William Whiston

“ Such a good influence for Mr. Whetstone! So fortunate! He was now known to be a strictly well behaved young man; what a pity nobody had a daughter old enough for him! Marriage was just what he needed, and he would make such a good husband! His hair grew so nicely over his ears, and had you ever noticed his eyelashes? Would it do to ask Mrs. Frankish or Verbena if they really were shooting quail? Or could it be something about the stage? Had the patrol really been drawn from the road? ”

“ It has not affected vulgar minds so much as it has dazzled the eyes of the learned, because they are more easily deceived by the glare of erudition, and the power of novel ideas. Mr. Whiston was a celebrated astronomer, in the constant habit of considering the heavens, observing the stars, and contemplating the wonderful course of nature; he could never persuade himself that this small grain of sand, this Earth which we inhabit, occupied more the attention of the Creator than the universe, the vast extent of which [119] contains millions of other Suns and Earths. ”

“ If the autobiography be slightly deficient on the side of sentiment, we may console ourselves by admitting that some of the descriptions of the actors of the time would not disgrace Charles Lamb. Would we find another variety of innocent and excessive vanity? Take up the memoirs—unfortunately fragmentary—of one whose long life ran side by side with Cibber's for some eighty-two years, though in oddly different surroundings,—Swift's 'wicked Will Whiston,' so called because so transparently guileless and well-meaning that even bigots could only smile at his absurdities. ”

“ The interpolation marked by a parenthesis is Whiston's, who proceeds:— [299]
"The Church of England allows their very bishops to be twice—nay thrice—nay even four times married without any impediment to their episcopal functions, whereas the Greek Patriarch of Constantinople would not admit the Emperor Leo, a layman, into the church, because he had married a fourth wife."
Whiston, though a "fanciful man," as Burnet calls him, was well read in Christian antiquity, and his opinion is therefore of some weight. Wall's authority no one would willingly undervalue. ”

“ MARMADUKE MEETS MRS. VYNER.
Everybody was at Dr. Whiston's, as the phrase goes, on one of his Saturday evenings. Dr. Whiston was a scientific man, whose great reputation was founded upon what his friends thought him capable of doing, rather than upon anything he had actually done. He was rich, and knew "everybody." His Saturday evenings formed an integral part of London society. They were an institution. No one who pretended to any acquaintance with the aristocracy of science, or with the scientific members of the aristocracy, could dispense with being invited to Dr. Whiston's. ”

“ I always like to do things cleanly."
* * * * *
The clash with George Moore came to a head with the challenge to fight a duel. In his own version of the event given in the London Chronicle of March 29th, 1895, Mr. Moore laid his troubles to his efforts to aid the artist. Learning that Sir William Eden wished his wife's portrait painted, he "undertook a journey to Paris in the depth of winter, had two shocking passages across the Channel, and spent twenty-five pounds on Mr. Whistler's business." It was arranged, he thought, that Whistler was to receive one hundred pounds for a "small sketch." ”

“ In 1770 he married Miss Mary Stevenson, a young lady whose intellectual culture had been much influenced by the interest taken in her by Benjamin Franklin, the American philosopher having lodged in her mother's house since he came to London in 1757. On his marriage Hewson removed to a house of his own in Craven Street, and this was made by William Hunter a ground for giving notice of breaking off their partnership. This was a blow to Hewson, especially as the building and anatomical museum necessary for carrying on the lectures were exclusively Hunter's property. ”

“ He had two brothers, William and Kirke, a half-brother, George, and a half-sister, Deborah, who married Seymour Haden, the well-known physician and etcher, who figures in “Gentle Art” as the “Surgeon-etcher.” Of the brothers, Kirke died young, George remained in this country, William became a well-known physician in London, dying a few years ago.
The family afterwards spent a short time in Stonington, where Major Whistler had charge of the construction of the railroad to Providence. They used to drive to church in Westerly in a chaise fitted with railway wheels, so as to travel on the tracks. ”

“ In 1707 he was also permitted by the author to publish Newton's ‘Arithmetica Universalis.’ Whiston was active in other ways. He complains of the practice of the time in regard to fellowship elections. The candidates sometimes recommended themselves by prowess in drinking. ”

“ Whiston acknowledged Smalridge to be one of the most learned and excellent persons in the kingdom, and said that if any one could have convinced him that he was in error, it would be he. Whiston rather flattered himself that he had convinced the bishop of some ‘emendanda’ in the Athanasian creed; but of any tendency to the ‘damnable heresy’ of Arianism Smalridge satisfactorily cleared himself in a letter to Bishop Trelawny dated from Christ Church but four days before his death. ”

“ The principal characters are Professor Whiston (Hoyle) , who gives lessons in the game of Whist; Sir Calculation Puzzle, a passionate admirer of Whist, who imagines himself a good player, yet always loses; Sharpers, Pupils of the Professor, and Cocao, Master of the Chocolate-house. The sharpers are disgusted at the appearance of the book.
"Lurchum. Thou knowest we have the Honour to be admitted into the best Company, which neither our Birth nor Fortunes entitle us to, merely for our Reputation as good Whist-Players. ”

“ The case was not proceeded with, for Woolston now attacked a posthumous dissertation of Walter Moyle [q. v.] , in ‘A Defence of the Miracle of the Thundering Legion’ (1726, 8vo) , dedicated to Whiston, who had written on the same side. ‘I had used you,’ he says, ‘with such freedom in my “Moderator” as would have provoked another man to resentment, and even to rejoice at any sufferings that could have fallen on me; but it is manifest that you are of a more Christian temper, and can forgive any treatment from an adversary; for which I shall always esteem you a brave and a good man ”

“ It was only recently that any of his neighbors, barring Judge Leslie and Tom Colton, who shared his secret, had definitely proposed a political career to him, in other words divined his abilities and ambitions. But Mr. Wheaton had once been young and adventurous himself, and much if not all of his success in life was due to his shrewd divination of human nature. No man could drive a harder bargain than "Wash" Wheaton (he was named for the father of his country) , but he had never been wanting in a vein of humorous sympathy, nor in a fair capacity for friendship as well as enmity. ”

“ Braver men the world has not known. Beside him, differing in creed, but united with him in works of love and charity, sat Thomas Whitson, of the Hicksite school of Friends, fresh from his farm in Lancaster County, dressed in plainest homespun, his tall form surmounted by a shock of unkempt hair, the odd obliquity of his vision contrasting strongly with he clearness and directness of his spiritual insight. ”

“ So sensible was even the calm Newton to critical attacks, that Whiston tells us he lost his favour, which he had enjoyed for twenty years, for contradicting Newton in his old age; for no man was of “a more fearful temper.” Whiston declares that he would not have thought proper to have published his work against Newton’s “Chronology” in his lifetime, “because I knew his temper so well, that I should have expected it would have killed him; as Dr. Bentley, Bishop Stillingfleet’s chaplain, told me, that he believed Mr. ”

“ Approaching the tiny personage alluded to,—“Well, Mr. Andrew Whiston,” said Dashall, “what important business brings you so far westward? I thought that your migrations from Bankside had never extended beyond the precincts of Temple-bar.”
“I wot weel, your honor, that I have strayed far frae hame, and to little purpose,—better fortune has not lit on me this wearisome day, than meeting wi' your honor, for God bless you many a time has the poor dwarfish body tasted your bounty.” ”

“ Whiston used to fling at Queen Caroline, consort of George II. Whiston, if not kept at Court like the jester of earlier times, was so frequent a sojourner there, that George II. got weary of this heterodox divine, who did not hesitate to tell him, when the King was inveighing against freedom of inquiry in religious matters, that if Luther had been of that opinion, his Majesty would never have been King of England! ”

“ Of this lucky contradiction the very incarnation was Whistler. No man ever preached the impersonality of art so well; no man ever preached the impersonality of art so personally. For him pictures had nothing to do with the problems of character; but for all his fiercest admirers his character was, as a matter of fact far more interesting than his pictures. He gloried in standing as an artist apart from right and wrong. ”

“ The worke of George Whetstones Gent. Formæ nulla fides. [Colophon] Imprinted at London by Richarde Ihones, and are to be solde ouer agaynst Saint Sepulchres Church, without Newgate. August. 20. 1578.
B. L. 4o. (65⁄8 × 47⁄8) . T. 9. 2.
Collation: A-M4, unpaged. Wanting M 4 (? blank) . Epistle dedicatory to William Fleetwoode, signed George Whetstone and dated July 29, 1578. Printer's address to the reader, signed R. I. Argument. Part II has a separate titlepage within woodcut border, 'The seconde part of the Famous Historie of Promos and Cassandra. ”

“ In some she stands with her filmy draperies floating about her or falling in long, straight folds to her feet; in others she lies upon a couch, indolent and lovely; she dances across the paper, she bends over a great bowl, she sits with her slim legs crossed and a cup of tea in her hand, she holds a fan or a flower; but whatever she may be doing or however she may rest, she is but another expression of the beauty that haunted Whistler, the beauty that was the inspiration of the Harmonies in White and the Six Projects. ”

“ Whistler may entertainingly insinuate that long life has been denied to his friendships, he will agree with me, I know, when I assert that it is secured to his etchings.
That my print-drawers contain but four or five etchings by Seymour Haden is at once my misfortune and my reproach. As one looks at them one conjures up visions of bygone sales at Sotheby’s, when as yet Mr. Wilkinson, benign and aged, sat in the chair, to wield the ivory hammer—what opportunities neglected, of which the more diligent have availed themselves! ”

“ Whistler, in fact, was past master of the art of refraction, its one great and supreme prophet; and it is to the consummate and most artistic use which he made of this one quality that his work owes all of that emotional, appealing, and poetic charm which is its distinguishing trait.
Of course every artist of any training at the present day is more or less aware of this phenomenon, otherwise his pictures would not find acceptance at the hands of the juries, for they would be hopelessly hard and edgy and unatmospheric. ”

“ It was like the horrible ailing old men in history books, who used to bathe in human blood to restore their vitality. Every one agreed that there was nothing such a clever sensitive fellow as Stanley Heuston mightn't have made of his life if he'd married a different kind of woman. As it was, he had just drifted: tried the law, dabbled in literary reviewing, taken a turn at municipal politics, another at scientific farming, and dropped one experiment after another to sink, at thirty-five, into a disillusioned idler who killed time with cards and drink and motor-speeding. ”

“ Work as a cadet, and also on the coast survey, does not seem to have interested him. In the fifties he migrated to Paris and became a student in the atelier of Gleyre, two of his fellow pupils being Sir Edward Poynter and George du Maurier. Whistler cannot have had much sympathy with the art in vogue at that time, a degenerated style based upon a sentimental classicalism. He found his best friends amongst young Frenchmen with extremely different ideas, men such as Fantin-Latour, Bracquemond, Degas, Manet, Duret, Claude Monet, and many others. ”

“ Nothing can make us realise the great significance of the Whistler influence in art more than the contrast between the esteem [Pg 51] in which his etchings are now held and the early criticisms of them which he collected and scornfully embodied in his book. These are indeed the most depressing reading—and Whistler’s quaint termination to those pages, “they roar all like bears,” does very aptly express the feeling of desolation that must overcome any one who appreciates the spirit of his etchings. ”

“ In this impression of grey sea-weather we have the colour equivalent of that expressive economy which Whistler practised with his line; and the butterfly touch—like a butterfly alighting.
The Society had come into existence with aims of its own. An order of art was [Pg 71] represented which had to be represented somewhere. A great amount of capable work for which the Academy had not room was on view here, representative of the everyday activity of London studio life. It was amusing to think of Whistler as the President of this Society as it was constituted in those days—and absurd. ”

“ But the great tragedy of the artistic temperament is that it cannot produce any art.
Whistler could produce art; and in so far he was a great man. But he could not forget art; and in so far he was only a man with the artistic temperament. There can be no stronger manifestation of the man who is a really great artist than the fact that he can dismiss the subject of art; that he can, upon due occasion, wish art at the bottom of the sea. Similarly, we should always be much more inclined to trust a solicitor who did not talk about conveyancing over the nuts and wine. ”