They were entrusted to the son-in-law of Mr. Paulin, and if the ship arrives safely as I trust it will, you have now received them.
What negligence on the part of Mr. Miers Fisher! In truth it is unpardonable, to let the mortgages stand after having paid them![101] Will you then, I pray, clear this up for the sake of our mutual peace of mind? You speak of repairs to the house,[102] it needs a complete cover; would it not be better for me to send some slate from here? This would perhaps be less expensive, and well nigh everlasting. Should you consider it advisable I will send you some at once.
I beg you not to neglect the affair of David Ross; if you can collect this sum, you will use it for our needs. I am annoyed that all these mishaps prevent you from working;[103] be well persuaded that it is no fault of mine, and that I am guilty of no negligence.
You speak of my going to that country; if such had been my intention I should have done it long ago. I am still troubled with an inflammation of the lungs; and one ought not to be ill in a foreign country, where he does not receive the care that he enjoys in his own home. You ask me to bring you money.... You know better than anyone else what was my [financial] position when I sold to you; by that alone you must know how difficult this would be for me. It is necessary to manage so that our object suffices us [or so that the mine pays its way], and if we cannot work on a grand scale, we must needs do the best with our affairs on a lower plane; for that I depend on you. I salute you.
P.S. When you shall have my papers from Mr. Miers Fisher, you will find a promissory note of Mr. Samuel Plaisance of Richmond, for the business of the widow Ross. If there were justice there this sum would be paid to me with the costs.
The foregoing letters show that Dacosta had been asked to oppose the proposed marriage of the younger Audubon to Lucy Bakewell until consent should be given; that he was calling for more money to exploit the lead mine and was urging Lieutenant Audubon to come to America; and that their relations were becoming strained, Dacosta, to prove his title to a one-half interest in the mine and farm, having threatened to take his case to the courts.
This mining experiment was spread over many years. Before turning to the sequel (see [Chapter XI]), let us glance at the picture which the naturalist has left of his unsympathetic tutor. "Dacosta," he said, "was intended to teach me mineralogy and mining engineering, but in fact" he "knew nothing of either; besides which he was a covetous wretch, who did all he could to ruin my father, and indeed swindled us both to a large amount. I had to go to France to expose him to my father to get rid of him, which I fortunately accomplished at sight of my kind parent. A greater scoundrel than Dacosta never probably existed, but peace be with his soul." In one respect only, said Audubon, did he receive any sympathy from his guardian: Dacosta commended his drawings of birds. "One morning," Audubon relates, "when I was drawing a figure of the Ardea herodias [the great blue heron], he assured me that the time might come when I should be a great American naturalist"; however curious it might appear, he adds, that praise "from the lips of such a man should affect me, I assure you that they had great weight with me and I felt a certain degree of pride in these words even then."
To follow Audubon's story further, not only did Dacosta take control of his finances, but he interfered with his personal liberty, first by objecting to his proposed marriage to Lucy Bakewell, and then by cutting off his stipend when he rebelled.[104] Audubon, being thoroughly aroused, determined to return to France and lay the case before his father in person. With this end in view he walked to Philadelphia, whither Dacosta had gone, to demand the money necessary to take him to Nantes. He was given, as he says, what purported to be a letter of credit to a Mr. Kauman, an agent and banker in New York. Returning with his letter to "Mill Grove," he then started on foot for New York, where he arrived on the evening of the third day. While there he stayed at the house of Mrs. Palmer,[105] "a lady of excellent qualities," who received him most kindly. Audubon called promptly upon Benjamin Bakewell, for whom he was the bearer of a letter from his brother, William Bakewell, of "Fatland Ford." Instead of an order for money, Kauman's letter, he said, contained only the advice that its bearer be "arrested and shipped to Canton." Perplexed and bewildered beyond endurance, Audubon said that for the first time he felt the call of murder in his blood, and his outraged feelings were not assuaged until his landlady, to whom he had opened his heart, and Mr. Bakewell, had come to his aid. Having secured from this gentleman the necessary funds, he bought a passage in the ship Hope, which was then about to sail direct for Nantes.
Thanks to an old cash account of William Bakewell, we can follow Audubon's movements at this time fairly closely. This record[106] extends from January 4, 1805, to April 9, 1810, during which time he advanced money to his future son-in-law and received credits due him from various sources. He did the same for the young partners when an association in business had been formed between Audubon and Rozier, and acted as their agent or attorney after the sale of their farm and their settlement in the West; as will be seen he aided Audubon very substantially later when money was needed at Louisville and for the more ambitious projects at Henderson, in which his son was also interested. This particular record shows that he supplied Audubon with small sums of money on January 4 and 12, 1805, just before his departure from "Mill Grove," and that on the eighteenth of the same month he paid his brother, Benjamin Bakewell of New York, $150 on the young man's account. This was undoubtedly the passage money which Audubon had borrowed from his friend, and as the ship was then ready to sail, the date of his voyage on the Hope is very closely fixed.
After his vessel had passed Sandy Hook and was opposite New Bedford, the captain, in order, as he averred, to make necessary repairs, ran her into that port, where they passed a week. This was thought to be only a ruse on the captain's part to gain time, for, having recently married, he wanted a holiday on shore; accordingly he had ordered a few holes bored below the waterline in the bows of his ship. When they finally put to sea in earnest, they passed "through an immensity of dead fish floating on the surface of the water," a remark which now recalls stories of the famous tilefish, once thought to be extinct, which have been found floating dead in vast numbers in that part of the Atlantic. After nineteen days out the Hope entered the Loire and anchored at Paimbœuf, the lower harbor of Nantes; this was in February, and not far from the eighteenth of that month.