When Mr. Bakewell returned, his daughter, Lucy, presided at the tea that was served, and Audubon received his first experience of hospitality in the English style, that was to be repeated in Britain at a later day on a more lavish scale. A hunting expedition was arranged and the men started out at once. Festivities of various sorts, and, later, skating parties, became the order of the day, and it was not long before hospitalities were exchanged, when Audubon, having secured, with the aid of his tenant's son, as many partridge as possible, had the whole Bakewell family to dinner under his roof at "Mill Grove."
Audubon's choice of a wife, thus quickly made, marked a turning-point in his career, and the curious fact remains that while he might have ransacked the country from Florida to Maine, as he afterwards repeatedly did in his search after birds, and woefully blundered, the woman who by her sterling qualities of mind and heart was the one to recognize and call forth the best that was in him, should have been placed by circumstances close by his door. Whatever the world has ever owed to Audubon is a debt due to Lucy Bakewell, for every leaf of oak that is plaited for his brow, another of lavender should be twined for hers.
During this gay but brief period of his life, Audubon has described himself as inordinately fond of dress, often cutting, as he said, an absurd figure by shooting in black satin breeches and silk stockings, and wearing the best shirts which the Philadelphia market could afford; he took pride, he adds, in riding the best horse that he could procure, and in having his guns and fishing tackle of the most expensive and ornate description. "Not a ball," he said, "a skating match, a house or riding party took place without me."
"MILL GROVE" FARMHOUSE, WEST FRONT, FACING PERKIOMING CREEK.
"FATLAND FORD," THE CHILDHOOD HOME OF LUCY BAKEWELL AUDUBON.
This and the above after photographs of August 16, 1914.