I have been in some doubt where this letter should be addressed, since "86 White St." will not reach you, and you must by this time be snugly fixed I hope in your beautiful place up the River. Do not laugh therefore if I prefix "Formerly" to the old superscription....
I suppose that the First Number of the "Quadrupeds of North America" is out by this time, I hope that it will be hailed by a large list of subscribers, and will do what I can for this desirable end.
Submerged as Audubon was, with painting the Quadrupeds, keeping the small edition of his Birds in motion, and canvassing for subscribers to both works, which he published himself, he nevertheless found time for an extraordinary number of letters, which were written with an elegance of chirography that diverts our attention from their orthographic defects. In the labor of drawing and in all his business affairs he was constantly aided by his sons.
In Audubon's time the center of Carmansville was a quarter of a mile to the east of his house, while at a short distance below, on the river, lay Manhattanville, at the present One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, from which men frequently came on summer evenings to help handle the seine, fish then being plentiful in that part of the Hudson. The place came to possess a good garden and orchard, with stable, dairy, and poultry yards; enclosures also were made for deer, elk, wolves, foxes and other wild animals. The old barn of the Audubon place stood higher on the slope where the naturalist built his studio or painting house, but no traces of either now exist. Though standing low, the house commanded a wide sweep of the river with the Palisades on its opposite shore, and such attractive surroundings were a never failing source of delight and inspiration to the naturalist to his dying day.
In describing Audubon's activities, Parke Godwin made this note in the spring of 1842:[186]
During the last winter, which he spent in this city, he has worked on an average fourteen hours a day, preparing a work on the Quadrupeds of America, similar to his work on the Birds. The drawings already finished, of the size of life, are master-pieces in their way, surpassing if that be possible, in fidelity and brilliancy, all that he has done before. Early in the summer he will depart to continue his labors in the woods.
"MINNIE'S LAND" AS IT APPEARED IN 1865.
After a lithograph published in D. T. Valentine's Manual of the Council of the City of New York.