Letter from John Audobon

Philadelphia Octr Sunday 23d/36

My Dear Bachman,

     I have added Two subscribers names to my list since I wrote to you. Therefore I have now 15 New ones.-I hope the Dogs, Rum, &c have reached you ere this.-I hope too. and that most sincerely that you are quite recovered an that you Dear Familly are all well, and the cholera gone to Jerico!...

     Now Good Friend open your Eyes! Aye open them tight!! Nay place specks on your proboscis if you chuse! Read aloud!! quite aloud!!!-I have purchased Ninety Three Bird Skins! Yes 93 Bird Skins!-Well what are they? Why nought less than 93 Bird Skins sent from the Rocky Mountains and the Columbia River By Nuttal & Townsend!-Cheap as Dirt too-only one hundred and Eighty Four Dollars for the whole of these, and hang me if you do not echo my saying so when you see them!!-Such beauties! such rarities! Such novelties! Ah my Worth Friend how we will laugh and talk over them!-

     Have counted the poins of exclamation? no, very well.-good then.-Titian Peale has given me a New Rallus and Six Young ones to Draw, caught about 30 miles below this, last summer, and plenty more there!-Wam Cooper of New York's has positively given me some very rare Bird Skins.-Friend Harris, a great number of Do Do-So you see or do not see how lucky the "Old Man" is yet! and why all this Luck?-Simply because I have laboured like a cart Horse for the last thirty hears on a Single work, have been successful almost to a miracle in its publication thus far, and now am thought a-a-a-(I dislike to write it, but no matter her e goes) a Great Naturalist!!!-That's all! oh! what a strange World we do live in, and how grateful to our God must we be, when after years of trouble, anxiety & sorrow, we find ourselves Happy because true to him! him without whose assistance, and ever parental care, we poor things never could be called Worthy the notice of even our own Race!

     I am obliged to remain here about 10 days longer to finish a few Drawings wanted in London-when this is done, I will proceed southward, a few days at Baltimore, and the same at Washington, and then Trot or Gallop on, Nags or Horses; until you reach the Door of my Worthy friend the Bachman's!...

Yours as ever
John J Audobon

I made for the fields

(To be read subsequent to the letter on the left.)

Bird skins! Skins preserved in kegs of Common Yankee Rum, cheap as dirt and gifted by friends, and more shot by my own hand and others! Others begged and wheedled. Rallus young and old, the Do-Do, Eskimo Curlew, Ivory-billed Woodpecker , skins rare yet plentiful to me. You wink eyes at my exclamation, and nod yet knowing the import!!

I have labored like a cart Horse for the last thirty years on a Single work. A young man's age in hunting, collecting, careful graphing, and the coloring just right. At 18-years, who knew then the work before me? This Philadelphia - a Fricasee from the grip of Le Petit Carporal. This land - my life discovered at Mill Grove, farmhouse of fieldstone and ivy, shore of Perkiomen Creek and its swift slope to the Schuylkill. If I claim a quiet life of simple study, call it cock-and-bull! Rather up with the morning, up with bird song and over the field with flintlock gun; the scatter shot of birds wings beating to the echo of the lead mine thudding, the water mill surging, all method of modern machinery.

I tell you John, dear friend and help in all I now do, father of my dear sons' wives, man of earth animals as I am of air. It began with phoebe - "pewee" - tracking and thinnest sliver thread, and comes now to this: Black Bear, Hog-nosed skunk, the swift fox and the Gray, those keen mice and rats that come so easily to me.

"Man creates his own history" claimed my father, shuffling rum, sugar, slaves, the sea in one swift card sharp hand, the other cupping a woman's thigh. The courtly sports of blade and reigns, a toss of careful curls, more than my share of a scoundrel, I took him at his truth. Still, friend, it comes to this: Artifice and truth, death and malleability, string and wire, twist and bend.

By ERIN GAUTSCHE