William Hamilton Gibson: artist—naturalist—author

by John Coleman Adams

“I believe he always retained an affectionate feeling for the Twenty-fourth Street quarters of the Club, where we smoked, ate the Captain’s salad, told stories (Gibson not a poor contributor), seldom talked shop, and certainly never were literary; where we met Lowell, Stedman, Boyesen, Eggleston, Grant White, Godwin, Stoddard, Conway, Jefferson, Riley, Kipling, Mitchell, Hay, St. Gaudens—it would be a long and an interesting list. Mr. Gibson’s genius and personality alike attracted to him the attention of the choicest spirits in a gathering of this kind. He always had a fine fund of that quality which belongs to genius—which is in itself a genius—a quality of youthful enjoyment in the simpler pleasures. I remember the contagious gusto with which, on a certain memorable Watch Night, he told the company a ghost story that came to its crisis in a materialized ghost of his own making which he had concealed under his coat. The hoax recalls some of his fun at Washington village, where his astonishing mummy with a message from the past will long be a droll tradition, and where there is a lively recollection of his dashing horsemanship on a wonderful steed with a feather-duster tail!

“I heard him lecture at Washington village and shared in the delight of an audience whose youngest members he held quite as closely as their elders. Indeed, I never have known in any department of science or of art an enthusiast who could convey, with an utter absence of academic formality, so rich and delightful a fund of information and suggestion. To me he was always the ideal interpreter of nature. There was no hint of book covers between. He did not turn to and from his theme at any time. It was part of his life—and plainly a pleasant, unstrenuous part of it. In the woods, in his garden, on the quiet porch overlooking the hillside sumac, he spoke of a discovery in a petal or in the habits of a beetle with that charming undidactic delight of one who assumes that all must have a common pleasure in these phases of natural life.

“As an artist he was quite as free from personal mannerisms or eccentricities. When I first visited his studio on Montague street, Brooklyn, he talked as he worked—the picture was an illustration to one of his magazine papers,—and afterwards turned to his portfolio, quite without the effect of entertaining me, but always with a companionly frankness and simplicity that made him at all times the most attractive of hosts. I remember his house studio on Lincoln Place by but two visits, and I had no greater acquaintance with the little crib at the foot of the Washington lawn. I think I liked the dishevelled workshop at Washington best of all.

“Mr. Gibson never permitted the very handsome things that were said of his writings to disturb his relation to his artistic ideals. ‘I am an artist,’ he said to me when this subject came up between us, and profound as was his affection for plant and insect life, it was as an artist that he looked across the leaping lines of this Washington country; it was as an artist that he labored to transmit with his brush the flame colors of autumn or the lustrous prophecies of spring. The healthy ideals of his art and the hearty simplicity of his nature are to be read in the unmannerish charm of his pictures.

“Once or twice we met on the trains in the course of our lecturing work. He had stories to tell me of his own experiences—of hardship, of accident, of humorous incident. Once his voice left him so completely that he was obliged to make a momentary exit after a pantomimic apology to the audience. On the whole I think that he greatly enjoyed his lectures. Certainly they were inspiringly memorable to those who were privileged to hear them.

“When I recall him in his own home and in mine, I have before me a splendidly strong head and figure. I hear his strong healthy laugh. I see his broad shoulders turned to me as he sits at the piano playing the ‘Largo’ with a full singing volume of tone. His ear was so keen and sympathetic that he could express without knowledge of notes even the subtler harmonies of a fragment like the ‘Largo,’ and his playing always had the fascination that is present in the interpretations of those who truly love music, and who find in an instrument a companion to whom they may go in any mood with certainty of response.

“The news of his death brought to me a shock and a sense of bereavement deeper and more lasting than any I had known for many years. Here, surely, was a fine spirit, a lover of life and of art, and an exponent of all that is sanest and sweetest in both.”

It was four years after his death that the Alumni and friends of the “Gunnery” school completed a memorial of Gibson which for fitness and significance is one of the most successful in America. On the left of the road, as one climbs the long hill from the railroad station to Washington Green, nearly at the top of the slope, there stands a large boulder, a little back from the highway. Here it was determined to place a bronze medallion in bas-relief, which should aim to suggest the man and commemorate his relation to the little town which he so loved and which so loved him.

The report of Mr. E. K. Rossiter, made to the Alumni Association, tells the interesting story of the inception and completion of this loving task, whose results will be an enduring memorial of this inspiring life.

“You have undoubtedly all heard of that ideal committee composed of three persons—one dead, one in Europe, and one left at home to do as he pleased. But my parallel, if I draw one at all, must soon end, for though Mr. Van Ingen is to-day on the other side of the water, the other two members, Dr. Lyman Abbott and Dr. Ludlow, are very much alive—as proof of it, I would refer you to the weekly issue of the ‘Outlook’ or beg you to attend one of the good Doctor’s sermons at Orange.