The Child's Book of American Biography by Mary Stoyell Stimpson (10 best books of all time TXT) 📕

he had to stay in the house and have his feet put in hot water. Instead of making a fuss about this, he used to call for pencil and paper and practise drawing feet until he could make very perfect ones. Major Whistler sent him to the Art Academy in St. Petersburg, where he was praised by his teachers. That old, tiresome rheumatism kept bothering him, and by and by he had a long rheumatic fever. He was a dear, patient boy, however, and afterwards declared he was almost glad he had it because some one who pitied the small invalid sent him a book of Hogarth's engravings. I want you to be sure and remember about this gentleness and patience, because when he was older people often accused him of being cross and rude. But at this time I am sure no one could have been nicer.

James was very careful of his mother, too. One evening she had taken the boys in a carriage to see a big illumination. Bands were playing and rockets flying. The horses next their carriage were frightened, and reared and plunged as if they would hit the Whistler party. James shoved his mother down on the seat behind him, and standing in front of her, beat the horses back from them. He always was as polite to her as if she were the emperor's wife.

The major worked too hard on the great railway and died before James was fifteen. The emperor was fond of the two boys and wanted them to stay on in Russia and be trained in the school for pages of the Court. But their mother said they must grow up in America and hurried back to her own land. She did not have much money to spend but thought James should go to West Point to get the military training his father had had. At this academy he found he did not like to draw maps and forts nearly as well as he did human figures and faces. Once, when he had been sent to Washington to draw maps for the Coast Survey, he forgot what he was about and filled up the nice, white margins with pert little dancing folks. He was well scolded for this, I can tell you.

James was a tall, handsome young fellow at this time, and liked to go about to dancing-parties in the evening. He earned very little making maps and could not afford to buy the real, narrow-tailed coat which was proper. So he used to take his frock coat that he wore all day and pin it back to look like a dress coat and start off for big balls, where nobody was much shocked, because he was always doing droll things and was so lively that he was welcome in any dress.

In Paris strangers used to ask who the young artist was who had the snow-white lock among his black curls, for the brown curls had grown as black as jet, and the map-drawing had grown so tiresome that James had given up West Point and settled down to painting and etching in Paris. He had decided that there was nothing in the world which suited him but the life of an artist. He worked quite steadily and people began to say: "I think young Whistler is going to do great things some day." But suddenly he packed up and went to London.

In this city he was praised even more, but he did not sell enough pictures to pay his bills, and once, when he had kept men waiting a long time for money that he owed them, officers came and took everything away but his pictures. The room looked so bare and homely that Whistler painted a very good imitation of furniture round the walls of his room. So good, in fact, that a rich man who came to look at the pictures sat down in one of the imitation chairs and found himself on the floor.

It was fortunate that James could go a long time without food, for it took nearly all he could earn from his pictures to buy paint and canvas for others. I dare say that quite often when it was said: "James McNeill Whistler is growing rude and cross," the real truth of the matter was that James McNeill Whistler was hungry and worried.

However, he began to make money at last, and just as life seemed bright, an art critic, Mr. John Ruskin, declared that the Whistler pictures, which were being bought at big prices, were poor--very poor! Mr. Ruskin spoke, and what was worse, printed his opinion. "I never expected," he wrote, "to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face!" Well, it did not look for a while as if there was any more good luck in the world for James Whistler. He did not lose any time in getting a lawyer to sue Mr. Ruskin for spoiling the sale of his pictures. There was a trial in London, and the court-room was crowded. Some were there because they already owned Whistler pictures and wanted to find out if they had paid good money for bad pictures; others because they were warm friends of the artist or the critic; but even more men and women went to hear the sharp questions of the lawyers and the clever answers of Ruskin and Whistler. Whistler won the case. When the judge awarded one farthing for damages (this is only a quarter of a cent in our money!), Whistler laughed and hung the English farthing on his watch-chain for a charm. Mr. Ruskin had to pay the costs of the trial, which had mounted up to nineteen hundred dollars. Some of his friends insisted on raising that sum for him. One of them said it was worth nineteen hundred dollars to have heard the talk that went on in the court-room.

Later, Mr. Whistler received much more than two hundred guineas for a single picture. Two famous ones, of which we often see prints, are "Portrait of my Mother" and the Scotch writer, "Carlyle." James Whistler's mother lived to be an old woman, as one can guess from the picture, and her son loved her just as dearly as he did when he beat the prancing horses away from her, in Russia. The French nation bought this portrait, and it hangs in the Luxembourg Museum, Paris. The Scotch people wanted to own the portrait of Carlyle, and the city of Glasgow was glad to pay five thousand dollars for it.

Mr. Whistler married a woman who was herself an artist, and she was very proud of him. "The Duet", one of his pictures, shows his wife and her sister at the piano. Two portraits by this American artist hang in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, but most of them are owned in England.

James Whistler was always kind to young artists and liked to have them sit by him while he worked. They were very proud to be noticed by him, for long before he died he had received all kinds of honors and medals from foreign academies; and France, Germany, and Italy made him an Officer of the Legion of Honor, a Commander, and a Chevalier. He loved art so well that he made water-colors, pastels, etchings, and lithographs, as well as oil paintings. He did not get his fame without much hard work. You remember how many times he copied his own foot when he was a child. Well, he was just as patient and thorough when he was older. For a long time he made a practice of drawing a picture of himself every night before he went to bed. He traveled a great deal, painting views in many countries and studying the pictures of other artists. But Hogarth was his favorite, and it is interesting to know that James McNeill Whistler lies buried very near Hogarth, in London, for he had thought him a model ever since his boyhood days in St. Petersburg.

 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

You can't think how hard fathers and mothers used to work and plan to get their children educated in the old days when there were no public schools. The Emersons did some planning, I can assure you.

All the pictures of Ralph Waldo Emerson that I have happened to see show him as a man of middle age, with very smooth hair, and plain but very nice-looking clothes. He looks in these pictures as nurse Richards used to say of my father,--"as if he had just come out of the top bureau drawer."

Well, Ralph Emerson did not always wear fine clothes, but I would not be a bit surprised if he always looked middle-aged. Boys who had as little fun as the Emerson boys had when they were growing up would not be expected to look young.

In the end, Ralph became a minister, as well as a writer, and a lecturer, and a philosopher. His father and his grandfather had been ministers, too. I fancy it was trying to send all these minister-Emersons to school and college that kept each set of parents so poor.

Ralph's father, William Emerson, did not care to be a minister. He wanted to live in a city and teach school, play his bass viol, and belong to musical or singing clubs. But his mother looked ready to cry when he told her this and said: "Why, William, it has taken all the money I had to send you through Harvard College. What good will it do you, if you do not become a preacher?" So, rather than grieve his mother, he agreed to fit himself for preaching. How he hoped he might be sent to some large town! But instead of that, he settled in a small place where neighbors lived two or three miles from each other. He was as lonesome as he could be. He was too poor to buy a horse and too busy to spend half his time walking, so he could not get very well acquainted with the families that came to hear him preach. Besides, his pay was small, and if the kind-hearted farmers had not brought him a ham, a leg of lamb, or a load of wood now and then, I don't see how he would have managed.

In spite of all these hindrances, William saved a little money in five years. He bought a small farm and got married. As the years went by and there were children to feed, his preaching did not bring half the money they needed, so he taught school, his wife took boarders, and he--even--sold--his--beloved bass viol. And I do not think they felt that anything was too hard if only these children could go to college. Mrs. Emerson was very proud of her husband when he stood in the pulpit on Sundays, and used to shut her eyes and try to imagine how their boys would look in a pulpit.

Finally good luck came their way. Mr. Emerson was asked to preach in Boston. Then he had the city life he loved, he heard good music, and could call on his friends three times a day if he wished,