William Hamilton Gibson: artist—naturalist—author

by John Coleman Adams

“Pressure of work has prevented me from answering yours of Jan. 1st. I did not see an impression of the ‘chick a dee dee’ block and was surprised to find it was in any degree successful. I have never even seen a drawing of yours till now and have never had any idea of your artistic quality. Common printed impressions of course represent no one fairly, but those artists lose the most who have the most to lose, and you are no exception to the rule, as I should never have guessed what your drawings looked like from anything I ever have seen printed. You will certainly be disappointed in my rendering of your work, for I have no patience and my hand is not as firm or my line as delicate as your drawings require, but if you send me a block I shall do it honestly after my fashion. With hearty sympathy in the troubles which you must always find in the engraving of your most elegant and refined work, I remain

“Yours truly,
“Henry Marsh.

Thackeray somewhere says that there are no people who so love their work as the artists do, unless it be the actors, who when they are not playing themselves are always at the theater. Even the holiday of the artist is generally devoted to work in a different locality from the home studio; so that it amounts to nothing more than a change of scene without any abatement of business. Gibson himself was one of the worst offenders in this way. He never seemed to rest, while in health, save in and by a change in the place and character of his task. In the pages of “Pastoral Days,” in which he describes—in the chapter upon “Summer”—his visit to “Hometown and Snug-Hamlet,” he confesses his propensity for thus using his vacation.

“My wife and I have run away from the city for a month or so. A vacation we call it; but to an artist such a thing is rarely known in its ordinary sense, and often, indeed, it means an increase of labor, rather than a respite. My first week, however, I had consecrated to luxurious idleness. Together we wandered through the old familiar rambles, where as boy and girl in earlier days we had been so oft together.” But the sort of thing which he calls idling comes out a few pages later, when he sums up the doings of that seven days of luxury.

“For a week thus we idled, now on the mountain, now in the meadow, while I with my sketch-book and collecting-box either whiled away the hours with my pencil, or left the unfinished work to pursue the tantalizing butterfly or search for unsuspecting caterpillars among the weeds and bushes.” What a busy-body was this, who knew no distinction between work and play, and to whom the sketch-book and collecting-box were the playthings of the idle hour as well as the tools of the most laborious of professions! Well might the companion of that happy summer say in after years, “He seemed never to spend an idle hour.” Another member of his household circle bears similar testimony. “If he were sitting at the table, chatting and joking with us, as likely as not he would have his pencil in his hand, and before we knew it, would dash off on any scrap of paper, some sketch of a beetle, or a bird, or a butterfly, or perhaps a caricature of somebody in the group.” With this nature, steam was always up, and the fires hardly banked at all. No wonder that the machinery literally wore out prematurely.

There is one legacy of his busy life which seems to have a special interest to those who loved his work and care to know how he did it. For many years he carried in his mind a plan for a new work, which was characteristic of his genius, and would have added a new delight to those he had conferred. He meant some day to write and to illustrate a book which should describe the history of the endless movement of water, from cloud to mountain-top, from the heights to the valleys, from the valleys to the sea, and back to the clouds again. He had made many notes and references, and the scheme was well worked out in its general features. The memoranda which he left are sufficiently full to convey a clear idea of what he proposed; and as one reads them they seem to suggest all the graceful text and the graphic illustration with which his matured skill would have filled them out. While they raise the keenest disappointment in the thought that they never were completed and that American literature and nature-study have missed what they promised, yet they are so full of hints, so stimulating to the imagination, that they seem to belong to that public for which he wrought, and which prizes every thought of his fertile mind.

On the fly-leaf of the blank-book in which these notes are entered, with long blanks for the material yet to be written in, he has written the words “Memoranda; Cycle of the Raindrop.” On the next page follow a number of tentative titles:

“From the Fountain to the Deep Sea.

“The Cycle of the Raindrop.

“From the Rain Cloud to the Sea.