95 Great Russell St.
Bedford Sq.
LETTER OF WILLIAM SWAINSON TO AUDUBON, MAY, 1828.
From the Deane MSS.
Thus began an intimate friendship between William Swainson and John James Audubon which lasted until 1830, and their intercourse did not wholly cease before 1838. In his use of English at this time Audubon was not far behind Swainson, whose mother tongue it was. Swainson, according to Dr. Günther, was "extremely careless in orthography and loose in his style of writing: he persistently misspelt not only technical terms, but also the names of foreign authors, and even of some of his familiar friends and correspondents; he knew no other language but his own, and the application of Latin and Greek for the purpose of systematic nomenclature was a constant source of error."
At this time Swainson was living in semi-retirement at a farmstead of considerable size, called "Highfield Hall,"[355] near Tyttenhanger Green, a small settlement, off the highroad, two miles southeast of the historic town of St. Albans, in Hertfordshire; though his letters were always dated from "The Green" at Tyttenhanger, his associations were with the more considerable village of London Colney, but a mile to the south, on the road to Barnet. Audubon had brought a letter of introduction from Dr. Traill, a valiant champion of Swainson at Edinburgh, but was unable to go to the country to deliver it. Swainson, however, attended promptly to the review, and on April 11, 1828, sent it to Mr. Loudon, who published it in the May number of his Magazine.[356]
Swainson's review was extremely laudatory, and Audubon reproduced extracts from it in later editions of his "Prospectus." To quote a characteristic paragraph, he said that the naturalist's ornithological papers printed in one of the Scotch journals, are as valuable to the scientific world, as they are delightful to the general reader. They give us a rich foretaste of what we may hope and expect from such a man. There is a freshness and an originality about these essays, which can only be compared to the animated biographies of Wilson.... To represent the passions and the feelings of birds, might, until now, have been well deemed chimerical. Rarely, indeed, do we see their outward forms represented with any thing like nature. In my estimation, not more than three painters ever lived who could draw a bird. Of these the lamented Barrabaud [Barraband], of whom France may be justly proud, was the chief. He has long passed away; but his mantle has at length been recovered in the forests of America.
Audubon spent four days with Swainson and his family at Tyttenhanger, from May 28 to June 1, 1828, when they talked birds and made drawings; Audubon also showed Swainson "how to put up birds in his style, which delighted him." The friendship between these men, though very intimate while it lasted, received a sudden check two years later, when Audubon was about to publish the letterpress to his plates, as will be related farther on.[357]
Though his hands were already more than full at this time, Audubon seems to have played with the idea of publishing a work on the birds of Great Britain, but on May 1 he wrote to Swainson that the plan did not meet with favor, and later he relinquished all claims in such a project to his assistant, William MacGillivray.[358]