Beschreibung:

AUDUBON, JOHN JAMES Autograph letter signed ("John J. Audubon") to his wife Lucy Audubon ("My dearest Friend") in Bayou Sarah, Louisiana; Edinburgh, 23 February 1827. 2 1/4 pages, folio, address panel in Audubon's hand, red wax seal, and ship post ink-stamp, partial separations along several folds. A long, affectionate letter written just prior to the publication of the first parts of The Birds of America , thanking Lucy for sending "the segments of Trees" (specimen branches for models?), and cautioning that "it is yet quite impossible My Dear Sweet Girl to say precisely what I will do ultimately regarding my stay in England, untill I have reached and been in London some months. I am I assure you doing all my senses can devise to forward my Plans as rapidly as possible....My first Number [the first serial part] will be most positively out on the 1st of March, on the 5th my Ballot at the Royal Society of Edinburgh will take place, and Elected or not as a member, I shall leave there 5 days after -- intent then on visiting such and all the Towns in the Three Kingdoms, as rapidly as the case can admit of, to furnish Subscribers to my Work....If I become a foreign member of the Royal Society it will add greatly to my standing in Society...." He has been industrious, he reports, while playing the role of "the Fashionable Man of Edinburgh," and has found England to be "altogether...very different from what I expected....The amount of wealth is astonishing, and that keeps apace with expense." He enquires about various friends, complains that Victor has not written him and requests Lucy to send 12 "pairs of nicely made up Shoes...of Rattlesnake Skins, 6 for ladies and 6 for Gentlemen." Apparently unpublished, not in Letters of John James Audubon 1826-1840 , ed. Howard Corning (Boston 1929; reprint 1969). Provenance : Dr. Evan Morton Evans (1870-1955) Daniel Webster Evans (1907-1966)