The Whistlers As They Were in the 1840s

William McNeill Whistler (Willie)

William Whistler (see Images 27, 30), the child and adolescent, was seven to almost thirteen years old during his sojourn in Russia. Like James (see Images 24–29), he was beautiful to look at and for several of their early years they resembled one another. In the Dessain portrait (see Image 27), they almost look like twins, and are both slender. But Willie was robust in health compared to James: “round, ruddy and hard as a Spitsbergen Apple.”1 He did not suffer from a major chronic illness, nor did he fall sick from minor bouts of cold and flu as often as his older brother. In 1848, however, possibly because he was entering puberty, Willie became fat. In June of that year, after he had been on an inspection trip with his father while James was suffering from another attack of rheumatic fever, Anna Whistler recorded how fat he was.2 He had a face “like ‘plum pudding Jack.’”3 Even in referring to his excellent progress in his studies, his mother, calling him “our little Parson elect,” exclaimed “what a student the fat boy is.” He became thinner while attending Baxter’s Commercial School that fall,4 perhaps because he was so unhappy there.

In temperament he was gentle, tractable, obedient, studious, probably slow in his speech and deliberate in his movements,5 and a homebody. As he was “rather less excitable than Jemmie, & therefore more tractable,” Anna Whistler (see Images 1–5) preferred to take “this gentlest of my dear boys” as her interpreter when she went shopping.6 Observing Willie during their 1847 trip to England, she felt that in his manliness as he strode “about the deck holding the Capt’s hand & talking German so eagerly with him”; in his “lovely combination of gentleness and determination to do what is right”; in his constant concern for her when she was seasick, he “was prompted by his dear father, whom he is so much like.”7

An obedient child, he held his parents’ views and mouthed similar thoughts. He accepted that his mother approved only of puppet shows but not of the theater. He was surprised that James attended private parties in England that he and their parents had seen held up to ridicule in Punch.8 He did not understand how James, knowing that their parents disapproved of such snobbish parties, would nevertheless participate and risk injury to his health as well.9 Major Whistler’s last words to him, “Goodbye, be a good boy,”10 were hardly necessary.

Anna Whistler constantly held Willie up for James to emulate.11 Recounting to him the abusive treatment Willie suffered at Baxter’s, she asked him whether he was not sorry that he was “ever … rough to so gentle and loving a brother?”12 None of this changed James’s nature, nor did it mar or weaken the brothers’ close relationship, which lasted until Willie’s death.13

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While Koritskii (see Images 167–170) had been engaged solely to give drawing lessons to James, Willie took drawing lessons from their regular tutor, Mr. Biber, but there was a certain amount of interaction: Koritskii lent models to Mr. Biber;14 Willie was present when Koritskii came to their home on Saturdays; and on at least one occasion Koritskii drew him. Willie was thus engaged in seeing Koritskii drawing and at work with James and participated in the excitement of that atmosphere. We know that he painted some watercolors for James when the latter was sick, that he went to the Academy in March of 1847 to sit to Koritskii for his portrait and saw the exhibits there, and that there is documentation for his acquaintance with Briullov (see Image 173). But James’s enrollment at the Academy apparently prompted him to want to take a drawing course, too.

In 1846, when James was not enrolled, Willie, who was nine years and seven months old, was registered in Drawing Course 1: “From Originals of Heads” (see Image 162).15 Koritskii signed the receipt book at the Academy on 18 February / 2 March 1846, and paid nine rubles for ticket No. 341, which was issued to “Villiam Uistler, son of a Major in American service” (see Image 161).16 “Villiam” is also registered in the “Book of Addresses of Academy Pupils for 1846” (see Image 162),17 but only his ticket number and name are recorded. In the columns for noting down documents presented in order to register, and for his address, nothing appears. He was one of 475 students registered for 1846.18 Willie seems even to have submitted a drawing at a monthly examination just two weeks later: “341. Uistler, Villiam” in Course 1 was ranked “28” in a group of 52 students for his drawing at an examination held on 2 March 1846 (14 March NS).19 His ranking was reassessed and changed to “38” (see Image 162).20

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Willie was the only Whistler child to remain in St. Petersburg until his father’s death. Parting with James in the fall of 1848 distressed him very much “& for some time, [he] could not bear to hear [James’s] name mentioned without the tears coming to his eyes.”21 Once he was back in Russia, the question of his education became paramount, and his parents did not know whether to hire tutors or send him to a private school. They considered hiring a previous tutor, Monsieur La Roche, to teach him again,22 but ended up sending him to Baxter’s Commercial School.23

He tried very hard to please his parents by being a good student. He had hated boarding at Monsieur Jourdan’s in 1846, and the necessity of parting with his mother on Sunday night after a day-and-a-half weekend at home had inevitably reduced him to tears.24 In his homesickness, he was “a complete Whistler,” very like his father and his half-brother, Joseph Swift Whistler. 25 While Anna Whistler had sympathized with him “tenderly” then, duty, she had felt, required her to conceal her sympathy in the hope that “time may reconcile him to his privations.” Asked by her whether he wanted to stay home instead, he had bravely answered that “it is right to go to school and I will do all fathers wishes.” He had brought her “the best testimonials from his masters,” and she did not think he would “disappoint his father.” It was the same when he was sent to Baxter’s. He “dislike[d] going there so much”26 and “was sad when the weather forced him to have to board for a few days.”27 For a while, Anna Whistler reported, “the boys flocked around him as a natural curiosity, because he is an American,” but then let him alone, “call[ing] him Independent.”28 She also reported that he became “the pet of the whole school,” loved by “all the boys and all the teachers.”29 How long “all the boys” loved him is not clear, because he wrote to James, telling him of the continuing hazing and rough treatment he received: “they cuff him and taunt him, call him ‘American monkey’, ‘Milk Sop’ etc., when he asks them about the lessons he is to learn, they ‘have to get their own’ and will not oblige him, yet when he takes out his white roll to eat … for the 3 o’clock recess … they beg him and he never refuses to share it.”30 Each evening, he recounted to his mother “the vexations of the day,” and she, who had held English boys up as an example of good manners for her wild sons, decided that “the English lads here are of a degenerated stock.” Major Whistler (see Images 7–8, 21) counseled him “either to become entirely independent of the boys in lessons play and all, or to knock down any who touches him” and “to become hardened to rough and tumble.”31 Willie pointed out that “they attack him in a gang” and wished that the fearless James “were at the same school with him to fight his battles which he cannot do himself” because “his gentle spirit is principled against tit for tat.”32 His parents, who could do nothing, simply hoped that eventually the other boys might “find out what a high principled lad the Yankee is and that merit and forbearance will meet its reward.” Despite his unhappiness at Baxter’s, close to the end of their stay in Russia he was second in his class.33

Dr. Rogers advised them to send him back to England to study, as apparently in the climate of St. Petersburg there was a risk even “to a healthy boy in going from heated rooms to extreme frosty atmosphere, before and after daylight.”34 Had Major Whistler lived, and had James come home for the summer of 1849, Willie would most certainly have gone back to England with his feisty brother.

When he stopped in England with his mother on the decimated family’s journey home, she sent him for that brief period to take lessons from the clergyman with whom James was studying,35 ever aware of the fragmented education both were receiving. They could also be a solace to one another and talk of their father.

Willie “scarcely knew Jim,” who had “grown so very tall and look[ed] much fatter than he used to.”36 They both had their daguerrotypes taken, as did Anna Whistler, by Kilburn (see Images 29–30; the whereabouts of the daguerreotype of Anna Whistler are unknown to me).37 One of the few cultural events in London that Willie and Anna Whistler attended was the Royal Academy exhibition, where they saw James’s portrait by William Boxall (see Images 28, 209).38 Aunt Alicia (see Image 39) took the boys on a trip to Scotland.39 They visited Preston, Liverpool, Fleetwood, and all the old haunts, saying what at that difficult moment might have seemed permanent goodbyes to their relatives and friends.40 On 29 July 1849 they sailed for home.

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The documentation for Willie’s biography comes from the diaries and the family correspondence. Neither contains any mention of him as a pupil at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts. The information in the Pennells’ correspondence with the Academy, while surprising and confusing, revealed that perhaps Willie had also attended the Academy, and my own research in the Russian State Historical Archives in St. Petersburg and the Pennell–Whistler Papers at the Library of Congress showed that there was indeed documentation for this supposition.

Notes