192 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



his enterprise was ruined by a fire, when he went back 

 to England and he died there about 1840. After a brief 

 residence in Brooklyn, Robert Havell settled at Sing 

 Sing, now Ossining, at a beautiful spot on the Hudson, 

 overlooking the Palisades, which he named "Rocky 

 Mount." There he devoted himself with characteristic 

 energy to painting and sketching, but he also engraved 

 and published a number of excellent views of his favorite 

 river, the Hudson, as well as of New York and other 

 American cities. In 1857 he established himself at 

 Tarrytown, where he built a house and studio, and where 

 in his later years he produced many meritorious works 

 in oils. "He never tired," says his biographer, "of the 

 great, broad, sweeping Hudson, and propped up in bed, 

 that he might gaze at will on this mighty river," he died 

 at the age of eighty-five, November 11, 1878. 14 



Havell has been described as quite the opposite of 

 Audubon in many of his characteristics, calm, deliberate, 

 not easily discouraged, and fully his equal in industry, 

 perseverance and determination. Audubon sometimes 

 complained of his friend's lax business habits, but their 

 long sustained and cordial relations were never broken 

 during life, and their mutual debt was great. The en- 

 graver's first son, who lived but a year, was named 

 Robert Audubon, and the naturalist, who was his god- 

 father, held the child at its baptism at old St. James 

 Church, Oxford Street, in 1827. A descendant of Luke 

 Havell, who was a drawing master at Reading, uncle of 

 Robert the second, possesses a silver loving-cup which 

 Audubon presented to his engraver upon the completion 

 of the second volume of his illustrations ; it is inscribed 

 "To Robert Havell, from his friend J. J. A. 1834." 



"George Alfred Williams (Bibl. No. 232), Print-Collectors Quarterly, 

 vol. vi, p. 225 (1916). 



