"Whistler" Quotes from Famous Books
... graced an alderman's house and served up noble dinners for gourmets, and here she was in this remote corner of the world ringing the changes on boiled chicken and roast chicken and boiled eggs and poached eggs. Mr. Whistler, set to paint sign-boards for public-houses, might have felt the same restless discontent. As for her husband, the Hired Retainer, he took life as tranquilly as ever, and seemed to regard the whole thing ... — Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... Mr. Bispham faced the tittering like a man, and endeavored to rehabilitate himself. But his hands had slipped on the handle of the audience, and the forensic rosin of Demosthenes would not have enabled him to regain his grip. He was cruelly assured of the fact by the hostile and ready-witted whistler. Again Mr. Bispham absurded. This time the tune broke out in all parts of the hall and was itself punctuated by catcalls and sotto-voce insults delivered with terrific shouts. Mr. Bispham's speech was hurriedly finished, and the peroration came down as flat as a skater who tries a grape-vine ... — Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... generation before, pressure and expediency seemed to combine, so that the family, as we first see them, were Christians. No soil can grow genius, no seed can produce it—it springs into being in spite of all laws and rules and regulations. "No hovel is safe from it," says Whistler. ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... onslaught of the hairy brute, tusks erect and mouth wide open, a perfect glimpse of elephantine fury. It forms a capital example of early impressionism, respectfully recommended to the favourable attention of Mr. J.M. Whistler. ... — Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... are building them out year by year. The memory is still fresh of flocks of teal by the "Green Stores" on the Neck; but the teal and the "Stores" are gone, and perhaps the last black duck has quacked on the river, and the last whistler taken his final flight. Some of us, who are not yet old men, have killed "brown-backs" and "yellow-legs" on the marshes that lie along to the west and south of the city, now cut up by the railroads; and you may yet see from the cars an occasional long-booted individual, whose hopes ... — The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... thousand — or ten thousand — years had brought England to stuff which Palgrave and Woolner brayed in their mortars; derided, tore in tatters, growled at, and howled at, and treated in terms beyond literary usage. Whistler had not yet made his appearance in London, but the others did quite as well. What result could a student reach from it? Once, on returning to London, dining with Stopford Brooke, some one asked Adams what impression the Royal Academy Exhibition ... — The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... (bakers before 10 and after 4,) boat houses, livery stables, ferry boats, and street cars. But to catch a fish or fire a pistol on Sunday is a $10 offense, and to look on at a game of chess is a $50 crime. However, the law does not punish whistling on Sunday, unless the whistler has spectators, then it is a $50 business for all concerned. To read Longfellow's Excelsior on Sunday to a parlor of company is a $50 crime. Reading Milton's Paradise Lost, or the American Declaration ... — Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... cool and competent, this skilful Jack, leading her down in the illumined, dewy woods, talking on and on, talking—the fool—for so, with a bitter smile, her inner commentary dubbed him—of Manet, of Monet, of Whistler, of the decomposition of light, the vibration ... — A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... in their power of treatment—one of the few great masters of the medium the world has known. He knew the meaning of wash as few since have known it, he knew that it has scale and limitation of its own, and for all that, infinite suggestibility. Not Turner or Whistler have excelled him, and I do not know of anyone who has equalled him in understanding of this medium outside of Dodge Macknight and John Marin. It is in these so expressive paintings on paper that you feel the real esthetic longing as well as a certain contribution in Homer, ... — Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... are for the most part highly objectionable in substance or sentiment, but he gradually worked into a better vein. He was a friend of George Meredith, Burne-Jones, Morris, Rossetti (to whom he loyally devoted himself for years), and the painter Whistler. He died ... — A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... of the particular form of wizardry practised so successfully by the celebrated Mrs. Whistler, one of whose names is, according to the Talmud, that of ... — Visionaries • James Huneker
... day, say from the deck of a river steamer, the spectacle they offered was, according to bias of mood and disposition, unlovely and drear or colourful and romantic: Whistler might have etched these houses, Dickens have staged therein a lowly tragedy, Thomas Burke have made of one a frame for some vignette unforgettable ... — Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... through the mysterious movement of the lamp-lit London streets, toward her lodgings, she plunged enjoyingly into certain theories of her religion, which embraced Arnold and Aristotle and did not exclude Mr. Whistler, and made wide, ineffectual, and presumptuous grasps to include all beauty and all faith. She threw handfuls of the foam of these things at Kendal, who watched them vanish into the air with pleasure, and asked if he might smoke. ... — A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... gloated over the description of that famous London dining-room, known to the art world as the "Peacock Room," designed by Whistler. Panels to the right and left represent peacocks with their tails spread fan-wise, advancing in perspective toward the spectator, one behind the other, the peacocks in gold and the ground ... — Adopting An Abandoned Farm • Kate Sanborn
... whistler for breakfast," David assured her. "Fat as butter. He wouldn't eat now anyway. He is too much interested in the bear." She had finished, with a little sigh of content, when he asked: "What do you mean when you say that you have trained Tara to kill? ... — The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... suspended from his neck. All the natives wore whistles similar in appearance, being simply small horns in which they blew, the sound of which was considered either to attract or to drive away rain, at the option of the whistler. No whistle was supposed to be effective unless it had been blessed by the great magician Katchiba. The ceremony being over, all commenced whistling with all their might; and taking leave of Katchiba, with an assurance that we should again return, we started amidst a din of "toot too too-ing" upon ... — The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... neck, and a tweed cap of fantastic shape. At that time impressionism reigned in the Latin Quarter, but its victory over the older schools was still recent; and Carolus-Duran, Bouguereau, and their like were set up against Manet, Monet, and Degas. To appreciate these was still a sign of grace. Whistler was an influence strong with the English and his compatriots, and the discerning collected Japanese prints. The old masters were tested by new standards. The esteem in which Raphael had been for centuries held was a matter of derision to wise young men. They offered ... — Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... who was near the door. "There he comes now." Somebody approached, whistling an air from "Traviata," which rang loud and clear, and low and muffled, as the whistler wound among the intricate hallways. This air was as much a part of Hawker as his coat. The spaghetti had arrived at a critical stage. Florinda ... — The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... sign of triumph at having accomplished her purpose—at having forced his thoughts to leave his pet subject, himself, and center upon her. "I was thinking," said she reflectively, "what a brave whistler ... — The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... 'The British Grenadiers' or 'Cherry Ripe'. The latter air is indeed the shibboleth and diploma piece of the penny whistler; I hazard a guess it was originally composed for this instrument. It is singular enough that a man should be able to gain a livelihood, or even to tide over a period of unemployment, by the display of his proficiency upon the penny whistle; still more so, that the professional should almost ... — The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... present prospect of carrying this out, however. After I had taken lunch, General Terry asked me if I would carry some dispatches to General Whistler, and I replied that I would be glad to do so. Captain Smith, Terry's aide-de-camp, offered me his horse, and I was glad to accept the animal, as my own was pretty well spent. He proved to be a ... — An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... not been restored, such as yet exist in Westminster Hall, temp. Rufus or Stephen, or so. Genuine old woodwork, worth your while to go and see. Take a sketch-book and make much of the ties and angles and bolts; ask Whistler or Macbeth, or some one to etch them, get the Royal Antiquarian Society to pay a visit and issue a pamphlet; gaze at them reverently and earnestly, for they are not easily to be matched in London. Iron girders and spacious roofs are the modern fashion; here we have the Middle Ages well-preserved—slam! ... — The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... one place—the veiled whiteness of the cliff coming through, like a diffused, mysterious radiance. It was a delicate and wonderful picture, something expressive, suggestive, and desolate, a symphony in grey and black- -a Whistler. But the next thing said by the voice behind me made me turn round. It growled out contempt for all associated notions of roaring seas with concise energy, then ... — Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... hideous charge hanging over him—a conspiracy hatched by men who should have been his friends—the probability of a great trial in Westminster Hall; and then he ran on again about builders and architects—Whistler, Burne Jones—and the marvellous mansion he was going to erect on the ... — The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... and Franz Hals was lost on me; all I could see was the dirty face of that guide. Rembrandt's Night Watch made me forget the creature for a moment, but when he began to describe it I fled in horror. We finished up in the modern section, and as I looked at van Gogh and Cezanne and Whistler's Effie Deans his squeaky voice kept up a running commentary. I rushed from the building after a ten minutes' tour, paid the worm his three guilden . . . and then went back and enjoyed the gallery. But I nearly ... — A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... says Mallarme characteristically (ceux epars et prives d'architecture) of this long expected first volume of collected prose, Divagations, in which we find the prose poems of early date; medallion or full-length portraits of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Poe, Whistler, and others; the marvellous, the unique, studies in the symbolism of the ballet and the theatrical spectacle, comparatively early in date; Richard Wagner: reverie d'un Poete francais, Le Mystere dans les Lettres; and, ... — Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... your gossip of devils," snorted the other mate. "You're as evil a man for a ship's company as a whistler. You'll be calling ill luck on us to name the fiend ... — Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... hill, which was shaped like a level surfaced mound, and stood right up above the ordinary undulations of the moor, and Scarlett Markham whistled as he slowly climbed the other side, while high overhead, to turn the duet into a trio, there was another whistler in the shape of a speckled lark, soaring round and round as if he were describing the figure of a gigantic corkscrew, whose point was intended ... — Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... narrow leads, or in huge bodies blackened the open pools or the projecting points of ice. Among them, too, wheeled many flocks of clamorous brent, while, from time to time, the desolate cry of the Moniac duck, or the shrill, monotonous, strident flight of the "Whistler" warned the sportsmen that new visitants were about ... — Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... finished his breakfast with an effort, and then, moving to the window, lit his pipe and sat for some time in moody thought. A little natural curiosity as to the identity of the fair whistler would, however, not be denied, and the names of Binchester's fairest daughters passed in review before him. Almost unconsciously he got up and surveyed ... — Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... been handsomely supplied. In my own time there have been four—Burne-Jones (you should look at his early work), Conder, Steer, and John, all of whom had an allowance far above the average, while in America there was Whistler. No one, I suppose, would claim for any of these, save, perhaps, Whistler, a place even in the second rank of artists. From which it follows clearly that something more than delicacy of reaction and touch is needed to make a man first-rate. What ... — Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... because it was much frequented by the Polish hero. On the parade ground is Victory Monument (78 ft. high), erected in 1874 as a Civil War memorial. The library—one of the finest military libraries in existence—contains interesting memorials by Saint Gaudens to J. McNeil Whistler and Edgar Allan Poe, both of whom were cadets at the academy and both ... — The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... come by Fussie? I went to Newmarket with Rosa Corder, whom Whistler painted. She was one of those plain-beautiful women who are so far more attractive than some of the pretty ones. She had wonderful hair,—like a fair, pale veil,—a white, waxen face, and a very good figure; and she wore very odd clothes. She had a studio ... — McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... edited by the late Professor Huxley; Froude's edition of the "Grammar of Assent;" Mr. G. B. Shaw's edition of the works of Mr. Lecky; or the criticism of art and life of Ruskin,—the "Beauties of Ruskin" annotated by Mr. Whistler and carefully prepared for the press by Professor William James. Like the tomato and the cucumber, every book would carry its antidote wrapped about it. Impossible, you say. But is it? Or is it only unprecedented? ... — Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... did not give her a chance. She was a cook who would have graced an alderman's house, and served up noble dinners for gourmets, and here she was in this remote corner of the world ringing the changes on boiled chicken and roast chicken and boiled eggs and poached eggs. Mr. Whistler, set to paint signboards for public houses, might have felt the same restless discontent. As for her husband, the hired retainer, he took life as tranquilly as ever, and seemed to regard the whole thing as the most exhilarating farce he had ever been in. I think he looked on Ukridge ... — Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... he will not be angry with me when I say I prefer his tinker drunken to his Deity sober. None of our Irish poets has found God, at least a god any but themselves would not be ashamed to acknowledge. But our poet does know his men and his women. They are not the shadowy, Whistler-like decorative suggestions of humanity made by our poetic dramatists. They have entered like living creatures into his mind, and they break out there in an instant's unforgettable passion or agony, and the wild words fly up to the poet's brain to match their emotion. I do not ... — Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... same spirit with which I enjoyed beating up Tom Spink, that I have in the past enjoyed contests of the mind in which I have out-epigrammed clever opponents. In the one case, one proves himself top-dog of the mind; in the other, top-dog of the muscle. Whistler and Wilde were just as much intellectual bullies as I was a physical bully yesterday morning when I punched Tom Spink into lying down and ... — The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... are faithful line for line transcriptions, as far as wood can give them, of the original copper-plates; and, this being the case, it is not to be wondered at that the public, who, for a few pence can have practical facsimiles of Blake, of Cruikshank, or of Whistler, are loud in their appreciation of the "new American School." Nor are its successes confined to reproduction in facsimile. Those who look at the exquisite illustrations, in the same periodical, to the ... — The Library • Andrew Lang
... was in the good taste of the period. It was very severe. There was a high dado of white wood and a green paper on which were etchings by Whistler in neat black frames. The green curtains with their peacock design, hung in straight lines, and the green carpet, in the pattern of which pale rabbits frolicked among leafy trees, suggested the influence of William Morris. There was blue delft on the chimney-piece. At that time there must have ... — The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... one by Whistler full of the subtle mystery that he wrops round his figgers. Why you know he has painted one that to them that are sympathetic, the Little Lady in Black, will walk right out of the picture and come towards ... — Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... fair to criticise the amount," Mr. Clarkson expostulated pleasantly; "the L500 represents prolonged training and practice in the art. As Whistler said, the payment is not for a day's work, but ... — Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... why Whistler is right when he says that Velasquez is the painters' painter. "The Blacksmith" by Whistler shows you the blacksmith, not Whistler; Rembrandt's pictures of his mother show the woman; Franz Hals gives you the Burgomaster, not himself. Shakespeare of all writers is the most impersonal—he ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... it was always wrong, and always wrong the same way. Yet he seemed proud of his song, delivered it with execution and a manner of his own, and was charming to his mate. A very incorrect, incessant human whistler had thus a chance of knowing how his own music pleased the world. Two great birds—eagles, we thought—dwelt at the top of the canyon, among the crags that were printed on the sky. Now and again, but very rarely, they wheeled high over our heads in silence, or with a distant, dying ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Whistler refers to Velasquez as "a painter's painter." John Wesley said, "No man is worthy to be called a teacher, unless he be a teacher of teachers." The great writer is the one who inspires writers. And in this book I will not refer to a man as a philosopher ... — Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... Cornelia, Monica, Martha Washington, Mrs. Whistler, Margaret Ogilvy, and Mrs. Neugass, blessed be their tribe, must all have had about the same look about the eyes. Masha Neugass was sixty, and looked it. A blue-gingham apron held her in at the waist so that she bulged softly and fatly ... — Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... to his forge and worked till dinner-time. Nay, more, was a beautiful whistler, and always whistled a little at his work: so to-day he whistled a great deal: ... — Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... trees look at this time of year," interposed a lady with a soft, silvery voice that suggested a chinchilla muff painted by Whistler. ... — The Toys of Peace • Saki
... art. Instead of wasting artistic genius upon such small fry as premiers, diplomatists, and cabinet ministers, our cartoons will be caricatures of the pictures of Millais, Leighton, Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, Watts, Sandys, Whistler, Wilderspin: our letterpress will be Aristophanic parodies of Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, Arnold, Morris, Swinburne; game worth flying at, my boy! The art-world is in a dire funk, I can tell you, for the artistic epidermis has latterly grown ... — Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... becoming day sounds; the far-away hooting of freight-engines seemed brisker than an hour ago in the dark. A cheerful whistler passed the house, even more careless of sleepers than the milkman's horse had been; then a group of coloured workmen came by, and although it was impossible to be sure whether they were homeward bound ... — Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... his art, Mr. Brummell had a personality of almost Balzacian insignificance. There have been dandies, like D'Orsay, who were nearly painters; painters, like Mr. Whistler, who wished to be dandies; dandies, like Disraeli, who afterwards followed some less arduous calling. I fancy Mr. Brummell was a dandy, nothing but a dandy, from his cradle to that fearful day when he lost his figure and had to flee the country, even to that distant day when he died, a ... — The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the world do they want any expert criticism of their text for? Now for such people to buy pictures, when they haven't a mint of money! Why don't they buy something within their means really fine—a coin, a Van Dyck print? I could get your uncle a Whistler etching for twenty-five pounds; a really ... — Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... she puts the question she stands still and gazes at him;— her voice is no longer mocking: it has taken another tone,—a tone soft as the long golden note of the little brown bird they call the siffleur-de-montagne, the mountain-whistler.... Yet Fafa hesitates. He hears the clear clang of the plantation bell recalling him to duty;—he sees far down the road—(Ouill! how fast they have been walking!)—a white and black speck in the sun: Gabou, uttering through his joined hollowed ... — Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... "that fact most certainly proves that she is full of a fine futility and the end of all things. Whatever the American men of genius are, they are not young gods making a young world. Is the art of Whistler a brave, barbaric art, happy and headlong? Does Mr. Henry James infect us with the spirit of a schoolboy? . . . Out of America has come a sweet and startling cry, as unmistakable as the cry of a dying man." This sweet and startling cry is less startling ... — Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... bars of a rag-time melody, and the air was immediately taken up, and then quickly ended with a peculiar run. The first whistler walked confidently up to the fire. The fat man looked up, and spake in a ... — Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Henry the Third and his Queen. I have looked in the map, and find the first name between Bodiham and Rye, but I am not sure it is the place. I will be much obliged to you if you will write directly to your Sir Whistler, and beg him to inform himself very exactly if there is any such thing in such a church near Bodiham. Pray state it minutely; because if there is, I will have them drawn for the ... — The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... phrasing is far from subtle. He induces moods of excitement and sadness by his musical scheme rather than by individual phrases. Who can resist, for example, the spell of the opening verses of Before the Mirror, the poem of enchantment addressed to Whistler's Little White Girl? One hesitates to quote again lines so well known. But it is as good an example as one can find of the pleasure-giving qualities of Swinburne's music, apart from his phrases ... — Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... elements of a whole—sameness in difference. The repetition of the same space-form in architecture, like the round arch and window in the Roman style; the recurrence of the same motive in music; the use of a single hue to color the different objects in a painting, as in a nocturne of Whistler: these are simple illustrations of harmony. An almost equally simple case is gradation or lawful change of quality in space and time—the increase or decrease of loudness in music of saturation or brightness of hue in painting, the gentle change of direction of a curved line. In these ... — The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... to conceal his movements. On the contrary, knowing that the sloop must have got clear of the harbour by that time, he went along the streets whistling cheerfully. He had been a noted, not to say noisy, whistler when a boy, and the habit had not forsaken him in his old age. On turning sharp round a corner, he ran against two men, one of whom swore at ... — The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... Nicky to his intimates today. Edgar Allan Poe was always Eddie to his wife, and Mark Twain was always Youth to his. P. T. Barnum's stable-name was Taylor, his middle name; Charles Lamb's was Guy; Nietzsche's was Fritz; Whistler's was Jimmie; the late King Edward's was Bertie; Grover Cleveland's was Steve; J. Pierpont Morgan's was Jack; Dr. ... — Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken
... from the third movement of the '—— Sonata.' This message was accompanied by a curious little device like the letter C with a line drawn through it, and I said to myself: 'If this should prove to be a mark which "Ernest" used in signing his manuscript, something like Whistler's butterfly, I shall have a ... — The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... silver boxes. Photographs in silver frames also stood there, of female relatives in court dress and of male relatives in uniform. Behind the photographs were pots of growing flowers; and on the walls etchings and engravings after well-known landscapes. It was the room of a young man uninfluenced by Whistler, unaware of Chinese screens and indifferent to the rival claims of Jacobean and Chippendale furniture. It was civilised, not cultivated; and it was ... — Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... whistler paused in the middle of a note and spun sharply about. The color left his bronzed face. A mile to the rear, on the other side of the fence, a horseman was following him at full speed. A glance at the white-faced pony told it ... — The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... pleased many critical souls, James McNeill Whistler for one, who had no patience with other English resorts. It pleased us, too. ... — The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... polished front door, in the small, discreet, fashionable street in which lived fairly old Mrs. Thomas Denby; got out, went up the white marble steps, rang the bell, and was admitted into the narrow but charming hall—dim turquoise-blue velvet panelled into the walls, an etching or two: Whistler, Brangwyn—by a trim parlour-maid. Ten generations, at least, of trim parlour-maids had opened the door for Mr. McCain. They had seen the sparkling victoria change, not too quickly, to a plum-coloured limousine; they had seen Mr. McCain become perhaps ... — O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... And now comes "the whistler." I had been expecting him. He is to-night whistling airs from Pinafore. The Pirates, thank Heaven! furnishes him no airs. He whistles—let me confess, reluctant although I am to do it—he whistles to perfection. There is nothing experimental, nothing ... — Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... this kind was unknown to the Scotch Sixty Years Since.] and year-olds, and gimmers, and dinmonts, and stots, and runts, and kyloes, and a proposed turnpike-act; while Balmawhapple, in notes exalted above both, extolled his horse, his hawks, and a greyhound called Whistler. In the middle of this din, the Baron repeatedly implored silence; and when at length the instinct of polite discipline so far prevailed that for a moment he obtained it, he hastened to beseech their ... — Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... nearer came the whistler; until the crunching of his feet could be heard upon the dead leaves. Rolf pushed the hair out of his eyes, and settled himself to watch with a ... — The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... so one feels that London can never be more beautiful, never better express her inmost spirit. I write these lines in September, when we have mornings of pearly mist, all the city a Whistler pastel, the air bland but stung with sharp points, and the squares dressed in many-tinted garments; and I feel that this is the month of months for the Londoner. Yet in April, when every parish, from Bloomsbury to Ilford, ... — Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... veritable bank-notes. His rooms were provided with all those distinguished comforts and elegancies proper to a success that may any moment be interviewed. Needless to say, the walls had been decorated by Mr. Whistler, and there was not a piece of furniture in the room that had not belonged to this or that poet deceased. Priceless autograph portraits of all the leading actors and actresses littered the mantelshelf with ... — Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... room man,{*} was famous for having several times, for trifling wagers, drank a full overman of strong beer off at a draught. A Tun, another vessel in use at Pembroke, is a half pint silver cup. A Whistler, a silver pint tankard also in use there, was the gift of Mr. Anthony Whistler, ... — The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... there it is. The reason is perhaps that a dog spends most of his day just finding a really good smell and being diverted from it by something else, a loud whistle in front or a motor-bicycle or another smell. He rushes off then after the whistler or the motor-bicycle or the new smell, missing all kinds of good smells on the way and never getting the cream of the old one. And that is like the day ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, June 30th, 1920 • Various
... artists, is the least impressionist; the idea people have of his being an impressionist only proves once again the absolute inability of the public to understand the merits or the demerits of artistic work. Whistler's art is absolutely classical; he thinks of nature, but he does not see nature; he is guided by his mind, and not by his eyes; and the best of it is he says so. Oh, he knows it well enough! Any one who knows him must have heard him say, "Painting is absolutely scientific; ... — Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... to the left, but stopped in the middle of the room to study her as she stood framed in the doorway—a picture for Whistler. With pretty art and a woman's instinctive desire to please, she had placed the candle on a chair and assumed something of a pose. The mellow candle-light deepened the raven black of her hair, softened the tint of her gown until it appeared ... — The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... high-pitched, peculiar whistle which they both knew mighty well, and the four-legged one obeyed instanter by wheeling so suddenly that he put a very realistic climax upon the scene by nearly unseating the two-legged one, as he tore pell mell for the whistler and came to a sudden halt in front of him, to the increased astonishment ... — A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... great talent he had. Huh! I soon cured him of that. 'Go right to it, son,' says I. 'Paint something you can sell for five hundred and I'll cover it with a thousand. Until then, not a red cent.' And inside of twenty-four hours he concluded he wasn't any budding Whistler or Sargent, and came asking what I thought he should tackle first. Eh? Think you could place ... — Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... the best in this best of all possible worlds. The sun was shining. Even the sound of someone in the street below whistling one of his old compositions, of which he had heartily sickened twelve months before, was pleasant to his ears, and this in spite of the fact that the unseen whistler only touched the key in odd spots and had a poor memory for tunes. George sprang lightly out of bed, and turned on the cold tap in the bath-room. While he lathered his face for its morning shave he beamed ... — A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... they have been weakened and embittered by early solitude of spirit. No artistic genius of the past has been put through such cruel tests, has been kept on such miserably short commons, as have our artists of the last hundred years, from Turner to Rossetti and Watts, from Manet and Degas and Whistler to Rodin and Albert Besnard. And if their work has shown lapses and failings; if it has been, alas, lacking at times in health or joy or dignity or harmony, let us ask ourselves what the greatest individualities of Antiquity and the Middle ... — Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... Well, the whistler was far away in the heart of the storm, and the sound was merely blown against the wind by a chance echo. Yet he remained holding his rein taut, and listening with all ... — The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... you've got," said a mild young man, with a deep voice across the table. "If I had a few hundred thousand," said the mild young man, "I'd put every cent of it on Benny Whistler for the heavyweight championship. I've private information that Battling Tuke has been got at and means to lie down in ... — The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... there can be no such thing as progress in art. At one time the arts flourish, at another they decay: but, as Whistler put it, art happens as men of genius happen; and men cannot make it happen. They cannot discover what circumstances favour art, and therefore they cannot attempt to produce those circumstances. There are periods of course in which the arts, or some one ... — Progress and History • Various
... we artists err ridiculously when we depart from the Greek standard. Your Whistler never achieved fame until he stopped reproducing bits of nature and devoted his superb ... — A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... continue to get their "cultural backgrounds" in the great achievements of the whole race, where they can hold converse with Lincoln and Darwin and the makers of the Cologne Cathedral and George Meredith and Pasteur and Karl Marx and Whistler and Joan ... — Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... may have copied. But for all that, his work belongs to no special school or group; like all the world's great masterpieces, whether produced in Spain by a Velasquez, in Venice by a Titian, in England by a Whistler, it stands alone ... — Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... last night I went out into the Grande Monde to a bal masque for charity at the palace of the Comtesse de la Ferrondeux. It was very stupid and the men outnumbered the women 30 to 1, which are interesting odds. To-day we went to Whistler's and sat out in a garden with high walls about it and drank tea and laughed at Rothenstein. The last thing he said was at the Ambassadeurs when one of the students picking up a fork said, "These are the same sort of forks I have." Rothenstein said "yes, I did not know you dined here that ... — Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... Others remove the coating and "prove" the plate by taking a print from it after each "bite,"—each of these prints being known as a "state of the plate" and showing what is still required to be done. In the work of an etcher like Whistler the impressions of the "first state," "second state," etc., are of considerable interest, as they show the progress of the man's work, but, except as an object of interest or as a curiosity, these prints can have no ... — The Building of a Book • Various
... gallery given up to living clerks than to dead canvases. If he had his way there should be no pictures but those that stimulated people to greater activity. He had, for example, never seen any beauty in WHISTLER'S portrait of his (WHISTLER'S) mother until it was reproduced as a War-savings poster, with words scrawled across it. A few of the placards which American business men pinned up in their offices, such as, "To Hell with Yesterday," were better ... — Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... and poet; the mob all there; the groundlings far out-numbering the elite:—and all not merely sitting out the play, but roused to a frenzy of enthusiasm; and Milton himself, present and acting, the hero of the day. That, despite Mr. Whistler and the Ten O'Clock—seems really to have been the kind of thing that happened in Athens. Tomides was there, with his companions— little Tomides, the mender of bad soles—and intoxicated by the grand poetry; understanding ... — The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... standing was for the most part reduced to a primitive simplicity for which a sign-language would have sufficed. Arnold's phrase for the situation was, "I let Madrina alone, and she don't bother me." But now, seeing that neither the facade of Rouen, nor the influence of Chardin on Whistler, had been mentioned, his unusual loquacity continued. "Well, if one west wind (I don't mean that as a slam on Sylvia for coming from west of the Mississippi) has done us so much good, why not have another?" he inquired. "Why couldn't Judith come on and make us a visit too? It would be ... — The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... Herbert Spencer as a "never-ending ass." One remembers that Byron thought nothing of Keats—"Jack Ketch," as he called him. One remembers that the critics damned Wagner's operas as a new form of sin. One remembers that Ruskin denounced one of Whistler's nocturnes as a pot of paint flung in the face of the British public. In the world of science we have a thousand similar examples of new genius being hailed by the critics as folly and charlatanry. Only the other day a biographer of Lord Lister was reminding us how, at the British Association in ... — The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... paints, which opened out into an easel and a stool, and contained a palette of a shape preferred by the late Edwin Long, R.A., a selection of colours which had been approved by the late Lord Leighton, P.R.A., and a patent drying-oil which (she said) had been used by Whistler. Priam Farll got away from the shop without this apparatus for the confection of masterpieces, but he did not get away without a sketching-box which he had had no intention of buying. The young lady was too energetic ... — Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... English traveller, perchance, will leave with kindlier feelings towards those responsible for the Chantrey pictures, though envious of a collection whose catholicity embraces works by two great modern masters, Londoners by option—Legros and Whistler. But any impression that may be left on the traveller's mind by the inspection of the examples of contemporary French art exhibited in this museum should be supplemented and corrected by an examination ... — The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... profession," said the boy, as he got up and stretched himself, and cut off a slice of cheese, and took a few crackers. "I have always been a good whistler, and I have decided to turn my talent to account. I am going to hire an office and put out a sign, 'Boy furnished to whistle for lost dogs.' You see there are dogs lost every day, and any man would give half a dollar to a boy to find his dog. I can hire out to whistle for ... — Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... impossible to predict; Russia has to feel its way towards civilisation. During the progress of the Moscow and St Petersburg Railway, a curious enterprise was determined on. According to the New York Tribune, Major Whistler, who had the charge of the construction of the railway, proposed to the emperor that the rolling-stock should be made in Russia, instead of imported, Messrs Harrison, Winans, and Eastwick, engineers of the United States, ... — Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... the wind and steam-tugs laboured slowly against the stream, dragging behind the heavily-laden lighter. Warehouses and wharfs and timber-yards now begin to line either bank; yet the materials for a sketch-book are scanty and uninviting: an artist who, like Mr. Whistler, has etched at Battersea and Blackwell, would find by comparison on the Neva the forms without character, the surface without texture, the masses without light, shade, or colour. As the boat advances the imperial city grows in scale and pomp. The river view becomes imposing, the ... — Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... did not always know how useful they were. The Rev. Webster Whistler, of Hastings, records that he was awakened one night to receive a votive cask of brandy as his share of the spoil which, to his surprise, his church tower had been harbouring. A commoner method was to leave the gift—the tithe—silently on the doorstep. Revenue ... — Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... was ordered. You know how the Bohemian feast of reason keeps up with the courses. Humor with the oysters; wit with the soup; repartee with the entree; brag with the roast; knocks for Whistler and Kipling with the salad; songs with the coffee; the ... — The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Lord and most of the company to a club supper; Sir P. Neale, [Sir Paul Neile, of White Waltham, Berks, eldest son to Neile, Archbishop of York.] Sir R. Murrey, [One of the Founders of the Royal Society, made a Privy Counsellor for Scotland after the Restoration.] Dr. Clerke, Dr. Whistler, [Daniel Whistler, Fellow of Merton College, took the degree of M.D. at Leyden, 1645; and after practising in London, went as Physician to the Embassy, with Bulstrode Whitlock, into Sweden. On his return he became Fellow, and at length President, of the ... — The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... heard of it," said the priest, making a face. "It's a foul thing. I'm sure you're too good a man for a Whistler. I couldn't have countered it even with the Spots myself; I'm not ... — The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... course, an evangelical, somewhat old-fashioned for so late a date; and fairly early in her volume she warns us of what we may expect. She is anxious to damp any undue optimism as to the lightness of her muse. When worldly, foolish people like Whistler and Pater were talking 'art for art's sake,' she could ... — Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... beauty than she had even now. He shut his eyes, tried to imagine her, to see her before him with snow-white hair, a face perhaps etherealized by knowledge of life and suffering; once he even called up the most perfect picture of old age he knew of—the portrait of Whistler's mother, calm, dignified, gentle, at peace, with folded hands; but his efforts were in vain; he simply could not see his Rosamund old. And so, because of that, he could only see their child as a very young boy, wearing a boy's crown of wild olive, ... — In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... into a cab and was driven to a number in one of the correct West Seventies. His card admitted him to the reception room of an old-fashioned house into which the spirits of Fortune, Chance and Adventure had never dared to enter. On the walls were the Whistler etchings, the steel engravings by Oh-what's-his-name?, the still-life paintings of the grapes and garden truck with the watermelon seeds spilled on the table as natural as life, and the Greuze head. It was a household. There was even brass andirons. On a table was an album, ... — Strictly Business • O. Henry
... mark of distinction beyond the knob used by physicians in general. Men of genius now and then have found in their choice of a cane an opportunity for the play of their eccentricity, such a celebrated cane being the tall wand of Whistler. Among the relics of great men preserved in museums for the inspiration of the people canes generally are to be found. We have all looked upon the cane of George Washington at Mount Vernon and the walking-stick of Carlyle in Cheyne Walk. ... — Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... of scraping the fire together, to make it last as long as possible, when an unexpected whistle broke upon his ears. He sprang to the front of the shelter and listened intently. The whistle was one he knew well, and the whistler was rendering an old English air, called "Lucy Locket Lost Her Pocket," an air which we to-day call ... — On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... picked out a bridle and started off whistling Buffalo Gals—he was a powerful pretty whistler and could do the Mocking Bird with variations—to catch the mule and begin his plowing. The animal was feeding as peaceful as a water-color picture, and she didn't budge; but when Jeff began to get nearer, her ears dropped back along her neck as if they had lead in them. ... — Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... no more toasts for the present. They seem too formal when only we three are together. And we know what we wish each other without them. Oyster soup! You see, I remembered what you are fond of, Claudie. I recollect ages ago in London I once met Mr. Whistler. It was when I was very small. He came to lunch with Madre. By the way, Claude, did you take Madre's cablegram with you when you went to answer ... — The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... they fell forthwith to slapping away at the backs of each other's hands with great gusto, until, all of a sudden, the whistler outside gave one loud, shrill note, and—there was ... — Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Jack Poynter,' returned the man, taking off his paper cap and rubbing up his bristly gray hair. 'We call Jack "The Blackbird" among us; he is a famous whistler, is Jack.' ... — Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... sooner at an end than he carried me across the road to Masson's old studio. It was strangely changed. On the walls were tapestry, a few good etchings, and some amazing pictures—a Rousseau, a Corot, a really superb old Crome, a Whistler, and a piece which my host claimed (and I believe) to be a Titian. The room was furnished with comfortable English smoking-room chairs, some American rockers, and an elaborate business table; spirits and ... — The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were his disciples, but none of them came into contact with him without being influenced in some way by his sharp and positive personality. A pioneer and something of a prophet, he was one of the first to champion the paintings of Whistler and to proclaim the genius of ... — Modern British Poetry • Various
... a couple of years later, in Paris," goes on Steele. "I was dining in one of those big cafes—Maxime's, I think,—when I recognized him at the next table. He was telling a friend of a find he'd made in an old printshop,—a pencil sketch by Whistler. He collects such things, I believe. Well, this was something he wanted very badly; but he'd happened to be caught without cash enough to pay for it. So he'd asked the dealer to put it aside until next day. There was my chance. I know something about etchings; ... — Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... her," laughed Joan. "She's creeping up, poor lady, as Whistler said of her. We have passed the phase when everything she did was right in our childish eyes. Now we dare to criticize her. That shows we are growing up. She will learn from us, later on. She's a dear old ... — All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... a connoisseur, was not slow to recognise the value and extreme rarity of the prints. Rembrandt, Whistler, Hayden, Merryon, Cameron, Muirhead Bone and Zorn were represented by their most notable creations; two startling subjects by Brangwyn hung alone in one corner of the room, isolated, it would seem, out of consideration for the gleaming, ... — Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... is a survey of the more noticeable architectural and topographical features of London, which are indicating in no mean fashion the effect of Mr. Whistler's dictum: ... — Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... This gallery and the next two are designed to show works of those schools, chiefly French, that have had direct influence upon American art. On wall A is a painting by Courbet, interesting in the light of that artist's influence on Whistler's early work. But most important here are the examples of the Barbizon School, romantic landscape painters of the mid-Nineteenth Century, who had much to do with the development of the Inness-Wyant group in America. On wall B are two canvases by Corot, both badly placed, ... — An Art-Lovers guide to the Exposition • Shelden Cheney
... ability. It was certainly, too, the quality which served him best all through his life. He went about declaring that Mrs. Langtry was more beautiful than the "Venus of Milo," and Lady Archie Campbell more charming than Rosalind and Mr. Whistler an incomparable artist. Such enthusiasm in a young and brilliant man was unexpected and delightful and doors were thrown open to him in all sets. Those who praise passionately are generally welcome guests and if Oscar could ... — Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... midst of the toil a sound of whistling came upon the air. The girl in the auto looked up, alertly. It was the Toreador's song from Carmen that she heard, riotously rendered. A moment later the whistler appeared—and an exclamation all but escaped the ... — The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... curiously well-concocted piratical scheme to publish, without his knowledge or consent, a complete collection of Mr. Whistler's writings, letters, pamphlets, lectures, &c., has been nipped in the bud on the very eve of its accomplishment. It appears that the book was actually in type and ready for issue, but the plan was to bring out the work simultaneously in England and America. This caused delay, the plates ... — The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... and, what was more, he whistled quite the most beautiful tune I had ever heard. I felt all its changes and modulations, its majors and minors, just as if a whole band had been there to play the accompaniment, so cunning and expressive a whistler was he. ... — Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... course. But the simplicity of a single figure does not preclude the qualities of line and mass. The great things to be done with composition may as well be done in portrait as elsewhere. If you would see what may be done with a single figure, study the Portrait of his Mother, by Whistler. You could not have a better example. It is one of the greatest portraits of the world. Notice the character which is shown in every line and plane in the figure. The very pose speaks of the individuality. Notice the grace and repose of line, and the relations of mass to mass ... — The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... showed yellow in the sun? The calm, shallow sea conveyed the sounds with marvellous fidelity and surety. Yet this unaccountable call came from a quarter whence steamers may not venture, and was I not the only whistler within a range of many miles? No steamer ever gloated or warned or appealed in so fluty a note—plaintive, slightly ... — My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... can boast of no Watt, Brindley, Smeaton, Rennie, Telford, Brunel, Stephenson, or Fairbairn, and lacks such experimenters as Tredgold, Barlow, Hodgkinson, and Clark, yet we have our Evans and Fulton, our Whistler, Latrobe, Roebling, Haupt, Ellet, Adams, and Morris,—engineers who yield to none in professional skill, and whose work will bear comparison with the best of that of Great Britain or the Continent; and if America does not show a Thames Tunnel, a Conway or ... — Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... sixpence? Of course Everard Benson had a weak heart, but still, to win prizes, remember parrots, toady Miss Perry, despise Miss Rosseter, give tea-parties in his rooms (which were in the style of Whistler, with pretty books on tables), all this, so Jacob felt without knowing him, made him a contemptible ass. As for Miss Rosseter, she had nursed cancer, and ... — Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... thinks you might manage to get aft now. I will send Bill and Dick Whistler with you, to help you move any ... — A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... let us imagine ourselves straightway turning to one of the numerous scenes by Whistler of the Thames at twilight, with its glimmering lights and ghostly shapes of bridges and hulks of steamers. Nothing is outlined, nothing is clearly defined, but the mystery of London's river is ... — The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... demagogue: Disraeli a mystagogue. But ours is specially the time when a man can advertise his wares not as a universality, but as what the tradesmen call "a speciality." We all know this, for instance, about modern art. Michelangelo and Whistler were both fine artists; but one is obviously public, the other obviously private, or, rather, not obvious at all. Michelangelo's frescoes are doubtless finer than the popular judgment, but they are ... — All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... more or less the same manner were called Impressionists. The word remained in use, and Manet and his friends thought it a matter of indifference whether this label was attached to them, or another. At this despised Salon were to be found the names of Manet, Monet, Whistler, Bracquemont, Jongkind, Fantin-Latour, Renoir, Legros, and many others who have since risen to fame. Universal ridicule only fortified the friendships and resolutions of this group of men, and from that time dates the definite ... — The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... common with the rest of mankind. Your turn comes at last, and having paid the fare, you tremblingly inquire—'What time will it be necessary for me to be here in the morning?'—'Six o'clock,' replies the whistler, carelessly pitching the sovereign you have just parted with, into a wooden bowl on the desk. 'Rather before than arter,' adds the man with the semi-roasted unmentionables, with just as much ease and complacency as if the whole world got out of ... — Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... wonderful Rembrandt, Velasquez, Turner, Hobbema, Van Dyck, Raphael, Frans Hals, Romney, Gainsborough, Whistler, Corot, Mauve, Vermeer, Fragonard, Botticelli, and Titian reproductions followed in such rapid succession as fairly to daze the magazine readers. Four pictures were given in each number, and the faithfulness ... — A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... give warning to the others by a peculiar cry. In several of the species this cry resembles the syllables 'seek-seek' repeated with a hiss. Others bark like 'toy-dogs,' while still other kinds utter a whistling noise, from which one species derives its trivial name of 'whistler' among the traders, and is the 'siffleur' ... — Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... he should hide his light under a bushel of ill-temper—I can't conceive. It is as though Patti wouldn't sing till her manager threw an egg at her, or as though Sir Frederick Leighton would only paint a picture after Mr. Whistler had broken his studio windows with a brick. Even the whistling oyster of London tradition would perform without requiring a preliminary insult or personal assault. But let us account everything good if possible; perhaps the Adorned C. only suffers from a modest dislike for vain ... — The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... that little smoking-room to the right as you enter the Caffe Quadri," he began; "the one off the piazza? Well, a lot of us fellows used to dine there—Whistler, Rico, Old Ziem, Roscoff, Fildes, Blaas, and the rest of ... — The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... belong to it as much as to any school. They are cosmopolitan in their art, and reside in Paris, Munich, London, or elsewhere, as the spirit moves them. Sargent, the portrait-painter, really belongs to this group, as does also Whistler (1834-[23]), one of the most artistic of all the moderns. Whistler was long resident in London, but has now removed to Paris. He belongs to no school, and such art as he produces is peculiarly his own, save a leaven of influences from Velasquez and the Japanese. His art is the perfection ... — A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke |