The Life of James McNeill Whistler

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born on July 10, 1834, at Lowell, Massachusetts, in the United States of America.

Whistler, in the witness-box during the suit he brought against Ruskin in 1878, gave St. Petersburg as his birthplace-or the reporters did-and he never denied it. Baltimore was given by M. Théodore Duret in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts (April 1881), and M. Duret's mistake, since corrected by him, has been many times repeated. The late Mrs. Livermore, who knew Whistler as a child at Lowell, asked him why he did not contradict this. His answer was: "If any one likes to think I was born in Baltimore, why should I deny it? It is of no consequence to me!" On entering West Point he stated that Massachusetts was his place of birth. But, as a rule, he met any one indiscreet enough to question him on the subject as he did the American who came up to him one evening in the Carlton Hotel, London, and by way of introduction said, "You know, Mr. Whistler, we were both born at Lowell, and at very much the same time. There is only the difference of a year-you are sixty-seven and I am sixty-eight." "And I told him," said Whistler, from whom we had the story the next day, "'Very charming! And so you are sixty-eight and were born at Lowell! Most interesting, no doubt, and as you please! But I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born at Lowell, and I refuse to be sixty-seven!'"

Whistler was christened at St. Anne's Church, Lowell, November 9, 1834. "Baptized, James Abbott, infant son of George Washington and Anna Mathilda Whistler: Sponsors, the parents. Signed, T. Edson"; so it is recorded in the church register. He was named after James Abbott, of Detroit, who had married his father's elder sister, Sarah Whistler. McNeill (his mother's name) was added shortly after he entered West Point. Abbott he always kept for legal and official documents. But, eventually, he dropped it for other purposes, "J. A. M." pleasing him no better than "J. A. W.," and he signed himself "James McNeill Whistler" or "J. M. N. Whistler."

The Rev. Rose Fuller Whistler, in his Annals of an English Family (1887), says that John le Wistler de Westhannye (1272-1307) was the founder of the family. Most of the Whistlers lived in Goring, Whitchurch, or Oxford, and are buried in many a church and churchyard of the Thames Valley. Brasses and tablets to the memory of several are in the church of St. Mary at Goring: one to "Hugh Whistler, the son of Master John Whistler of Goring, who departed this life the 17 Day of Januarie Anno Dominie 1675 being aged 216 years"-an amazing statement, but there it is in the parish church durable as brass can make it, and it would have delighted Whistler. The solemn antiquary, however, has decided that the 21 is only a badly cut 4. This remarkable ancestor figures as a family ghost at Gatehampton, where he is said to have been buried with his money, and there he still walks, guarding the treasure he lived so many years to gather. The position of the Whistlers entitled them to a coat of arms, described in the Harleian MSS., No. 1556, and thus in Gwillim's Heraldry: "Gules, five mascles, in bend between two Talbots passant argent"; and the motto "Forward."

The men were mostly soldiers and parsons. A few made names for themselves. The shield of Gabriel Whistler, of Combe, Sussex, is one of six in King's College Chapel, Cambridge. Anthony Whistler, poet, friend of Shenstone, belonged to the Whitchurch family. Dr. Daniel Whistler (1619-1684), of the Essex branch, was a Fellow of Merton, an original Fellow of the Royal Society, a member and afterwards President of the College of Physicians, friend of Evelyn and Pepys. Evelyn often met him in "select companie" at supper, and once "Din'd at Dr. Whistler's at the Physicians Colledge," and found him not only learned but "the most facetious man in nature," the legitimate ancestor of Whistler. Pepys, who also dined and supped with him many times, pronounced him "good company and a very ingenious man." He fell under a cloud with the officials of the College of Physicians, and his portrait has been consigned to a back stairway of the Hall in Pall Mall. In the seventeenth century Ralph Whistler, of the Salters' Company, London, was one of the colonisers of Ulster, and Francis Whistler was a settler of Virginia. When Whistler saw the name "Francis Whistler, Gentleman," in the Genesis of the United States, he said to us, "There is an ancestor, with the hall-mark F.F.V. [First Families of Virginia], who tickles my American snobbery, and washes out the taint of Lowell."

The American Whistlers are descended from John Whistler of the Irish branch. In his youth he ran away and enlisted. Sir Kensington Whistler, an English cousin, was an officer in the same regiment, and objected to having a relative in the ranks. John Whistler, therefore, was transferred to another regiment starting for the American colonies. He arrived in time to surrender at Saratoga with Burgoyne. He went back to England, received his discharge, eloped with Anna, daughter of Sir Edward Bishop or Bischopp, and, returning to America, settled at Hagerstown, Maryland. He again enlisted, this time in the United States army. He rose to the brevet rank of major and served in the war of 1812 against Great Britain. He was stationed at Fort Dearborn, which he helped to build, and Fort Wayne. According to Mr. A. J. Eddy (Recollections and Impressions of Whistler), Whistler once said to a visitor from Chicago:

"Chicago, dear me, what a wonderful place! I really ought to visit it some day; for, you know, my grandfather founded the city, and my uncle was the last commander of Fort Dearborn!"

In 1815, upon the reduction of the army, Major John Whistler was retired. He died in 1817, at Bellefontaine, Missouri. Of his fifteen children, three sons are remembered as soldiers, and three daughters married army officers. George Washington, the most distinguished son, was the father of James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

George Washington Whistler was born on May 19, 1800, at Fort Wayne. He was educated mostly at Newport, Kentucky; and from Kentucky, when a little over fourteen, he received his appointment to the Military Academy, West Point, where he is remembered for his gaiety. Mr. George L. Vose, his biographer, and others tell stories that might have been told of his son. One is of some breach of discipline, for which he was made to bestride a gun on the campus. As he sat there he saw, coming towards him, the Miss Swift he was before long to marry. Out came his handkerchief, and, leaning over the gun, he set to work cleaning it so carefully that he was "honoured, not disgraced," in her eyes. He was number one in drawing, and his playing on the flute won him the nickname "Pipes." He graduated on July 1, 1819. He was appointed second lieutenant in the First Artillery, and, in 1829, first lieutenant in the Second Artillery. He served on topographical duty, and for a few months he was assistant professor at the Academy. There was not much fighting for American officers of his generation. But railroads were being built, and so few were the civil engineers that West Point graduates were allowed by Government to work for private corporations, and he was employed on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, the Baltimore and Susquehanna, and the Paterson and Hudson River. For the Baltimore and Ohio he went to England in 1828 to examine the railway system. He was building the line from Stonington to Providence, when, in 1833, he resigned from the army with the rank of major, to carry on his profession as a civil engineer.

In the meanwhile Major Whistler had married twice. His first wife was Mary Swift, daughter of Dr. Foster Swift, of the United States army. She left three children: George, who became a well known civil engineer; Joseph, who died in youth; and Deborah, Lady Haden. His second wife was Anna Mathilda McNeill, daughter of Dr. Charles Donald McNeill, of Wilmington, North Carolina, and sister of William Gibbs McNeill, a West Point classmate and an associate in Major Whistler's engineering work. The McNeills were descended from the McNeills of Skye. Their chief, Donald, emigrated with sixty of his clan to North Carolina in 1746, and bought land on Cape Fear River. Charles Donald McNeill was his grandson and was twice married; his second wife, Martha Kingsley, was the mother of Anna Mathilda McNeill, who became Mrs. George Washington Whistler. The McNeills were related by marriage to the Fairfaxes and other Virginia families, and Whistler, on his mother's side, was the Southerner he loved to call himself.

In 1834 Major Whistler accepted the post of engineer of locks and canals at Lowell, and to this town he brought his family. There, in the Paul Moody House on Worthen Street, James McNeill Whistler was born, and the house is now a Whistler Memorial Museum. Two years later the second son, William Gibbs McNeill, was born. In 1837 Major Whistler moved to Stonington, Connecticut, and Miss Emma W. Palmer and Mrs. Dr. Stanton, his wife's nieces, still remember his "pleasant house on Main Street." It is said that he had a chaise fitted with car wheels in which he and his family drove every Sunday on the tracks to church at Westerly; also that a locomotive named Whistler was in use on the road until recently. He was consulted in regard to many new lines, among them the Western Railroad of Massachusetts, for which he was consulting engineer from 1836 to 1840. In 1840 he was made chief engineer, and he removed to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he lived in the Ethan Chapin Homestead on Chestnut Street, north of Edward Street. A third son, Kirk Booth, born at Stonington in 1838, died at Springfield in 1842, and here a fourth son, Charles Donald, was born in 1841.

In 1842 Nicholas I. of Russia sent a commission, under Colonel Melnikoff, round Europe and America to find the best method and the best man to build a railroad from St. Petersburg to Moscow, and they chose the American, George Washington Whistler. The honour was great and the salary large, 12,000 dollars a year. He accepted, and started for Russia in Midsummer 1842, leaving his family at Stonington.

The life of a child, for the first nine years or so, is not of much interest to any save his parents. An idea can be formed of Whistler's early training. His father was a West Point man, with all that is fine in the West Point tradition. Mrs. Whistler, described as "one of the saints upon earth," was as strict as a Puritan. Dr. Whistler-Willie-often told his wife of the dread with which he and Jimmie looked forward to Saturday afternoon, with its overhauling of clothes, emptying of pockets, washing of heads, putting away of toys, and preparation for Sunday, when the Bible was the only book they read. Of the facts of his childhood there are few to record. Mrs. Livermore remembered his baby beauty, so great that her father used to say "it was enough to make Sir Joshua Reynolds come out of his grave and paint Jemmie asleep." In his younger years he was called Jimmie, Jemmie, Jamie, James, and Jim, and we use these names as we have found them in the letters written to us and the books quoted. Mrs. Livermore dwelt on the child's beautiful hands, "which belong to so many of the Whistlers." When she returned to Lowell in 1836 from the Manor School at York, England, Mrs. Whistler's son, Willie, had just been born:

"As soon as Mrs. Whistler was strong enough, she sent for me to go and see her boy, and I did see her and her baby in bed! And then I asked, 'Where is Jemmie, of whom I have heard so much?' She replied, 'He was in the room a short time since, and I think he must be here still.' So I went softly about the room till I saw a very small form prostrate and at full length on the shelf under the dressing-table, and I took hold of an arm and a leg and placed him on my knee, and then said, 'What were you doing, dear, under the table?' 'I'se drawrin',' and in one very beautiful little hand he held the paper, in the other the pencil."

The pencil drawings which we have seen, owned by Mrs. Livermore, are curiously firm and strong for a child of four.

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