He is known to have been an affectionate son, an
affectionate husband; but, for the rest, all the tenderness in him
seems to have been absorbed into his love for such things in nature as
were expressible through terms of his own art. As a man in relation to
his fellow-men, he cannot, from any purely Christian standpoint, be
applauded. He was inordinately vain and cantankerous. Enemies, as he
has wittily implied, were a necessity to his nature; and he seems to
have valued friendship (a thing never really valuable, in itself, to a
really vain man) as just the needful foundation for future enmity.
Quarrelling and picking quarrels, he went his way through life
blithely. Most of these quarrels were quite trivial and tedious. In
the ordinary way, they would have been forgotten long ago, as the
trivial and tedious details in the lives of other great men are
forgotten. But Whistler was great not merely in painting, not merely
as a wit and dandy in social life. He had, also, an extraordinary
talent for writing. He was a born writer. He wrote, in his way,
perfectly; and his way was his own, and the secret of it has died with
him. Thus, conducting them through the Post Office, he has conducted
his squabbles to immortality.
Immortality is a big word.
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