TO EUROPE AND SUCCESS 355 



his sister-in-law, Mrs. Alexander Gordon, urged him 

 to have his hair cut and to buy a fashionable coat, but 

 he could not then bear to sacrifice his ambrosial locks, 

 which continued to wave over his shoulders until the 

 following March. If we can accept Sir Walter Besant's 

 characterization of the period, the "long-haired Achaean" 

 was no stranger to the streets of London as late as 1837: 

 "brave is the exhibition of flowing locks; they flow over 

 the ears and over the coat-collars; you can smell the 

 bear's grease across the street; and if these amaranthine 

 locks were to be raised you would see the shiny coating 

 of bear's grease upon the velvet collar below." 



Audubon had not been in England three weeks 

 before he resumed his drawing and painting habits, at 

 first in order to repay his friends for their kindness, 

 and later as a means of support; at times he would 

 devote every spare moment to this work, and he was 

 then able to paint fourteen hours at a stretch without 

 fatigue. On October 2 he recorded that he had made in 

 less than twenty minutes a diminutive sketch of the 

 Turkey Cock from his large twenty-three hour picture. 

 This was for Mrs. William Rathbone, Senior, who later 

 presented it to him in the form of a handsome gold- 

 mounted seal, inscribed with his favorite motto, "Amer- 

 ica, my countrv." 7 The facility which Audubon dis- 



' v ml %/ 



played in producing his pictures of animal life — Amer- 

 ican wild turkeys, trapped otters, fighting cats, English 

 game pieces, and the like, in a style both novel and indi- 

 vidual, added much to his immediate popularity in Eng- 



7 This seal, the design of which has since been adapted for a book- 

 plate, was long in use, and though at one time lost, is still in possession 

 of the family. A copy of the large original, which was to serve as his 

 first plate, was presented to the Royal Institution of Liverpool as an 

 acknowledgment of its hospitality, for it had refused remuneration in any 

 other form. 



