TO
ELIZABETH
MY
SISTER
PREFACE
The origin of the gifted ornithologist, animal painter, and writer, known to the world as John James Audubon, has remained a mystery up to the present time. In now lifting the veil which was cast over his early existence, I feel that I serve the cause of historical truth; at the same time it is possible to do fuller justice to all most intimately concerned with the story of his life and accomplishments.
The present work is in reality the outcome of what was first undertaken as a holiday recreation in the summer of 1903. While engaged upon a research of quite a different character, I reread, with greater care, Audubon's Ornithological Biography, and after turning the leaves of his extraordinary illustrations, it seemed to me most strange that but little should be known of the making of so original and masterful a character. As I was in England at the time some investigations were undertaken in London, but, as might have been expected, with rather barren results. After my return to America in the following year the search was continued, but as it proved equally fruitless here, the subject was set aside. Not until 1913, when this investigation was resumed in France, did I meet with success.
Every man, however poor or inconsequential he may appear or be, is supposed to possess an estate, and every man of affairs is almost certain to leave behind him domestic, professional, or commercial papers, which are, in some degree, a mark of his attainments and an indication of his character and tastes. In the summer of 1913 I went to France in search of the personal records of the naturalist's father, Lieutenant Jean Audubon, whose home had been at Nantes and in the little commune of Couëron, nine miles below that city, on the right bank of the Loire. The part which Lieutenant Audubon played in the French Revolution was fully revealed in his letters, his reports to the Central Committee, and numerous other documents which are preserved in the archives of the Préfecture at Nantes; while complete records of his naval career both in the merchant marine and governmental service (service pour l'État) were subsequently obtained at Paris; but at Nantes his name had all but vanished, and little could be learned of his immediate family, which had been nearly extinct in France for over thirty years.
Again the quest seemed likely to prove futile until a letter, which I received through the kindness of Mr. Louis Goldschmidt, then American Consul at Nantes, to M. Giraud Gangie, conservateur of the public library in that city, brought a response, under date of December 29, 1913, informing me that two years before that time, he had met by chance in the streets of Couëron a retired notary who assured him that he held in possession numerous exact records of Jean Audubon and his family. The sage Henry Thoreau once remarked that you might search long and diligently for a rare bird, and then of a sudden surprise the whole family at dinner. So it happened in this case, and since these manuscript records, sought by many in vain on this side of the Atlantic, are so important for this history, the reader is entitled to an account of them.
Upon corresponding with the gentleman in question, M. L. Lavigne, I was informed that the documents in his possession were of the most varied description, comprising letters, wills, deeds, certificates of births, baptisms, adoptions, marriages and deaths, to the number, it is believed, of several hundred pieces. This unique and extraordinary collection of Audubonian records had been slumbering in a house in the commune of Couëron called "Les Tourterelles" ("The Turtle Doves") for nearly a hundred years, or since the death of the naturalist's stepmother in 1821.
Since I was unable to judge of the authenticity of the documents or to visit France at that time, my friend, Professor Gustav G. Laubscher, who happened to be in Paris, engaged in investigating Romance literary subjects, kindly consented to go to Couëron for the purpose of inspecting them. Monsieur Lavigne had already prepared for me, and still held, a number of photographs of the most important manuscripts, which are now for the first time reproduced, and, with the aid of a stenographer, in the course of two or three days they were able to transcribe the most essential and interesting parts of this voluminous material. But at that very moment sinister clouds were blackening the skies of Europe, and my friend was obliged to leave his task unfinished and hasten to Paris; when he arrived in that city, on the memorable Saturday of August 1, 1914, orders for the mobilization of troops had been posted; it was some time before copies of the manuscripts were received from Couëron, and he left the French capital to return to America.
These documents came into the hands of Monsieur Lavigne through his wife, who was a daughter and legatee of Gabriel Loyen du Puigaudeau, the second, son of Gabriel Loyen du Puigaudeau, the son-in-law of Lieutenant and Mme. Jean Audubon. Gabriel Loyen du Puigaudeau, the second, who died at Couëron in 1892, is thought to have destroyed all letters of the naturalist which had been in possession of the family and which were written previous to 1820, when his relations with the elder Du Puigaudeau were broken off; not a line in the handwriting of John James Audubon has been preserved at Couëron.