You see him and know him here. The voice
drawls slowly, quickening to a kind of snap at the end of every
sentence, and sometimes rising to a sudden screech of laughter; and,
all the while, the fine fierce eyes of the talker are flashing out at
you, and his long nervous fingers are tracing extravagant arabesques
in the air. No! you need never have seen Whistler to know what he was
like. He projected through printed words the clean-cut image and
clear-ringing echo of himself. He was a born writer, achieving
perfection through pains which must have been infinite for that we see
at first sight no trace of them at all.
Like himself, necessarily, his style was cosmopolitan and eccentric.
It comprised Americanisms and Cockneyisms and Parisian argot, with
constant reminiscences of the authorised version of the Old Testament,
and with chips off Molie`re, and with shreds and tags of what-not
snatched from a hundred-and-one queer corners. It was, in fact, an
Autolycine style. It was a style of the maddest motley, but of motley
so deftly cut and fitted to the figure, and worn with such an air, as
to become a gracious harmony for all beholders.
After all, what matters is not so much the vocabulary as the manner in
which the vocabulary is used. Whistler never failed to find right
words, and the right cadence for a dignified meaning, when dignity was
his aim.
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