"'Dear Sir—Our attention has been called to the attack made upon you by Mr. du Maurier in the novel "Trilby," which appeared in our magazine. If we had had any knowledge of personal reference to yourself being intended, we should not have permitted the publication of such passages as could be offensive to you. As it is, we have freely made such reparation as is in our power. We have agreed to stop future sales of the March number of Harper's Magazine,[B] and we undertake that, when the story appears in the form of a book, the March number shall be so rewritten as to omit every mention of the offensive character, and that the illustration which represents the Idle Apprentice shall be excised, and that the portraits of Joe Sibley in the general scene shall be altered so as to give no clue to your identity. Moreover, we engage to print and insert in our magazine for the month of October this letter of apology addressed to you. Assuring you again of our sincere regret that you should have sustained the least annoyance in any publication of ours, we are,
"'Yours respectfully, Harper & Brothers.
"'J. McNeill Whistler, Esq.'"
* * *
One of the humors of the controversy was a letter that appeared in the first number of Harry Furniss's Lika-Joko. It was supposed to have been written by Whistler to express his indignation at having been cut out of the book. The English as well as the American papers fell into the trap, and discussed the letter as a genuine expression of Mr. Whistler's outraged feelings. It was only a joke, however—and is said to have been the only joke in Mr. Furniss's comic paper. To an interviewer for The Westminster Budget, Mr. Whistler expressed his surprise that anyone should have been taken in by the parody. "There was no harm in the appearance of the article," he said, "but what caused my merriment, though not surprise, is that anyone would have thought for a moment that I had written it. But then, it was in England, and in England anything is possible!" That the parody was a clever one will be seen from the following extract:—
"In the fascinating numbers of 'Trilby,' as they appeared in Harper's Magazine, I read with delight of one Joe Sibley, idle apprentice, king of Bohemia, roi des truands, always in debt, vain, witty, exquisite and original in art, eccentric in dress, genial, caressing, scrupulously clean, sympathetic, charming; an irresistible but unreliable friend, a jester of infinite humor, a man now perched upon a pinnacle of fame (and notoriety), a worshipper of himself; a white-haired, tall, slim, graceful person with pretty manners and an unimpeachable moral tone. My only regret was that too little was said about so charming a creation. I looked to see more of him in the published three volumes. But no! I found the addition of some thoughtful excursuses by Mr. du Maurier upon nudity, agnosticism, and other more hazardous subjects, which had, presumably, been judged too strong for the ice-watered, ice-creamed constitution of the American Philistine; but I looked in vain for the delightful Joseph Sibley. In his place I find a yellow-haired Switzer, one Antony, son of a respectable burgher of Lausanne, who is now tall, stout, strikingly handsome and rather bald, but who in his youth had all the characteristics of the lost Joseph Sibley—his idleness, his debts, his humor, his art, his eccentricity, his charm. I rubbed my eye-glass. Je me suis demandé pourquoi."
Displeased with The Speaker's comments on his connection with "Trilby," Mr. Whistler compelled that paper to print a letter from his solicitors, from which it appears that the revised MS. of the novel was sent to him to be passed. And apropos of this, he remarks in a letter to the editor:—"I question if it be not without precedent that a writer ever before so abjectly regorged his spleen as to submit his Bowdlerized work to his victim for his approval."
In the Chicago Tribune of Sunday, 2 Dec., 1894, were reprinted from Harper's the pictures of, and passages about, Joe Sibley which provoked Mr. Whistler's threatened libel-suit. The revised passages, as they appear in the book, were also given.
