The Whistlers As They Were in the 1840s

George Washington Whistler

Why George Washington Whistler (see Images 7–8, 21) was called “Major” is an item of curiosity that has not been resolved. He graduated from West Point with the rank of second lieutenant in July 1819. He was promoted to first lieutenant in August 1829, “but resigned his commission on December 31, 1833, in order to become a full-time civil engineer. Nevertheless, by May, 1836, he was called Captain Whistler, and by the time that he began to work for the Western Railroad of Massachusetts … in 1837, he was known as Major Whistler, by which rank he was called, both in America and Russia, until his death in April, 1849.”1 He may have been a member of a state militia,2 but to date this has not been corroborated.

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Whistler’s first marriage (23 January 1821) was an elopement with Mary Roberdeau Swift (see Image 10) against her parents’ wishes.3 Three children – George William (see Images 12–13), Joseph Swift, and Deborah Delano (see Images 17–19, 21) – were born to them within a period of four years (1822–1825). Whistler’s peripatetic life as an army engineer entailed at times extensive absences from home. Mary Roberdeau (Swift) Whistler died in 1827. His wife’s death resulted in the necessity of relinquishing their children to the care of her family and rarely seeing them,4 until his second marriage enabled him to retrieve them. Viewed retrospectively from twelve years (1843) into his marriage to Anna McNeill (see Images 1–5) and the ensuing years in Russia until his death, this earlier life seems to reflect an absence of religious conviction or commitment to formal religion fostered by his wandering life and his anguish and bitterness over the loss of his first wife and separation from his children. Anna Whistler set about working to shape his religious life and views, and partly succeeded. He went to church on Sunday. He enjoyed the sermons read aloud at home on a Sunday night, participating as a reader himself sometimes. He joined in the family’s daily attendance at church during the week before Easter. In time, he began to carry his Bible with him on inspection trips with Count Kleinmikhel’ (see Image 243).5 He was “wont to kneel side by side [with his wife] in [their] chamber” and pray silently.6 He celebrated the Sabbath by withdrawing from the outside world to please her. On his deathbed, he assured her that he believed in Christ, but she seems never to have been able to persuade him to partake of communion and thus enter into the formal mysteries of her religion. Nor was he willing to simply entrust his cares entirely to God, as, for example, when his son George had to take a year’s cruise for his health. Only on his deathbed, barely able to speak, did he accept his wife’s words that he could leave them all to God. The eulogies Anna Whistler wrote after his death of his religious beliefs and of the almost providential purpose in his going to Russia have, therefore, to be considered in the light of her own deeply religious persuasion and her grief-stricken need to embellish all aspects of his life.

There are two interesting descriptions of Whistler’s physical appearance in midlife. The first is the more sensual:

A man of medium height, erect and military in bearing, Major Whistler was always a prominent figure on the street. With dark rich complexion and black hair that hung in coarse curls, he might easily be taken for a foreigner. He had a rare face. The nose was strong and prominent yet delicately molded, and the lips of a refined mouth were mobile and expressive.7

The best description of Whistler’s physical appearance and spiritual bearing in the 1840s, though, is the succinct and vivid statement made by his Russian colleague, Anton Shtukenberg (see Image 250), first cousin of James’s drawing teacher, Aleksandr Koritskii (see Images 167–170):

During the first years Whistler was very hale, with wonderful thick black hair and a slightly bronzed face with an aquiline nose; and in general he had a noble-looking native profile which reminded you of an Indian and made you recognize in him, when you got to know him, a true free gentleman.8

In temperament, he was a perceivably honorable, generous, modest, gentle, compassionate, stubborn, anxious, and emotional man, who cried easily and suffered from homesickness whenever parted from his family. Separated by great distance from his young children, he sought out other children wherever he was for the reason that they physically resembled his own. He often rode all night at the end of an inspection trip to reduce his time away from home. He reluctantly accepted an invitation from Russian colleagues for even a day’s absence from his family, although he occasionally allowed himself to spend a “bachelor” evening with his English sea-captain friend, John Kruger. He was a “humane person who did not forget man or beast.”9 In his modesty, he was “inclined in a place of worship to ‘take the lower room.’”10 He was embarrassed by “public displays of feeling.”11 He was anxious “lest deviating from Mr. Laws practice should bring remarks upon him,”12 when his wife broke with custom and asked Rev. Williams to close the evening at their home by conducting their family devotions.

He held decided views on the influence of women upon society and “on the claims of children”:

[His] views … of the sacred responsibility of women, were such as would if adopted extend happiness throughout all classes of society, he was solemnly impressed by the dignity of the calling of the mother of a family & seriously considered the influence of women of all ages upon the society in which they moved. how often he lamented that frivolity in manner, indelicacy or extravagance in dress should impair it, he would conclude his very forcible remarks upon this important subject, by saying he knew he could not make converts – for fashion was his opponent.

As a result of these views, he left domestic decisions to be made by his wife, though he murmured with pained feelings when she decided that Debo should marry Francis Seymour Haden (see Image 20) immediately and that James (see Images 24–29) should be left in England for his health. His ineffectual plea both times was that they should first come back to St. Petersburg just for the winter.

Of the claims of children he was very scrupulous, to practice any injustice upon a helpless little one or take advantage of confiding & unsuspecting youth he considered an outrage to laws human and divine. he always was scrupulous against deceiving children, watchful against injudicious indulgence, yet none shrink from harshness more, he was grieved but never angry when his children were in fault.13

He did not chide Debo when staying out late at a party affected her health adversely and exhausted him as well. His daughter’s insufficient concern for him on her wedding day, although she would now be permanently separated from him, drew comment in Anna Whistler’s diary, but she recorded no murmuring from Major Whistler, only his misery. But he was a stubborn man. Debo’s marriage “outside the United States”14 – and something he disliked in his brief encounter with Haden – prevented him from writing to her until he was dying. This behavior, though admittedly hurtful to his daughter, came not from a hardened heart, according to Anna Whistler, but from an awareness of how offensive it might be to Debo that he would never allow himself to speak of Haden in any letter he might write. His correspondence with General Joseph G. Swift (see Image 11) reveals how he struggled, encouraged, and empathized with his sometimes flighty and difficult son, George, thousands of miles away. The news of the terrible death of young Charlotte Canda, Debo’s schoolmate, made him weep, perhaps because he, too, had only one daughter. After hearing the choristers of the Imperial Choir and viewing their comfortable quarters, he “allowed his imagination to embitter his pleasure in listening to them by the idea of how they must be dulled & punished”15 under the Russian educational system. He became a mentor to young men. The diaries record that the troubles of an unnamed young man agitated him greatly. Anna Whistler’s correspondence refers to young men at Alexandrofsky who had turned to him for guidance and about whom he concerned himself even on his deathbed.16

Whistler felt from the start of his work with due anxiety the weight of the responsibility placed on him:

[T]his establishment [the Alexandrofsky Head Mechanical Works] has always been a source of great anxiety to me … for in all matters relating to it they have left me to do as I thought best – never investigating the merits of the Engines or Cars – leaving all to me – … in the beginning the responsibility I felt here was very heavy – for where so much was doing – if it was not right – the wrong would be irreparable.17

His conscientiousness about his work is evident in the four requests he made to Count Kleinmikhel’ for leave to go abroad (in 1843, 1846, 1847, and 1849) during his stay of six years and eight months in Russia. Nicholas I (see Images 420–423) approved them all. The first leave, to meet his family in Hamburg, Whistler did not in the end have to take; thus he remained in Russia from August 1842 until October 1846 without a break. His final request was for permission to depart “for a milder climate on the sea coast” for the restoration of his health and to “return with the first opening of navigation,”18 but he died in the meantime.

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His American colleagues in Russia loved and revered him. Maxwell considered him his “bosem [sic] friend, [his] counsellor”:19

He is all that my imagination had ever dreamed of in the beau ideal of a soldier … he has seen much of life on the good side and the bad, without being spoiled by either and retains a heart as fresh and as generous as those I loved so much in my school day friends.20

How am I indebted to him for hour after hour of pleasure and content in this dreary land! How inestimable are the riches of this man’s heart. how few will I ever meet to be compared to him in character and virtue … I know his talent. I have had an opportunity known to few to learn his perfect honour where an extraordinary attempt was made upon it.

I have seen him empty his pocket and shed his tears over a poor child in the street.21

He must be happy too at home for I have seen the tears jump from his eyes when speaking of his lady.22

Joseph Harrison Jr. (see Image 226) was deeply attached to him, and at his death acknowledged to Joseph Harrison Sr. several times that he had lost his best friend. When the widowed Anna Whistler was preparing to return to America, he undertook “all the expenses and toil of boxing those articles of furniture valuable from fond associations of home here.”23 His tie to Whistler prompted, after the latter’s death, an extremely generous offer of thousands of dollars to help young George Whistler establish himself. Later, the Harrison home in America was always open to Anna Whistler, who paid extensive visits to the family in the lean years before she left America permanently.

Andrew Eastwick (see Image 233) also felt that by the death of Major Whistler he had lost “a friend whom I loved with brotherly affection. He was a good man, always anxious to promote the happiness of his fellow man. For such a man who cannot weep? … The death of my dear friend … was unexpected and cast sad and gloomy feelings upon me, from which I feel it most difficult to arouse myself.”24 The Eastwicks later in the United States demonstrated much kindness to Anna Whistler, from storing her furniture to lending money to her brother, Charles.25

Colin Ingersoll (see Image 280), too, was drawn to Whistler from his first meeting with him in St. Petersburg, where he found it “a treat to see and talk with a real live Yankee … intelligent and delightful in conversation.”26 He frequented their home with the same ease and enthusiasm as had Maxwell before him, “daily at our fireside, at our table unceremoniously welcomed.”27

Whistler’s Russian colleagues and the emperor also appreciated him. Both Pavel Petrovich Mel’nikov (see Image 247) and Osip Ivanovich Kraft (see Image 248), the engineers sent to America by the Russian government to find a suitable consulting engineer for the building of the St. Petersburg–Moscow Railway, proposed Whistler because of his “strict rules of honesty and wonderful qualities of character, in particular [his] American calmness and easygoing disposition.”28

Aleksandr Andreevich Bodisco, the Russian Ambassador in Washington (see Image 283), appraised the Russian government’s “excellent acquisition” thus: “Major Whistler unites a great ability and twenty years’ experience with a great desire to do good [work] and to justify the confidence with which we wish to honor him.”29

Nicholas I, “the soul of frankness” himself, liked the Americans building the railroad and the rolling stock for their frankness.30 Having granted Whistler’s request for permission to send for American mechanics in 1843, he spoke to Ambassador Ralph Isaacs Ingersoll in 1847 – several months after awarding the Order of St. Anne (2nd class) to Whistler (see Image 252) and diamond rings to Harrison, Winans, and Eastwick – “of … Major Whistler, in the highest terms and of the great service which the Empire had derived from his talents and skill,”31 and said that the success of both Whistler and Harrison “was beyond his expectations, and that words failed him to express his confidence in Whistler, and the gentlemen whom he induced to come to Russia, and undertake the contract.”32

In America, Whistler’s name became “identified with the American interests in Russia. If people [began] to talk of Russia, it [was] only a sort of prelude to a conversation about Major Whistler.”33

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Whistler, the namesake of the first president of the United States34 and a graduate of West Point, was a staunch American. Attempts had been made by Count Bodisco and by Baron Brünnow, the Russian ambassador in London, to persuade him to actually enter the Russian service, but his own disinclination and Major Bouttatz’s advice against it kept him from doing so. He never regretted his decision to remain “Mr. Whistler” and to stay out of that “most servile of all services,” in which “I have seen generals treated with much more indignity – than any gentleman could stand in our country – and worse than I have ever seen a private treated with in our service” and for which there was no redress, only a continuing “endeavor to please, at all hazard.” He was astonished by the corruption he saw in the government, having been “unwilling to believe all that was told [him]” and felt that “not even His Majesty could with impunity interfere with [the system].”35 He was free of those “snobbish instincts” that inclined some Americans “to a disparagement of our country, and its democratic institutions.”36 To the Russian system of patronage, in which “persons have very little by right” and in which “fear keeps every body within his orbit lest he should be crushed – as he most certainly would be,” he contrasted that of his own country: “none but Americans can understand the blessings of security by law – and the justice of public opinion.” He defended America against its critics: “I know it is common all over Europe – and even at home, to accuse our public opinion of tyranny – it may be sometimes but where there is no public opinion – there can be nothing but tyranny in its worst shape”;37 “ours is the only country worth living in. I wish with all my heart all our people could visit Europe, they would return satisfied and be thankful for the blessings they enjoy.”38

With the outbreak of the 1848 revolutions, “orders [were] given to our countrymen” at Alexandrofsky “to complete at once 250 baggage wagons for the Army”; but at “a large dinner party at the [American] Legation” on 11 March 1848, “Major Whistler, good Republican that he is, [was] enthusiastic over the French news, and [thought] the Republic there [was] going to last.”39 A few days later, he “called [at the Legation] in great spirits over the success of the French Republicans.”40

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Appropriations for the building of the railroad were not straightforward, nor could they be questioned. It was expected that the railroad would be completed in 1847, but year after year saw a postponement. In January 1847, Whistler was puzzled as to why “when the money for this work was a spe[cia]l loan – by the govt … we are cut short 33 pr cent of our funds – we ask for 15,000,000 silver rubs – and they give us only 10,000,000 … the work for want of the 5,000,000 will be extended another year for its completion.”41 He had already blamed delays to a great extent on the Imperial family’s extravagant living.42 Now he heard “that some of this next year’s appropriation has been employed in the last year’s travels of the Imperial family.”43 His comment was: “So they do things here – no troublesome members of Congress to call for informat[ion].”44 In early 1849, he placed the time of the railroad’s completion in 1850, citing War Department expenditures as the cause:

What a pity that we should be curtailed in the means of finishing just now – ’tis true the expenditures of the Govt War Dept. may be very great – but what signifies 8 or 10 millions of dollars to a Govt to complete a work upon which they have expended forty millions – ’tis strange how things are managed and kept from appearing in their proper light here – for I know full well ’tis only because of this management that the money is not forthcoming.45

He felt that no inducements could make him stay in Russia after the railroad was built, as he “would not upon any consideration bring up [his] family in this country.”46 “[H]is native land, he cherished … as a religious sentiment which he desired his children to retain wherever they might be.”47 He had great misgivings about his long absence from America and “long[ed] to take [his] boys home that they may feel themselves always Americans.”48 In fact, he was already considering sending his family to England in 1847, where they would spend a year waiting to return home with him at the anticipated completion of the railroad in 1848.49 He also considered sending them all back to America,50 for “every day convinces me that ours is the only country in which to live a rational and happy life – and my children should receive this impression there.”51

Although he wanted his sons (see Images 24–30) to be educated in America, he was aware of the importance of an exposure to Europe for them. His own exposure to a foreign country other than England made him understand the necessity of knowing foreign languages. Sending for his family, he urged them to concentrate on learning French in the months before setting out, or they would “not be able to understand anybody.”52 In all his years in Russia, he never learned Russian and spoke such labored French that he was assigned an interpreter. When he decided to send the boys to Monsieur Jourdan’s school, his prime reason was that they should learn modern languages. He later wanted them to learn the classical languages as well, in anticipation of their possibly attending Harvard or Yale.53

He believed that it was better for them to attend a school than to be tutored at home. He knew it was right for James, but was anxious over the irregularity of his education caused by ill health. When he had to decide about Willie’s studies in late 1848, he ultimately chose Baxter’s Commercial School over tutors at home, a decision made in part to strengthen Willie’s character.

Maxwell assured him that he “could have no conception of the vast advantages” James and Willie were enjoying. He felt that the family’s “residence in Europe on their account should reconcile [Whistler] perfectly to a few more years of absence” from America, and that he would “never regret the course” he had chosen.54

Despite Whistler’s strongly held views about returning home, in 1849, for the first time, he spoke, and with poignance, of his desire to remain in Russia until the completion of the railroad. Only if actually physically present for the ceremony of its opening did he seem to feel he would get his share of the credit:

I have had a great desire to finish this road – to be here until it was finished – indeed I should feel as if I had not accomplished the object for which I came if I left before I ran over the line – and I am sure I shall not get my just share of the credit if I do not see this ceremony – you see I do not hesitate to claim that the work will be creditable.55

Perhaps because he had come to know the system, he feared that his role would be played down if he were absent, but an undoubtedly more powerful reason was that he was now in a very weakened physical state and surmised that he would not live to see the railroad’s completion. The opening of the railroad to the general public took place on 1 November (OS) 1851.

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Whistler worked a six-day week. He spent his time at the Railway Commission office or out at Alexandrofsky Head Mechanical Works (see Images 223–225). Almost every evening, he conferred in his chancery at home with Thomas DeKay Winans (see Image 229), who came then on shop business because he could leave Alexandrofsky only after the work day was over. Occasionally, Whistler remained at home to write a technical document or a report for Count Kleinmikhel’. The two quite regularly went on at least a fortnight’s inspection trip of the line. Sometimes Whistler could be absent from home for a month. At first, they went during the working season of April to October; as the construction progressed, they went even in winter. Whistler’s work in building railroads in the United States had accustomed him to spending long days on horseback in all kinds of weather. In Russia, he would come home from these trips “rather browner than when he left” his family, reporting that he had “been sailing thro bogs knee deep” – luckily in his waterproof boots. On one trip, he had been “on horse back seventeen hours at a sitting,” so that “his joints [were] unhinged.”56 On another, “he had [spent] only one night in bed, [and] … had one day walked 7 versts and rode 47 over such bogs!”57 On occasion, he “suffered from the cold in traveling” and even in July had to put on a fur-lined pelisse (shuba) (see Image 13).58

In his early years in Russia, he was very hale. These years were not free of illness, but his constitution was not visibly undermined. Like many foreigners, not long after arriving in St. Petersburg he became sick from drinking the Neva water,59 but the diaries contain many instances of severe colds that he succumbed to with increasing frequency. From the time his family arrived, he would ride all night from an inspection trip to get home sooner. In winter, he sometimes suffered for days afterwards from a cough and pain in the chest. A few days after an inspection trip in March of 1846, he had an alarming attack with excruciating pain that the best efforts of the family physician could not alleviate for many days.60 In March of 1847, he left home one morning, did not eat all day, returned at one in the morning, and caught cold. In April 1847, he was a victim – with James, Willie, and their laundress – of the influenza raging in St. Petersburg, but returned to his duties as soon as he seemed well. Still, in his letters to General Joseph G. Swift, he indicated that he was in good health, and as late as January 1847, that the climate agreed with him.61

The decisive blow to Whistler’s health occurred in July of 1848, when “his family [had] all gone to England and left him alone in the house,” and he felt for the first time “the difference between leaving home and being left at home, it is so dreadful lonesome … the house appears as large again as usual, and the servants farther off than ever.”62 Their friends tried to assuage his loneliness. In this particularly virulent period of the cholera epidemic, he had an “attack of illness” while at the Gellibrands’ dacha, that “seriously impaired [his] general health.”63 He became very susceptible to colds, “and his stomach [was] so irritated that not a week … passed without his being confined several days to [his bed].”64 It is not clear whether he had contracted cholera. When Anna Whistler and Willie returned to St. Petersburg in late September, they “found him sadly changed by his late severe attack.” She was “sad to think how very ill he must have been,” and reported to James that “he still needs much care and good nursing.”65

Ever conscientious, Whistler returned to work as soon as he could and in October went on an inspection trip to Moscow.66 He was “suddenly attacked by cholera” in November and was only able to leave his bed “to sit up” in early December.67 He could dress himself and go out for prescribed short drives.68 The cholera had left his constitution shattered, and it was an “extraordinarily severe winter.”69 Nevertheless, each time he seemed to recover, he returned to work immediately. Before Christmas, he attended a Railway Commission meeting70 and traveled to Alexandrofsky with Count Kleinmikhel’.71 In January and February of 1849, he continued to work but was still on an invalid’s diet.72 He did “not ever feel just well – I can eat but little that does not agree with me – my feet and legs swell.” Nevertheless, he intended to go to Moscow “the next week if it be milder,” thinking that “perhaps the journey will be of service to my health and strength”; but if his health did not improve soon, he would not stay in Russia but would “try a trip to Germany.”73 In March, his condition worsened and he was suffering pain similar to that of James’s rheumatic fever attacks.74 Anna Whistler called his illness “the most distressing I ever attended”: “congestion about the heart … great difficulty at times in breathing, but the rheumatism in the legs has lessened that … his arms have lain like pillows by his side & his legs as powerless, & swelled, until today he can lift them a little … he has been only shifted from one side of bed to the other in a sheet.”75 He aged greatly in these few months.76 A petition, expedited by Count Kleinmikhel’, for permission to leave the country, was approved by Nicholas I. They hoped to take the first steamer, but navigation was not expected to open until May.77

Some of Whistler’s Russian colleagues visited him. Among them was Count Kleinmikhel’. There is a story with possibly apocryphal details about his visit: “When Whistler’s wife saw this figure wearing his stars and with a cock’s tail feathers on his hat, she absolutely did not want to let him in, thinking that he would frighten her husband. The Count, therefore, almost burst into the sick man’s bedroom.”78 Anna Whistler’s account, however, stresses his kindness and concern: “[Whistler] bids me … tell you how kind his chief has been in obtaining promptly the Emperors permission to his traveling for health. Count Kleinmikhel’ came himself to see Whistler – before he was so very ill as to be denied seeing any but the doct and myself – he sent his own physician to enquire in person – and couriers daily since, until he left [for] M[oscow] where the Court are to spend the Carnival.”79

Not long before Whistler’s death, the reclusive Kraft, in charge of the Southern Administration of the St. Petersburg–Moscow Railway, also paid him a visit, “and the dying man said: ‘Yes, indeed, my breathing is at high pressure, and very soon I’ll be setting out on the express train for eternity!’”80

Through verbal instructions to his wife, Whistler, who had not made a will in Russia,81 bequeathed to Pavel Mel’nikov his portrait (possibly the one executed for his birthday in 1848, whereabouts unknown), and the Bible (whereabouts unknown) that he read every day, containing many notes in his own hand.82

He died on 26 March / 7 April 1849. Anna Whistler and Joseph Harrison Jr. were present, along with Dr. Rogers, who, “the evening before … had said there was no danger”:83

Our good Doct. was greatly shocked at the rapid sinking – in a few minutes Mr. Harrison communicated to me there was no hope of recovery – I then asked the Doct. to tell your father so – oh it is very painful he replied! but remember Doct. where he is going! When Doct. R. asked him, “have you any wordly affairs to settle my dear Sir?” not any was the calm reply. It seems he had told Harrison before I returned, “I feel as if I was going on a long journey!” And tho he was so serene his convictions may have been strong that his present existence must soon be swallowed up in an endless one.

I said to my dearest as I knelt alone in his chamber of death, “Whistler you can leave us to God! He will take care of us!” “Oh yes, yes, he answered fervently – And dearest your hopes are as mine centered in Christ!” “Oh yes I hope in Him.” Then I added. “you have nothing to say to me my own Whistler for we have but one heart & one mind” – he pressed my hand between his, tho’ chilled by death still warmly! “But our absent children dear Whistler!” “Oh Annie let the Doct. give me something to help me speak! but the cordial failed to revive nature, he threw his arms around me & said “I cannot speak, but love them, bless them.”84

He died “without a struggle” at half past four in the morning.85 It seemed to Anna Whistler that a “bright look irradiated [his] countenance in death.”86 A death mask (whereabouts unknown) was commissioned by Joseph Harrison Jr.87

Willie, who “had been spending a day with Henry” Harrison at Alexandrofsky, “arrived in the morning” to receive the “sad sad news” of his father’s death.88 He seems to have been inconsolable and to have suffered physical collapse for a time.89 He did not write to James until four weeks had passed, but even then did not communicate his feelings, preferring to wait until they were together in England, when “talking will be so much more comforting.”90

The funeral service, performed by Rev. Dr. Edward Law (see Image 253), was held on Tuesday, 29 March / 10 April 1849, at two o’clock in the English Church (see Images 9, 110–111).91 Whistler’s body was then placed in the vault of the church until arrangements could be made for it to be sent to America for interment.92 There seems to be no document identifying the makeup of the congregation at the service.

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It is unlikely that no Russians attended the funeral service, but the record of condolences and assessments of Whistler’s character by Russians, although heartfelt, is chiefly official and diplomatic. It reflects both the high esteem in which he was held and an awareness of the difficulty of replacing him.93

K.I. Fischer, director of the Department of Railways, verbally presented to Anna Whistler the condolences of both Kleinmikhel’ and the emperor: “I told Mrs. Whistler, in your name, of your heartfelt sorrow at the death of her husband, whom you esteemed equally for his mind and his heart; [and] that the Emperor, too, had expressed his extreme regret over the loss of a person so useful and in every respect worthy.”94

Kleinmikhel’ further said in a letter to Bodisco that he had been ordered by the emperor to contact Bodisco “to find in America a man capable of replacing M. Whistler,” whom he described thus: “Death has deprived us of this worthy employee, who, through his profound and solid knowledge, the scope of his practical experience in his field, the great probity of his character, and the zealousness of his labors, had acquired among us a well-deserved general esteem.”95 The emperor also showed his sensitivity by suggesting they wait a while before putting in a replacement. Bodisco responded: “In appreciating with equal good will and justice the great ability and the high probity of Major Whistler, you yourself, Count, have gauged how difficult it will be to replace him adequately.”96

Anna Whistler wrote James that “the Emperor sent a Courier” in early May “to express his high appreciation of our loss and his own loss in the death of your father & to offer to aid me in any way. This mark of respect is gratifying – The Count too has expressed his sympathy in the same way – But rich and poor, all ranks respected & loved Major Whistler.”97

Fischer was sent by Kleinmikhel’ to tell Anna Whistler that if “she needed anything or had any wishes he would deem it a particular pleasure to intercede in her behalf … Despite all her stoicism she could not hide her emotion and tears.”98 She asked for help in leaving the country and in removing her possessions without any difficulties. As she already had a certificate from the Department of Railways identifying her as Major Whistler’s widow, Fischer foresaw no obstacle to her leaving, but pointed out in his report that a special order would be necessary to prevent customs from going through her belongings.99 The note Kleinmikhel’ wrote on Fischer’s report shows that the emperor ordered the minister of Finances to let her possessions go through customs without inspection.100 She was also paid her husband’s salary up to the day of his death.101

From Anton Shtukenberg there is a personal statement. He wrote in his memoirs that Whistler was one of a small group that had exercised a good influence over him: “One could turn to him for advice as one would to a comprehensive technical book; his answer was always positive, clear and reliable, not like some, who tell you: ‘Why, you can do it this way or that way; do that there, and this here, but, how to do it best, well, figure that out for yourself’ … His responses about my work helped me a lot and made my reputation.”102

In early May, letters arrived from James for Willie and from Debo for Anna Whistler. As the letters are not extant, we know only that they “relieved [her] almost bursting heart by weeping over your sorrow, & your affection,”103 and that James’s letter was “touching and manly.”104

Willie wrote James about some of the visitors who had come to express their condolences or who had sent notes. Monsieur Lamartine, their former tutor, “came to see [them]… he was very much afflicted and quite bowed down with sorrow, he felt he had lost his best friend, poor man he looked very ill.”105 Anna Whistler “received such a kind note from Mr. Biber,” another former tutor, in which “he spoke of the great affliction of his brother at the loss of his first patron.”106 Koritskii came, too, and said he was going to write a letter to James for Anna Whistler and Willie to take to England, because his hopes of traveling with Briullov and seeing James were not to be realized.107

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Anna Whistler apparently gave up their apartment at the end of April, because she and Willie spent the first week of May in the home of the Mirrielees family (see Images 268–269), then moved to the Harrisons’ home at Alexandrofsky (see Images 239–240) on 7 May.108 Some of their household goods were left behind to be sold. They were to depart Russia on 12 May on the Vladimir, but their departure was delayed until the 19th because navigation remained closed.109 She had been sure she would not cast “one lingering look” back at Russia in the days when she anticipated returning to “an enticing future” in America with her husband, but departing as a widow rendered “sacred … [her] associations” with Russia and “the dear circle” there.110 The day they left would have been Whistler’s forty-ninth birthday.

Whistler’s body came home to America on the Medora, one of the ships belonging to William Ropes and Company. The ship arrived in Boston on 14 August, and his body was placed “in the vault of R. Lee until the completion of the tomb at S[tonington].”111 The funeral service in Stonington was held in the Calvary Episcopal Church in late August–September 1849.112 Whistler was then buried in the family plot in Evergreen Cemetery with his four young sons: Joseph Swift, Kirk Boott, Charles Donald, and John Bouttatz.

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Whistler’s biography in the diaries fades with the departure of Anna Whistler, James, and Willie for England in June of 1848. Mention of him appears twice that summer through some of his letters from cholera-stricken St. Petersburg. Listening to Mary Ann (Parland) Morgan, who had also fled Russia, read aloud her husband’s letters about the desolation being visited upon St. Petersburg and the countryside by the cholera, Anna Whistler reveals that, true to character, “my dear husband never clouds his reports of his own health & of the preservation of that of our faithful domestics with these fearful details.”113 When she next refers to him, he has announced his own illness and the kindness of their friends in caring for him.114

The diaries present a wife’s deeply loving portrait of the qualities of character of her husband, their family and social life, and glimpses into his work in Russia; but because they conclude in September of 1848, they supply no information about his possibly second and more serious bout of cholera, his increasing heart failure, and his family-shattering death.

This essay on Whistler’s life in St. Petersburg has, therefore, had to rely extensively on the letters of John Stevenson Maxwell at the New-York Historical Society; the letters of Whistler and William Henry Swift to General Joseph G. Swift at the New York Public Library; the Whistler Collection at Glasgow University Library; the Pennell–Whistler Collection at the Library of Congress; correspondence of members of extended family in the United States Military Academy Library archives at West Point; Letterbook No. 1 of Joseph Harrison Jr. at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; diplomatic correspondence in the U.S. National Archives in Washington, DC; and documents in the Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv (Russian State Historical Archives) and the archives of the Leningradskii institut inzhenerov zheleznodorozhnogo transporta (Leningrad Institute of Railway Transport Engineers), both in St. Petersburg.

Notes