUDUBON

ORNITHOLOGIST

1780-1851

BY WITMER STONE

PROBABLY no name is more nearly synonymous with the study of birds than that of Audubon, and no ornithologist is more widely known. In science and literature as well as in other fields notoriety is due either to the personality of the man or to the work which he has accomplished, while in certain cases both contribute to his fame. Audubon is a striking example of this, and the aid that he gave to the development of American Ornithology rests quite as much upon his striking personality and the unique character of his bird portraits as upon the actual scientific value of the labors that he performed.

We cannot, therefore, form an estimate of his relative position in the world of science without a careful consideration of Audubon the man as well as of Audubon the ornithologist.

Unfortunately no one who knew him well has given us a careful review of his life and character and consequently we are compelled to fall back upon an autobiography covering his early life, written for his children and upon his journals for the history of his later achievements.

It seems somewhat characteristic of the man that he does not state when he was born and such mentions as he makes of his age are at variance, so that his granddaughter states in her sketch of his life "he may have been born anywhere between 1772 and 1783"; the usually accepted date is, however, May 5, 1780.

His father, Jean Audubon, an admiral in the French navy, was a man of wide experience. He rose entirely through his own exer

tions, having shipped on a fishing vessel at the age of twelve and later commanded trading vessels until entering the service of his country. He prospered, too, and finally became possessed of estates in France and Santo Domingo, besides a farm in Pennsylvania. On one of his excursions from his Santo Domingo estates to Louisiana, then a French territory, the elder Audubon married a lady of Spanish descent who became the mother of the ornithologist. Returning to Santo Domingo soon after his birth, the mother perished in the negro uprising on the island while the father and infant son escaped and made their way back to France. In a few years the father was married again to Anne Moynette.

Under the care of his stepmother young Audubon seems to have enjoyed every pleasure that youth could wish; she "was desirous," he writes, "that I should be brought up to live and die like a gentleman, thinking that fine clothes and filled pockets were the only requisites needful to attain this end. She therefore completely spoiled me, hid my faults, boasted to every one of my youthful merits and more than all frequently said in my presence that I was the handsomest boy in France. All my wishes and idle notions were at once gratified so far as actually to give me carte blanche at all the confectionary shops in the town and also of the village of Coneron when during the summer we lived, as it were, in the country."

Audubon's father having himself suffered from lack of educational advantages realized the importance of their cultivation on the part of his son whom he destined for the navy. School, however, had no attractions for the boy. He says: "I studied drawing, geography, mathematics, fencing, etc., as well as music for which I had considerable talent. I had a good fencing master and a first rate teacher of the violin, mathematics was hard dull work, I thought; geography pleased me more. . . . ... My mother suffered me to do much as I pleased and it was not to be wondered at that instead of applying closely to my studies I preferred associating with boys of my own age and disposition who were more fond of going in search of birds' nests, fishing, or shooting, than of better studies."

The mania for rambling about the country and collecting curiosities seemed to increase, and upon the return of his father from a cruise abroad, Audubon was taken under his personal care. Studies now became more obligatory, but without any marked increase of interest upon his part or any lessening of his love of outdoor life. At this period of his life he states that he had made some drawings of French birds but apparently without any thought or interest in ornithology, and simply because they appealed to him as subjects upon which to exercise his artistic skill.

When somewhat over seventeen years of age Audubon was sent to America to look after the Pennsylvania estate at Mill Grove on the Perkiomen not far from its juncture with the Schuylkill. His father it seems despaired of making a student of him or of interesting him in the career that he had planned for him and thinking him old enough to enter seriously upon life intrusted him with the responsibility of his American property.

Audubon experienced a severe attack of sickness upon reaching New York and after his recovery was temporarily the guest of his father's agent, Miers Fisher, a Philadelphia Quaker, whose tastes it may be imagined were totally different from those of the gay young Frenchman-in fact to quote Audubon "he was opposed to music of all description, as well as to dancing, could not bear me to carry a gun or fishing rod and indeed condoned most of my amusements."

After a short period of restless toleration of his uncongenial surroundings Audubon was established as his own master on the Mill Grove estate. Here, surrounded by nature, he indulged to his heart's content all the pleasures that he so enjoyed. He describes himself at this time as "extremely extravagant." "I had no vices," he says, "it is true, neither had I any high aims. I was ever fond of shooting, fishing and riding on horse-back; the raising of fowls of every sort was one of my hobbies, and to reach the maximum of my desires in those different things filled every one of my thoughts. I was ridiculously fond of dress. To have seen me going shooting in black satin small clothes, or breeches, with silk stockings, and the finest ruffled shirt Philadelphia could