Before following further Audubon's history in America, we shall return for a more intimate view of the happy home which he had left behind him in France. This was at Couëron, a small commune in the arrondissement of Saint-Nazaire, on the right bank of the Loire, nine miles west of Nantes. Here, as we have noticed, his father had acquired a country place at about the outbreak of the Revolution. The old house still stands, though in decay, and is still known as "La Gerbetière," a name possibly referring to the wheat which is harvested from the surrounding fields as of yore. In the records of that district country places are always designated by their proper names, and it is a curious fact that while such names survive, they are seldom or never displayed on door or gate.
"LA GERBETIÈRE" JEAN AUDUBON'S COUNTRY VILLA AT COUËRON, FRANCE, AND THE NATURALIST'S BOYHOOD HOME.
From a photograph of August 18, 1913.
In a journal written before 1826, Audubon says: "My father's beautiful country seat, situated within sight of the Loire, about mid-distance between Nantes and the sea, I found quite delightful to my taste, notwithstanding the frightful cruelties I had witnessed in that vicinity not many years previously. The gardens, greenhouses, and all appertaining to it appeared to me of a superior cast." Though it was occupied for many years previously as a refuge from the turmoil or heat of the city, Lieutenant Audubon made "La Gerbetière" his permanent abode only when he retired from the navy in 1801, still maintaining, as we have seen, a foothold in Nantes.
Upon Audubon's first return from the United States in the spring of 1805, he said that his vessel entered the mouth of the Loire and anchored off Paimbœuf, the lower harbor of Nantes. "On sending my name to the principal officer of the customs," the narrative continues, "he came on board, and afterwards sent me to my father's villa, La Gerbetière, in his barge and with his own men." It is to be noticed, incidentally, that as the distance to be covered between the lower and upper harbors was twenty-five miles, or sixteen miles to Couëron, such journeys no doubt were made upon the arrival of incoming vessels for the regular business of the service.
It has been suggested, without proof, that Couëron represents the ancient town of Corbilo, mentioned by Strabo at the beginning of our era. Though unquestionably ancient, at the time of the Revolution it was a small and unimportant parish of poor but industrious farmers. It occupies rolling ground, but little raised above the Loire, to the east of Port Launay and nearly opposite Pellerin. As this commune was easily accessible by river-barge from Nantes, the revolutionists seem to have thought it worth watching, though Citizen Audubon found its people in a tranquil mood when he canvassed their district in behalf of the Central Committee in April, 1793. Couëron is still a farming community, but its population[116] has been considerably swelled in recent years by the development of a large industry for the treatment of lead; it is the shot tower and forest of chimneys of these great metallurgical works that arrest the eye of the traveler as he approaches Couëron by river at the present day. The town is also accessible by railroad, but the steamer journey from Nantes, which is made in less than an hour, is more attractive as well as more direct. In this section the Loire is flanked on either side by bottom lands, reduced in places to narrow strips, which are followed at intervals by elevations called, by courtesy, hills or buttes. To the west of Couëron, and especially at Pellerin, which stands high, these buttes come close to the river, which is eating them away.
My visit to Couëron, which was made on a warm midsummer's day in 1913, served to correct certain previous impressions, but I found the old Audubon homestead in its essential aspects but little changed, considering that over a century had rolled by since the naturalist's visit which we have just described. After leaving Nantes at the Gare de la Bourse by one of those quaint little trains which still do service in the less traveled parts of France, we traversed the broad Quai with requisite deliberation, passing shops, warehouses and factories in long array. A slight swerve from the river soon brought us to Chatenay, now a part of the city; it is still some distance from that point before the real countryside is reached, and scenes familiar to southern Brittany are in a measure reproduced. There were the old farmhouses of rough stone, dear to every painter's heart, mellowed by age and lichens, and surrounded by great ricks of straw, for the harvest had been gathered and the stubble fields were brown. There also the farms were divided into small plats, marked by willows or ramparts of stone. On higher ground stood the windmills, characteristic of Brittany also,—stalwart towers of stone, with broad arms of latticed wood ever ready to take the sails.
The small station for Couëron lies in the commune of Sautron, and at this isolated point the traveler will sometimes find a country conveyance to take him to the village. While we were raising the dust from this old Couëron pike on the eighteenth day of August, swallows hawking with characteristic energy for their insect prey were the only birds we saw to remind us of the ornithologist, who as a youth had doubtless passed this way many times, over a hundred years before. The most direct approach to the old Audubon place from Sautron, as we afterwards learned, is by a path which diverges on the right and leads through stubble fields and cabbage patches, along hedgerows and stone walls. We, however, fared on to the town and soon began to pass shops and small modern houses. On the side of the village the traveler's eye is certain to be arrested by a great crucifix in stone,[117] which rises high above the street from a lofty pedestal, and is approached by tiers of stone steps. Nearly opposite stands the secrétariat, or official bureau of the commune, where a solitary clerk, who seemed to welcome my intrusion in a place where business was utterly stagnant, closed his office and with characteristic courtesy cheerfully showed me the way. This led directly westward to one side of the center of the town, and after passing down a street of old houses of the humblest description, we were again in the region of brown fields and old farmsteads.