He also telli admit it. But for those of us of the younger generation it is impossible to understand the compulsion. Because he was so serious, because he was so honest and strong, they (the critics) think he must have been a fraud. He was the most intensely American of Americans. But though Whistler passed almost all his life in England and but a renewing his liability ん that he has disansand with you the question of my needing 150 at once, PART OF A LETTER WRITTEN BY WHISTLER IN 1878 perfect, as a whole, that any etcher has few years in France, he followed American affairs with the feelings and the emotions of a patriot. No tribute that can be bestowed upon him by the United States will be too great for his glory." I quote liberally from Mr. Pennell because I heartily concur with his opinions on this subject. Artists are supposed to be, in general, jealous of one another; but the intimate intercourse of Mr. and Mrs. Pennell with Whistler shows us a beautiful example of absolute "The reflections in the water are exquisite, and in the far distance the buildings down the river are indicated with great subtlety of touch."-The Art of J. McNeill Whistler, by T. R. Way loyalty to a great man, just because they knew so well how great an artist he was; and although very few people could avoid quarreling with him. With the Pennells "the King could do no wrong," and I remember that when Whistler (as was his habit) arrived an hour or so late for dinner at their house in London, not a word of reproach from hostess or host was ever expressed or implied; although we cannot blame the French servant, Augustine, when, on admitting the honored guest upon such an occasion, she would shake her finger at him and say, "Ah, Monsieur Veestlaire, vous avez gâté mon diner, vous savez !" A dozen of such dinners might have been spoiled without a word or a look of reproach from one or other of the two accomplished art critics who had invited their hero to dine. I must relate a quaint incident to illustrate this immense admiration of one artist for the work of another. Having shaken hands with Mr. Pennell on arriving at his house, I said to him: "You have a hand like Whistler's, very delicate and frail, but your hand is bigger than his because you are a much bigger man." To this Mr. Pennell, willfully misunderstanding me, exclaimed: "A bigger man than Whistler-oh, I wish to heaven I were !" The mere list of books or of detached articles on Whistler is already a long one, and more are forthcoming. Even writers who scorned his work during the years when he was producing it have now rushed in to proclaim that he was a great master. This state of things had already begun before his death, and Whistler, who was always an aggressive and valiant fighter, used to say to critics of this sort: " If you now find my works to be masterpieces, why were not these same things masterpieces long years ago when you neglected them totally or when you ridiculed them ?" The serious student of the best original etchings is often confronted with a dangerous obstacle in the form of the deceiving counterfeits which have been fabricated on the masterworks of the art. Rembrandt's etchings were shamefully and shamelessly copied by dishonest anonymous etchers even during his own lifetime and by later forgers for two centuries, and within the last fifty years some deceiving counterfeits have been made of the etchings of such masters as Méryon, Millet, and Seymour Haden. But no man has ever successfully counterfeited an etching by Whistler-for the good reason that no man could. The master's exquisitely delicate and intensely personal style and touch stand hopelessly above and beyond the reach of the counterfeiter. If such a falsification were attempted, by the etching process, the result would surely remind us of Dickens's description of the wig of Mrs. Sairey Gamp, which was so visibly an imitation of natural human hair "that it could hardly be called false." Yet even with this protection to collectors, based on Whistler's unattainable superiority of style and technique, there is still some danger that passably good imitations of the etchings might be made by some mechanical process founded on photography, although such imitations would be speedily detected by any expert. James McNeill Whistler was born on the 10th of July, 1834, in Worthen Street, Lowell, Massachusetts, and he died at Chelsea, London, on the 17th of July, 1903. He really was baptized with the name of James Abbot, but he repudiated the latter name and substituted for it the maiden name of his mother. His father, Major George W. Whistler, was an eminent engineer in the United States army, and it was he who was the real designer and constructor of the first Russian railway, which runs from St. Petersburg to Moscow, although (as so often happens) he was by no means the chief beneficiary from his own work. Major Whistler, having lost his first wife-who left him one daughter, now Lady Seymour Haden-married Miss McNeill, a Southern lady, who was the mother of our artist. At the age of ten young Whistler was living in St. Petersburg with his father and mother, and I must quote an extract from his mother's diary of that time, which shows us how true it is that "the child's the father of the man." She writes: "While visiting the Czar's palace we were allowed, as a special favor, to see some pictures of feathered fowl which were made by Peter the Great. I thought they were beautifulbut our Jimmie had the impudence to laugh at them." Poor fellow! he continued to laugh at the productions of other artists all his life long. Later we find Whistler a cadet at West Point. That was about fifty years ago, yet his name is still a potent memory there. His engaging personality and bright wit made him a favorite among his comrades, but he was so refractory and so little amenable to discipline that the authorities had to dismiss him. Long years afterward he gave his own whimsical version of this dismissal: “I would have been a United State's officer to-day except for a difference of opinion between the authorities and myself; they maintained that silicon was a mineral, while I insisted that it wa's a gas." While on the tempting subject of Whistler's witticisms, I must relate one of his latest and least known: During his last visit to Paris he was making a call on a lady of exalted rank, and she said to him, "You are well acquainted with King Edward of England." "Well, no," said Whistler, "not personally." "Why," said the lady, "his Majesty was speaking to me in London recently, and he said he knew you well." "Oh," said Whistler, "that was only his brag.” imagination. The bureaucratic authorities were shocked, the plate was confiscated, and the too imaginative young etcher was cashiered. At about the age of twenty Whistler drifted to Paris, and it was there that the budding master first "found himself." Paris, indeed, has for long years been the mother and the nurse of artists. Among the French, art in any form is a very serious matter indeed; while, in comparison, both in England and America art is generally looked on as a trifling, non-essential, outside matter, and one that any educated person may notice or not, as he thinks fit. In this it may be compared to the religion of some of us a sentimental, idealistic emotion, and one that we may take on if we are in the humor, or lay off if our humor drifts the other way. The incurable refractory bent which so often caused trouble to Whistler as a man was altogether favorable to his development as an artist. It was simply impossible for his independent nature to shut his eyes and tamely swallow rules and methods which were not of his own making. It was this intransigeant spirit, combined with his own inherent genius, that made him the thoroughly original master that he was. He was a master in a double sensefirst, through his great pictures, and, secondly, through the dominating influence which these pictures exercised on so many other artists throughout the civilized world. Many of these men would fiercely deny that they were imitating Whistler; but they were, whether they knew it or not. Thus, when a recent exhibition of new etchings was held in London, the Saturday Review, in noticing it, said that these etchings were "mainly penny-Whistlers," and, just because they were more or less gross imitations of the style and method of the master, they were of no more value artistically than a child's penny whistle. Whistler's very first etching was, characteristically enough, the cause of storms and tempests; and then began his lifelong habit, which recalls to us the prophecy concerning Ishmael of old, "His hand shall be against every man, and every man's hand against him." After his dismissal from West Point he found employment in the Bureau of Engraving at Washington, where the director instructed him to etch a plate for the United States Coast Survey. He had no chance to make a work of art of this first plate, for it was a slavishly accurate picture of one part of the coast line and was destined for the guidance of mariners. The young Whistler etched this It was in Paris, at the age of twentyuncongenial subject very accurately, five and in the year 1859, that Whis although in a perfunctory and "tight' tler published his first series of etchmanner, but he "let himself go" by ings-the "French Set," as it is now decorating the sky of Uncle Sam's formal called. There were thirteen in the set. plate with a series of fantastic little and the price for it was fifty francsheads which were spun from his own or ten dollars. Happy were the few |