(From The Westminster Budget)
Mr. Whistler
Mr. Whistler has mastered two arts besides painting and sketching. One he has immortalized in that unique brochure, "The Gentle Art of Making Enemies"; the other is the Gentle Art of Advertising Oneself. These two generalities are not always to be distinguished from each other. It is quite possible to make an enemy in advertising oneself; and nothing is easier than to draw general attention to oneself, by the same act that incurs the enmity of individual—especially if the individual be eminent. At the present moment M. du Maurier happens to be one of the most conspicuous figures in the field jointly occupied by Art and Letters. In choosing him as an object of clamorous attack, Mr. Whistler has shown himself a past-master of the art of advertising oneself. By identifying himself with one of the characters in a story that everyone is reading, he brings himself more conspicuously before the public than by painting a new picture. Moreover, in sending to an English newspaper a letter in which he vituperates his quondam friend and fellow-artist, he interrupts himself for but a moment in the pursuit of his legitimate calling as a painter.
In America, at least, few readers of "Trilby" would have known that, in Joe Sibley, Mr. du Maurier had hit off some of the most salient "peculiarities" of the immensely talented etcher, who, when he takes the newspapers into his confidence, dips his pen in the corrosive acid with which he bites his plates. Joe Sibley is not an engaging character; he is a Bohemian of the Bohemians, clever, witty, penniless and presuming. In taking his sibilant surname as a pseudonym for Whistler, we have the endorsement of the artist himself, though he does not expressly declare himself to be the archetype of this particular character. Sibley is the only man in the book who could have been drawn from Whistler—the Whistler of a generation ago; and no one but Sibley could have written the following letter, in which the creator of the character is so wittily vilified:—
"To the Editor—SIR: It would seem, notwithstanding; my boastful declaration, that, after all, I had not, before leaving England, completely rid myself of the abomination—the 'friend '! One solitary, unheeded one—Mr. George du Maurier—still remained, hidden in Hampstead. On that healthy heath he has been harboring, for nearly half a life, every villainy of good fellowship that could be perfected by the careless frequentation of our early intimacy and my unsuspecting camaraderie. Of this pent-up envy, malice and furtive intent he never at any moment during all that time allowed me, while affectionately grasping his honest Anglo-French fist, to detect the faintest indication. Now that my back is turned, the old marmite of our pot-au-feu he fills with the picric acid of 30 years' spite, and, in an American magazine, fires off his bomb of mendacious recollection and poisoned rancour. The lie with which it is loaded à mon intention he proposes for my possible 'future biographer'—but I fancy it explodes, as is usual, in his own waistcoat, and he furnishes, in his present unseemly state, an excellent example of all those others who, like himself, have thought a foul friend a finer fellow than an open enemy.
"Paris. J. M'Neill Whistler.
"Reflection: The compagnon of the pétard we guillotine. Guineas are given to the popular companion who prepares his infernal machine for the distinguished associates in whose friendship he has successfully speculated."
* * *
The following card appeared in Harper's for October:—
"Pursuant to an arrangement made with Mr. J. McNeill Whistler by our London agents, Messrs. Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., the publishers of the English edition of Harper's Magazine, the following letter is published:—
August 31, 1894.