INTRODUCTION 11 



genius of the man, surmounting every difficulty and dis- 

 couragement of the author, had found and claimed its 

 own. . . . Audubon and his work were one; he lived 

 in his work, and in his work will live forever." 3 



There is no doubt that Audubon regarded an honest 

 man as the quintessence of God's works, and though he 

 sometimes set down statements which do not square 

 with known facts, this was often the result of lax habits, 

 or of saying what was uppermost in his mind without 

 retrospection or analysis. When memory failed or 

 when more piquancy and color were needed, he may 

 have been too apt to resort to varnish, but for every- 

 thing written on the spot his mind was as truth-telling 

 as his pictures. In considering the good intent of the 

 man, his extraordinary capacity for taking pains, and 

 his vast accomplishments, criticism on this score seems 

 rather captious. On the other hand, when it came to 

 dealing with his own early life, that was a subject upon 

 which he reserved the right to speak according to his 

 judgment, and in a way which will be considered later. 



Audubon left England to settle his family finally 

 in America in the autumn of 1839, when he was fifty- 

 four years old, and since he lived but twelve years 

 longer, probably few are now living who retain more 

 than a childish memory of his appearance in advanced 

 age. Many Londoners will recall an odd character, an 

 aged print dealer who used to sit alone, like a hoary 

 spider in its web, in his little shop in Great Russel 

 Street, close to the British Museum, and another of 

 similar type, who may still haunt a better known land- 

 mark, the old "naturalist's shop" in Oxford Street, not 

 far from Tottenham Court Road and but a min- 



8 Elliott Coues, Key to North American Birds, 4th ed., p. xxi (Boston, 

 1890). 



