While English in his remote racial root, his forbears lived long enough in Ulster to extract from the soil and atmosphere of Ireland that Celtic wit and pugnacity, that brilliance and originality so characteristic of the man. The transplantation of his immediate ancestors to American soil added to the mental celerity and nervous alertness of his fiber, giving to his personality that Gaelic flavor which the English-speaking races acquire under our skies in sloughing off the heavy heritage of insularity of the land of fogs.
Great talents are seldom transmitted from one generation to another, yet certain characteristics which are physiological rather than psychological, may mark the branches of a common family tree. Whistler owes his intellectual qualities to his racial fiber, to his mixture of blood and the changing environments of his ancestors; they are in fact highly developed racial characteristics, while his artistic instincts—raised in him to the plane of genius—are a family inheritance. His wit, humor and mental dynamics he owes to his Irish fathers; his merciless mockery, his acidulous aggressiveness, his satirical sardonism, are the Calvinism of his Scottish strain run to seed and sprouting in the soil of Bohemia: a sparkling champagne, which has been spoiled with vinegar.
The son of a great father, standing in the glare of a great light, has his own brilliance minimized and is deprived of that natural light and shade so necessary to his artistic proportion. If he be great himself, his contemporaries will institute comparisons that are ever odious, unless their greatness be in different directions. On the other hand, when the son is great his glory only adds to the aureole of the great father.
Whistler’s father was a famous man in his day; but time has done for the father what it has yet to do for the son—it has stilled the voices of contemporary panegyric and detraction, it has estimated his true worth, measured and ascertained his proportion and given him a definite historical verdict.
A glance at Whistler’s antecedents will be of interest to all, for they have added to the glory of the Republic and given it as loyal service as any one family in its history.
The Whistler family is remotely of English origin, and it was Ralph, son of Hugh Whistler of Goring, in Oxfordshire, who founded its Irish branch, removing to Ulster as a tenant of one of those predacious London guilds which exchanged its guineas for the broad acres which that thrifty monarch, James Stuart, had despoiled from the O’Neills and O’Donnells of Ulster.
The first Whistler on American soil was John, a scion of this Ulster settler of the Plantation. While little that is definite is known of this branch, the internal evidence forces us to conclude that it was one of some social and political importance, for it was on terms of intimacy with the landed proprietors of the province. The character of this John indicates that whatever the religious and political opinions of the Irish Whistlers may have been, they had grown on the soil to be Irish of the Irish. John Whistler was a high-strung, bold, brave, devil-may-care blade, who loved adventure and excitement and had the Irishman’s love of a fight and a soldier’s life. While yet a mere boy he ran off from home, enlisted in King George’s army and was hustled off in a transport to America to aid in the work of subduing the rebellious colonies.
He reached Canada in season to march with the luckless Burgoyne and to come to grief and captivity with his superior at Saratoga. He fell in love with his captors and the country, and doubtless registered a vow that he would make his home in America at some future period. In time he was exchanged and sent back to England. He was poor, yet, with that amusing contempt of poverty so characteristic of the Irish gentleman, he aggravated his troubles by falling rapturously in love with the pretty daughter of his father’s friend, Sir Edward Bishop. The maid was as ardent and foolish as her lover, but the father looked askance at the suit of the young soldier of fortune. The lovers solved the problem for themselves in Irish fashion by running away, marrying and taking ship for the rebellious colonies before the elders woke up. The young couple landed at Baltimore with full hearts and empty pockets and settled down at Hagerstown to begin the battle of life.
It is certain that fortune continued as unkind and capricious under American skies as she had been under Irish ones, and we next hear of the young husband bidding adieu to his young wife and child, and marching with a musket on his shoulder, as a soldier of the United States, into the wilderness of the West, under General St. Clair.
Fighting and soldiering in those days were done in rough and ready fashion under conditions that called for courage and endurance, when pluck and dash and personal prowess were the prime essentials of a soldier; and in such a school an Irish daredevil like Whistler easily made his mark. In that disastrous battle on the Miami in 1791, where the forces of St. Clair were surprised and routed by the vengeful tribesmen under Blue Jacket and the renegade, Simon Girty, young Whistler was wounded, but his gallant conduct in the battle and on the retreat earned him his shoulder-straps, and gave him a position that his birth, breeding and education enabled him to fill with honor to himself and credit to the republic. It gave him an assured position in the calling he loved best, and for which his talents and taste fitted him.