William Hamilton Gibson: artist—naturalist—author

by John Coleman Adams

“And now, my dear friend, au revoir! I sincerely wish that we might meet again if only to clasp hands and exchange greeting, but until another year at least it seems improbable. To-morrow I leave to visit friends in the Adirondacks for two weeks returning here to keep my nose to the grindstone until November when I return to Brooklyn,

“Good bye, regards to all. W. H. G.”

In season for the holidays in 1890 “Strolls by Starlight and Sunshine” was ready; and Gibson had another surprise for the nature-lovers in the chapters on “A Midnight Ramble,” and “Night Witchery.” All he had done was to take his lantern and wander among the grasses and the wild-flowers as they slept, and to tell the story of what he saw and heard. But when he had done with them, his readers all felt, at second-hand, indeed, but keenly enough, as he himself had done, “We have explored a new world—a realm which we can look in the face on the morrow, with an exchange of recognition impossible yesterday.” Edmund Clarence Stedman, suggesting possible choice of material for the “Library of American Literature,” said of this article,” I scarcely believe that you or any one has of late written anything more novel or more poetic than your espionage in the camp of the flowers at midnight.”

All the next year was devoted to work upon “Sharp Eyes,” which appeared in the late autumn of 1891. The intent and scope of the book has been told in the author’s letter to his friend. He puts his purpose succinctly in a paragraph of the introduction, which he quaintly entitled “Through My Spectacles”: “‘Sharp Eyes,’ then, is, in brief, a cordial recommendation and invitation to walk the fields and woods with me and reap the perpetual harvest of a quiet eye, which Nature everywhere bestows; to witness with me the strange revelations of this wild bal masqué, to laugh, to admire, to study, to ponder, to philosophize,—between the lines,—to question, and always to rejoice and give thanks.”

Meantime, he was hard at work pushing the studies for his botany. With the sketches he was making for this purpose, he was also making more water-colors, sending them to the various exhibitions, and arranging sales of his own. He was at work on new articles for the “Young People” continuing the unexhausted vein he had opened for these pages. For older readers he was beginning the articles on the cross-fertilization of flowers which foreshadowed the wonderful charts and lectures with which he delighted and informed the whole country. He had begun to lecture too, and he notes in his journal, July 23, 1891, “At Mrs. Van Ingen’s suggestion, I have concluded to give a series of ten familiar talks on Nature, covering botany, entomology, and ornithology, two each week.” This was the beginning of successive series of lectures, covering four years. From these home talks his work in this field grew and multiplied. Soon he was lecturing with these amazing charts before the clubs in New York, before colleges and schools, and finally before popular audiences. In the winter of 1893-94, he made the venture of a series of six lectures in Hardman Hall, New York City, which netted him the handsome sum of eight hundred and fifty dollars, and drew from the veteran manager, Major Pond, an expression of wonder: “The news of your success in Hardman Hall is phenomenal. I can assure you that you are the only man in the United States who could have done such a business.”

Then the calls began to come from all over the country. The same energy, industry, and genius which he had put into his painting and his writing he threw with increasing intensity into this new work. In 1894 he lectured sixty-four times. His success in the new field was instant and complete. It was as thoroughgoing with scientific folk as it was with the children and the plain people. The press had nothing but wonder and commendations. It was an epoch in the popular presentation of scientific fact and research unequaled since the days of Agassiz.

But somehow, in the midst of this new interest and the engagements it brought, he found the time to bring out still another book, as novel and as fascinating as any of its predecessors; and though it dealt with what at first sight seemed an unlovely theme, it was perhaps the most beautiful of his volumes. Promptly on calendar time in 1895 came “Our Edible Mushrooms and Toadstools,” destined to be the forerunner of a fungus-literature growing with every year. Its accuracy satisfied the scientific; its information gratified the popular mind; its illustrations were a joy to the mushroom-hunters. And his originality in treatment gave a hint to the publishers which they have been quick to follow and which they will be sure to follow for many a year to come.

Two more books were to be added to the list of his collected writings, “Eye Spy,” and “My Studio Neighbors,” both volumes in the same vein as “Sharp Eyes,” and made up of his magazine articles. But before they were gathered between covers, he had finished his brief career and had passed on. The last entry in his journal was made on June 12, 1896, to record, as did all his brief notes, nothing but a new item of work,—“Lecture, Holiday House.” He was already in the grip of death. The fierce fires of a relentless industry had burned his forces to a cinder. Through the summer days he languished and drooped, yet would not wholly give over work, nor cease his planning. On the 16th of July, among the hills of Washington, he suddenly died from apoplexy. His overtaxed frame gave way, and, at the early age of forty-six, he slept the long sleep of the body, in the beautiful home he had reared for himself, among those dearest scenes.

Perhaps there is no more fitting close to this hurried sketch of his career than a reference to this beautiful home which he made for himself out of the earnings of his toil, and which seems to have embodied the desires and the noble purposes of his whole life. It was natural, inevitable, than he should choose Washington as the site of this new hearthstone. He located it upon a hillside sloping to the river-valley, with a long and entrancing outlook to distant southern hills. He left the wild-flowers to grow undisturbed upon his lawns, and the clumps of low trees which bore their crimson cones in August gave him the right to call the new estate “The Sumacs.” Here he planted his house, building first of all a story of stones gathered from the fields and old walls round-about. Then a “story-and-a-half,” to use New England phraseology, a tasteful adaptation of old Yankee architecture, with hip roof and low studding. Broad piazzas surrounded it, a great hall welcomed the guest, and inviting rooms with enticing prospects through great windows gave a sense of comfortable space within. To complete the ideal of a home, the great fireplace stood ready for the winter backlog, or bore a screen of boughs in summer and in autumn. How bitter the irony of life, in that as soon as he had reared this shrine for his domestic affections, amid scenes for which he had been yearning all his days, imprisoned in the city, among friends of his boyhood, who loved him as few men are loved—what a strange and baffling lot was his, to be summoned from it all, and from the larger future which seemed opening before his eager heart!