THE PERSONAL SIDE
There is a curious notice of Gibson’s work, written for a leading New
York publication in 1882, which is calculated to fill the minds of his
friends with wonder, not unmingled with amusement. The writer attempts a
portrait of Gibson’s soul, and does it, as the Irishman made his
chopping-block, “out of his own head.” “In some way,” he (or she) says,
“Mr. Gibson has never classed himself in our mind with the profession of
illustrators, but has seemed rather to stand apart, to work in his own
ways, to avoid association, to prefer lonely walks, to follow his own
bent, no matter where it leads, and irrespective of any who come after
him. These impressions have given a certain solitariness to his figure,
so that we fancy him wandering alone up and down the earth, a man of
silence, a man of keen and penetrating eye, of ear attent, of swiftly
susceptible feelings, who searches out nature in her recesses, and
coyest moods, is on the friendliest terms with her, to whose delicate
touch she lends herself with an indulgence which coarser lovers are
denied”! That extraordinary sketch of the personality of the man is a
most felicitous antithesis of the real Gibson. It happily describes
what he was not. It is a capital portrait of somebody else. Just where
the writer got his materials for such a description, it would be hard to
tell. Certainly not from personal contact with the subject. It sounds
like a far-off account of Thoreau; as if he had been taken as the
likeliest type of a thoroughgoing nature lover, and the lines drawn
after the similitude of his strange nature. But it would be hard to find
two men in more total contrast than Thoreau and Gibson. The former may
have loved “to stand apart, to work in his own ways, to avoid
association, to prefer lonely walks.” But the latter loved to touch
elbows with his fellow-men; to cultivate friendships and share the joys
of society; to walk with a company of congenial spirits, from whom he
was always learning something, unless they were those to whom he could
always teach something. He was not the least bit of a recluse. A
hermitage would have had no charms for him. For he was, in the highest
sense, “a man of the world,” who loved his kind, and loved to live with
them. There was no “solitariness” about him. He was eminently social. So
far was he from “wandering alone up and down the world,” that he always
drew a crowd about him, wherever he went. He was no McGregor, to usurp
the head of the table; but wherever Gibson was, there was the center of
the circle. And, far from being “a man of silence,” he was the freest
and easiest of talkers, accessible, communicative, as genial as
sunshine, as fluent as a brook.
The nature which was in him began to express itself from the earliest
years. In his school-days he was anything but the shy, retiring child
which would be the father of such a man as our critic described; and his
love and yearning for companionship and the expression of affection come
out in almost every one of his juvenile letters. It is so seldom that a
boy’s letters really express the boy’s life that one does not feel that
they have any permanent interest. But the boy Gibson wrote letters which
deserve to be preserved. They are as quaint as if they were fictitious.
They could not have been truer to life if they had been made out of
whole cloth. It would be hard to match the following, written when he
was twelve years old, from the “Gunnery”; its quaint and naïve
boyishness is delicious:
“WASHINGTON, _March 1, 1863_.
“DEAR MOTHER:
“I received your letter for the first in three weeks and was as happy as
a king and I am now. you may expect a letter from me every week.
“Only till the latter part of this month before the Exhibition, and then
comes vacation which I long for very much. Every Friday the boys act a
drama; the last one was ‘Love in ’76,’ and it was perfectly splendid
and the one before that was ‘Romance under Difficulties,’ and that was
better than the last. I wish you could send me up some small dramas
because I would like to read them.
“The principal thing among the boys is catching mice with little box
traps, (like the one that Grandpa made two or three summers ago) which
we make ourselves. One of the boys took some hoopskirt and made a cage
to keep his mice in and I made two and have got four traps. The boy that
made the first trap made the first cage and he is a very ingenious boy
his name is Charley Howard he is a nice boy and is liked throughout this
whole great institution as well as the other boys too.
“It is a very unpleasant day first in the morning it snowed and next it
rained and now it is snowing again and looks as if it would snow a long
while it is dark dismal and foggy.
“I am very sorry that Cotty has so many boils, because I can imagine how
they feel but you must tell him he must try to be as patient as Job if
he can. The other evening I touched the tip end of my nose to the stove
pipe the stove pipe being hot burnt the tip of my nose off so now
everywhere I go I am laughed at. It don’t hurt me any to be laughed at
if they leave my nose alone that is all I ask.
“The other day I was sliding out in the grove on the ice and I slipped
and fell and struck on my sore knee and now it cracks just like it did
first, only it don’t hurt me so much, but I guess I will get over it
before long. I am known in this school by the name of Fatty and Pussy
and am so used to it that I take it as my own name.
“Please ask Julie and Henry if they think that they are big enough to
read letters, and if they say yes tell them I will write to them you
tell me in your next letter. In your answer let Hubie write as he did in
one of your letters.
“And now as I have written you a long letter I will stop. Sending love
to you all and give them all a kiss for me.
“From your aff. Willie.
“P. S. Excuse bad writing as I have a sore finger.”
The same winter he wrote to his sister; and surely nothing could be
more delightfully artless than the patronizing little moral
harangue with which the letter begins--a strain which ends in such
complacent satisfaction over his own success as a good boy! It must
have been mightily encouraging to the little girl. But when he
drops into narrative and gives such a vivid account of his skating
adventures, one begins to feel the real boy’s heart again:
“WASHINGTON, _Feb. 24, 1863_.
“DEAR JULIE:
“I guess that you are getting to be a great big girl by this time
and I hope that you are trying to be a good girl too and that you
are trying to correct all your bad habits. I am trying to do it and
succeed very well.
“I will now tell you about my last skate; we all started at half
past nine in the morning and went to a lake warramaug which is 5
miles from Mr. Gunn’s house I walked up there and put on my skates
and off I went like a streak of blue greased lightning and the ice
was as smooth as glass and a foot thick after I skated about four
hours, something happened. did the ice break, No! did my skate
break, No! My buckle, NO! the clouds broke and their contents were
spilled upon the earth and you had better believe that I got off my
skates and put for home with my legs in my boots. It was a snow
storm. On going home I summed up how many miles I had been that day
and found out that I had gone on my own legs no body else’s you
understand, I had that day gone 20 miles. the next day I was sick.
I soon got over it and was all right again.
“I remain your aff. Brother
“Willie.
“Give love to all write soon.”
Sometime during this same year he wrote in quite a different vein to his
mother. He shows a spirit “strenuous” enough to suit the most
aggressive, and as tender as strenuous. There are two or three points of
school ethics which appear with much force in his account of the
trouble:
“The other night a few of the boys (Henry and I included) were
playing ‘blind man’s buff’ in the kitchen, and I was it and one of
the boys got a hand full of pepper and doused it in Henry’s eyes.
of course Henry cried some, but you couldn’t get him to tell Mr.
Gunn and at last one of the boys Daniel B. Gunn told Mr. Gunn and
he called him in there and sent all the other boys to bed. When I
was just getting in bed, a knock came at my door and I opened it
and there stood ‘Henry’ with a handkerchief up to his face a crying
he kissed me good night and went in his room. Pretty soon after I
went in his room and he was still crying and told him not to mind
it but keep a wet handkerchief to it and it wouldn’t ache much, so
he did so and he felt quite comfortable. I told Ralph (which was
the boy that did it) if he ever did another thing of the kind to my
brother, I would knock him down, and I think I ought to. If I had
only seen Ralph do it I would have knocked him down on the spot and
teach him to mind his own business.
“According to Mr. Gunn’s rules ‘Stick up for your Brother’ and I
mean to do it.
“With love to all, I remain your aff. son.
“WILLIE.”
Other letters written in these delightful school-days show him at the
time when the boy-mind begins to realize the importance of dress and of
personal adornment. The episode of the diamond pin is told with
characteristic frankness and vivacity. But another paragraph from the
letter shows a most commendable fondness for his old hat--a marked
evidence of the genuine sentiment of the boy’s nature. The description
of the football field and its unfailing perils carries a contemporaneous
interest; and a boy’s account of his studies is always fascinating
reading. The brief story of the prayer-meeting in “Willie Beecher’s”
room and his confidence in the leader who “can explain about any passage
in the Bible” must close these glimpses into the real heart of an
unspoiled and ingenuous boy. They are a key to his nature,--its
frankness, heartiness, enjoyment of simple things, a self-confidence
that was destined to help him touch the goal of a great success,
singularly combined with a humility which kept him always open to
reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness. They show his
warm and affectionate nature, which never changed but to deepen and
sweeten as he matured. They reveal his earnestness and sincerity; traits
which underlie all his qualities like the bedrock of the continent, and
on which his fun and frolic grew as naturally as grass and foliage out
of the soil which masks and clothes the granite:
“WASHINGTON, CONN., _May 21, 1864_.
“DEAR MOTHER:
“I arrived here safely. Meeting Willie B. and Bertie B. & Mary Gunn
all at Newtown in the cars. We had a very pleasant time coming up
& Mrs. Gunn was delighted with the Tulips. Everybody noticed my
diamond pin, & I tell you what!!!! They praise it up, saying &
asking me how much it cost? and having me stand still, so that they
might see it, once in a while I do _stand still_ & let them feast
their eyes on it. Some of them ask me if it is glass set round with
Gutta Percha and brass. I always tell them ‘yes of course.’ I tell
you what!! I’m proud of it and _will keep it_ & conform to your
rules. I wear it whenever I go to school & put the guard on my
shirt, so if the tie should fall off it would be held on. I suppose
you remember the blue tie that you got me. I wore it up from N. Y.
to here, & my rough coat rubbing against it made it look awful,
bringing out all the shoddy, and making it look like down all over
the tie.
“When I got home I took every bit of the white stuff out & now all
the boys think it looks a great deal prettier. Dear Mother I want
to tell you something about that hat. It is one that I have had two
winters, and I like it because it is so old. I would rather have
this one than a new one, and the other is not fit to wear and
doesn’t fit me, so Henry may have a new one.
“Mrs. Gunn thinks that I ought to have my own old hat. And she is
going to try and have the other one fixed up for Henry.
“Here I must stop,
I am your affectionate Son,
“WILLIE.”
RIGHT “WASHINGTON, CONN.,
“_Dec. 6, 1864_.
“MY DEAR MOTHER:
“It is a very cold day, and we have just come in from out doors. We
all have been playing foot ball Which is a very exciting game.
However I dont play much for the simple reason, that I am too short
winded. A great many of the boys get their shins kicked, but I am
very fortunate, for I have never got _mine_ kicked but once and
then I kicked it myself, when I _meant_ to have kicked the
foot-ball. At all times of the recess you can look about the green
and see certain boys hopping about holding one leg up, and crying.
* * * * *
“This year I study a great many lessons, Latin, Anatomy,
Book-keeping, Spelling, & Arithmetic. In Latin, I get along nicely.
It seems a great deal easier this term than it ever has yet. In
Anatomy I get along perfectly splendid. I know every bone in your
body and the latin (or Scientific) names of them all. in
book-keeping I get along nicely. In Arithmetic I am in square root
and I understand it perfectly. I guess that if Mr. Gunn writes to
you, he will say that I get along very well in my studies, and you
can tell Father so too.
“I suppose that he thinks that I idle away my time writing letters.
to be sure I do write a great many letters, but I _don’t_ write
them until all my studies are learned. now this is so. And while a
person is away from home he wants to hear from his friends. All the
boys write a great many letters.
“Please send me some postage stamps in your letter.
“Here I must stop with love to all.
“I remain your aff. Son WILLIE.”
“WASHINGTON, CONN.,
“_Jan. 22, 1865_.
“MY DEAR MOTHER:
“Are you getting better, I hope so. I am very anxious about you, & you
must not think that I forget you, because I think of you all the time,
and pray for you every night.
“Willie Beecher has a prayer-meeting in his room every saturday night, &
a great many boys attend. I am one of them, and I am liked more this
term than any yet. Willie is superintendent and he can explain, about
any passage in the bible, to us, so that we can perfectly understand
it.”
But the poor boy did not always keep his lofty and self-approving mood.
Near the close of the same year he had occasion to realize how hard it
is to tread the right line of virtue. His wrath at one of the boys and
his doings got the better of his good feeling, and he vented himself in
some strong language written to one of the boys at home. This, being
brought to his mother’s attention, drew down a sharp reprimand, which
was quite effectual,--almost too effectual one feels, on reading dear
Mrs. Gunn’s calm and wise view of it. But the quick, passionate grief of
the repentant boy shows his warm and wholesome heart:
“WASHINGTON, _Dec. 9th, 1863_.
“DEAR MOTHER:
“I received your letter and with repeated sobs heard Mrs. Gunn read
it to me. I am very sorry for what I said in Frank’s letter and I
sincerely promise that I never will commit such a wrong again. And
do please forgive me this time and take me into your arms again.
Tell Mrs. Howard if you see her that I am very sorry and will never
permit such a thing to come out of my mouth again. I will write to
Frank and apologize for it. And I don’t think you will ever reprove
me of such a wrong again.
“With much love I remain your affectionate Son
“WILLIE.
“_He that calleth his brother a fool is in danger of hell fire._ I will
remember this.”
When this letter went to his mother Mrs. Gunn sent the following with
it.
“_Wednesday eve._
“MY DEAR MRS. GIBSON:
“Willie was almost heartbroken, when he heard your letter, which he
had given to me to read to him, without a suspicion of its
contents. He went immediately, without prompting from any one, and
wrote this answer. I am glad to see that he makes no attempt to
excuse himself, and I rejoice that the ‘expression’ came so soon to
your knowledge. He will never forget the lesson. I know he is not
in the habit of using such expressions, and cannot account for his
having written it. I think he does not quarrel at all with Henry.
You will think from Henry’s letter to Juliet, that he is suffering
from homesickness, but he seems perfectly happy. His mother’s
letter made him long to see you all and he wrote to Juliet
immediately. He and Bertie are very happy together and he is
getting on nicely now with all the boys. At first he used to get
himself into trouble constantly by calling them names, and treating
them as I suppose he had been treated by village boys in Newtown. I
presume it was that which made Willie write of him as he did, as he
was very much annoyed by it. I have heard nothing of it for some
days past, and conclude that he has discovered the way to live
happily and pleasantly with the other boys. He is a dear little
fellow and always good to us, obedient and cheerful.
In haste, yours sincerely,
“A. J. GUNN.”
In a letter written a week later he comes back to the subject in the
same tone of grief and honest penitence; and he gives another glimpse at
his real nature. For when a boy tells you what he thinks about after he
has gone to bed at night, he has taken you very much into his
confidence.
“WASHINGTON, CONN., _Dec. 15, 1863_.
“DEAR MOTHER:
“You can’t realize how sorry I feel for that great misconduct that
happened about a week ago and I want to be forgiven. Will you forgive me
this time.
“Christmas is now near at hand and I have concluded to stay here and I
suppose you had rather have me to. Mrs. Gunn has just got through
reading ‘Eric or little by little’ and the boys were delighted with it
only they didn’t like to have the ‘hero’ of the story die. They expected
to have it turn out that he would be a great man: But it didn’t. You
know that he died on hearing that his Mother was very sick and might
die. It ended up very sad and scarcely a boy ceased to cry. It is a
beautiful book and impressed several things on the hearts of some of our
boys and I realy believe it has done them some good and if it hasn’t
done them any I think it has me. Often in bed I think of ‘Eric’ and hope
that I will never do some of the bad things he did; but, on the other
hand if I turn out to be as good a boy as he turned out to be I will be
satisfied and I guess you will to.”
Out of such a frank, hearty, kindly boyhood, there matured its natural
and necessary fruit. The boy was father to the man. The mature Gibson
was no disappointment to the hopes of those who had known him in youth.
He had all the charm of a perfectly natural and wholesome nature,
developing along lines which strengthened constantly all that was
noblest and most admirable in it. He was able to express himself fully
in his work; and his self-expression constantly broadened and deepened
his best qualities.
His exuberant nature continually overflowed in fun. His seriousness was
tempered by an unfailing sense of humor, and his tremendous energy was
stopped short of oppressiveness by his capacity for play. He had the
secret of perpetual youth. He always kept the heart of boyhood. His
letters bubbled with mirth. His talk was bright with it. All his friends
have memories of this side of his life which form one of the most
delightful legacies from that past. But there is no preserving the
effervescence of such a nature. It is never the same on the memorial
page. His own spirit was so much a part of it all that without his
personality behind the joke it would lose half its point. But whether he
made sport for a company, as in his droll stories at the club, or raised
the laugh in the flow of personal talk, his touch was sure, his humor
was contagious.
Probably no trait in him thus throve and grew as did his enthusiasm, his
zest in living, his love of what he did, and what he saw, and what he
contributed to other lives. To all who knew him he was a fellow of
infinite zest. He enjoyed life. He enjoyed all lives, both great and
small, human and sub-human. A friend used to say of him that Gibson was
a man who thoroughly enjoyed _himself_. No doubt he did. For that is
only another way of saying that he rejoiced in the things God had given
him, the powers which were at once endowment and working capital in his
life. No man ever took more keen delight in what is commonly counted the
drudgery of toil. He really did not seem to be conscious of the hardship
of hard work or the irksomeness of the set task. He so thoroughly loved
the thing which he did, that all labor was a labor of love. That took
away the sense of bondage to his business, and was one of the secrets of
his immense endurance, his elasticity under heavy loads, his exuberance
of spirits in situations when most men would have sunk overwhelmed.
He had the trait which marks all such natures, a whole-heartedness in
all that he undertook, which made him a difficult man to overcome, to
put down, or to defeat. That was obvious in all his hard apprenticeship;
in his determined struggle for success; in his loyalty to his own
ideals. It came out in some other incidents of his life. His vigorous
fight against the spirit of vandalism which threatened the natural
beauties of Prospect Park, at the hands of a dense and narrow
officialism, was a case in point. In the spring of 1887, Mr. Gibson, in
the course of a stroll through the Park, was filled with the
consternation and wrath which are inevitable in a real nature-lover when
he finds that ignorant and unsympathetic hands--and heads--have been
busy destroying the natural beauties which years of artificial culture
cannot make good. As he wrote in a communication to one of the most
reputable journals of the day: “One of the wildest and most beautiful
sections of the Park had been invaded by the butcherly Goths and Vandals
known as our Park Commissioners. Chaos reigned on every side--beautiful
fresh trees by the score, lying in piles of logs among seas of chips,
bonfires of brushwood on every hand, and the beauty of the place
otherwise hacked and slashed on all sides.” Gibson at once sounded an
emphatic and indignant warning through the columns of the Brooklyn
“Eagle.” The Park Commissioners replied through an agent in contemptuous
fashion, and declared that all they had been doing was to cut down “a
lot of ailanthus trees.” They did not know the caliber of their critic.
In a second letter Gibson reiterated his charges and showed as the
result of actual count and careful identification, that over two hundred
trees had been felled in one small acre, and that these included large
and beautiful specimens of white birch, black birch, willow, elm,
poplar, sweet-gum, flowering dogwood, hornbeam, European alder,
nettle-tree, young maple, and numerous other varieties of the minor
sylvae, comprising one of the most beautiful pieces of underwood to be
found in any park. The Park Commissioners met this new charge with a
square denial. Gibson produced new and indisputable evidence to confute
them; induced a committee of gentlemen of the highest standing and
intelligence to investigate the premises and the evidences of his
accuracy,--including Dr. Charles H. Hall, Dr. Charles C. Hall, Dr.
Truman J. Backus, and Dr. Almon Gunnison,--who over their own names
verified all his statements. Then the Commissioners were forced to admit
his charges (and thus, indirectly, their own untruthfulness), but
claimed that what they had done was in the nature of the “improvement”
of the Park. Then Gibson challenged the discomfited Commissioners to
refer their claim of “improvement” to Samuel Parsons, the Superintendent
of Central Park, requesting his expert decision whether this cutting was
or was not a justifiable artistic or skilful piece of landscape
gardening. The challenge was not accepted. There was no need that it
should be. Gibson had roused a vigorous public sentiment which forced
the Commissioners to call a halt in their reckless and stupid work; and
his absolute honesty, accuracy, and readiness as an advocate had put his
adversaries to shame and confusion. The incident is well worth recalling
as an evidence of what one honest and vigorous citizen can do in the
correction of a public evil. It is even more interesting as an
illustration of the thoroughness and grasp of his mind on all subjects
of which he claimed any right to speak.
His encounters with his critics were often as amusing as they were
interesting, on account of the completeness with which he would effect
their refutation and overthrow. His very neat rejoinder to that
redoubtable critic, Charles A. Dana, was a piquant instance of the care
with which he took a position, as well as of the skill with which he
defended it. Mr. Dana had taken Gibson to task in the columns of the
“Sun,” for using the form “witch-hazel” instead of “wych-hazel,” which
he held to be the correct and original form,--“wych” being an old Saxon
word which means “hanging,” and has been applied to foliage with pendent
stems. Gibson responded in a very brief letter showing that while both
forms of the word had sanction, yet that the oldest and the latest
botanists used the form which he had adopted, as well as the most
reputable dictionaries of that date. His summing-up, in a letter to the
“New York Tribune,” is too well-turned to be translated or abridged.
“Who then are my authorities? The botanical scholars; Thoreau, Tennyson;
The Imperial Dictionary, Stormonth’s, Webster’s, and Worcester’s
Dictionaries; and I might add, last but by no means least, ‘The American
Cyclopedia,’ an able authority which presents conspicuously the
questioned form ‘witch-hazel,’ and upon whose title-page, by the way,
the name of Charles A. Dana appears significantly as editor.”
Well might an intimate friend write to him, after such an effective
“counter”: “Against a literary shot like that, which hits the bull’s eye
squarely in the center, no ‘literary sins’ of a minor order can count
for much even when they are proved; and no one who has the power to make
the shot need be over-modest about his literary ability--he has the
essential thing.”
Quite as dramatic in its completeness was the refutation to which he
subjected a critic of his illustrations, who had accused him of owing
much that there was of merit in his pictures to the skill of his
engravers. Gibson’s own letter tells the whole story and exposes his
critic in the fewest possible words.
This is the incident referred to in one of Mr. Roe’s letters to Gibson
which appears in his memoir (p. 189).
“The Editor of the ‘Tribune.’
“DEAR SIR:
“I observe this evening in the current number of the ‘Critic,’ an
art reference which calls for a slight correction. In a review of
‘Nature’s Serial Story,’ by E. P. Roe, after paying a delicate
compliment to the illustrations of the volume the reviewer goes on
to say that, ‘without detracting from the artist’s meed of praise,
the most remarkable thing about these illustrations is the
extraordinary skill displayed by the engravers.... Mr. Henry Marsh,
whose delicacy and precision of touch are marvelous, shows the
still rarer power of taking up the theme submitted to him by the
artist and adding increment after increment of meaning to it until
it becomes almost wholly his own. His engraving of “A Winter
Thunder-Storm” is the finest thing in the book. We give the credit
to him because we know that Mr. Gibson’s forte is not in
landscape.’
“I yield to no one in my admiration of Mr. Marsh not only as a
master and a poet in his art, but equally as an esteemed personal
friend. Indeed I love him too well, and have too great a respect
for his interpretative genius to see attributed to him a piece of
work which I am sure he would not care to claim, although it is
‘the finest thing in the book’ and fraught with ‘increment after
increment of meaning’ and which is nevertheless nothing but a
photo-engraved plate, by a purely mechanical process. Of course the
‘Critic’ (?) will hasten to make all due acknowledgments and place
the credit where it righteously belongs, _i. e._, to the Ives
Photo-Engraving Company, Phila., Pa., whose admirable process has
reproduced not only this, but several others of the illustrations
in which the aforesaid alleged marvelous ‘increment’ was
discovered. Such is fame!
“Shade of Albrecht Dürer! Who are our critics?”
Mr. Roe wrote under date of Dec. 29, 1884: “You did indeed win a victory
over the ‘incrementitious’ critic. I should think he would wish to crawl
into a small hole, and pull the hole in after him. I enjoyed your
triumph as much as if it had been my own. It was the neatest thrust
under the fifth rib I ever saw, and I fear I shall never have enough of
Christian meekness not to enjoy seeing a fellow receive his _congé_ when
so well deserved. Dr. Abbott and I took part in the ‘wake’ up here.”
Another instance of his trapping the friendly critic is preserved in his
correspondence. Colonel Gibson had objected to the “Old Barnyard” as
pictured in “Pastoral Days.” “The sloppy slush through which the man is
splashing” he wrote, “is almost too faithful. But, my dear fellow,--an
apple-tree in a cow-yard!--and loose fence-posts leaning on it!... And
do you ever see trees or shrubs on the pond side of a mill?” (referring
to the skating scene in the same paper). To which Gibson the artist made
answer as follows:
“I have had considerable amusement over my large and most important work
at the last display, viz.: ‘Autumn at Knoll Farm,’ bought first day by
Henry Ward Beecher, who says that ‘the Colmans, the Giffords, or the
Smiths can’t beat it.’ He tells all his friends so, and in his
appreciation of it only sounds the universal praise which it met with;
but, mark you! Our most high-toned and modern art publication, ‘The Art
Review,’ which employs the finest staff of contributors the country
affords, contained in its last issue a criticism that ‘did me proud’ and
at the same time gave me a jolly laugh at the way I had ‘fooled’ one of
our most noted art critics. He went on at the beginning of his
‘critique’ to condemn lightly the body-color school, claimed that it
took away from the atmosphere, ‘made mud,’ was always likely to hurt
rather than improve a painting. He hedged himself however in the
statement that ‘a skilful hand could obtain a finer effect with ‘body
color’ than an unskilled hand with wash.’ But he did not see the
necessity of using it at all.’ ‘Not even for the most bold subjects is
it necessary.’ ... ‘Take for instance Swain Gifford’s (I forget title,
but it was a very strong bit of color), rich and full of strength, or
even W. H. Gibson’s very strong “Autumn,” all rocks and tree trunks and
weeds and admirable sky, all done with pure blots.’ Mark you! Those
rocks and tree trunks and weeds were all put in thick with body color,
painted over. The result was a rich full texture, that could not have
been got in wash without at least much more labor and I doubt even then.
Others are deceived in the same way, and I repeat that the result
sanctifies the means, and I will guarantee to deceive any critic in the
country on the question of body color. I sold
[Illustration: _Late October_
_From a Painting_]
three of my pictures and it looks as though the rest would go too.
“I am glad you admired my ‘Idyl’ and especially so that you should have
thought to write me about it. It is always pleasant to receive such
letters, although unpleasant to think that you are obliged to send such
horrible scrawls in return. But I believe you are good at ‘puzzles’ even
if it is a 13.15.14. But you slipped up in your overhauling of that barn
with its fence-posts leaning against an apple-tree, and an ‘apple-tree
in a barn-yard’! Know, my friend, that that apple-tree and barn, with
all their ‘improbabilities’ in the way of posts and apple-trees, etc.,
were direct from a photograph which I made from nature with my little
camera, and all these things were there. The old mill with its
‘pond-side trees’ was also from nature, and if you will take another
look at it, consider these questions meanwhile: What does the mill stand
on? Could not a tree grow from the ground at its other indefinite end
and spread toward you?”
He was a man of many and warm friendships. It was natural for him to
like and to love his fellow-men. He opened his heart and his lips
readily to all who came to him in sincerity and in friendliness. But he
had special places in his life and thoughts for those who stood nearest
to him in sympathy and affinity. The “old boys” of the “Gunnery” were
accorded a high place in his heart, and so were those who later became
his neighbors in Washington. His affection for Mr. and Mrs. Gunn was
almost a sacred passion with him, and never waned but rather grew
throughout his life. Very tender and beautiful were the expressions of
this affection which passed between himself and his old teacher.
No less genuine and tender was his devotion to Henry Ward Beecher, his
pastor as a boy in Plymouth, his friend and sympathizer always. His
frank and open nature was one to which the warm heart of the great
preacher would naturally be drawn; and Beecher’s fervid, enthusiastic
personality would as inevitably attract and hold the appreciative,
impulsive heart of the young artist. There was little danger of
misunderstanding between these two. Through all the great sorrow of Mr.
Beecher’s life, young Gibson was his enthusiastic champion, his loyal
friend. His own heart was heavy and hot by turns, over the hounding of
Mr. Beecher. He wrote at the close of a letter to his wife:
“Mr. D. worked me up into a red-hot rage this evening, by his
insufferable and insulting remarks against Mr. Beecher. If he were a
gentleman he would at least have manners enough not to insult Mr.
Beecher to my face, knowing him to be my pastor and personal friend.”
In a later letter of the same year, he excuses himself for not writing
oftener, by saying:
“My mind has been full of this trouble, not through anxiety about Mr.
Beecher’s innocence or guilt, but more through my belief in his
innocence and consequent pity and sorrow for him. I love him almost as a
father. He has done more than I can tell for my spiritual good, and his
kindness and interest in me have drawn me close to him.”
He poured his whole heart into a letter which he sent with the volume
which he had dedicated to Mr. Beecher:
AUTHORS CLUB
“19 WEST 24TH STREET, NEW YORK,
“_Dec 23, ’86_.
“DEAR MR. BEECHER:--
“I send herewith the volume which I have taken the liberty of
inscribing to you. If you shall find between these brief lines any
deeper sentiment than there appears, any grateful acknowledgment of
a friendship which I have been fortunate and proud to possess,
which I have sought to deserve and which has been most fondly
returned; of thanks for many kindnesses on the threshold of my
struggle for recognition, and of your continual helpful and welcome
encouragement; of sincere gratitude too toward my pastor, who from
earliest youth has quickened my aspirations toward a high ideal of
character and a life of usefulness and integrity;--if you shall
discover these and thus learn how close a place you hold in my
affections, then you shall read truly the spirit of my dedication.
“With hopes that the coming Christmas may be blest with peace and
joy to you and yours and that your helpful companionship may be
spared to all of us with health and happiness to yourself and with
continual beneficence to others for many years to come,
“Believe me,
“Yours affectionately,
“W. HAMILTON GIBSON.”
An interesting side-light is thrown on a now memorable event in Plymouth
Church in another letter, written on the same day on which Mr. Beecher
delivered his famous sermon in denunciation of Calvinism, and made his
outspoken and unmistakable revolt against the stern dogmas of an older
day. There is little doubt that Gibson was one of the quickest and
heartiest in the applause which he describes:
“Mr. Beecher delivered, this morning, to an immense audience the finest
sermon of his life,--the most eloquent effort, without doubt, that ever
escaped his lips. He was heartily applauded throughout the house several
times, as he vehemently denounced the right of bishops and other
ecclesiastical heads, to usurp authority in the Church. True
Christianity, he said, implied liberty. Men should not turn their hearts
to Christ through fear but through love. The God that has been and is
still preached in the churches throughout the land, is not a god but a
devil. If he could picture a monster the most horrible and cruel
imaginable it would be the God which is preached in many of our churches
and to thousands of our people. He maintained his utter independence,
and said that no man could say to him what he should do or what he
should not do, he was responsible to God alone, and if he was inspired
to preach the gospel to his people he would do it with all his heart and
all his soul and would give utterance to every thought he chose. ‘Men
say I shall not, I say I shall.’ Christianity, he said, had been
trampled under foot by the spirit of ecclesiastical authority, that the
time was approaching when liberty in the church was to rule triumphant
and until it did the world would suffer.
“His voice rose very high and it was altogether the most eloquent effort
he has ever made in this pulpit,--and is so conceded by all whom I have
spoken with. I never saw Mr. Beecher when he appeared happier and
healthier than now.
“It had been almost decided to send him away on a six months’ vacation
for rest, but he to-day refused to take it, saying that he did not need
it and would rather stay at home with his people as ‘they needed his
preaching and he needed to preach.’ I am going to call on him soon.”
To attempt to enumerate the authors and the artists, the critics and the
clergymen, the naturalists and the nature “amateurs” with whom he was on
friendly and even intimate terms would be to make a long catalogue of
the most eminent men of his time. It would include such names as Stedman
and Stoddard, Beard and Murphy, Abbott and Ludlow, Burroughs and Roe and
Ellwanger, Parsons and Alden and the Egglestons. His correspondence
included men and women from all over the world. His genius appealed to
men of all classes and pursuits--to all who had the simple heart of
childhood and its open eye. And that genius was so full of the vitality
of the individual, so warm with his own personality, that to admire him
as artist or naturalist was to be drawn to him as a man. He seemed to
come to people as a friendly interpreter and as a helpful friend,
unlocking new gates outward into nature’s life, disclosing new horizons,
telling new secrets of the Cosmos. The tone of the letters he received
from hundreds of unknown admirers shows that he was everywhere held as a
personal friend, a teacher who won at once the attention, the
admiration, and the love of his disciples.
Two letters from correspondents curiously remote from each other are
types of the hundreds who were drawn by the human spirit of his writings
to ply him with questions, or overwhelm him with appreciation and
gratitude. From the confines of civilization on the north to the
boundary of the nation on the south, the friends whom he had made by his
pencil and his pen, his art and his scientific knowledge, appealed to
him with an instinctive feeling that he would understand them, welcome
them, help them if he could. Nor were they ever disappointed. The first
letter is from bleak Anticosti Island:
“THE LIGHTHOUSE,
“_South West Point_,
“_13th May, 1895_.
“DEAR MR. GIBSON:
“We hesitated a long time before coming to you with this question.
We knew that so many must worry you in the same way, and yet we
have come at last like the rest. I can only hope you will forgive
us. We live on Anticosti, an island with a very bad name in the
Gulf of St. Lawrence. I know you never heard a good word of it. I
must beg you, though, to believe that it is as much belied as the
toadstools you championed last year. Its woods and plains are full
of treasures and among them goodly stores of those same toadstools.
They were all under the ban, though, as in other places and we
dared only look at them regretfully.
“You don’t know how glad we were when you broke the spell in
‘Harper’s’ last summer. I don’t think anybody else was so glad. You
know we live alone here and try to make friends of ‘all out-doors’
and anything like this means more to us than to most people.
“For a while then we were happy. We knew you and we had faith
enough in ourselves to believe that we were able to understand
anything you wrote for everyday folks, let alone something that led
them among deadly poisons. But very soon we began to fret. Nearly
every toadstool we met near home was a Russula and generally far
larger and more delicious-looking than anything else we could find
far or near.
“They went through every shade of redness and pinkness and
pepperiness. I should be afraid to say how often I vowed with
pricking lips that I would taste no more. Some ‘were not so _very_
red or so _very_ peppery’ and then ‘how very far Mr. Gibson must be
keeping on the safe side for the sake of stupid people.’ I tried
cooking some of them though I felt in my heart that they were the
same as the rest and found them very good. But every one was, and
very reasonably, shy of them.
“At this critical time we came across the article enclosed.
“Here was another excitement. But who was Charles McIlvaine? ‘He
knows what he is talking about anyway,’ I said, ‘and I am going to
try the whole red tribe’; and I did.
“They were all he said and after a while the others took courage
and we even gave some to a friend who had discovered the common
mushroom for us.
“I felt misgivings all through the winter, though, about the
coming season. I did not want to risk unpleasantness and ‘emeticus’
is such a very ominous name. And who was McIlvaine, after all?
Wasn’t it rash to listen to him?
“And lo and behold you talk now in the ‘Bazar’ of Captain Charles
McIlvaine the eminent mycologist!
“Did you know that he said all that about the Russula? If we follow
his advice what risk do we run of making people ill? We don’t mind
so much about ourselves but we must think a little more of our
guests. They are rare enough without poisoning any of them.
“Please give us just a little word of advice, anything you find
time to say. And please, even if you cannot excuse this liberty and
cannot say anything, send me back the newspaper cutting.
“I never intended to say all this when I began and feel quite
ashamed when I look back at the length of my letter. Hoping that
you will excuse it, believe me with warmest thanks and gratitude,
“Yours faithfully,
“GRACE POPE.
HANG
“W. HAMILTON GIBSON, Esq.,
“NEW YORK.”
The second letter, a few years before, came from the extreme southwest:
“SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS,
“_Jan’y 13th, 1892_.
“MY DEAR MR. GIBSON:
“Will you pardon me, an entire stranger, and a Texan writing to
you, but I want to tell you how much I have enjoyed and profited by
reading your ‘Sharp Eyes.’ A good friend sent it from Denver as a
Xmas remembrance and each night I read some portion because it is a
never failing delight to read of my many familiar friends in Nature
you describe in such a clear and delightful manner. Knowing your
time is valuable and you are of human patience, though you have the
young lover of Nature at heart, I am tempted to ask you to solve
for me a problem that has been not only a mystery for several years
but an actual annoyance not to be able to find a satisfactory
explanation. It is this. Often in winter time we see flies and
mosquitoes swollen almost to bursting attached to panes of glass,
their little bodies oftentimes striped like a yellow wasp’s and
surrounding them and attached to the glass is a misty deposit of
some kind. It is the cause and object of this misty deposit I seek.
If you will enlighten me upon this subject by explanation or
reference you will add only one more favor to a large number.
“That you have been the means of adding greatly to the pleasure and
instruction of the present generation, young and old, I see from my
limited field of observation. That you may be spared many years to
continue your good work and enjoy the pleasures of God’s Nature in
this world and reap a rich reward in the Life hereafter is the
earnest wish of
“Your sincere admirer,
“ARCHIBALD A. ALEXANDER.”
One could add to these indefinitely. A minister in the northwest, a
lover of flowers and a true woodsman, has a fine program for a canoeing
trip on Minnesota rivers and lakes; a farmer’s wife writes to ask
direction to some simple manual which will help her copy flowers in
color, and encloses some examples of her simple work; an admiring poet
sends some verses which will not scan, and will be glad to have her
adulations published,--and remuneration secured; another admirer insists
that he is not an autograph fiend,--but he _would_ like a letter in
reply to his praises; an impecunious poet suggests an immediate loan of
ten dollars; a mother in a western state sends some admirable sketches
done by her daughter and wishes his judgment upon their merits. People
felt his kindly nature in his writings and in his pictures. It was a
virtue that went out of him, and drew like a loadstone.
Nowhere, perhaps, outside the charmed and privileged circle of the
“Gunnery” boys,--they were always “boys” and “girls” to one
another!--was he more welcome or more warmly cherished than at the
Authors Club. He counted it a great honor to be chosen into that
favored circle, and as he was one of its earliest members, so he was one
of its most constant and loyal supporters. Whenever he could he joined
in its social conclaves and its decorous revels; and his presence was
always a guarantee of good fellowship, unconstrained, talkative, and
sparkling. In the earliest home of the Club in East Fifteenth St.; in
its rooms in West Twenty-fourth St.; later in the West Twenty-third St.
quarters; and finally in the soaring apartments to which it attained,
Gibson’s was one of the familiar figures, as it was one of those most
commonly sought out of strangers. But it was never a figure with “a
certain solitariness,” as seen by his imaginative critic. Wherever
Gibson sat or stood, there was sure to be a group. Men gathered about
him as birds flock to the banks of a rippling stream. Nor was he any
slower in coming to the side of others. He sought companionship as
frankly as he gave it. He was always running over with bright,
attractive talk; but he had a willing ear. He was conscious of his power
to attract; but it never bred in him the slightest condescension toward
others. He was passionately fond of wit, and humor, and all the honest
fun of life; but he never showed a particle of coarseness, and he never
confounded fun with foulness. He was as much at home with the largest
minds and characters as he was with the simple farmers and rustics, he
delighted to describe; for he met all men on the ground of their common
brotherhood,
[Illustration: _The Edge of the Woods_
_From a Painting_]
and had no absurd consciousness of external condition and accidental
differences to embarrass him. His reverence and his religiousness were
profound elements of his nature. He was no formalist. Probably he did
not set a very high value upon some of the externals of spiritual life
which seem so important to many men. He was, indeed, a loyal supporter
of religious works and enterprises, as he was a member of the visible
church; and he paid the highest respect to all that pertained to what is
commonly demanded as a mark of Christian life and interest. But he had a
life in the Spirit which was larger and broader than all that. He felt
and he loved the Divine Life in all that he saw, and heard, and studied,
and tried to draw and paint, in the world around him. To his thinking it
was all the expression of God; as such he reverenced the creation.
Through this world of nature he was always seeing and feeling the
Father. His letters breathe a note of honest devoutness which passes all
lip-service. And scattered through his pages are frequent expressions of
a spirituality deeper than any words or phrases which so easily become
cant. There is a deep revelation of the heart of the man in a passage in
“Woodnotes.” Listen to his soul pouring itself out in these words:
“Sitting alone in the woods I have sometimes known a moment of such
supreme exaltation that I have almost questioned my sanity--a spirit and
an impulse which I would no more attempt to frame into words than I
should think to define the Deity himself--‘I am glad to the brink of
fear.’ My own identity is a mystery. The presence of the dearest friend
on earth would be an unwelcome intrusion. The pulses of the woods beat
through me. The joyous flight of bird brings buoyant memories, the
linnet’s song now seems swelling in my own throat. Happy Donatello in
the garden of the Borghese is no longer a myth, though even he knew no
such joy as this. At such times--and are they not vouchsafed to every
true ‘Holy-Lander’?--I am conscious of an unwonted sympathy in nature--a
strange, double, paradoxical existence, which, while lifting me to the
clouds, still holds me to the earth.”
It was this inner soul of nature as it filled the inner soul of the man,
which he felt a growing power to express in art. But before he could
speak his message he passed from our presence.