AUDUBON IN LONDON 389 



At York he found that a number of his Birds, which had 

 been forwarded from Edinburgh before he had taken 

 his departure, "was miserably poor, scarcely colored 

 at all"; and a copy of his first number which was later 

 examined at the Radcliffe Library in Oxford was so 

 unsatisfactory that he rolled it up and took it away, with 

 the reflection that Lizars, whom he had paid "so amply 

 and so punctually," could have made him a better re- 

 turn. The colorists gave no end of trouble, but he 

 never hesitated to reject their work when it did not 

 meet his requirements, and the defective plates were 

 invariably sent back to Havell's shop to be washed, hot- 

 pressed, and done over again. To such watchful care 

 must be ascribed, in large measure, the high degree of 

 perfection which his big work eventually attained. 

 When it is remembered that upwards of one hundred 

 thousand of his large plates had to be colored labori- 

 ously by hand, and that at one time fifty persons were 

 engaged at the Havell establishment, we can understand 

 the difficulties involved in maintaining a uniform stand- 

 ard of excellence in a work that was issued piecemeal and 

 spread over a long period of time. 



In August, 1827, Audubon wrote to Mrs. Thomas 

 Sully of Philadelphia to announce the removal of his 

 business to London. By this change he expected to 

 save "upwards of an hundred pounds per annum, a 

 large sum," as he remarked, "for a man like me." His 

 third number had then been issued, and he expressed 

 the hope that all would go smoothly after "this first year 

 of hard trials and times," and that he would be able to 

 send for his wife and one of his sons in the coming 

 autumn or winter. He was then painting "a flock of 

 Wild Turkeys for the king, who had honored him with 

 his particular patronage and protection." When writ- 



