William Hamilton Gibson: artist—naturalist—author

by John Coleman Adams

But Mr. Gunn could administer as sharp reprimands to parents and older folk as he could to the boys who were his pupils. There is a plaintive letter from Gibson to his father, growing yellow now, with age, in which the heart of the little boy is uncovered, and his longing for letters from home is touchingly revealed. And the fatherly, warm-hearted teacher had evidently read it, and his soul burned within him. So he wrote upon the back page of the little note the following admonitory words, which must have elicited a letter by return mail:

“My Dear Sir: It seems to me if I had such a dear little son as Willie Gibson, sent away from home to a boarding school, and thrown upon the cold charities of the world, so proverbially heartless and selfish as the ministers say it is, I would require one of the clerks to write to him once or twice a quarter. Willie is happy in his present relations, but somewhat anxious about the friends he left behind him. He presumes his parents are well, not having seen their names in the papers, but would feel more sure if he heard from them. Willie is a dear little fellow, just as good as he can be. Should you think it best to write to him, direct care of F. W. Gunn, Washington, Conn.”!

These are words like rifle bullets!

Of course the students of child psychology will be interested to learn whatever is worth knowing concerning the appearance, in embryo, of the man Gibson in the boy of this period. There is satisfaction for such investigators and there is disappointment as well. There are many intimations, at this period, of the man that is to be. There are traces of peculiarities which wholly disappeared with the years. There were aptitudes and tastes appearing in the school-days at the Gunnery, which no reprimands and no discouragements could subdue; and there were shortcomings and faults which the years were destined utterly to efface. It certainly seems strange to find Mr. Gunn writing to the boy’s mother, “Willie has not yet learned to be spontaneously industrious. I know he will come to it. He improves”; and again to his father, “Willie insists that he is getting along finely in his studies, that he studies very hard, and is doing well. But you must accept this with some grains of allowance for a boy’s favorable judgment of himself. He does not learn as fast as I wish to have him. I think his tendency to take on fat hinders his power of industrious, persevering application; he is getting to be quite a big fellow, and I urge him a good deal.” When one remembers that the most marked of all his traits as a man was the fierce and enthusiastic zeal with which he worked, consuming the powers of a robust physique in his zest for toil, one is moved to be very patient with the unpromising side of a child’s nature. It may take a great while to become “spontaneously industrious”; but Gibson’s experience shows how needless it is to be despondent because a boy does not work with a man’s spirit. Sufficient unto the age are the traits thereof.

But in other ways, the schoolboy was forecasting the traits of the mature man. There is a mournful letter preserved out of these years, in which the little fellow writes his father after receiving a reprimand for illustrating his letters with pen-and-ink pictures. His inborn faculty would exhibit itself, and the home letters were filled with funny and interesting sketches. But that did not seem to the parental mind a wise use of writing materials. So the embryo artist was warned to curb his passion for illustration. He wrote a few penitent lines in response. “Next comes about the writing. I own that I am very foolish in putting those pictures in my letters, and I won’t do it any more. I never put them in only to the letters home.” Vain promise! It was one more attempt to drive out nature with a pitchfork; and was as unsuccessful—as it deserved to be. The artist-impulse was straining and struggling within him already and was bound to assert itself more and more vigorously till it should triumph in his life-work.

So, too, there appeared in these early days the passionate love of nature which was to be a controlling element in his later years. Botany was one of the studies which he insisted upon taking up under Mr. Gunn’s teaching. There was a little family controversy over the matter, growing out of the mother’s fear that the really practical things would be neglected in this passion for nature-study. It sounds strange enough, at this distance in time, with all the light of the boy’s later life, to read the mother’s anxious words:

“We wish [Mr. Gunn] to judge and direct in all these things, but I was afraid your own wish and the way I spoke to you about the delight of studying Botany, might have led you to speak so positively in choosing it, that he would suppose it was by our direction. If you really do take up Botany you must expect to find that it is not all play either. There are hard things to remember, and you must make up your mind to work at them bravely and perseveringly if you are determined to make them yours.”

A little sentence later in the same letter shows the bent of the boy. His mother, referring to a recent visit of his father to the school, remarks:

“I was afraid when your father told me how he found you in the calamus swamp, that you would be sick.”

That tells an interesting story of boyish passion for plants. And so do the little fellow’s letters home. Very early in his life at the Gunnery he wrote to his father: