66 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



ments, and there is no reason to suppose that knowledge 

 of his age was ever withheld from him. Nevertheless, 

 Audubon was inclined to overestimate his years, a char- 

 acteristic rare in these days; when at Oxford in 1828 

 he was asked for his autograph, and was begged to in- 

 scribe also the date of his birth; "that," he said in record- 

 ing the incident, "I could not do, except approximately," 

 and his hostess was greatly amused that he should not 

 know. 



While going down the Ohio River in 1820, bound for 

 New Orleans, Audubon took advantage of a rainy day 

 to write in his journal something about himself that he 

 thought his children at some future time might desire 

 to know. This brief record may or may not have been 

 at hand when in 1835 he wrote the more extended ver- 

 sion that finally saw the light in 1893. 19 Since the manu- 

 script of the later sketch was presumably in possession 

 of Mrs. Audubon when the biography of her husband 

 was prepared in New York about the year 1866, that 

 account in its various versions has furnished biograph- 

 ers with practically all of the available material, not 

 purely conjectural, concerning the naturalist's early life. 

 Such additions as were made subsequently have proved 

 to be very inaccurate. 



In the first of these sketches, which, so far as it goes, 

 is more in strict accord with facts, Audubon said nothing 

 of his birth, and of his mother remarked only that he 

 had been told that she v/as "an extraordinary beauti- 

 ful woman," who died shortly after he was born. His 

 father, he added, saw his wealth torn from him, until 

 there was left barely enough to educate his two chil- 

 dren, all that remained of the five, his three elder broth- 



19 Published by Maria R. Audubon (Bibl. No. 78) in Scribner's 

 Magazine, vol. xiii (1893). 



