°igi6 J Grinnell, Some A%tduhon Letters. 119 



SOME AUDUBON LETTERS. 



BY GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL. 



For many years I have had in my possession a lot of Audubon 

 papers, among them the two letters printed below from John James 

 Audubon to his son Victor. For me these letters possess unusual 

 interest — personal rather than ornithological — because of the 

 light they throw on the naturalist's family life, and the suggestions 

 they give as to his business methods and the progress of the great 

 work. Then, too, the first was written just as he was leaving New 

 York to start on his famous Labrador trip and the other just after 

 his return. The letter here printed, however, is not the last one 

 written to Victor before leaving for Labrador, for Miss Maria R. 

 Audubon quotes from one dated May 16, 1833, which we may 

 fairly assume was written from Boston.^ 



The two sons, Victor and John, were at this time very young. 

 Victor was about 23, and John only 20. John, in fact, had been 

 so boyish as to cause his father some uneasiness. Yet on this 

 expedition he showed that he possessed qualities which already 

 made him of great service to his father. Later he became a painter 

 of whom his father was proud, and it was John who gathered much 

 material concerning North American mammals, which was pub- 

 lished in the "Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America." 



The young men referred to in the second letter were, of course, 

 Joseph Coolidge, George C. Shattuck, William Ingalls, and Thomas 

 Lincoln. John Woodhouse Audubon was the fifth. 



My father was for many years a near neighbor of the Audubons. 

 I attended a school conducted by Madam Audubon in the Victor 

 Audubon house, where she lived, and as a boy I often saw Victor. 

 I remember him as bedridden from an injury, and he died, I think, 

 in August, 1860. 



John Woodhouse I knew very well in the way that a small boy 

 may know a middle aged man. I used to play with the sons of 

 Victor and John Woodhouse about the houses and barns of the 



1 Audubon and His Journals, I, p. G7. 



