MR. WHISTLER'S EPIGRAMS.
APART entirely from any question of the value of his work —which it does not fall to the present writer to discuss —the career of James McNeill Whistler, whose death a large
number of personal friends have lately mourned, is full of deep interest. Few men have been possessed by a more original and independent spirit; few have stood more deliberately
aloof from the crowd, not hating it as profane, perhaps, so much as despising it as ignorant ; and few have taken so keen a delight in fashioning the sentence " with its own honey, small-bodied, and a sting in the tail." Mr. Whistler was a master of epigram, and especially of the epigram that wounds, and is meant to wound. He seemed, indeed—we say seemed, for there is a reservation, perhaps, to be made—to take a plea- sure in wounding with words : and to take especial pleasure in wounding friends with whom he had quarrelled. His rapier was always out; but to fight friends with whom he had a difference he spent pains in secret to make it diabolically sharp. The pleasure, if it was real pleasure, and not that kind of pleasure which is nearly pain, sometimes, doubtless, arose from sharpening wit against wit, and he was ready to admire a skilful parry or counter-thrust. But occasionally, too, he seemed to find delight in the mere wounding, in stabbing the inert and stupid ; his indignation, or his resent- ment, would not allow him to see that his opponents were not always worth hurting as deeply as he hurt them.
There was a reason. no doubt, for much of his resentment, —a resentment the depth of which perhaps few of those who disagreed with him or criticised his work harshly understood. He had his own views on art, and believed in them sincerely and profoundly. He "knew" that he was right. "I am not arguing with you—I am telling you," he wrote in bitter reply to a critic who had dispraised him ; and because he thought the dispraise clumsy, he added keenly, "I could have cut my own throat better." But probably there is no better illustra- tion of his attitude towards his critics than the character of the man as revealed in the famous trial, " Whistler v. Ruskin." Ruskin, " art critic," as Whistler savagely adds in a marginal note on the report of the trial, had dismissed Whistler's work with the contemptuous criticism that he had " seen and heard much of Cockney impudence before now ; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face." That sentence fairly well sums up the attitude taken up by the defence in the trial, and Whistler's attack is self-contained in ten words of his own. How long had he taken to " knock off " the Graham " Nocturne in Blue and Silver " ? he was asked. There was a questioning silence. The Attorney-General begged his pardon ; perhaps he had used a phrase descriptive rather of his own work than the plaintiff's. Whistler would not dream of being asked to pardon a comparison between the barrister's work and his own; and answered that perhaps he had taken a day over the picture; or perhaps, he added, he might have added a touch or two the next day. He would answer, then, that he had spent two days on the painting. Sir John Holker had got the opening he wanted, and pressed in " The labour of two days, then "—one can hear the stinging emphasis of each word—" is that for which you ask two hundred guineas ? " Perhaps it needed an Attorney= General to realise the piercing finality of the reprise :—" No, —I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime." There was applause in Court, — convincing testimony to the appreciation of a fine stroke, for the question of the merits of the " Nocturne" had been obscured by the battle of words. The " Nocturne" was received with hisses, later, when it came up for sale at an auction. " It is rare that recognition, so complete, is made during the lifetime of the painter," was the artist's comment.
Not all Whistler's epigrams were meant to wound, how- ever. Everybody knows his reply to the gushing critic who
exclaimed that there were but two painters, Whistler and. Velasquez. " Madam, why drag in Yelasquez ? " " Nature," he wrote once, "is usually wrong that is, the condi- tion of things that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy a picture is rare, and not common at all." It was that belief which inspired him, when some one observed that a splendid sunset reminded him of one of the much disputed "Nocturnes," to the extraordinarily sardonic remark, "Nature is creeping up." The " Ten o'Clock " lecture, too, is full of the quieter form of epigram. " There is no such thing as English Art. You might as well speak of English Mathematics," is characteristic. But moat of the sentences in his letters are as bitter as he could make them. " With its own honey, small- bodied, and a sting in the tail,"—could any sentence better fulfil Martial's definition of epigram than the retort to Tom Taylor, who apologised for taking Whistler seriously for once in a way ? " Why, my dear old Tom, I never was serious with you, even when you were among us. Indeed, I killed you quite, as who should say, without seriousness, ' A rat! A rat!' you know, rather cursorily." The last two words flick raw. " He has the courage of the opinions —of others," was his verdict on one who was, if net always a friend, at all events more than a passing acquaintance,—a critic whom he afterwards accused of having "been down the area again." Perhaps one of the most furious of his attacks—it is a kind of crescendo, at the end of which you hear the blade " did " on the breast-bone like the sword of the Master of Ballantrae—is his comment on a critic who objected to the title, "A Symphony in White," because the picture contained notes of brown and red and flesh-colour. " Does he then, in his astounding consequence, believe that a symphony in F contains no other note, but shall be a continued F F F ? . . . . Fool !" That has the ring and flash of sudden attack, which not all Whistler's sentences have. The dedication of "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies " is polished and repolished. That " Gentle Art " is described as " pleasingly exemplified in many instances, wherein the serious ones of this earth, carefully exasperated, have been prettily spurred on to unseemliness and indiscretion, while overcome by a due sense of right." There is a second dedication, sad or merry, who shall say ? " To the rare Few, who, early in Life, have rid themselves of the friendship of the many, these pathetic papers are inscribed." Last comes the challenge : " Messieurs Lea Ennemis !"
Is there not, after all, a genuine revelation in the carefully chosen epithet " pathetic " ? Did not the epigrammatist, perhaps, really feel some kind of sadness in contemplating the result of his duels, and would it not be expected finally that any man who had often used a bitterly sharp weapon would realise and regret the nature of the wounds he had inflicted,—bad been compelled to inflict, as he might say to himself ? If that was not the case with Whistler, at all events he once admitted that he need not, perhaps, have " protected" himself as he did. It was at a dinner given to him by his friends, and he compared himself to the man in the fable who, buttoning his cloak tighter and tighter in a cold wind, was compelled to throw the covering away under the rays of a warm sun. He thanked them with emotion for their kindli- ness. But whatever may or may not be true of a particular individual—who, in this case, is sincerely mourned by many who never were enemies—it is generally true that the weapon of epigram is dangerous. It cuts its holder. The epigram habit grows, like other habits. Having once summed up an enemy or a friend, or a school or a clique, in a few words, honey on the point of• the dagger,- the
temptation is to sum -up all. The desire to make . epi- grains on- men and women tends surely to a narrow and dangerous outlook on the larger facts of life. The danger is that an epigram to be an epigram must sting, and that in the attempt to create epigram surpassing epigram all effort is concentrated to the sharpening of the sting. It can be good for no man gifted with the power of words to strive to see how ho can make those words wound a fellow-man most deeply. There can be no power greater or more valuable to humanity than the power to use words forcibly in attackin4 principles, and no power for which its possessor may be more thankful. But also a man would be right to be thankful if he were not tempted to use that power in attacking per- sonalities. The principle it is right to attack fiercely ; the man is a fellow-man.
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