On the 4th of this month the 'Great Western' was nearly half way across the Atlantic!! Sir William Jardine has published a capital review of the work! What a strange world we do learn in! Be sure to let me know about the original drawings at Henry's, if he has finished them, where they are &c. &c. We all remain as usual with kind good wishes to you all,
Your friend
John J. Audubon.
6 Alva St.
[Superscribed]
Robert Havell Esq.
Engraver.
77 Oxford st
London.
How fully Audubon's injunctions in regard to his residual stock, and particularly to scattered plates of the Birds, were followed, is not known, but it is certain that a part of this residuum remained in England, where it is occasionally turned up even at the present day. In a considerable number of the original plates which were found in a bookshop in New Oxford Street in August, 1912, twelve were in the uncolored state, and several had the appearance of rejects; moreover, in a collection of these plates received from England in 1910, there were nine copies of the same subject, the Painted Bunting (No. 11, Plate 53). Though a complete set of the plain plates is known,[156] and a considerable number were probably dispersed in America, they are very rare.
Audubon wrote to Havell again on the 13th of March, when he complained of the gross mistakes made by the "idle rascals" who were employed in filling orders in his shop, and who had so sadly mixed matters that no less than twelve numbers of his Birds had come back to him, some of them containing one, three, and five copies of the same plate, instead of a "Number," and mixtures of the most incongruous sort; he thought that "a clever young man as a clerk was worth a hundred thick heads," and begged Havell again to send him "a correct list of what he shipped to America on his account, and that list not made by any other person than either himself or Mrs. Havell." His next injunction, on May 4, was to insure his copper-plates of The Birds of America for £5,000, and to send them to either Victor Audubon or Mr. N. Berthoud, Number 2 Hanover Street, New York. At that moment Audubon was planning to return to America with his family by the Great Western on July 6. In writing again on June 30, he remarked that he was not at all certain that Havell, who was then visiting at his native Reading, in Berkshire, would really sail on the 25th of July, since he had already postponed the journey so many times; he added that it would not even surprise him if his work on the Quadrupeds of America might not be out before they could fish and shoot together in his "native land."
Havell eventually came to America with his wife and daughter on the ship Wellington, in September, 1839; they landed at New York after the 15th of that month, and for a time were the guests of the Audubons at Number 86 White Street. His brother, Henry,[157] who visited the United States in 1829, returned at about this time and established a print shop in Broadway, New York, but according to Robert's biographer, 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.[158]
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 engraver's first son, who lived but a year, was named Robert Audubon, and the naturalist, who was his godfather, 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."
When we consider the size of Audubon's plates, which required for the portrayal of his largest subjects, such as the Whooping Crane or Wild Turkey, an area of no less than five square feet, it will be seen that his engraver was compelled to adopt the most expeditious methods. This and kindred difficulties were overcome by Havell's skillful union of aquatint with etching and line engraving, but some of his smaller figures, as the Snow Birds (Plate 13), appear to have been etched in the usual way, with but slight use of either aquatint, dry-point or burin. In aquatinting the plate was usually bitten to the desired depth for the softer shading of feathers or foliage, or for the entire expression of sky, water or landscape. Says George Alfred Williams:[159]
Aquatint proper consists entirely of gradations of tone produced by biting with aquafortis into the copper through a resinous ground broken into a multitude of fine granules, that render the personal touch practically negligible, and in consideration of this we can appreciate the exceptionally skillful use Havell, Junior, made of the difficult process. The graining of the aquatint grounds is produced by allowing fine dust particles to settle upon the freshly prepared plate. It is to these grainings of different degrees of fineness that the engraver must look for the subtlety of the tonal surfaces, but strength is obtained usually through the use of the etched line. The chief limitation of the aquatint process lies in the great difficulty of getting more than a few differences of shade, as the ground goes to pieces rather rapidly under successive bitings, and the transitions from one tone to another are very few, so that half tones are not readily obtainable. It is in the economical use of these half tones that Havell, Junior, achieved so much and thereby produced a chiaroscuro seldom, if ever, equaled in aquatint.