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And whatever ?nay be thought of reprinting entire The 
 Gentle Art, there can be no question about the great need of 
 scattering broadcast the .... Ten o’Clock. 
 
 ARTHUR JEROME EDDY. 
 
 In the Ten o’Clock he brought his style to perfection. His 
 philosophy , based on the eternal truths of art , was expressed 
 with the beauty that endures for all time. 
 
 ELIZABETH R. AND JOSEPH PENNELL. 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 THOMAS BIRD MOSHER 
 1916 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 FOREWORD ....... ix 
 
 BY DON C. SEITZ 
 
 “TEN O’CLOCK” ...... 3 
 
 BY J. A. MCNEILL WHISTLER 
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S LECTURE ON ART • • • 33 
 
 BY A. C. SWINBURNE 
 
 “ ET TU, BRUTE ! ” . . . . . .45 
 
 FREEING A LAST FRIEND ..... 47 
 
 BY J. A. MCNEILL WHISTLER 
 BEFORE THE MIRROR . . . . 5 I 
 
 BY A. C. SWINBURNE 
 
JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL WHISTLER 
 
 BORN IN LOWELL, MASSACHUSETTS, JULY 10 , 1834. 
 
 DIED IN LONDON, JULY 17, 1903. 
 
 It was a grey, stormy summer day, and as the clergyman 
 said the last prayers, and the coffin was lowered, the thick 
 London atmosphere wrapped the green enclosure in the magic 
 and mystery that Whistler was the first to see and to reveal. 
 The grave was made by the side of his wife under a wall 
 covered with clematis. A low railing, like the trellis in the 
 garden at the Rue du Bac, with flowers growing over it, shuts 
 in the little unmarked plot of ground where Whistler, the 
 greatest artist and most striking personality of the nineteenth 
 century, lies at rest in a remote corner of the London he 
 loved, not far from the house, and nearer the grave, of 
 Hogarth, who had been to him the greatest English master 
 from the days of his boyhood in St. Petersburg. 
 
 HIS NAME AND HIS FAME WILL LIVE FOREVER. 
 
 Joseph Pennell, 
 
 Elizabeth Robins Pennell. 
 
 August 24, 1911. 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 M ORE than thirty years have passed since a curious audi- 
 ence of Londoners, belonging to the upper circle of Art 
 and Intellect, gathered in Prince’s Hall at ten o’clock on the 
 evening of February 20th, 1885, to hear James Abbott McNeill 
 Whistler make his first essay as a lecturer. He had fixed the 
 hour himself as a time best fitted to meet the convenience of 
 that exalted society and from the hour gave his talk its name. 
 As “ Ten o’clock ” it endures. No one knew what eccentricity 
 the artist would develop. More came to be amused than 
 instructed. They thought rather to hear an exquisite pipe a 
 thin threnody of art, with quips and quirks at critics and 
 public. Instead the small figure in black, looking much like 
 his portrait of Sarasate, grew into transcendent size, the thren- 
 ody expanded into a sonorous song, exalting art — magnificent, 
 immortal ! It reads to-day like a mighty chant, fit to be sung 
 by a great chorus. 
 
 Like all his works it was not the offspring of the moment, a 
 thing of hasty inspiration. It was the product of long and 
 tense thinking, the compounding of well-digested ideas, the 
 fruit of exacting experience. It was polished and perfected 
 and much rehearsed. The chance to lecture came to him from 
 Mrs. R. D’Oyley Carte, wife of the impressario to whom we owe 
 the first glories of the “ Mikado ” and the rest of the joyous 
 
X 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 Gilbert and Sullivan memories. She had been Miss Lenoir, of 
 the London stage, and was her husband’s chief aid in his pro- 
 ductions, having a tiny office in the Savoy Theatre lit with a 
 dim little lamp, throwing strange shadowings. The treatise 
 had been growing like a mosaic, preferably for publication, 
 when an invitation to address the Dublin Sketching Club sug- 
 gested its use as a lecture. Whistler did not get to Dublin, 
 but George Augustus Sala heard the notes read and introduced 
 him to Mrs. Carte, who won the artist over to the Prince’s Hall 
 effort. 
 
 When the clear notes of “ Ten o’clock ” were sounded, the 
 sad-eyed pre-Raphaelites and the droopy followers of Oscar 
 Wilde filled the public eye with their antics. That a reputed 
 eccentric should be the man to recall art to its true sense 
 surprised the critical and jarred the poseurs. Sensible people 
 welcomed the address as a turning point in the all submerging 
 silliness. On the 15th of March the lecture was repeated at 
 Cambridge before the University Art Society and on April 30th 
 it was delivered at Oxford. The Royal Academy Students’ 
 Club, the Society of British Artists, and the Fine Arts Society 
 also heard “ Ten o’clock,” — in all six public deliveries. 
 
 Twenty-five copies were printed for private use in 1885, but 
 the call for a public edition led to an issue in small quarto form, 
 bearing the stamp of the butterfly, from the press of Chatto 
 & Windus, in 1 888. Mr. Whistler personally supervised the 
 printing — selecting type and covers, making it uniform with his 
 previously issued “Whistler vs. Ruskin,” and “Notes, Harmo- 
 nies and Nocturnes.” It was issued in the same form in 
 Boston the same year by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, and 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 XI 
 
 in Paris, by Perrin et Cie, from a translation by Stephane 
 Mallarme. 
 
 When, in 1890, impelled by the conceit of Sheridan Ford’s 
 “ Gentle Art of Making Enemies ” Whistler recast the volume, 
 he included “ Ten o’Clock ” in the collection of his adventures 
 with the pen. It earned its place in the compilation by having 
 been the means of splitting his relations with Algernon Charles 
 Swinburne. They had long been friends. The publication of 
 the essay in 1888 caused the poet to indulge in a critical 
 review in the Fortnightly of June, 1888. “Freeing a Last 
 Friend,” a letter to the London World announced their parting 
 on behalf of the artist. From some strange mental twist in 
 reading “Ten o’Clock,” Swinburne had chosen to regard it as 
 the “ thrust of a tongue in a smiling cheek,” had in short failed 
 to grasp the strong, serious intent of the essay, and this 
 Whistler resented. “ Who are you,” he asked Swinburne, 
 “ deserting your Muse, that you should insult my Goddess with 
 familiarity, and the manners of approval common to the man- 
 ners of the market-place ? ” 
 
 Theodore Watts Dunton, with whom Swinburne lived as a 
 brother, received the missive in his absence and took it to 
 Whistler unopened, imploring him to destroy it and breed no 
 quarrel. This he refused to do. Swinburne, deeply affronted, 
 declared that he would never again speak to Whistler, and kept 
 his word. 
 
 That such a Philistine could remain long in harmony with 
 British art was not to be expected. Made the head of the 
 Society of British Artists, clashes followed of such fierceness 
 that soon after the publication of “ Ten o’Clock ” but not in 
 
 
Xll 
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 consequence of it, he resigned the presidency. Many others 
 followed. As he tersely put it, “ The artists retired, the British 
 remained.” 
 
 Surviving all controversies “ Ten o’Clock ” continues to com- 
 mand attention and interest. The Schools of Ruskin, and the 
 critics who assailed its views are dead. Other issues were 
 required after the wide circulation in “The Gentle Art.” The 
 Old Dominion Shop in Chicago produced an edition in 1904, 
 containing also Mr. Swinburne’s comment and Whistler’s reply. 
 The same year it found its way into German, translated by 
 Theodor Knorr and printed in Strassburg by J. H. Ed. Heitz. 
 The Alderbrink Press in Chicago produced a third American 
 edition in 1907, and in 1908 the Marion Press, Jamaica, Long 
 Island, reproduced the lecture in fac-simile of its original form. 
 
 Secure in his fame, Whistler holds a rare place in the history 
 of art. “ He took,” as Sheridan Ford has written, “ the 
 methods of Velasquez and the Japanese, and, with the might of 
 his marvellous genius, shaped for the Nineteenth Century’s 
 nerves and needs, supreme effects in decoration, unsurpassed 
 and unsurpassable. In art pictorial whatever he touched he 
 adorned.” 
 
 Don C. Seitz. 
 
 Cos Cob, Conn., Oct. 1, 1916. 
 
He talked of art, certainly for art’s sake, with the passionate 
 reverence of the lover, and with the joyous certainty of one 
 who knows himself beloved. . . . He only said to me, I 
 suppose, what he had been saying and writing for fifty years ; 
 it was his gospel, which he had preached mockingly, that he 
 might disconcert the mockers ; but he said it all like one 
 possessed of a conviction, and as if he were stating that 
 conviction with his first ardour. 
 
 Now, in all this, which was once supposed to be so revolu- 
 tionary, so impertinent even, there is just so much exaggera- 
 tion as wit lends to any single aspect of truth. But it is truth, 
 and that aspect of truth which, in our time, most needs 
 emphasis. 
 
 ARTHUR SYMONS. 
 
Ladies and Gentlemen, 
 
 It is with great hesitation and much misgiving 
 that I appear before you, in the character of The 
 Preacher. 
 
 If timidity be at all allied to the virtue modesty, and 
 can find favour in your eyes, I pray you, for the sake 
 of that virtue, accord me your utmost indulgence. 
 
 I would plead for my want of habit, did it not seem 
 preposterous, judging from precedent, that aught save 
 the most efficient effrontery could be ever expected in 
 connection with my subject — for I will not conceal 
 from you that I mean to talk about Art. Yes, Art — 
 that has of late become, as far as much discussion and 
 writing can make it, a sort of common topic for the 
 tea-table. 
 
 Art is upon the Town ! — to be chucked under the 
 chin by the passing gallant — to be enticed within the 
 gates of the householder — to be coaxed into company, 
 as a proof of culture and refinement. 
 
 If familiarity can breed contempt, certainly Art — or 
 what is currently taken for it — has been brought to its 
 lowest stage of intimacy. 
 
4 
 
 MR. WHISTLERS 
 
 The people have been harassed with Art in every 
 guise, and vexed with many methods as to its endurance. 
 They have been told how they shall love Art, and live 
 with it. Their homes have been invaded, their walls 
 covered with paper, their very dress taken to task 
 until, roused at last, bewildered and filled with the 
 doubts and discomforts of senseless suggestion, they 
 resent such intrusion, and cast forth the false prophets, 
 who have brought the very name of the beautiful into 
 disrepute, and derision upon themselves. 
 
 Alas ! ladies and gentlemen, Art has been maligned. 
 She has naught in common with such practices. She 
 is a goddess of dainty thought — reticent of habit, 
 abjuring all obtrusiveness, purposing in no way to 
 better others. 
 
 She is, withal, selfishly occupied with her own per- 
 fection only — having no desire to teach — seeking and 
 finding the beautiful in all conditions and in all times, 
 as did her high priest Rembrandt, when he saw pic- 
 turesque grandeur and noble dignity in the Jews’ 
 quarter of Amsterdam, and lamented not that its inhab- 
 itants were not Greeks. 
 
 As did Tintoret and Paul Veronese, among the 
 Venetians, while not halting to change the brocaded 
 silks for the classic draperies of Athens. 
 
TEN O CLOCK 
 
 5 
 
 u 
 
 >> 
 
 As did, at the Court of Philip, Velasquez, whose 
 Infantas, clad in inassthetic hoops, are, as works of Art, 
 of the same quality as the Elgin marbles. 
 
 No reformers were these great men — no improvers 
 of the ways of others ! Their productions alone were 
 their occupation, and, filled with the poetry of their 
 science, they required not to alter their surroundings — 
 for, as the laws of their Art were revealed to them, they 
 saw, in the development of their work, that real beauty 
 which, to them, was as much a matter of certainty and 
 triumph as is to the astronomer the verification of the 
 result, foreseen with the light given to him alone. In all 
 this, their world was completely severed from that of 
 their fellow-creatures with whom sentiment is mistaken 
 for poetry ; and for whom there is no perfect work that 
 shall not be explained by the benefit conferred upon 
 themselves. 
 
 Humanity takes the place of Art, and God’s creations 
 are excused by their usefulness. Beauty is confounded 
 with virtue, and, before a work of Art, it is asked : 
 “ What good shall it do? ” 
 
 Hence it is that nobility of action, in this life, is hope- 
 lessly linked with the merit of the work that portrays 
 it ; and thus the people have acquired the habit of look- 
 ing, as who should say, not at a picture, but through it, 
 at some human fact, that shall, or shall not, from a 
 
6 
 
 MR. WHISTLERS 
 
 social point of view, better their mental or moral state. 
 So we have come to hear of the painting that elevates, 
 and of the duty of the painter — of the picture that is 
 full of thought, and of the panel that merely decorates. 
 
TEN O CLOCK 
 
 7 
 
 (( 
 
 }> 
 
 A favourite faith, dear to those who teach, is that 
 certain periods were especially artistic, and that nations, 
 readily named, were notably lovers of Art. 
 
 So we are told that the Greeks were, as a people, 
 worshippers of the beautiful, and that in the fifteenth 
 century Art was engrained in the multitude. 
 
 That the great masters lived in common understand- 
 ing with their patrons — that the early Italians were 
 artists — all — and that the demand for the lovely thing 
 produced it. 
 
 That we, of to-day, in gross contrast to this Arcadian 
 purity, call for the ungainly, and obtain the ugly. 
 
 That, could we but change our habits and climate — 
 were we willing to wander in groves — could we be 
 roasted out of broadcloth — were we to do without 
 haste, and journey without speed, we should again 
 require the spoon of Queen Anne, and pick at our peas 
 with the fork of two prongs. And so, for the flock, 
 little hamlets grow near Hammersmith, and the steam 
 horse is scorned. 
 
 Useless ! quite hopeless and false is the effort ! — 
 built upon fable, and all because “ a wise man has 
 
8 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 uttered a vain thing and filled his belly with the East 
 wind.” 
 
 Listen ! There never was an artistic period. 
 
 There never was an Art-loving nation. 
 
 In the beginning, man went forth each day — some to 
 do battle, some to the chase ; others, again, to dig and 
 to delve in the field — all that they might gain and live, 
 or lose and die. Until there was found among them 
 one, differing from the rest, whose pursuits attracted 
 him not, and so he staid by the tents with the women, 
 and traced strange devices with a burnt stick upon a 
 gourd. 
 
 This man, who took no joy in the ways of his 
 brethren — who cared not for conquest, and fretted in 
 the field — this designer of quaint patterns — this deviser 
 of the beautiful — who perceived in Nature about him 
 curious curvings, as faces are seen in the fire — this 
 dreamer apart, was the first artist. 
 
 And when, from the field and from afar, there came 
 back the people, they took the gourd — and drank from 
 out of it. 
 
 And presently there came to this man another — and, 
 in time, others — of like nature, chosen by the Gods — 
 and so they worked together; and soon they fashioned, 
 from the moistened earth, forms resembling the gourd. 
 
“ TEN O’CLOCK ” 
 
 9 
 
 And with the power of creation, the heirloom of the 
 artist, presently they went beyond the slovenly sug- 
 gestion of Nature, and the first vase was born, in 
 beautiful proportion. 
 
 And the toilers tilled, and were athirst ; and the 
 heroes returned from fresh victories, to rejoice and to 
 feast; and all drank alike from the artists’ goblets, 
 fashioned cunningly, taking no note the while of the 
 craftsman’s pride, and understanding not his glory in 
 his work ; drinking at the cup, not from choice, not 
 from a consciousness that it was beautiful, but because, 
 forsooth, there was none other ! 
 
 And time, with more state, brought more capacity 
 for luxury, and it became well that men should dwell in 
 large houses, and rest upon couches, and eat at tables ; 
 whereupon the artist, with his artificers, built palaces, 
 and filled them with furniture, beautiful in proportion 
 and lovely to look upon. 
 
 And the people lived in marvels of art — and ate and 
 drank out of masterpieces — for there was nothing else 
 to eat and to drink out of, and no bad building to live 
 in; no article of daily life, of luxury, or of necessity, 
 that had not been handed down from the design of the 
 master, and made by his workmen. 
 
 And the people questioned not, and had nothing to 
 say in the matter. 
 
IO 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 So Greece was in its splendour, and Art reigned 
 supreme — by force of fact, not by election — and there 
 was no meddling from the outsider. The mighty 
 warrior would no more have ventured to offer a design 
 for the temple of Pallas Athene than would the sacred 
 poet have proffered a plan for constructing the catalpult. 
 
 And the Amateur was unknown — and the Dilettante 
 undreamed of ! 
 
 And history wrote on, and conquest accompanied 
 civilisation, and Art spread, or rather its products were 
 carried by the victors among the vanquished from one 
 country to another. And the customs of cultivation 
 covered the face of the earth, so that all peoples contin- 
 ued to use what the artist alone 'produced . 
 
 And centuries passed in this using, and the world 
 was flooded with all that was beautiful, until there 
 arose a new class, who discovered the cheap, and fore- 
 saw fortune in the facture of the sham. 
 
 Then sprang into existence the tawdry, the common, 
 the gew-gaw. 
 
 The taste of the tradesman supplanted the science of 
 the artist, and what was born of the million went back 
 to them, and charmed them, for it was after their own 
 heart; and the great and the small, the statesman and 
 the slave, took to themselves the abomination that was 
 
“ TEN O’CLOCK ” 
 
 I I 
 
 tendered, and preferred it — and have lived with it ever 
 since ! 
 
 And the artist’s occupation was gone, and the manu- 
 facturer and the huckster took his place. 
 
 And now the heroes filled from the jugs and drank 
 from the bowls — with understanding — noting the glare 
 of their new bravery, and taking pride in its worth. 
 
 And the people — this time — had much to say in the 
 matter — and all were satisfied. And Birmingham and 
 Manchester arose in their might — and Art was relegated 
 to the curiosity shop. 
 
I 2 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of 
 all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all 
 music. 
 
 But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group 
 with science, these elements, that the result may be 
 beautiful — as the musician gathers his notes, and forms 
 his chords, until he bring forth from chaos glorious 
 harmony. 
 
 To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as 
 she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on the 
 piano. 
 
 That Nature is always right, is an assertion, artisti- 
 cally, as untrue, as it is one whose truth is universally 
 taken for granted. Nature is very rarely right, to such 
 an extent even, that it might almost be said that Nature 
 is usually wrong : that is to say, the condition of things 
 that shall bring about the perfection of harmony worthy 
 a picture is rare, and not common at all. 
 
 This would seem, to even the most intelligent, a doc- 
 trine almost blasphemous. So incorported with our 
 education has the supposed aphorism become, that its 
 belief is held to be part of our moral being, and the 
 
“TEN O’CLOCK 
 
 13 
 
 words themselves have, in our ear, the ring of religion. 
 Still, seldom does Nature succeed in producing a pic- 
 ture. 
 
 The sun blares, the wind blows from the east, the 
 sky is bereft of cloud, and without, all is of iron. The 
 windows of the Crystal Palace are seen from all points 
 of London. The holiday maker rejoices in the glorious 
 day, and the painter turns aside to shut his eyes. 
 
 How little this is understood, and how dutifully the 
 casual in Nature is accepted as sublime, may be 
 gathered from the unlimited admiration daily produced 
 by a very foolish sunset. 
 
 The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in 
 distinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognise the 
 traveller on the top. The desire to see, for the sake of 
 seeing, is, with the mass, alone the one to be gratified, 
 hence the delight in detail. 
 
 And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with 
 poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose 
 themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys 
 become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in 
 the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and 
 fairy-land is before us — then the wayfarer hastens 
 home ; the working man and the cultured one, the wise 
 man and the one of pleasure, cease to understand, as 
 
14 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 they have ceased to see, and Nature, who, for once, 
 has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist 
 alone, her son and her master — her son in that he loves 
 her, her master in that he knows her. 
 
 To him her secrets are unfolded, to him her lessons 
 have become gradually clear. He looks at her flower, 
 not with the enlarging lens, that he may gather facts 
 for the botanist, but with the light of the one who sees 
 in her choice selection of brilliant tones and delicate 
 tints, suggestions of future harmonies. 
 
 He does not confine himself to purposeless copying, 
 without thought, each blade of grass, as commended by 
 the inconsequent, but, in the long curve of the narrow 
 leaf, corrected by the straight tall stem, he learns how 
 grace is wedded to dignity, how strength enhances 
 sweetness, that elegance shall be the result. 
 
 In the citron wing of the pale butterfly, with its dainty 
 spots of orange, he sees before him the stately halls of 
 fair gold, with their slender saffron pillars, and is taught 
 how the delicate drawing high upon the walls shall be 
 traced in tender tones of orpiment, and repeated by the 
 base in notes of graver hue. 
 
 In all that is dainty and lovable he finds hints for his 
 own combinations, and thus is Nature ever his resource 
 and always at his service, and to him is naught refused. 
 
 ■ 
 
“TEN O’CLOCK” 
 
 15 
 
 Through his brain, as through the last alembic, is 
 distilled the refined essence of that thought which began 
 with the Gods, and which they left him to carry out. 
 
 Set apart by them to complete their works, he pro- 
 duces that wondrous thing called the masterpiece, which 
 surpasses in perfection all that they have contrived in 
 what is called Nature ; and the Gods stand by and mar- 
 vel, and perceive how far away more beautiful is the 
 Venus of Melos than was their own Eve. 
 
i6 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 For some time past, the unattached writer has become 
 the middleman in this matter of Art, and his influence, 
 while it has widened the gulf between the people and 
 the painter, has brought about the most complete mis- 
 understanding as to the aim of the picture. 
 
 For him a picture is more or less a hieroglyph or 
 symbol of story. Apart from a few technical terms, 
 for the display of which he finds an occasion, the work 
 is considered absolutely from a literary point of view ; 
 indeed, from what other can he consider it? And in 
 his essays he deals with it as with a novel — a history — 
 or an anecdote. He fails entirely and most naturally 
 to see its excellences, or demerits — artistic — and so 
 degrades Art, by supposing it a method of bringing 
 about a literary climax. 
 
 It thus, in his hands, becomes merely a means of 
 perpetrating something further, and its mission is made 
 a secondary one, even as a means is second to an end. 
 
 The thoughts emphasised, noble or other, are inevit- 
 ably attached to the incident, and become more or less 
 noble, according to the eloquence or mental quality of 
 the writer, who looks, the while, with disdain, upon what 
 he holds as “ mere execution ” — a matter belonging, he 
 
“TEN O’CLOCK 
 
 17 
 
 believes, to the training of the schools, and the reward 
 of assiduity. So that, as he goes on with his translation 
 from canvas to paper, the work becomes his own. He 
 finds poetry where he would feel it were he himself 
 transcribing the event, invention in the intricacy of the 
 mise en scene , and noble philosophy in some detail of 
 philanthropy, courage, modesty, or virtue, suggested to 
 him by the occurrence. 
 
 All this might be brought before him, and his imagina- 
 tion be appealed to, by a very poor picture — indeed, I 
 might safely say that it generally is. 
 
 Meanwhile, the painter’s poetry is quite lost to him — 
 the amazing invention, that shall have put form and 
 colour into such perfect harmony, that exquisiteness is 
 the result, he is without understanding — the nobility of 
 thought, that shall have given the artist’s dignity to the 
 whole, says to him absolutely nothing. 
 
 So that his praises are published, for virtues we would 
 blush to possess — while the great qualities, that distin- 
 guish the one work from the thousand, that make of the 
 masterpiece the thing of beauty that it is — have never 
 been seen at all. 
 
 That this is so, we can make sure of, by looking back 
 at old reviews upon past exhibitions, and reading the 
 flatteries lavished upon men who have since been for- 
 
i8 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 gotten altogether — but, upon whose works, the language 
 has been exhausted, in rhapsodies — that left nothing 
 for the National Gallery. 
 
 A curious matter, in its effect upon the judgment of 
 these gentlemen, is the accepted vocabulary, of poetic 
 symbolism, that helps them, by habit, in dealing with 
 Nature: a mountain, to them, is synonymous with 
 height — a lake, with depth — the ocean, with vastness 
 — the sun, with glory. 
 
 So that a picture with a mountain, a lake, and an 
 ocean — however poor in paint — is inevitably “ lofty, 
 “ vast,” “ infinite,” and “ glorious” — on paper. 
 
 There are those also, sombre of mien, and wise with 
 the wisdom of books, who frequent museums and 
 burrow in crypts ; collecting — comparing — compiling 
 — classifying — contradicting. 
 
 Experts these — for whom a date is an accomplish- 
 ment — a hall mark, success 1 
 
 Careful in scrutiny are they, and conscientious of 
 judgment — establishing, with due weight, unimportant 
 
“TEN O’CLOCK” 
 
 19 
 
 reputations — discovering the picture, by the stain on 
 the back testing the torso, by the leg that is missing — 
 filling folios with doubts on the way of that limb — dis- 
 putatious and dictatorial, concerning the birthplace of 
 inferior persons — speculating, in much writing, upon 
 the great worth of bad work. 
 
 True clerks of the collection, they mix memoranda 
 with ambition, and, reducing Art to statistics, they 
 “file” the fifteenth century, and “pigeon-hole” the 
 antique ! 
 
 Then the Preacher — “ appointed ” ! 
 
 He stands in high places — harangues and holds 
 forth. 
 
 Sage of the Universities — learned in many matters, 
 and of much experience in all, save his subject. 
 
 Exhorting — denouncing — directing. 
 
 Filled with wrath and earnestness. 
 
 Bringing powers of persuasion, and polish of lan- 
 guage, to prove nothing. 
 
 Torn with much teaching — having naught to impart. 
 
 Impressive — important — shallow. 
 
20 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 Defiant — distressed — desperate. 
 
 Crying out, and cutting himself — while the Gods hear 
 not. 
 
 Gentle priest of the Philistine withal, again he 
 ambles pleasantly from all point, and through many 
 volumes, escaping scientific assertion — “babbles of 
 green fields.” 
 
“TEN O’CLOCK 
 
 21 
 
 So Art has become foolishly confounded with educa- 
 tion — that all should be equally qualified. 
 
 Whereas, while polish, refinement, culture, and 
 breeding, are in no way arguments for artistic result, 
 it is also no reproach to the most finished scholar or 
 greatest gentleman in the land that he be absolutely 
 without eye for painting or ear for music — that in his 
 heart he prefer the popular print to the scratch of Rem- 
 brandt’s needle, or the songs of the hall to Beethoven’s 
 “ C minor Symphony.” 
 
 Let him have but the wit to say so, and not feel the 
 admission a proof of inferiority. 
 
 Art happens — no hovel is safe from it, no Prince 
 may depend upon it, the vastest intelligence cannot 
 bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal 
 end in quaint comedy, and coarse farce. 
 
 This is as it should be — and all attempts to make it 
 otherwise, are due to the eloquence of the ignorant, the 
 zeal of the conceited. 
 
 The boundary line is clear. Far from me to propose 
 to bridge it over — that the pestered people be pushed 
 across. No ! I would save them from further fatigue. 
 
22 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 I would come to their relief, and would lift from their 
 shoulders this incubus of Art. 
 
 Why, after centuries of freedom from it, and indiffer- 
 ence to it, should it now be thrust upon them by the 
 blind — until, wearied and puzzled, they know no longer 
 how they shall eat or drink — how they shall sit or 
 stand — or wherewithal they shall clothe themselves — 
 without afflicting Art? 
 
 But, lo ! there is much talk without ! 
 
 Triumphantly they cry, “Beware! This matter 
 does indeed concern us. We also have our part in all 
 true Art! — for, remember the ‘one touch of Nature’ 
 that ‘ makes the whole world kin.’” 
 
 True, indeed. But let not the unwary jauntily sup- 
 pose that Shakespeare herewith hands him his passport 
 to Paradise, and thus permits him speech among the 
 chosen. Rather, learn that, in this very sentence, he 
 is condemned to remain without — to continue with the 
 
 common. 
 
“ TEN O’CLOCK ” 
 
 23 
 
 This one chord that vibrates with all — this “one 
 touch of Nature” that calls aloud to the response of 
 each — that explains the popularity of the “Bull” of 
 Paul Potter — that excuses the price of Murillo’s “ Con- 
 ception” — -this one unspoken sympathy that pervades 
 humanity, is — Vulgarity ! 
 
 Vulgarity — under whose fascinating influence “the 
 many” have elbowed “the few,” and the gentle circle 
 of Art swarms with the intoxicated mob of mediocrity, 
 whose leaders prate and counsel, and call aloud, where 
 the gods once spoke in whisper ! 
 
 And now from their midst the Dilettante stalks abroad. 
 The amateur is loosed. The voice of the aesthete is 
 heard in the land, and catastrophe is upon us. 
 
 The meddler beckons the vengeance of the gods, and 
 ridicule threatens the fair daughters of the land. 
 
 And there are curious converts to a weird culte, in 
 which all instinct for attractiveness — all freshness and 
 sparkle — all woman’s winsomeness — is to give way to 
 a strange vocation for the unlovely — and this desecra- 
 tion in the name of the Graces ! 
 
 Shall this gaunt, ill-at-ease, distressed, abashed mix- 
 ture of mauvaise honte and desperate assertion, call 
 itself artistic, and claim cousinship with the artist — 
 
24 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 who delights in the dainty — the sharp, bright gaiety of 
 beauty ? 
 
 No! — a thousand times no! Here are no connec- 
 tions of ours. 
 
 We will have nothing to do with them. 
 
 Forced to seriousness, that emptiness may be hidden, 
 they dare not smile — 
 
 While the artist, in fulness of heart and head, is glad, 
 and laughs aloud, and is happy in his strength, and is 
 merry at the pompous pretension — the solemn silliness 
 that surrounds him. 
 
 For Art and Joy go together, with bold openness, 
 and high head, and ready hand — fearing naught, and 
 dreading no exposure. 
 
 Know, then, all beautiful women, that we are with 
 you. Pay no heed, we pray you, to this outcry of the 
 unbecoming — this last plea for the plain. 
 
 It concerns you not. 
 
 Your own instinct is near the truth — your own wit 
 far surer guide than the untaught ventures of thick- 
 heeled Apollos. 
 
 What ! will you up and follow the first piper that 
 leads you down Petticoat Lane, there, on a Sabbath, 
 to gather, for the week, from the dull rags of ages, 
 
TEN O CLOCK 
 
 25 
 
 U 
 
 >> 
 
 wherewith to bedeck yourselves? that, beneath your 
 travestied awkwardness, we have trouble to find your 
 own dainty selves? Oh, fie! Is the world, then, 
 exhausted? and must we go back because the thumb 
 of the mountebank jerks the other way? 
 
 Costume is not dress. 
 
 And the wearers of wardrobes may not be doctors of 
 taste ! 
 
 For by what authority shall these be pretty masters? 
 Look well, and nothing have they invented — nothing 
 put together for comeliness’ sake. 
 
 Haphazard from their shoulders hang the garments 
 of the hawker — combining in their person the motley 
 of many manners with the medley of the mummers’ 
 closet. 
 
 Set up as a warning, and a finger-post of danger, 
 they point to the disastrous effect of Art upon the middle 
 classes. 
 
26 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 Why this lifting of the brow in deprecation of the 
 present — this pathos in reference to the past? 
 
 If Art be rare to-day, it was seldom heretofore. 
 
 It is false, this teaching of decay. 
 
 The master stands in no relation to the moment at 
 which he occurs — a monument of isolation — hinting at 
 sadness — having no part in the progress of his fellow 
 men. 
 
 He is also no more the product of civilisation than is 
 the scientific truth asserted, dependent upon the wisdom 
 of a period. The assertion itself requires the man to 
 make it. The truth was from the beginning. 
 
 So Art is limited to the infinite, and beginning there 
 cannot progress. 
 
 A silent indication of its wayward independence 
 from all extraneous advance, is in the absolutely 
 unchanged condition and form of implement since the 
 beginning of things. 
 
 The painter has but the same pencil — the sculptor 
 the chisel of centuries. 
 
 Colours are not more since the heavy hangings of 
 night were first drawn aside, and the loveliness of light 
 revealed. 
 
“TEN O CLOCK 
 
 27 
 
 yy 
 
 Neither chemist nor engineer can offer new elements 
 of the masterpiece. 
 
 False again, the fabled link between the grandeur of 
 Art and the glories and virtues of the State, for Art 
 feeds not upon nations, and peoples may be wiped from 
 the face of the earth, but Art is. 
 
 It is indeed high time that we cast aside the weary 
 weight of responsibility and copartnership, and know 
 that, in no way, do our virtues minister to its worth, in 
 no way do our vices impede its triumph ! 
 
 How irksome ! how hopeless ! how superhuman the 
 self-imposed task of the nation ! How sublimely vain 
 the belief that it shall live nobly or art perish ! 
 
 Let us reassure ourselves, at our own option is our 
 virtue. Art we in no way affect. 
 
 A whimsical goddess, and a capricious, her strong 
 sense of joy tolerates no dulness, and, live we never so 
 spotlessly, still may she turn her back upon us. 
 
 As, from time immemorial, has she done upon the 
 Swiss in their mountains. 
 
 What more worthy people ! Whose every Alpine gap 
 yawns with tradition, and is stocked with noble story ; 
 
28 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 yet, the perverse and scornful one will none of it, and 
 the sons of patriots are left with the clock that turns the 
 mill, and the sudden cuckoo, with difficulty restrained in 
 its box ! 
 
 For this was Tell a hero ! For this did Gessler die ! 
 
 Art, the cruel jade, cares not, and hardens her heart, 
 and hies her off to the East, to find, among the opium- 
 eaters of Nankin, a favourite with whom she lingers 
 fondly — caressing his blue porcelain, and painting his 
 coy maidens, and marking his plates with her six marks 
 of choice — indifferent, in her companionship with him, 
 to all save the virtue of his refinement ! 
 
 He it is who calls her — he who holds her ! 
 
 And again to the West, that her next lover may bring 
 together the Gallery at Madrid, and show to the world 
 how the Master towers above all ; and in their intimacy 
 they revel, he and she, in this knowledge ; and he 
 knows the happiness untasted by other mortal. 
 
 She is proud of her comrade, and promises that, in 
 after years, others shall pass that way, and understand. 
 
 So in all time does this superb one cast about for the 
 man worthy of her love — and Art seeks the Artist 
 alone. 
 
 Where he is, there she appears, and remains with him 
 — loving and fruitful — turning never aside in moments 
 
“TEN O’CLOCK” 
 
 2 9 
 
 of hope deferred — of insult — and of ribald misunder- 
 standing ; and when he dies she sadly takes her flight, 
 though loitering yet in the land, from fond association, 
 but refusing to be consoled.* 
 
 With the man, then, and not with the multitude, are 
 her intimacies ; and in the book of her life the names 
 inscribed are few, scant, indeed, the list of those who 
 have helped to write her story of love and beauty. 
 
 From the sunny morning, when, with her glorious 
 Greek relenting, she yielded up the secret of repeated 
 line, as, with his hand in hers, together they marked, 
 in marble, the measured rhyme of lovely limb and 
 draperies flowing in unison, to the day when she dipped 
 the Spaniard’s brush in light and air, and made his 
 people live within their frames, and stand upon their 
 legs , that all nobility and sweetness, and tenderness, 
 and magnificence should be theirs by right, ages had 
 gone by, and few had been her choice. 
 
 Countless, indeed, the horde of pretenders ! But she 
 knew them not. 
 
 A teeming, seething, busy mass, whose virtue was 
 industry, and whose industry was vice ! 
 
 Their names go to fill the catalogue of the collection 
 at home, of the gallery abroad, for the delectation of 
 the bagman and the critic. 
 
 * And so have 
 we the ephem- 
 eral influence of 
 the Master’s 
 memory — the aft- 
 erglow, in which 
 are warmed, for a 
 while, the worker 
 and disciple. 
 
30 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 Therefore have we cause to be merry ! — and to cast 
 away all care — resolved that all is well — as it ever 
 was — and that it is not meet that we should be cried at, 
 and urged to take measures ! 
 
 Enough have we endured of dulness ! Surely are we 
 weary of weeping, and our tears have been cozened 
 from us falsely for they have called out woe ! when 
 there was no grief — and, alas ! where all is fair ! 
 
 We have then but to wait — until, with the mark of 
 the gods upon him — there come among us again the 
 chosen — who shall continue what has gone before. 
 Satisfied that, even were he never to appear, the story 
 of the beautiful is already complete — hewn in the 
 marbles of the Parthenon — and broidered, with the 
 birds, upon the fan of Hokusai — at the foot of Fusi- 
 yama. 
 
The Fortnightly Review article for June, 1888, which sun- 
 dered a lifetime friendship, here follows word for word. 
 Whistler’s extracts, renamed by him, An Apostasy, with his 
 marginal “Reflections” appeared in The Gentle Art (1890) 
 and are printed in red ink that it may be seen at a glance to 
 what extent and to whom provocation and disclaimer belong. 
 
 That Whistler was not letter perfect in his citations is of 
 minor moment ; that he put in italics certain words of the 
 poet’s indefensible outburst is of far greater interest, and 
 these italicised passages we retain, — refinements of cruelty 
 assuredly not lost on the author of Under the Microscope ! 
 
 As if to leave no possible avenue of return or of escape 
 open Et tu , Brute ! and the ultimate word, Freeing a Last 
 Friend , follow thg poisoned arrows of “ Reflections ” beyond 
 which invective could only become “ full of sound and fury, 
 signifying naught.” 
 
 T. B. M. 
 
MR. WHISTLER’S LECTURE ON ART 
 
 T O speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
 truth, may justly be required of the average witness ; it 
 cannot be expected, it should not be exacted, of any critical 
 ■ writer or lecturer on any form of art. Even when the writer is 
 an acknowledged and indisputable master in his own line of 
 work, it is not to be supposed or imagined that there cannot 
 possibly be anything to add to his conclusions, or that his 
 utterances are to be of necessity accepted without qualification 
 or reserve. The great question is whether he is right or wrong 
 in his main contention ; whether the message he delivers is 
 worthy or unworthy of consideration and acceptance in its 
 most significant and distinctive point. And it appears to one at 
 least of those unfortunate “ outsiders ” for whose judgment or 
 whose “ meddling ” Mr. Whistler has so imperial and Olympian 
 a contempt, that the most notable thing in the famous lecture 
 on art which he has now transmitted to the printers is the 
 assertion in terms of most felicitous accuracy, the explanation 
 on grounds which no imaginable reader could mistake, of a 
 dominant and central truth which is not more certain, more 
 necessary, more important, with reference to any one of the 
 arts than to any other ; and which is more vital, more certain, 
 more indispensable as a condition of creative work than any 
 other axiom or postulate whatever. This truth is the principle 
 of independence ; the simple and sufficient gospel which affirms 
 that the first duty of a workman in any particular line is to do 
 good work in that and no other than that line, and that if he 
 does this it is a matter of quite secondary consideration whether 
 his work may or may not be commendable on any foreign or 
 
 Mr. Whistler’s 
 Lecture on Art, 
 b y Algernon 
 Charles Swin- 
 burne. — F o r t - 
 nightly Review, 
 June, 1888. 
 
 a 
 
34 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 REFLECTION: 
 “ If ” indeed ! 
 
 external or accidental ground. It should be unnecessary to 
 add that this principle cannot either fairly or plausibly be so 
 strained and wrested as to cover, for example, the literary 
 offences of French pornographers and coprologists. M. Zola 
 and his merry men are artists only in the sense — if such a 
 sense there be — in which the term is applicable to a dealer in 
 coloured photographs of unmentionable subjects. Sweeping 
 aside into the gutter such dirty little vermin as know no more 
 of aesthetics than of ethics, of taste or intelligence than of 
 decency or shame, we proceed to examine the question as seri- 
 ously stated by an artist and a theorist of serious pretensions 
 and indisputable accomplishments. And we find what we 
 might have made sure of finding in the present case ; brilliant 
 and pungent wit, wisdom salted with paradox and reason 
 spiced with eccentricity; truths and semi-truths, admirable 
 propositions and questionable inferences. Much that Mr. 
 Whistler has to say about the primary requisites and the radical 
 conditions of art is not merely sound and solid good sense as 
 well as vivid and pointed rhetoric, it is a message very specially 
 needed by the present generation of students in art or letters. 
 Those only who have laid it to heart may be permitted to point 
 out that it is not all the truth; that it is by no manner of 
 means an exhaustive and complete statement of the capacities 
 and the duties, the objects and the properties of creative or 
 imaginative art. 
 
 Let us begin at the end, as all reasonable people always do : 
 we shall find that Mr. Whistler concedes to Greek art a place 
 beside Japanese. Now this, on his own showing, will never 
 do ; it crosses, it contravenes, it nullifies, it pulverises his theory 
 or his principle of artistic limitation. If Japanese art is right 
 in confining itself to what can be “ broidered upon the fan,” — 
 and the gist of the whole argument is in favour of this assump- 
 tion, — then the sculpture which appeals indeed first of all to 
 
LECTURE ON ART 
 
 35 
 
 our perception of beauty, to the delight of the eye, to the wonder 
 and the worship of the instinct or the sense, but which in every 
 possible instance appeals also to far other intuitions and far 
 other sympathies than these, is as absolutely wrong, as demon- 
 strably inferior, as any picture or as any carving which may 
 be so degenerate and so debased as to concern itself with a 
 story or a subject. Assuredly Phidias thought of other things reflection , 
 than “arrangements”* in marble — as certainly as ^Eschylus * Because the 
 thought of other things than “ arrangements ” in metre. Nor, 2$ th? PaS 
 I am sorely afraid, can the adored Velasquez be promoted to a ceasetosee? 
 seat “ at the foot of Fusi-yama.” Japanese art is not merely 
 the incomparable achievement of certain harmonies in colour ; 
 it is the negation , the immolation , the annihilation of every- 
 thing else. By the code which accepts as the highest of models 
 and of masterpieces the cups and fans and screens with which reflection: 
 “the poor world” has been as grievously “pestered” of late “Cupsand fans 
 years as ever it was in Shakespeare’s time “with such water- and HamUton 
 flies — diminutives of nature” as excited the scorn of his 
 moralising cynic, Velasquez is as unquestionably condemned “ wat ' 
 
 as is Raphael or ffitian. It is true that his miraculous power reflection 
 of hand (?) f makes beautiful for us the deformity of dwarfs, and t 
 dignifies the degradation of princes ; but that is not the question. 
 
 It is true, again, that Mr. Whistler’s own merest “ arrangements ” reflection • 
 in colour are lovely and effective ; * but his portraits, to speak of * whereby it 
 these alone, are liable to the damning and intolerable imputa- Sto'&Ktte 
 tion of possessing not merely other qualities than these, but necessarily " n e °! 
 qualities which actually appeal — I blush to remember and I fective '” 
 shudder to record it — which actually appeal to the intelligence t REFLECTION: 
 and the emotions, to the mind and heart of the spectator. It 
 would be quite useless for Mr. Whistler to protest — if haply ippXtlT- 
 he should be so disposed — that he never meant to put study rionTmTn'd.Td 
 of character and revelation of intellect into his portrait of Mr. £en£hen\?ded 
 Carlyle, or intense pathos of significance and tender depth of tive.” he effec ' 
 
 
3 ^ 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 expression into the portrait of his own venerable mother. The 
 scandalous fact remains, that he has done so; and in so doing 
 has explicitly violated and implicitly abjured the creed and the 
 canons, the counsels and the catechism of Japan. 
 
 Apart from the crowning and central merit of this lecture, 
 which I have attempted to indicate at starting, the most notable 
 and memorable thing in it is rather the excellence of certain 
 detached or detachable passages or phrases than any continuity 
 of reasoning or coherence of argument. But some of these 
 passages or phrases are very jewels of epigram or of illustra- 
 tion. What, for instance, can be happier or more sensible, 
 wittier or more effective, than this? “To say to the painter 
 that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player that 
 he may sit on the piano.” Not of course that this is a discovery 
 of Mr. Whistler’s ; for the finest and the fullest evidence of its 
 truth now extant in the world is flashed out on us from every 
 great or characteristic work of Turner. 
 
 This, again, is a very just as well as a very striking sarcasm ; 
 though it does not exactly prove that there is no loveliness in 
 distinct outline, no grandeur in luminous clearness. 
 
 “ The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in distinct- 
 ness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognise the traveller on 
 the top. The desire to see, for the sake of seeing, is, with 
 the mass, alone the one to be gratified, hence the delight 
 in detail.” 
 
 But it is hardly to the countrymen of Crome and David Cox 
 that the beauty and the glory of painted wind and cloud and 
 mist can be preached as the gospel of a new revelation. How- 
 ever, we can but be grateful for this indirect protest against the 
 kind of art which gives us landscapes worthy only of a botanist 
 or geometrician, and seascapes which represent the most lovely 
 and luminous and living and various and subtle in colour of all 
 imaginable seas — our own incomparable Channel as a dead 
 
LECTURE ON ART 
 
 37 
 
 mass of densely stupid blue, so hard that if you were to hit it 
 with a hammer the hammer would break into shivers, so 
 monotonous and so monochromical that it would almost be a 
 libel on the very Mediterranean itself. 
 
 Another excellent remark may be quoted from a later part of 
 this desultory lecture : — “Art happens — no hovel is safe fronj 
 it, no prince may depend upon it ; the vastest intelligence can- 
 not bring it about, and puny efforts to make it universal end in 
 quaint comedy or coarse farce.” 
 
 Unquestionably they may or they must do so; but it does 
 not follow that all efforts to widen the sphere of appreciation, 
 to enlarge the circle of intelligence, must needs be puny or 
 unprofitable. Good intentions will not secure good results ; 
 but neither — strange as it may seem — will the absence of 
 good intentions. And when Mr. Whistler informs us that 
 “ there never was an artistic period,” we must reply that the 
 statement, so far as it is true, is the flattest of all possible 
 truisms ; for no mortal ever maintained that there ever was a 
 period in which all men were either good artists or good judges 
 of art. But when we pass from the positive to the compara- 
 tive degree of historic or retrospective criticism, we must ask 
 whether the lecturer means to say that there have not been 
 times when the general standard of taste and judgment, reason 
 and perception, was so much higher than at other times that 
 such periods may justly and accurately be defined as artistic. 
 If he does mean to say this, he is beyond answer and beneath 
 confutation : ip other words, he is where an artist of Mr. 
 Whistler’s genius and a writer of Mr. Whistler’s talents can by 
 no possibility find himself. If he does not mean to say this, 
 what he means to say is exactly as well worth saying, as valu- 
 able and as important a piece of information, as the news that 
 Queen Anne is no more, or that two and two are not generally 
 supposed to make five. 
 
 REFLECTION : 
 
 Of course I do 
 mean this thing 
 
 — though most 
 imprudent was 
 the saying of it! — 
 for this Art truth 
 the Poet resents 
 with the people. 
 
 — June, 1888. 
 
38 
 
 MR. WHISTLER’S 
 
 REFLECTION : 
 
 Je reviens done 
 de Pontoise ! 
 
 i 
 
 But if the light and glittering bark of this brilliant amateur 
 in the art of letters is not invariably steered with equal dex- 
 terity of hand between the. Scylla and Charybdis of paradox 
 and platitude, it is impossible that in its course it should not 
 once and again touch upon some point worth notice if not 
 exploration. Even that miserable animal “ the unattached 
 writer ” may gratefully and respectfully recognise his accurate 
 apprehension and his felicitous application of wellnigh the most 
 hackneyed verse in all the range of Shakespeare’s — which yet 
 is almost invariably misconstrued and misapplied. “ One touch 
 of nature makes the whole world kin : ” and this, as the poet 
 goes on to explain, is that all, with one consent, prefer worth- 
 less but showy novelties to precious but familiar possessions. 
 “This one chord that vibrates with all,” says Mr. Whistler, 
 who proceeds to cite artistic examples of the lamentable fact, 
 “this one unspoken sympathy that pervades humanity, is — 
 Vulgarity.” But the consequence which he proceeds to indi- 
 cate and to deplore is calculated to strike his readers with a 
 sense of mild if hilarious astonishment. It is that men of 
 sound judgment and pure taste, quick feelings and clear per- 
 ceptions, most unfortunately and most inexplicably begin to 
 make their voices “heard in the land.” Porson, as all the 
 world knows, observed of the Germans of his day that “ in 
 Greek ” they were “ sadly to seek.” It is no discredit to Mr. 
 Whistler if this is his case also : but then he would do well to 
 eschew the use of a Greek term lying so far out of the common 
 way as the word “aesthete.” Not merely the only accurate 
 meaning but the only possible meaning of that word is nothing 
 more but nothing less than this : an intelligent, appreciative, 
 quick-witted person ; in a word, as the lexicon has it, “ one who 
 perceives.” The man who is no aesthete stands confessed, by 
 the logic of language and the necessity of the case, as a thick- 
 witted, tasteless, senseless and impenetrable blockhead. I do 
 
LECTURE ON ART 
 
 39 
 
 not wish to insult Mr. Whistler, but I feel bound to avow my 
 impression that .there is no man now living who less deserves 
 the honour of enrolment in such ranks as these — of a seat 
 in the synagogue of the anaesthetic. I cannot bring myself to 
 descend to flattery so gross and insincere as would be the 
 admission that a Saul of his spiritual stature is also among 
 the prophets of Philistia ; that his place is beside the blatant 
 boobies with whom the imputation of intelligence — an impu- 
 tation which they surely cannot apprehend on their own account 
 — passes for a cutting and branding insult. It would no doubt 
 be most unseemly, and to the shrinking modesty, the too sensi- 
 tive diffidence of Mr. Whistler it would of course be quite 
 exceptionally painful, to claim the title, to arrogate the honours, 
 of a person so exceptionally endowed with good taste, right 
 feeling, keen insight, sound judgment and clear perception, as 
 specially to deserve the Platonic title of an aesthete ; for no 
 satire could be severe enough for the male or female fool who 
 should venture to put forward so arrogant a claim ; but it 
 would be an incongruity even more portentous and prodigious, 
 an incongruity for which Rabelais alone of all men could have 
 supplied the fitting chain of epithets, if an artist of skill so con- 
 summate, of tact so refined, of so sensitive an instinct and so 
 delicate an eccentricity, should use the word — if he knew the 
 meaning of the word — as a term of ridicule or reproach. Such 
 abuse of language is possible only to the drivelling despera- 
 tion of venomous or fangless duncery : it is in higher and graver 
 matters, of wider bearing and of deeper import, that we find it 
 necessary to dispute the apparently serious propositions or 
 assertions of Mr. Whistler. How far the witty tongue may be 
 thrust into the smiling cheek when the lecturer pauses to take 
 breath between these remarkably brief paragraphs it would be 
 certainly indecorous and possibly superfluous to inquire. But 
 his theorem is unquestionably calculated to provoke the loudest 
 
40 
 
 MR. WHISTLERS 
 
 REFLECTION : 
 
 * Is not, then, 
 the funeral 
 hymn a gladness 
 to the singer, if 
 the verse be 
 beautiful ? 
 
 Certainly the 
 funeral monu- 
 ment, to be 
 worthy the 
 Nation’s sorrow 
 buried beneath it, 
 must first be a 
 joy to the sculp- 
 tor who designed 
 
 The Bard’s rea- 
 soning is of the 
 People. His 
 Tragedy is theirs. 
 As one of them, 
 the man may 
 weep — yet will 
 the artist rejoice 
 — for to him is 
 not “ A thing of 
 beauty a joy for 
 ever ” ? 
 
 t At what point 
 of my “ O'clock” 
 does Mr. Swin- 
 burne find this 
 last — his own 
 inconsequence ? 
 
 REFLECTION : 
 
 Before the mar- 
 vels of centuries, 
 silence, the only 
 tribute of the 
 outsider, is by 
 him refused — 
 and the dignity of 
 ignorance lost in 
 speech. 
 
 and the heartiest mirth that ever acclaimed the advent of 
 Momus or Erycina. For it is this — that* “Art and Joy go 
 together,” and that t tragic art is not art at all. 
 
 “Arter that, let ’s have a glass of wine,” said a famous coun- 
 tryman of Mr. Whistler’s, on the memorable occasion when he 
 was impelled to address his friend Mr. Brick in the immortal 
 words, “ Keep cool, Jefferson. Don’t bust.” The admonition 
 may not improbably be required by the majority of readers 
 who come suddenly and unawares upon this transcendent and 
 pyramidal pleasantry. The laughing Muse of the lecturer, 
 “ quam Jocus circumvolat,” must have glanced round in expec- 
 tation of the general appeal, “After that, let us take breath.” 
 And having done so, they must have remembered that they 
 were not in a serious world ; that they were in the fairy-land of 
 fans, in the paradise of pipkins, in the limbo of blue china, 
 screens, pots, plates, jars, joss-houses, and all the fortuitous 
 frippery of Fusi-yama. 
 
 And yet, they .will presently have reflected, even this hyper- 
 bolical extravagance of jocularity does not succeed in launching 
 a really original paradox. There have always been auda- 
 cious humourists who asserted, and anaesthetic imbeciles who 
 believed, that the spirit of art was essentially and exclusively 
 joyous, or exclusively and essentially mournful. A type of the 
 former class of fool has been taken after the very life by the yet 
 undethroned sovereign of English poetesses. 
 
 REFLECTION: 
 
 Ifan£esthete,the 
 Bard is not col- 
 lector ! 
 
 “ My critic Jobson recommends more mirth, 
 
 Because a cheerful genius suits the times, 
 
 And all true poets laugh unquenchably 
 Like Shakespeare and the gods. That ’s very hard. 
 The gods may laugh, and Shakespeare : Dante smiles 
 With such a needy heart on two pale lips, 
 
 We cry, ‘ Weep rather, Dante.’ ” 
 
LECTURE ON ART 
 
 41 
 
 It is a cruel but an inevitable Nemesis which reduces even a 
 man of real genius, keen-witted and sharp-sighted, to the level 
 of the critic Jobson, to the level of the dotard and the dunce , 
 when paradox is discoloured by personality and merriment is 
 distorted by malevolence. (!) No man who really knows the 
 [excellence, the variety, the serious and noble] qualities of Mr. 
 Whistler’s best work, will imagine that he really believes the 
 highest expression of his art to be realised in reproduction of 
 the grin and glare, the smirk and leer, of Japanese womanhood 
 as represented in its professional types of beauty ; but to all 
 appearance he would fain persuade us that he does. Unhap- 
 pily for his chance of success in the attempt to depreciate and 
 degrade his genius to an equality with the highest type of 
 Asiatic aestheticism, his etchings and his portraits have not yet 
 been consigned to the flames which must of necessity consume 
 them before he can possibly be accepted as a genuine child of 
 Japan. In the latter of the two portraits to which I have 
 already referred there is an expression of living character, an 
 intensity of pathetic power, which gives to that noble work 
 something of the impressiveness proper to a tragic or elegiac 
 poem. 
 
 This, however, is an exception to the general rule of Mr. 
 .Whistler’s way of work : an exception, it may be alleged, which 
 proves the rule. But that apology will by no means hold water. 
 In one of the delightful minor works of an always delightful 
 humourist, we are introduced to a good man of the name of 
 William — I cannot, I will not allow myself to imagine that the 
 perversity of political malevolence could suggest an illusion 
 which nothing should induce me to hint at — who having led 
 a life of abnormal virtue for many, many years, is induced 
 to commit a treacherous and rascally crime by pure curiosity to 
 know from experience what may be the feelings of a deliberate 
 malefactor. Now the violation of principle committed on that 
 
 [W ords omitted 
 by Whistler.] 
 
42 
 
 MR. WHISTLERS 
 
 [Words omitted 
 by Whistler.] 
 
 occasion by Mr. Gilbert’s exemplary experimentalist was not 
 graver in its departure from an established standard of conduct 
 than is this infringement by Mr. Whistler of the hard and fast 
 line laid down by himself as the condition of all true art. A 
 
 single infraction of the moral code, a single breach of artistic 
 law, suffices to vitiate the position of the preacher. And this 
 is no slight escapade, [no venial] or casual aberration ; it is a 
 full and frank defiance, a deliberate and elaborate denial, hurled 
 right in the face of Japanese jocosity, flung straight in the teeth 
 of the theory which condemns high art, under penalty of being 
 considered intelligent, to remain eternally on the grin. 
 
 If it be objected that to treat this theorem gravely is “ to 
 consider too curiously ” the tropes and the phrases of a jester 
 of genius, I have only to answer that it very probably may be 
 so, but that the excuse for such error must be sought in the 
 existence of the genius. A man of genius is scarcely at liberty 
 to choose whether he shall or shall not be considered as a 
 serious figure — one to be acknowledged and respected as an 
 equal or a superior, not applauded and dismissed as a tumbler 
 or a clown . And if the better part of Mr. Whistler’s work as an 
 artist is to be accepted as the work of a serious and intelligent 
 creature, it would seem incongruous and preposterous to dis- 
 miss the more characteristic points of his theory as a lecturer 
 with the chuckle or the shrug of mere amusement or amaze- 
 ment. Moreover, if considered as a joke, a mere joke, and 
 nothing but a joke, this gospel of the grin has hardly matter 
 or meaning enough in it to support so elaborate a structure of 
 paradoxical rhetoric. It must be taken, therefore, as something 
 serious in the main; and if so taken, and read by the light 
 reflected from Mr. Whistler’s more characteristically brilliant 
 canvases, it may not improbably recall a certain phrase of 
 Molibre’s, which at once passed into a proverb — “ Vous etes 
 orfevre, M. Josse.” That worthy tradesman, it will be remem- 
 
LECTURE ON ART 
 
 43 
 
 bered, was of opinion that nothing could be so well calculated 
 to restore a drooping young lady to mental and physical health 
 as the present of. a handsome set of jewels. Mr. Whistler's 
 opinio7i that there is nothing like leather — of a jovial and Jap- 
 anese design — savours somewhat of the Oriental cordwainer. 
 
 But if we must more or less respectfully decline to accept 
 “ The Preacher ” as a prophet, we may all agree in applause of 
 the brilliant humour which barbs the shafts of good sense and 
 sound reasoning aimed by the satirist at the common enemies 
 of all good work — “a teeming, seething, busy mass, whose 
 virtue was industry, and whose industry was vice.” Nothing 
 can be truer, and nothing could be more happily expressed. 
 And, as a wiser than all the wise men of Greece was wont 
 impressively to observe, “ the bearings of this observation lays 
 in the application on it.” That was no part of Captain Bunsby’s 
 duty ; it was apparently no part of the lecturer’s ; and it cer- 
 tainly is no part of mine. 
 
 REFLECTION : 
 
 A keen commer- 
 cial summing up 
 — excused by the 
 “Great Em- 
 peror ! ” 
 
 Algernon Charles Swinburne. 
 
“ET TU, BRUTE!” 
 
 W HY, O brother! did you not consult with me before 
 printing, in the face of a ribald world, that you also 
 misunderstand , and are capable of saying so, with vehemence 
 and repetition. 
 
 Have I then left no man on his legs? — and have I shot 
 down the singer in the far off, when I thought him safe at my 
 side ? 
 
 Cannot the man who wrote Atalanta — and the Ballads 
 beautiful, — can he not be content to spend his life with his 
 work, which should be his love, — and has for him no mis- 
 leading doubt and darkness — that he should so stray about 
 blindly in his brother’s flower-beds and bruise himself ! 
 
 Is life then so long with him, and his art so short, that he 
 shall dawdle by the way and wander from his path, reducing 
 his giant intellect — garrulous upon matters to him unknown, 
 that the scoffer may rejoice and the Philistine be appeased 
 while he takes up the parable of the mob and proclaims him- 
 self their spokesman and fellow-sufferer ? O Brother ! where 
 is thy sting ! O Poet ! where is thy victory ! 
 
 How have I offended ! and how shall you in the midst of 
 your poisoned page hurl with impunity the boomerang rebuke ? 
 “ Paradox is discoloured by personality, and merriment is 
 distorted by malevolence.” 
 
 Who are you, deserting your Muse, that you should insult 
 my Goddess with familiarity, and the manners of approach 
 common to the reasoners in the market-place. “ Hearken to 
 me,” you cry, “and I will point out how this man, who has 
 passed his life in her worship, is a tumbler and a clown of the 
 
 From The Gentle 
 Art of Making 
 Enemies. (Lon- 
 don, 1890.) 
 
46 
 
 “ ET TU, BRUTE ! ” 
 
 booths — how he who has produced that which I fain must 
 acknowledge — is a jester in the ring! ” 
 
 Do we not speak the same language? Are we strangers, 
 then, or, in our Father’s house are there so many mansions that 
 you lose your way, my brother, and cannot recognise your kin? 
 
 Shall I be brought to the bar by my own blood, and be 
 borne false witness against before the plebian people ? Shall 
 I be made to stultify myself by what I never said — and shall 
 the strength of your testimony turn upon me? “If” — “If 
 Japanese Art is right in confining itself to what can be broid- 
 ered upon the fan . and again . . . . “ that he really 
 
 believes the highest expression of his art to be realised in 
 reproduction of the grin and glare, the smirk and leer ” . . . . 
 and further . ... “ the theory which condemns high art, under 
 the penalty of being considered intelligent, to remain eternally 
 on the grin " ... . and much more ! 
 
 “Amateur writer ! ” Well should I deserve the reproach, 
 had I ventured ever beyond the precincts of my own science — 
 and fatal would have been the exposure, as you, with heedless 
 boldness, have unwittingly proven. 
 
 Art tainted with philanthropy — that better Art result! — 
 Poet and Peabody ! 
 
 You have been misled — you have mistaken the pale 
 demeanour and joined hands for an outward and visible sign 
 of an inward and spiritual earnestness. For you, these are the 
 serious ones, and, for them, you others are the serious matter. 
 Their joke is their work. For me — why should I refuse myself 
 the grim joy of this grotesque tragedy — and, with them now, 
 you all are my joke ! 
 
FREEING A LAST FRIEND 
 
 B RAVO ! Bard ! and exquisitely written, I suppose, as 
 becomes your state. 
 
 The scientific irrelevancies and solemn popularities, less 
 elaborately embodied, I seem to have met with before — in 
 papers signed by more than one serious and unqualified sage, 
 whose mind also was not narrowed by knowledge. 
 
 I have been “personal,” you say; and, faith! you prove it 1 
 Thank you, my dear 1 I have lost a confrere; but, then, I 
 have gained an acquaintance — one Algernon Swinburne — 
 “ outsider ” — Putney. 
 
 The World , June 
 3, 1888. Letter 
 to Mr. Swin- 
 burne. 
 
After what has been shown as following in the wake of 
 Ten o' Clock it would be strange to overlook that both these 
 men of genius were once dear friends and comrades ; also 
 one finds warrant for believing “ the bitterness with which 
 Whistler wrote Et tu , Brute l had gone with les neiges d'antan .” 
 For we must take into consideration a letter by him, almost 
 at the close, to the London Morning Post explaining that the 
 poem on The Little White Girl “ was written, in my studio, 
 after the picture was painted. And the writing . . . was a 
 rare and graceful tribute from the poet to the painter — a 
 noble recognition of one work by the production of a nobler 
 one.” Therefore, no greater homage could be rendered than 
 to place as Postlude what might with equal assurance have 
 stood as Prelude to Whistler’s prose masterpiece ; that lecture 
 wherein he “ put all he had learned of art, which he knew' to be 
 unchangeable and everlasting.” The picture “ which will 
 always be recognised as one of the few great pictures of the 
 world,” was seen by Swinburne and his poem written in 1865. 
 “ Its haunting beauty is so full of poetic charm and mystery 
 that one cannot wonder that it inspired Swinburne to write 
 the poem entitled Before the Mirror." If unable to repro- 
 duce the picture I can, at least, print the verses that Swin- 
 burne said Rossetti told him “ were better than the painting, 
 and that Whistler ranked them far above it.” 
 
 T. B. M. 
 
BEFORE THE MIRROR 
 
 (VERSES WRITTEN UNDER A PICTURE) 
 
 INSCRIBED TO J. A. WHISTLER 
 
 I 
 
 A JL 7HITE rose in red rose-garden 
 ’ * Is not so white ; 
 
 Snowdrops that plead for pardon 
 And pine for fright 
 Because the hard East blows 
 Over their maiden rows 
 
 Grow not as this face grows from pale to bright. 
 
 Behind the veil, forbidden, 
 
 Shut up from sight, 
 
 Love, is there sorrow hidden, 
 
 Is there delight? 
 
 Is joy thy dower or grief, 
 
 White rose of weary leaf, 
 
 Late rose whose life is brief, whose loves are light? 
 
52 
 
 BEFORE THE MIRROR 
 
 Soft snows that hard winds harden 
 Till each flake bite 
 Fill all the flowerless garden 
 Whose flowers took flight 
 Long since when summer ceased, 
 
 And men rose up from feast, 
 
 And warm west wind grew east, and warm day night. 
 
 ii 
 
 “ Come snow, come wind or thunder 
 High up in air, 
 
 I watch my face, and wonder 
 At my bright hair ; 
 
 Nought else exalts or grieves 
 The rose at heart, that heaves 
 
 With love of her own leaves and lips that pair. 
 
 “ She knows not loves that kissed her 
 She knows not where, 
 
 Art thou the ghost, my sister, 
 
 White sister there, 
 
 Am I the ghost, who knows? 
 
 My hand, a fallen rose, 
 
 Lies snow-white on white snows, and takes no care. 
 
BEFORE THE MIRROR 
 
 53 
 
 “I cannot see what pleasures 
 Or what pains were ; 
 
 What pale new loves and treasures 
 New years will bear ; 
 
 What beam will fall, what shower, 
 
 What grief or joy for dower ; 
 
 But one thing knows the flower ; the flower is fair.” 
 
 hi 
 
 Glad, but not flushed with gladness, 
 
 Since joys go by ; 
 
 Sad, but not bent with sadness, 
 
 Since sorrows die ; 
 
 Deep in the gleaming glass 
 
 She sees all past things pass, 
 
 And all sweet life that was lie down and lie. 
 
 There glowing ghosts of flowers 
 Draw down, draw nigh ; 
 
 And wings of swift spent hours 
 Take flight and fly ; 
 
 She sees by formless gleams, 
 
 She hears across cold streams, 
 
 Dead mouths of many dreams that sing and sigh. 
 
54 
 
 BEFORE THE MIRROR 
 
 Face fallen and white throat lifted, 
 
 With sleepless eye 
 She sees old loves that drifted, 
 
 She knew not why, 
 
 Old loves and faded fears 
 Float down a stream that hears 
 
 The flowing of all men’s tears beneath the sky. 
 
 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE. 
 
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