124 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 
father to get rid of him, which I fortunately accom- 
plished 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 com- 
mended his drawings of birds. “One morning,” Audu- 
bon 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 nat- 
uralist”; 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 Da- 
costa 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.** Audubon, being thorough- 
ly 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,’® “a lady of 
“In the light of the preceding letters, Dacosta would appear in these 
respects to have been only attempting to carry out his instructions. 
* Probably Sarah White Palmer, Benjamin Bakewell’s sister-in-law, 
and widow of the Rev. John Palmer, who at one time was associated 
with Joseph Priestley in editing the Theological Repository, an organ of 
the Unitarians. Her son-in-law, Thomas W. Pears, was later a partner in 
Audubon’s business ventures at Henderson, Kentucky. Her grave is in 
the Bakewell burying plot at “Fatland Ford.” 
