The Gentle Art of Making Enemies
Chapter 5
Far from me to spoil a good story; but for the life of me I cannot see what any sympathizing _raconteur_ will regret in the destruction of this mere jumble of statistics that Mr. Hamerton calls "Mr. Haden's anecdote."
VENICE, Aug. 16, 1880.
_In Excelsis_
Mr. Hamerton presents his compliments to Mr. Whistler, and begs to inform him that he has read Mr. Whistler's very unbecoming and improper letter in the _New York Tribune_.
Mr. Hamerton in his article in _Scribner's Monthly_ simply quoted a passage from one of Mr. Haden's lectures on Etching, published in Cassell's _Magazine of Art_; consequently Mr. Hamerton did not offer matter to his readers under any disguise whatever. Mr. Hamerton has answered Mr. Whistler's letter in the same journal in which it appeared.
PRÉ CHARMOY, AUTUN, SAÔNE ET LOIRE, Sept. 28, 1880.
_A Suspicion_
It is possibly too much to expect--upon the principle of "trumps not turning up twice"--but Mr. Whistler does hope that Mr. Hamerton's letter to the _New York Tribune_ will be as funny as his note to Mr. Whistler, which has just been forwarded from London.
VENICE, Oct. 7. CAFÉ FLORIAN, PLACE SAN MARC.
Pardon! Is Mr. Whistler right in supposing, from the droll little irritation shown in Mr. Hamerton's note, that Mr. Hamerton is perhaps--another "Art Critic"?
_Conviction_
_TO THE EDITOR:_
[Sidenote: _New York Tribune_, Oct. 11, 1880.]
Sir--A friend in America has sent me the letter from Mr. Whistler which refers to my article in _Scribner_ on Mr. Haden's etchings. The letter begins as follows:
In _Scribner's Magazine_ for this month there appears an article on Mr. Seymour Haden, the eminent surgeon etcher by a Mr. Hamerton, and in this article I have stumbled upon a curious statement concerning--strangely enough--my own affairs, offered pleasantly in the disguise of an anecdote habitually 'narrated' by the Doctor himself, and printed effectively in inverted commas, as here shown.
Here Mr. Whistler accuses me of disguising something which I chose to tell, as if it came from Mr. Haden, by printing it in inverted commas. The statement is "offered pleasantly in the disguise of an anecdote," and "printed effectively in inverted commas." I used inverted commas because it is the custom to do so when making a quotation. I quoted Mr. Haden's own words from one of his lectures on etching, and they will be found printed, as I quoted them, in Cassell's _Magazine of Art_. I beg to be permitted to observe that a writer who quotes a passage, as I did, in perfect good faith, ought not to be accused of offering matter in disguise. There was no disguise about it. Mr. Haden's words may be compared with my quotation. Again, to prevent any possible inaccuracy, a proof of the article in _Scribner_ was sent to Mr. Haden before it was published.[22] It is scarcely necessary that I should allude to Mr. Whistler's studied discourtesy in calling me "a Mr. Hamerton." It does me no harm, but it is a breach of ordinary good manners in speaking of a well-known writer!
[Note 22: _REFLECTION:_
Queen's evidence.]
[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_
Q. E. D.
Yours obediently, P. G. HAMERTON. AUTUN, Sept. 29, 1880.
_MR. WHISTLER AND HIS CRITICS_
_A CATALOGUE_
"Out of their own mouths shall ye judge them."
"Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?"
_Etchings and Dry-points_
"His pictures form a dangerous precedent."
* * * * *
VENICE.
"Another crop of Mr. Whistler's little jokes."
_Truth._
1.--MURANO--GLASS FURNACE.
"Criticism is powerless here."--_Knowledge._
2.--DOORWAY AND VINE.
"He must not attempt to palm off his deficiencies upon us as manifestations of power."
_Daily Telegraph._
3.--WHEELWRIGHT.
"Their charm depends not at all upon the technical qualities so striking in his earlier work."
_St. James's Gazette._
4.--SAN BIAGIO.
"So far removed from any accepted canons of art as to be beyond the understanding of an ordinary mortal."--_Observer._
5.--BEAD STRINGERS.
[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_
"Et voilà comme on écrit l'histoire."
"'Impressionistes,' _and of these the various schools are represented by_ Mr. Whistler, Mr. Spencer Stanhope, Mr. Walter Crane, and Mr. Strudwick."
6.--FISH SHOP.
"Those who feel painfully the absence in these works of any feeling for the past glories of Venice."
_'Arry in the Spectator._
"Whistler is eminently vulgar."--_Glasgow Herald._
7.--TURKEYS.
"They say very little to the mind."--_F. Wedmore._
"It is the artist's pleasure to have them there, and we can't help it."--_Edinburgh Courant._
8.--NOCTURNE RIVA.
"The Nocturne is intended to convey an impression of night."--_P. G. Hamerton._
"The subject did not admit of any drawing."
_P. G. Hamerton._
"We have seen a great many representations of Venetian skies, but never saw one before consisting of brown smoke with clots of ink in diagonal lines."
9.--FRUIT STALL.
"The historical or poetical associations of cities have little charm for Mr. Whistler and no place in his art."
10.--SAN GIORGIO.
"An artist of incomplete performance."
_F. Wedmore._
11.--THE DYER.
"By having as little to do as possible with tone and light and shade, Mr. Whistler evades great difficulties."--_P. G. Hamerton._
"All those theoretical principles of the art, of which we have heard so much from Messrs. Haden, Hamerton(?)[23] and Lalauze, are abandoned."
_St. James's Gazette._
[Note 23: "Calling me 'a Mr. Hamerton' does me no harm--but it is a breach of ordinary good manners in speaking of a well-known writer."
Yours obediently, P. G. HAMERTON.
Sept. 29, 1880. To the Editor of the _New York Tribune_.]
12.--NOCTURNE PALACES.
"Pictures in darkness are contradictions in terms."
_Literary World._
13.--THE DOORWAY.
"There is seldom in his Etchings any large arrangement of light and shade."--_P. G. Hamerton._
"Short, scratchy lines."--_St. James's Gazette._
"The architectural ornaments and the interlacing bars of the gratings are suggested rather than drawn."
_St. James's Gazette._
"Amateur prodige."--_Saturday Review._
14.--LONG LAGOON.
"We think that London fogs and the muddy old Thames supply Mr. Whistler's needle with subjects more congenial than do the Venetian palaces and lagoons."--_Daily News._
15.--TEMPLE.
"The work does not feel much."--_Times._
16.--LITTLE SALUTE.--(DRY-POINT.)
"As for the lucubrations of Mr. Whistler, they come like shadows and will so depart, _and it is unnecessary to disquiet one's self about them_."
17.--THE BRIDGE.
"These works have been done with a swiftness and dash that precludes anything like care and finish."
"These Etchings of Mr. Whistler's are nothing like so satisfactory as his earlier Chelsea ones; they neither convey the idea of space nor have they the delicacy of handling and treatment which we see in those."
"He looked at Venice never in detail."
_F. Wedmore._
18.--WOOL CARDERS.
"They have a merit of their own, and I do not wish to understand it."[24]--_F. Wedmore._
[Note 24: Mr. Wedmore is the lucky discoverer of the following:--
"Vigour and exquisiteness are denied--are they not?--even to a Velasquez"!]
19.--UPRIGHT VENICE.
"Little to recommend them save the eccentricity of their titles."
20.--LITTLE VENICE.
"The Little Venice is one of the slightest of the series."--_St. James's Gazette._
"In the Little Venice and the Little Lagoon Mr. Whistler has attempted to convey impressions by lines far too few for his purposes."--_Daily News._
"Our river is naturally full of effects in _black and white and bistre_. Venetian skies and marbles have colour you cannot suggest with a point and some printer's ink."--_Daily News._
"It is not the Venice of a maiden's fancies."--_'Arry._
21.--LITTLE COURT.
"Merely technical triumphs."--_Standard._
22.--REGENT'S QUADRANT.
"There may be a few who find genius in insanity."
23.--LOBSTER POTS.
"So little in them."[25]--_P. G. Hamerton._
[Note 25: The same Critic holds:
"The Thames is beautiful from Maidenhead to Kew, but not from Battersea to Sheerness."]
24.--RIVA No. 2.
"In all his former Etchings he was careful to give a strong foundation of firm drawing. In these plates, however, he has cast aside this painstaking method."
_St. James's Gazette._
25.--ISLANDS.
"An artist who has never mastered the subtleties of accurate form."[26]--_F. Wedmore._
[Note 26: Elsewhere Mr. Wedmore is inspired to say--
"The true collector must _gradually_ and _painfully_ acquire the eye to judge of the impression."]
[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_
_This_ is possibly the process through which the preacher is passing.
26.--THE LITTLE LAGOON.
"Well, little new came of it, in etching; nothing new that was beautiful."--_F. Wedmore._
27.--NOCTURNE SHIPPING.
[Sidenote: "Amazing!"
"This Archimago of the iconographic aoraton, or graphiology of the Hidden."--_Daily Telegraph._
"Popularity is the only insult that has not yet been offered to Mr. Whistler."--_Oscar Wilde._
28.--TWO DOORWAYS.
"It is trying to any sketch without tone to be hung upon a wall as these have been."--_P. G. Hamerton._
29.--OLD WOMEN.
"He is never literary."--_P. G. Hamerton._
30.--RIVA.
[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_
Like Eno's Fruit Salt or the "Anti-mal-de-Mer."
"He took from London to Venice his happy fashion of suggesting lapping water."--_F. Wedmore._
"Even such a well-worn subject as the Riva degli Schiavoni is made original (?) by being taken from a high point of view, and looked at lengthwise, instead of from the canal."
31.--DRURY LANE.
"In Mr. Whistler's productions one might safely say that there is no culture."--_Athenæum._
32.--THE BALCONY.
"His colour is subversive."--_Russian Press._
33.--ALDERNEY STREET.
"The best art may be produced with trouble."
_F. Wedmore._[27]
[Note 27: "I am not a Mede nor a Persian."--F. WEDMORE.]
34.--THE SMITHY.
"They produce a disappointing impression."
"His Etchings seem weak when framed."[28]
_P. G. Hamerton._
[Note 28: Mr. Hamerton does also say:
"Indifference to beauty is however compatible with splendid success in etching, as the career of Rembrandt proved."--_Etching and Etchers._]
35.--STABLES.
"An unpleasing thing, and framed in Mr. Whistler's odd fashion."--_City Press._
36.--THE MAST.
[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_
At the service of critics of unequal sizes.
"The Mast and the Little Mast are dependent for much of their interest, on the drawing of festoons of cord hanging from unequal heights."
_P. G. Hamerton._
37.--TRAGHETTO.
"The artist's present principles seem to deny him any effective chiaroscuro."--_P. G. Hamerton._
[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_
"Sometimes generally always."
"Mr. Whistler's figure drawings, generally defective and always incomplete."
38.--FISHING BOAT.
"Subjects unimportant in themselves."
_P. G. Hamerton._
39.--PONTE PIOVAN.
"Want of variety in the handling."
_St. James's Gazette._
40.--GARDEN.
"An art which is happier in the gloom of a doorway than in the glow of the sunshine, and turns with a pleasant blindness from whatsoever in Nature or Man is of perfect beauty or noble thought."--_'Arry._
41.--THE RIALTO.
"Mr. Whistler has etched too much for his reputation."--_F. Wedmore._
[Sidenote: _REFLECTION:_
This critic, true, is a Slade Professor.
"Scampering caprice."--_S. Colvin._
"Mr. Whistler's drawing, which is sometimes that of a very slovenly master."
42.--LONG VENICE.
"After all, there are certain accepted canons about what constitutes good drawing, good colour, and good painting; and when an artist deliberately sets himself to ignore or violate all of these, it is desirable that his work should not be classed with that of ordinary artists."--_'Arry._
43.--NOCTURNE SALUTE.
"The utter absence, as far as my eye[29] may be trusted, of gradation."--_F. Wedmore._
[Note 29:?
"There are many things in a painter's art which even a photographer cannot understand."
_Laudatory notice in Provincial Press._
44.--FURNACE NOCTURNE.
"There is no moral element in his chiaroscuro."
_Richmond Eagle._
45.--PIAZETTA.
"Whistler does not take much pains with his work."
_New York Paper._
"A sort of transatlantic impudence in his cleverness."
"His pictures do not claim to be accurate."
46.--THE LITTLE MAST.
"Form and line are of little account to him."
47.--QUIET CANAL.
"Herr Whistler stellt ganz wunderbare Productionen aus, die auf Gesetze der Form und der Farbe gegründet scheinen, die dem Uneingeweihten unverständlich sind."--_Wiener Presse._
"This new manner of Mr. Whistler's is no improvement upon that which helped him to win his fame in this field of art."
48.--PALACES.
"The absence, seemingly, of any power of drawing the forms of water."[30]--_F. Wedmore._
[Note 30: See No. 30, _The Riva_.]
"He has never, so far as we know, attempted to transfer to copper any of the more ambitious works of the architect."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
"He has been content to show us what his eyes can see, and not what his hand can do."
_St. James's Gazette._
49.--SALUTE DAWN.
"Too sensational."--_Athenæum._
"Pushing a single artistic principle to the verge of affectation."--_Sidney Colvin._
50.--BEGGARS.
"In the character of humanity he has not time to be interested."--_Standard._
"General absence of tone."--_P. G. Hamerton._
51.--LAGOON: NOON.
"Years ago James Whistler was a person of high promise."--_F. Wedmore._
"What the art of Mr. Whistler yields is a tertium quid."[31]--_Sidney Colvin._
[Note 31: _REFLECTION:_
The quid of sweet and bitter fancy.
"All of which gems, I am sincerely thankful to say, I cannot appreciate."
"As we have hinted, the series does not represent any Venice that we much care to remember; for who wants to remember the degradation of what has been noble, the foulness of what has been fair?"
_'Arry[32] in the "Times."_
[Note 32: _REFLECTION:_
The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them because he knoweth not how to go to the City.
"Disastrous failures."--_F. Wedmore._
"Failures that are complete and failures that are partial."--_F. Wedmore._
"A publicity rarely bestowed upon failures at all."
_F. Wedmore, Nineteenth Century._
[Sidenote:
_"Voilà ce que l'on dit de moi Dans la Gazette de Hollande."_]
"Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us. We wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness."
"We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as in the night."
"We roar all like bears."
_Taking the Bait_
[Sidenote: _The Academy_, Feb. 24, 1883.]
By the simple process of applying snippets of published sentences to works of art to which the original comments were never meant to have reference, and sometimes, too, by lively misquotation--as when a writer who "did not wish to understate" Mr. Whistler's merit is made to say he "did not wish to understand" it, Mr. Whistler has counted on good-humouredly confounding criticism. He has entertained but not persuaded; and if his literary efforts with the scissors and the paste-pot might be taken with any seriousness we should have to rebuke him for his feat. But we are far from doing so. He desired, it seems, to say that he and Velasquez were both above criticism. An artist in literature would have said it in fewer words; but indulgence may fairly be granted to the less assured methods of an amateur in authorship.
F. WEDMORE.
_An Apology_
[Sidenote: _The World_, Feb. 28, 1883.]
Atlas--There are those, they tell me, who have the approval of the people--and live! For them the _succès d'estime_; for me, O Atlas, the _succès d'exécration_--the only tribute possible from the Mob to the Master! This I have now nobly achieved. _Glissons!_ In the hour of my triumph let me not neglect my ambulance.
Mr. Frederick Wedmore--a critic--one of the wounded--complains that by dexterously substituting "understand" for "understate," I have dealt unfairly by him, and wrongly rendered his writing. Let me hasten to acknowledge the error, and apologise. My carelessness is culpable, and the misprint without excuse; for naturally I have all along known, and the typographer should have been duly warned, that with Mr. Wedmore, as with his brethren, it is always a matter of understating, and not at all one of understanding.
_Quant aux autres_--well, with the exception of "'Arry," who really is dead, they will recover. Scalped and disfigured, they are not mortally hurt; and--would you believe it?--possessed with an infinite capacity for continuing, they have already returned, nothing doubting, to their limited literature, of which I have exhausted the stock.--Yours, _en passant_,
Chelsea.
_"Jeux Innocents" in Tite Street_
[Sidenote: _The World_, Dec. 26, 1883.]
Mr. Whistler's final breakfast of the year was given on Sunday last. The hospitable master has fresh wonders in store for his friends in the new year; for, not content with treating his next-door critic after the manner that Portuguese sailors treat the Apostle Judas at Easter-tide, he is said to have perfected a new instrument of torture. This invention is of the nature of a camera obscura, whereby, by a crafty "arrangement" of reflectors, he promises to display in his own studio, to his friends, "'Arry at the White House," under all the appropriate circumstances that might be expected of a "Celebrity at Home."
ATLAS.
_A Line from the Lands End_
[Sidenote: _The World_, Jan. 2, 1884.]
Delightful! Atlas--I have read here, to the idle miners--culture in their manners curiously, at this season, blended with intoxication--your brilliant and graphic description of 'Arry at the other end of my arrangement in telescopic lenses.
The sensitive sons of the Cornish caves, by instinct refined, revel in the writhing of the resurrected 'Arry.
Our natures are evidently of the same dainty brutality. Cruelty to the critic after demise, is a revelation, and the story of 'Arry pursued with post-mortem, and, for Sunday demonstration, kept by galvanism from his grave, is to them most fascinating.
I have, my sympathetic Atlas, the success that might have been Edgar Poe's, could he have read to such an audience the horrible "Case of Mr. Waldemar."
My invention and machinery, by the way, these warm-hearted people believe to be something after the fashion of their own sluice-boxes--and I dare not undeceive them.
Atlas, _je te la souhaite bonne et heureuse_!
ST. IVES, CORNWALL, Dec. 27.
_The Easy Expert_
Atlas--They have sent me the _Spectator_--a paper upon which our late 'Arry lingered to the last as art critic. In its columns I find a correspondent calling aloud for our kind intervention. Present me, brave Atlas, to the editor, that I may say to him:
[Sidenote: _The World_, Jan. 30, 1884.]
"GOOD SIR,--'Your Reviewer' is doubtless my unburied 'Arry. Why, then, should 'his mistaking a photogravure reproduction of a pen-and-ink drawing by Samuel Palmer for a finished etching by the same hand' seem, 'to say the least of it, astounding'?
"Not at all! By this sort of thing was he known among us, poor chap--and so was he our fresh gladness and continued surprise."
"Did I not make historical his enchanting encounter with Mr. Herkomer's water-colour drawing of Mr. Ruskin at the Grosvenor, which he described as the 'first oil portrait we have of the great master'? Amazing that, if you like!
"Do not all remember how we leaped for joy at the reading of it?"
"Even Atlas himself laughed aloud, and, handicapped as he is with the World, and weighted with wisdom, danced upon his plinth, a slow measure of reckless acquiescence, as I set down in the chronicles of all time that 'Arry, 'unable, by mere sense of smell, to distinguish between oil and water-colour, might at least have inquired; and that either the fireman or the guardian in the Gallery could have told him not to blunder in the _Times_.'"
"But no, he never would ask--he liked his potshots at things; it used to give a sort of sporting interest to his speculations upon pictures. And so he was ever obstinate--or any one at the Fine Art Society would have told him the difference between an etching and a photograph.--I am, good sir, yours, etc."
Atlas, _à bientôt_.
ST. IVES, CORNWALL, Jan. 25, 1834.
_Propositions--No. 2_
A picture is finished when all trace of the means used to bring about the end has disappeared.
To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.
Industry in Art is a necessity--not a virtue--and any evidence of the same, in the production, is a blemish, not a quality; a proof, not of achievement, but of absolutely insufficient work, for work alone will efface the footsteps of work.
The work of the master reeks not of the sweat of the brow--suggests no effort--and is finished from its beginning.
The completed task of perseverance only, has never been begun, and will remain unfinished to eternity--a monument of goodwill and foolishness.
"There is one that laboureth, and taketh pains, and maketh haste, and is so much the more behind."
The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter--perfect in its bud as in its bloom--with no reason to explain its presence--no mission to fulfil--a joy to the artist--a delusion to the philanthropist--a puzzle to the botanist--an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.
_A Hint_
[Sidenote: _The World_, Feb. 17, 1886.]
Please to take note, my dear Mr. James McN. W., that your "dearest foe," 'Arry, is a candidate for the Slade Chair of Art in the University of Cambridge! This is said to be the age of testimonials. A few words from you, my dear James, addressed to the distinguished trustees, could not fail to give 'Arry a lift.
ATLAS.
_A Distinction_
Atlas, you provoke me! The wisdom of ages means but little--I have said it. _Faut être "dans le mouvement,"_ you dear old thing, or you are absolutely out of it!
[Sidenote: _The World_, Feb. 24, 1886.]
You are misled, and mistake mere fact for the fiction of history, which is truth--and instructs--and is beautiful.
Now, in truth, 'Arry is dead--very dead.
Did I not, from between your shoulders, sally forth and slay him?--thereby instructing--and making history--and avenging the beautiful.
If within the distant Aïden, you can't descry, "with sorrow laden," the tiny soul of 'Arry, it is because you no longer read your own small print, my Atlas! and the microbes of Eternity escape you.
Moreover, are not these things written in the chronicles of Chelsea, adown whose Embankment I still, Achilles-like, do drag the body of an afternoon?
This practice has doubtless completed the confusion of the wearied ones of Slade--and they of the Schools, accustomed to the culture of Colvin, whose polished scalp I with difficulty collected, ceasing to distinguish between the quick and the dead, will probably prop up our late 'Arry as professor, long to remain undetected in the Chair!
Atlas, _tais-toi!_--Let us not interfere!
_A Document_
Atlas--I have come upon the posthumous paper of 'Arry--his certificate of character, and printed pretension to the Professorship of Slade--and O! the shame of it--and the indiscretion of it!
Read, Atlas, and seek in your past for a parallel:
[Sidenote: _The World_, March 24, 1886.]