Deborah Delano (Whistler) Haden (Debo)

Debo (see Images 17–19, 21) was Whistler’s youngest child from his first marriage, born on 24 October 1825. She was approximately two years and two-and-a-half months old when her mother, Mary Roberdeau (Swift) Whistler (see Image 10), died, and six when her father remarried.

Anna Whistler’s diaries and the correspondence of both family and friends reflect a long-term conflict between her and her step-daughter before the latter’s marriage, and a strong possessiveness on the part of Major Whistler (see Image 7–8, 21) toward his only daughter. Captain William Henry Swift, his brother-in-law, said he had “reason to know” that there was “a great difference in the treatment of Debo when W is at home and when he is absent.”1 Although he encouraged Whistler to remain in Russia alone to save money, he also rejoiced in the decision for the family to join Whistler, because he felt all would be right once Debo was “near her father.”2 While he did not think the relationship between a step-mother and step-daughter need be troubled, he regretfully saw Anna Whistler (see Image 1–5) as the stereotypical unloving step-mother.3 One has to keep in mind that Debo was his dead sister’s child. Anna Whistler was not unloving; she simply wanted to create a pious young woman, rather in her own image.

In addition, both parents seemed to feel “it better that [Debo] should be imured everlastingly within the precincts of her own house.”4 This was true even in Russia. When Debo returned to St. Petersburg in October 1846 after a year’s absence in England, the blunt Maxwell made a devastating comment on the loss of freedom she re-experienced in her parents’ home. Asking Major Whistler “not [to] be offended at so poor a similitude,” he wrote that she seemed to him “now, like a singing bird shut up in a cage of wire.”5

Maxwell described her as not precisely pretty, “nor such as one would fall in love with at first sight, but … possess[ing] the severe and classic beauty seen in the Grecian models.”6 She had no “equal in polite requirement” and was diligent in her studies. He admired her heartily for having “every mental quality that can command esteem.” While not finding her “coquettish, malicious or vain,” he characterized her as “capricious haughty and witty.”7 George Henry Prince said she was graceful.8 She was accomplished on the harp and piano and also sang. She devoted her time in Russia to practicing and performing; to the study of German, in which she was making phenomenal progress, according to her and Maxwell’s teacher, M. La Roche;9 and to teaching James and Willie (see Images 24–30). Her French was excellent.

She generally was the pianist at any gathering that included dancing, but at the Laws’ last soirée before Lent in 1844, to which she went accompanied only by her father, she “found it pleasant dancing.”10 Anna Whistler hoped that Debo would never “yield to fondness for dancing at the expense of what [Anna Whistler] conceived to be decorous.”11 When Debo would decline to dance, it won the approval of Anna Whistler, whose “heart [was] pained when [their] views were opposite.”12 She “so yearn[ed] for sympathy from Debo, that [she was] willing when there [was] no glaring folly to meet her more than half way.”13 She “love[d] to watch how unassuming [Debo was] compared to other young ladies.”14 She wished Debo to be one of that small band of Christ’s followers who stand as an example to those in error to lead them “into the way of truth.”15 She appreciated their spontaneous musical evenings at home, but did not want Debo to practice all morning in order to perform in the evening. Music could be a snare, and such excess only served self-aggrandizement. She thought Debo would be “much more happy … if she found no pleasure”16 in the theater or opera. She objected when Debo attended a concert by Clara Schumann (see Image 199) during Lent, because it was not “consistent with a communicant” of the Episcopalian Church “to give countenance to theatres,”17 especially in that season. Quite ignoring her step-daughter’s love of music and her expertise, she objected also because Debo had already heard Schumann play recently.

But Debo, though devoted to Anna Whistler, would not obey and did not want to be the kind of Christian her step-mother was. She resisted Anna Whistler’s wish to acquaint her with the sainted invalid, Mary Gent Hirst, “whose cheerfulness would render religion captivating to a young person,”18 and, for some reason, many years later did not want to visit the Gellibrands (see Images 265–266), who were then living in England.19 Anna Whistler, however, continued to hope to influence her, regretting, for example, that Debo was not with her when she met the pious young Bessie and Mary Smith at Chaddock Hall (see Image 467) in 1847. But, unbeknownst to her, someone was matchmaking Debo and Francis Seymour Haden (see Image 20) at that moment. After Debo had children, she instituted family prayers, and, when Anna Whistler visited her in London, proposed sacred music in the evening to please her.20

Debo was an eligible eighteen when she went to Russia (where she was also called “Dasha”). The Whistlers’ life until after Christmas 1843 was relatively isolated. The diary for 1844, however, shows that the young bachelors quickly responded to her, but her parents responded equally quickly to them. Well before his daughter came to Russia, Major Whistler had revealed to Maxwell the simple condition under which she might marry tomorrow with his consent: if she chose a young officer “who wears the uniform of our gallant little army.”21

Maxwell had the advantage over other young men, because he lived in the Whistler home and possibly saw Debo every day. He was treated like a member of the family. If Whistler had not expressed his preference for the kind of man his daughter should marry, perhaps Maxwell would have expressed an interest in her. But he loved her as he loved the entire Whistler family. This explains why, when he could have seen her at the Winstanleys’ during his travels after leaving Russia, in December 1845, when Debo was still single, he opted not to leave Paris, because “Scotland and my cousins, Lancashire and Miss Whistler, would gain nothing under the sky of February.”22

Apparently asked by his mother for more details about Debo, Maxwell kept describing her with his usual frankness, but asked his mother not to show his letters outside their family,23 because he would not wish to be the cause of any embarrassment for Debo. He made clear in so many words that he not only respected her and Anna Whistler, but loved them, and he discussed William Bonamy Maingay’s interest in her. But his mother must have betrayed him, because rumors were reported to Whistler by General Joseph G. Swift (see Image 11), to whom he replied: “we know of no matrimonial project in our family … we live quite as retired as we ever did in our lives, so whatever noise Debo’s music has made, is confined to ourselves.”24 And blind to his daughter’s possible matrimonial longings, he trusted he would “bring Debo home quite safe.”

It is possible also that Debo would not have wanted Maxwell as a suitor. His letters show him to have been rather a popinjay. Despite his intimacy with the family, she always responded to his invitations by saying she would only go if her mother went. When she read his book, The Czar, His Court and People, in 1848, she rightly judged “some parts [to be] written in rather bad taste.”25

Maxwell reported to his mother that William Bonamy Maingay (see Image 260), brother of Debo’s best friend, Emma Maingay (see Image 263), was in May of 1844 “making love with all his might and mind to Miss W, and judging from the intimacy between this lady and his sister,” Maxwell thought him “in a fair way to succeed.”26 Meeting “this new pretender” then for the first time, Maxwell “soon saw … and heard … that he made great headway.” While believing that Major Whistler did not like Maingay at all, Maxwell felt that “the objections to him [were] trifling.” But despite his predictions of Maingay’s success in making an impression on Debo “through his personal and agreeable accomplishments,” this courtship did not succeed. Because of the friendship between the two families, however, he continued to be a frequent guest at the Whistlers, often the bearer of letters from his sister, after the Maingays returned permanently to England.

The good-tempered and frank William Miller, a Scottish merchant approaching twice Debo’s age, who was as well honorary British vice-consul in St. Petersburg, was a suitor in the summer of 1844. The early period of his courtship, covered in the diaries, shows the poor bachelor building up his courage. It is also a clear instance of Anna Whistler working against a potential suitor, as she recorded her conversations with Miller in great detail. He first appears in the diary entry for Friday, 7 June 1844, when he brought to tea at the Whistlers’ dacha Timothy Abraham Curtis, a former banker, who was “willing to ride this far any time to listen to Debos piano or harp.”27 Generally, Miller visited on weekdays, but he came by again on Sunday, 10 June, this time after ten o’clock in the evening in deference to Anna Whistler’s wish that no one intrude on their Sunday. He tried to make a good impression by recounting that he had spent the Sunday at church and done a kind deed, after which, the day on the wane, he had come to Francis and Dorothea Baird’s dacha for dinner and thence to the Whistlers, ostensibly because he was bearing an invitation from Mr. Curtis. On Saturday, 19 June, when he brought Sir William Allan (see Image 320) with him to tea, Miller showed his interest in Debo quite openly. He exhibited a moment’s dissatisfaction when a note from Mrs. Ropes took her away from the tea table. While she was playing the piano for Allan, Miller confessed to Anna Whistler his “desire to see [them] all so very much” that he could not “overcome it even on Sunday.”28 She laughingly rebuffed his wish to come out some Sunday and walk with Major Whistler, to whom he thought the observance mattered less. Next, he proposed to take her and Debo for a drive in his phaeton. As the Major was away, the proposal was parried with the excuse that they “were obliged to use the Majors horses every day to keep them in order against his return.” Anna Whistler stated frankly in the diary entry her concern lest a particular significance be attached to their being seen out driving with an eligible bachelor. Miller continued to make visits. He came to tea on Wednesday, 17 July 1844, and to lunch–dinner on Wednesday, 21 August 1844. In September 1844, George Henry Prince recorded in his journal the plight of any man interested in Debo: “Miss W is a belle But Mr. Maxwell and I know pretty well how the wind blows – the matter has been discussed by us in secret.”29 Because of the gap in the diaries from September 1844 to March 1845, we do not know whether Miller visited the Whistlers in that period nor whether any other suitors appeared.

In June 1845, Miller returned from a trip to Scotland laden with gifts for the Whistlers ordered by Alicia McNeill (see Image 39), with whom he had become friends in the summer of 1844 in St. Petersburg. He even slipped in a gift for Debo from himself. He seemed at ease, inviting himself to dinner one Saturday and managing to intrude successfully on their Sabbath. Although he had said in his note that he would not outstay his welcome, because he was busy that evening, he changed his plans. He drove Debo to Elagin Island (see Image 409), accompanied by Major Whistler and “mademoiselle,” their governess. Anna Whistler was in an advanced state of pregnancy and did not go. After the ride, he stayed to tea. He remained until after ten o’clock and went home only when Anna Whistler hinted he should by leaving the room and going to bed. All of his behavior that day was very forward, and perhaps he had made progress in those unrecorded months. Still, he, too, was not successful.

The climate of St. Petersburg did not agree with young foreign females. Debo’s health began gradually to decline, and “the Doctors advised that she … leave … for a time.”30 In September 1845, she departed St. Petersburg in the company of her brother, George (see Images 12–13), and Aunt Alicia (see Image 39), bound, like her step-mother before her, for a long stay with the Winstanleys in Preston, and with friends in and near London. Separated from her parents, she was free to be introduced to eligible bachelors with less impediment. It is said she met her future husband, Francis Seymour Haden, at the Winstanleys.31 Another source specifies that she met him through the Chapmans32 of Preston, who were friends of the Winstanleys.

There is also evidence that after her return to St. Petersburg in October 1846, there was a Russian suitor, an unidentified army officer, with whom she was purported in 1847 to have “just had a love affair.”33 It is possible that she had rebuffed his advances, but, whether they appealed to her or not, we must conjecture that Major Whistler may have complained to the authorities, although such an act seems inappropriate for him, given his character. But it had come to their attention somehow, because the officer had been punished by being “sent off to Archangel.”34 As it was generally customary to send a disgraced person off to his family property when depriving him of permission to reside in the capital, the suitor may have been Captain Petr Petrovich Klokov, who was born in Archangel and had a family home there. Klokov, a bachelor, was Major Whistler’s aide, spoke English, and frequented their home.35 The Bliss family of Springfield, Massachusetts, who were touring Europe and made a brief visit to the Whistlers in May 1847, learned of the unhappy consequences. They invited Debo, a great friend of their daughter, Sarah, and loved by all their family, to travel with them for the summer “through Switzerland to Paris, and thence to England,”36 which explains why she left St. Petersburg so suddenly. This must later have seemed providential to Anna Whistler, who viewed Debo’s departures and canceled departures from St. Petersburg in that light, because as a result Francis Seymour Haden proposed to her that very summer.

The successful suitor, Francis Seymour Haden, called Seymour, seemed the ideal choice for her. He was the son of Charles Thomas Haden (1786–1824), an Edinburgh-trained surgeon–apothecary, and Emma (Harrison) Haden (1794–1881), the daughter of a singer and herself an excellent musician. His father died when Seymour was six years old, but left his family materially well-off.37 Seymour was not only a physician but “a talented draftsman … having attended a government art training school while studying medicine at the Sorbonne in Paris.” On “completion of his medical studies,” he had “traveled through Italy and Switzerland … from February to August, 1844,” going on “regular sketching expeditions.” He had made etchings of some of his sketches when back in London. Starting in 1845, he had begun to collect etchings, particularly “in the area of seventeenth-century Dutch etching,” accumulating Rembrandt’s work especially, and “in the mid to late 1840s … began [a] serious study of Rembrandt etchings.” After his marriage to Deborah Delano Whistler, and while James lived with them in London, he took charge of the latter’s schooling and art education, started him off as an art collector as well as criticizing his artistic efforts, and stopped just short of attempting to mold his character.38

Anna Whistler’s and Haden’s letters to Major Whistler received a surprised, anguished, and somewhat raving response from him.39 He wanted his daughter to come back to him just for the winter and then to marry, but he left the decision to his wife. Because Ann (Ormerod) Haden, the recent wife of Seymour Haden’s uncle John, had fostered the relationship between Debo and Seymour, and because Seymour was the nephew of the Whistlers’ close friends in Lowell, Massachusetts, Anne (Haden) and Kirk Boott (see Image 43), Anna Whistler yielded to his wish to marry immediately. Perhaps the recent unhappy love affair with the Russian suitor also persuaded her to finally choose Debo’s happiness over Whistler’s. The unhappy Major Whistler, in requesting the emperor’s permission to go to England, gave as his reason not the marriage of his daughter but the illness of his sons, that might require leaving them in England.40 Already irritated by the letters of the young man whose precipitous proposal had disturbed his tranquility, he took a dislike to Seymour in the few hours of their acquaintance41 and was unwell during the marriage celebration. The diaries reveal how he avoided making a toast to the newlyweds. From then on, he never responded to Debo’s letters to him and Anna Whistler.

When Debo married, Maxwell was first apprized of the event not by the Whistlers, but by the newspapers. Surprised, because he knew Whistler’s wish for a military son-in-law, he responded to the marriage by writing to Whistler with his wonted affability, teasing, and genuine good will, after gaining further corroboration of the marriage from the Winstanleys, whom he had met after leaving Russia; and from Mr. Maude, whom he had probably met at the Winstanleys’; and from a daughter of Anna Whistler’s brother, General William Gibbs McNeill, whose home was located at Irving Place in New York. Maxwell’s understanding of the situation and his gladness at this seemingly happy resolution is quite touching:

One morning last summer, while looking over the newspapers and sipping my coffee, mine eyes rested upon the list of marriages. Heavens, could it be possible? What!!! Well, I do declare, by Jove, Miss Deborah, Debo and Dacha – so named – is married – and to an Englishman and a physician – Mr Seymour Haden, MD of London – A letter from Mr Winstanley corroborated this announcement – one from Mr Maude do [“ditto”] – and a visit to Miss McNeill of Irving Place satisfied me that it was true. And you too, were in London, and Mrs. Whistler and the boys – and Mr Haden is a noble fellow, and you were all so well and happy, that I in a quiet way could not but feel a sympathy in your happiness and secretly wish the bride and you and all joy for a thousand times.42

In August of 1848, the pregnant Debo visited Anna Whistler and the boys on the Isle of Wight. James was left in London in September in the charge of Debo and Seymour, while his mother and Willie returned to St. Petersburg. On December 14, the Hadens’ first child was born, a daughter, whom they named Annie (Major Whistler’s name for Anna Whistler) (see Images 18–19). “Just before his death,” Major Whistler broke his silence and “by a great effort, wrote a note to his daughter full of kindness,” which was “a great consolation to [her].”43 When Anna Whistler broke up housekeeping in St. Petersburg, plans were made to send the piano to Debo, as it was for her that her father had bought it.44 Dessain’s portrait of James and Willie (see Image 27) was being taken to England “to be a comfort to her” when they should all leave her to return to America,45 for Anna Whistler felt she could not settle in England with the boys out of deference to her husband’s wish that they be educated in their native land.46

The friction between Anna Whistler and Debo disappeared with the latter’s marriage. They remained close until Anna Whistler’s death, even meeting in the homes of mutual friends, such as Tom and Eliza (Stevenson) Smith, after the rift between Seymour and James occurred.47

Many years later, Emma Palmer was very careful about what she copied from the diaries for the Pennells about Debo’s marriage: “Lady Haden … of course would not want to be put in [the Whistler biography], as it is written of her then; even the account of her wedding … I carefully refrained from copying any but the most trivial parts, as I was not sure they would like it.48

* * *

Debo’s biography in the diaries concludes with the anticipation of the birth of the Hadens’ first child in December 1848 (her pregnancy is referred to so obliquely that the reader cannot easily guess). The birth is not recorded, because the diaries stop in September of that year. Of all the Whistler family members, Debo’s biography for this period is the only one that relies extensively on the diaries and also the Maxwell Papers at the New-York Historical Society.

Notes