William Hamilton Gibson: artist—naturalist—author

President Almon Gunnison, of St. Lawrence University, speaking out of a long and intimate acquaintance in Brooklyn, wrote of him, a few weeks after his death:

“There have been few men of larger manhood than this poet-artist, this seer and interpreter of nature. He was open-minded and trustful as a child. He loved everything that was manly, and his sense of right was an instinct and a passion. He was tolerant in faith and scorned all narrowness. Reverent, worshipful, a lover of God and man. Not since Gilbert White of Selborne died has there lived one who more minutely discerned nature, and never has there been one more dowried to interpret her. Thoreau had equal skill of vision and perhaps larger grace of literary expression. Burroughs has the same order of discernment, and a like art to make nature interpret her lessons in her own words. But Gibson was poet and artist too; he could sing the song of the daisy with almost the melody of Burns, and could with his deft pencil depict the highway of the squirrel so cleverly that one could hear the echoes of its steps, and picture the hues of the flowers so that one could almost smell the fragrance of their blossoms. He was the most versatile of men. He was a stranger to no form of art. With pencil and with brush, with every form of pigment, he was the master, and with the candle’s smoke he made weird pictures which startled admiration. He was skilled in every mechanical device. He had most curious charts with cunning contrivances, strings and pulleys, by which he illustrated the fertilization of plants, and would shoot the pollen and would have curious insects flying in the air, to show how nature provided for the perpetuation of her growths. His studio was a museum of the mechanics of art, and had he chosen he could have excelled in many lines of inventive skill. He loved Nature in all her variant moods and forms. There was no flower that he could not call by name, and not a weed held the secret of its life inviolate from him. He could answer ‘Yes’ to the poet’s question, ‘Canst thou name the birds without a gun?’; he could go into the forest and the birds would come at his caressing call; he could see into the very heart of every flower, and could write the flora of every State. He loved Nature, too, in her larger forms. The mountains awed and the sea thrilled him with their immensities. He could set the song of the brook to music, and write out the melody of rivers in his symphonies. How well do we remember his telling us of the book which he would sometime make, but which, alas! he never made. It should be the biography of the water drop, and with pencil and with words he would tell the story of the water in its passage from the clouds to the sea.

“He would picture the clouds and the mists, the mountain-tops arresting the fogs and condensing them with its ledges; the little springs which run among the hills, the river’s cradle among the rocks, the tiny brook descending over the desolation of the heights, the brooklet entering the forest, the mossy coverts, the fern-covered banks, the shadowing trees, the twisting, turning stream, winding downward amidst tawny rocks, jumping over cataracts and falls, then emerging into the lower pasture slopes, with cattle drinking at its banks, and then the meadows with great sweeping branches of overhanging trees, the vexing wheels of mills, the larger and larger river, and then the city with its grime, and beyond, the sea, with its mighty ships sailing to far Cathay. And how his wondrous eyes, which had the luminousness but never the passion of the flame, used to glow as he talked of Nature and of the secrets that she told him and of the apostleship he held to make the great world see and love Nature with something of his idolatry. He kept the gladness of his youth and was never won away from the paths in which his boyish feet had strayed. That wondrous picture-making period of boyhood ever held his soul in thrall. He lived in the city, for he was the busiest worker among men, but the roots of his heart were tangled with the grasses of the sunlit pastures where his youth had been. When the sun’s rays lengthened over the noisy city, with the swiftness of the arrow’s flight from a Tartar’s bow he sought the old scenes, and there at length when favoring fortune came, he built his home, and when death wanted him she sought him there, and there she found him.”

The minute prepared for the Century Club of New York City was more than a perfunctory record, and witnesses to the high esteem in which the members held him:

“William Hamilton Gibson, distinguished alike as an artist, an author, and an illustrator, had risen by unwonted industry, native talent, and a tireless enthusiasm to a high place in the esteem of the lovers of nature and the admirers of true art. He was recognized as an artist with the pen as well as with the pencil, and entitled to a place among those enthusiastic naturalists who have the skill in words to impart their enthusiasm. His ‘Highways and Byways,’ ‘Pastoral Days,’ the ‘Heart of the White Mountains,’ ‘Nature’s Serial Story,’ ‘Camp Life in the Woods,’ ‘Trapping and Trap Making,’ ‘Happy Hunting Grounds,’ and many other books, all illustrated by himself, showed his scientific exactitude and his artistic quality. His illustrated article in the last number of ‘Harper’s Magazine’ seems like a farewell message from him in another world. He was also a noted water-colorist, and, in later years, a popular lecturer on natural history.

“His facility of expression and ingenious illustration of his subject by his crayon and mechanical appliances instructed and entertained his audiences, and no man had appeared in this field since Agassiz with such success as met him. There was a charm in his personality from the earnestness and kindliness of his nature, and the number of those who mourn his early death is not confined to his personal friends alone.

“Pleasant and unfading memories mingle with our regrets at parting with those whose names are recorded here. They were men without exception worthy, true, and of good report. May we not say, as their survivors, and conscious of our failings—

Other phases of his versatile spirit are noted by Mr. Alexander Black:

“I first met Mr. Gibson at the Authors Club in the old rooms on Twenty-fourth Street. At that time he was a regular attendant at the meetings, and he remained among the faithful until his lectures began. Thereafter he came, I fancy, whenever he was free to come, and found a stimulating enjoyment in meeting his fellow-craftsmen, literary and artistic, with whom at all times he had a hearty frankness of cordiality that made him an always-welcome figure in this singularly democratic group. At times I found him pulling at a ‘long Tom,’ generally, as he put it, ‘in self-defense,’ for we hovered in a deep fog of smoke. After I myself had been elected to the Club (in 1888) we met regularly in this literary aerie, and endured in common the recurrent jest inflicted upon those who, at two A.M., still had to make a homeward journey to Brooklyn,—an infliction which fell lightly upon me when I had his company to the Bridge, and could hear him talk of the flowers and their insect visitors, or the current movements of art.

“I believe he always retained an affectionate feeling for the Twenty-fourth Street quarters of the Club, where we smoked, ate the Captain’s salad, told stories (Gibson not a poor contributor), seldom talked shop, and certainly never were literary; where we met Lowell, Stedman, Boyesen, Eggleston, Grant White, Godwin, Stoddard, Conway, Jefferson, Riley, Kipling, Mitchell, Hay, St. Gaudens—it would be a long and an interesting list. Mr. Gibson’s genius and personality alike attracted to him the attention of the choicest spirits in a gathering of this kind. He always had a fine fund of that quality which belongs to genius—which is in itself a genius—a quality of youthful enjoyment in the simpler pleasures. I remember the contagious gusto with which, on a certain memorable Watch Night, he told the company a ghost story that came to its crisis in a materialized ghost of his own making which he had concealed under his coat. The hoax recalls some of his fun at Washington village, where his astonishing mummy with a message from the past will long be a droll tradition, and where there is a lively recollection of his dashing horsemanship on a wonderful steed with a feather-duster tail!

“I heard him lecture at Washington village and shared in the delight of an audience whose youngest members he held quite as closely as their elders. Indeed, I never have known in any department of science or of art an enthusiast who could convey, with an utter absence of academic formality, so rich and delightful a fund of information and suggestion. To me he was always the ideal interpreter of nature. There was no hint of book covers between. He did not turn to and from his theme at any time. It was part of his life—and plainly a pleasant, unstrenuous part of it. In the woods, in his garden, on the quiet porch overlooking the hillside sumac, he spoke of a discovery in a petal or in the habits of a beetle with that charming undidactic delight of one who assumes that all must have a common pleasure in these phases of natural life.

“As an artist he was quite as free from personal mannerisms or eccentricities. When I first visited his studio on Montague street, Brooklyn, he talked as he worked—the picture was an illustration to one of his magazine papers,—and afterwards turned to his portfolio, quite without the effect of entertaining me, but always with a companionly frankness and simplicity that made him at all times the most attractive of hosts. I remember his house studio on Lincoln Place by but two visits, and I had no greater acquaintance with the little crib at the foot of the Washington lawn. I think I liked the dishevelled workshop at Washington best of all.

“Mr. Gibson never permitted the very handsome things that were said of his writings to disturb his relation to his artistic ideals. ‘I am an artist,’ he said to me when this subject came up between us, and profound as was his affection for plant and insect life, it was as an artist that he looked across the leaping lines of this Washington country; it was as an artist that he labored to transmit with his brush the flame colors of autumn or the lustrous prophecies of spring. The healthy ideals of his art and the hearty simplicity of his nature are to be read in the unmannerish charm of his pictures.

“Once or twice we met on the trains in the course of our lecturing work. He had stories to tell me of his own experiences—of hardship, of accident, of humorous incident. Once his voice left him so completely that he was obliged to make a momentary exit after a pantomimic apology to the audience. On the whole I think that he greatly enjoyed his lectures. Certainly they were inspiringly memorable to those who were privileged to hear them.

“When I recall him in his own home and in mine, I have before me a splendidly strong head and figure. I hear his strong healthy laugh. I see his broad shoulders turned to me as he sits at the piano playing the ‘Largo’ with a full singing volume of tone. His ear was so keen and sympathetic that he could express without knowledge of notes even the subtler harmonies of a fragment like the ‘Largo,’ and his playing always had the fascination that is present in the interpretations of those who truly love music, and who find in an instrument a companion to whom they may go in any mood with certainty of response.

“The news of his death brought to me a shock and a sense of bereavement deeper and more lasting than any I had known for many years. Here, surely, was a fine spirit, a lover of life and of art, and an exponent of all that is sanest and sweetest in both.”

It was four years after his death that the Alumni and friends of the “Gunnery” school completed a memorial of Gibson which for fitness and significance is one of the most successful in America. On the left of the road, as one climbs the long hill from the railroad station to Washington Green, nearly at the top of the slope, there stands a large boulder, a little back from the highway. Here it was determined to place a bronze medallion in bas-relief, which should aim to suggest the man and commemorate his relation to the little town which he so loved and which so loved him.

The report of Mr. E. K. Rossiter, made to the Alumni Association, tells the interesting story of the inception and completion of this loving task, whose results will be an enduring memorial of this inspiring life.

“You have undoubtedly all heard of that ideal committee composed of three persons—one dead, one in Europe, and one left at home to do as he pleased. But my parallel, if I draw one at all, must soon end, for though Mr. Van Ingen is to-day on the other side of the water, the other two members, Dr. Lyman Abbott and Dr. Ludlow, are very much alive—as proof of it, I would refer you to the weekly issue of the ‘Outlook’ or beg you to attend one of the good Doctor’s sermons at Orange.

“We have acted, it is true, at arm’s length from each other and our work has been accomplished, strange as it may seem, without so much as once meeting as a committee of the whole. We have, however, been in frequent correspondence and from the beginning there has been nothing but a unanimity of feeling. It was Dr. Ludlow, I believe, who first

suggested that this Memorial take the form of a bas-relief. He keenly appreciated the fact, as did we all, that Gibson had conferred, through his work, an unusual distinction upon our little town and having stood, as he quoted from Oliver Wendell Holmes, next to Thoreau in his appreciative portrayal of nature it was not only fitting but incumbent upon us that he should be remembered in some enduring way—in some way that would enable those coming after to know the manner of man he was to us. Therefore when Mrs. Van Ingen pointed to a huge boulder at the lower end of the Cemetery nestling among the trees he loved so well, there seemed nothing further to debate beyond securing a sculptor.

“In this matter it was deemed essential that we should find one who knew our friend. For while an artistic success might readily be obtained by a score of men, we were aware that that indefinable something—that quickening spirit animating a man’s whole being and constituting his personality—was likely to be in a measure lost without the immediate contact which artists seek. It was just here that our good fortune became again manifest; for our covetousness was rewarded by finding in Mr. Bush-Brown the sculptor of our search. Behind him stood the personal knowledge, and, what was equally fortunate, a most excellent photograph by Smales. I cannot regard this snap-shot picture other than a portion of our rare good luck, for it gives us Gibson as we knew him—in his out-of-door garb, and in the very act, too, of his devotion to nature. It has enabled the modeler to produce a likeness, which I believe future generations must instinctively feel as good—just as we of to-day looking at the engraving of Shakespeare in the original folio edition of his works instinctively feel it is scarcely more than a travesty of the poet, that man of infinite fancy and wit. But since Shakespeare’s time, the graphic arts of expression, more particularly of engraving have progressed to such a degree of perfection that it is quite possible now to attain to the subtlest degree of an artist’s thought. Likewise in sculpture is this attainable—so much so that we shall to-day be able to read in the unveiled bronze the individual characteristics of the one whom we would portray.

“I was pleased in looking at the Medallion last week to discover a butterfly hovering over the convolvulus vine so accurately preserved and so gracefully worked into the composition—because as you will remember this was the emblem of immortality with the Greeks—a most appropriate symbol, too, in this instance; for when you come to think of it, Gibson was in spirit a good deal of an old Greek himself. He was one in his joyousness, in his large and passionate appreciation of out-of-door life, and more than all in his love of the beautiful. Beauty of form and color as he saw it in nature was a sort of visible divinity—a palpable happiness, heaven come down to earth; he viewed it in the conception of Gautier, the French poet—as an all-pervading yet delicate mantle let down by God to cover the nakedness of the world for the delight of his children. Of this mantle he always found enough to clothe his pictures with poetic truth, nay, more, for into the fine vesture of his thought he frequently wove a scientific fact of such intrinsic value as to win renown as a naturalist.

“Other boys will leave this Gunnery and we hope win as distinguished laurels as did Gibson; for is it not, as James Russell Lowell has said of Harvard, all but impossible to rub up against these walls without taking away something that no other institution can give? But be this as it may, it is not probable that there will soon be found among the Alumni a man of such rare versatility. The combination of his gifts has been recognized far beyond the confines of this little hamlet; but because it was here that he began his life’s work, here ended it, here that he made his home, and here that the mortal part of him lies near us, it seems particularly appropriate we should erect an enduring memorial to his worth. For how few of us who have dipped into his books or followed him in our walks but can repeat the words of the blind man of old, who in the ecstasy of a new vision cried ‘Whereas I was blind now I see.’”

William Hamilton Gibson

BIBLIOGRAPHY

OF THE WRITINGS OF

WILLIAM HAMILTON GIBSON

NOTE

“The American Agriculturist.”

“Hearth and Home.”

“Appleton’s Encyclopedia” (Botanical Drawings).

“Picturesque America.”

“Success with Small Fruits,” E. P. Roe.

“In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers,” Elaine and Dora Goodale.

The Heart of the White Mountains,” S. A. Drake.

“The Master of the Gunnery.”

“Nature’s Serial Story,” E. P. Roe.

“The Pictorial Longfellow.”

“Sketches in the South,” Charles Dudley Warner and Rebecca Harding Davis.

Books for the Country

NATURE STUDIES IN BERKSHIRE. By John Coleman Adams. With 16 illustrations in photogravure from original photographs by Arthur Scott. 8º, gilt top, $4.50. Popular edition, illustrated, 8º, $2.50.

“The book on the whole is a sane and sympathetic tribute to nature, a tribute that is much enhanced by the accompanying beautiful photographs.”—Chicago Tribune.

LANDSCAPE GARDENING. Notes and Suggestions on Lawns and Lawn-Planting, Laying out and Arrangement of Country Places, Large and Small Parks, etc. By Samuel Parsons, Jr., Ex-Superintendent of Parks, New York City. With nearly 200 illustrations. Large 8º, $3.50.

“Mr. Parsons proves himself a master of his art as a landscape gardener, and this superb book should be studied by all who are concerned in the making of parks in other cities,”—Philadelphia Bulletin.

LAWNS AND GARDENS. How to Beautify the Home Lot, the Pleasure Ground, and Garden. By N. Jönsson-Rose, of the Department of Public Parks, New York City. With 172 plans and illustrations. Large 8º, gilt top, $3.50.

“Mr. Jönsson-Rose has prepared a treatise which will prove of genuine value to the large and increasing number of those who take a personal interest in their home grounds. It does not aim above the intelligence or æsthetic sense of the ordinary American citizen who has never given any thought to planting and to whom some of the profounder principles of garden-art make no convincing appeal.”—Garden and Forest.

ORNAMENTAL SHRUBS. For Garden, Lawn, and Park Planting. By Lucius D. Davis. With over 100 illustrations. 8º, $3.50.

“Mr. Davis writes with authority upon his chosen theme.... The book is full of information upon the subject of which it treats, and contains many suggestions that will prove helpful.”—N. Y. Times.

THE LEAF COLLECTOR’S HANDBOOK AND HERBARIUM. An aid in the preservation and in the classification of specimen leaves of the trees of Northeastern America. By Charles S. Newhall. Illustrated. 8º, $2.00.

“The idea of the book is so good and so simple as to recommend itself at a glance to everybody who cares to know our trees or to make for any purpose a collection of their leaves.”—N. Y. Critic.

THE WONDERS OF PLANT LIFE. By Mrs. S. B. Herrick. Fully illustrated. 16º, $1.50.

“A dainty volume ... opens up a whole world of fascination ... full of information.”—Boston Advertiser.

THE HOME LIFE OF WILD BIRDS. A new method of the study and photography of birds. By Francis H. Herrick. With 141 illustrations from life. 4º, net, $2.50.

Mr. Herrick has perfected an invention that brings the birds beneath his eye, and beneath the eye of his camera, in a way hitherto unheard of. At an actual distance of about 2 feet from the nest, the author and his camera stand. From that point of vantage they watch and record every movement of the bird family.

OUR INSECT FRIENDS AND FOES. How to Collect, Preserve and Study Them. By Belle S. Cragin. With over 250 illustrations. 8º, $1.75

“Although primarily intended for boys and girls, it can hardly fail to enlist the aid of the older members of the family; and for the amateur collector of all ages who has all the requisite enthusiasm but lacks a practical knowledge of the art of preserving specimens, it should receive a warm welcome.”—Commercial Advertiser.

AMONG THE MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES. By Julia P. Ballard. Illustrated. 8º, $1.50.

“The book, which is handsomely illustrated, is designed for young readers, relating some of the most curious facts of natural history in a singularly pleasant and instructive manner.”—N. Y. Tribune.

BIRD STUDIES. An account of the Land Birds of Eastern North America. By William E.D. Scott. With 166 illustrations from original photographs. Quarto, leather back, gilt top, in a box, net, $5.00.

“A book of first class importance.... Mr. Scott has been a field naturalist for upwards of thirty years, and few persons have a more intimate acquaintance than he with bird life. His work will take high rank for scientific accuracy and we trust it may prove successful.”—London Speaker.

WILD FLOWERS OF THE NORTHEASTERN STATES. Drawn and carefully described from life, without undue use of scientific nomenclature, by Ellen Miller and Margaret C. Whiting. With 308 illustrations the size of life. 8º, net, $3.00.

“Anybody who can read English can use the work and make his identifications, and, in the case of some of the flowers, the drawings alone furnish all that is necessary.... The descriptions are as good of their kind as the drawings are of theirs.”—N. Y. Times.

THE SHRUBS OF NORTHEASTERN AMERICA. By Charles S. Newhall. Fully illustrated. 8º, $1.75.

“This volume is beautifully printed on beautiful paper, and has a list of 116 illustrations calculated to explain the text. It has a mine of precious information, such as is seldom gathered within the covers of such a volume.”—Baltimore Farmer.

THE VINES OF NORTHEASTERN AMERICA. By Charles S. Newhall. Fully illustrated. 8º, $1.75.

“The work is that of the true scientist, artistically presented in a popular form to an appreciative class of readers.”—The Churchman.

THE TREES OF NORTHEASTERN AMERICA. By Charles S. Newhall. With illustrations made from tracings of the leaves of the various trees. 8º, $1.75.

“We believe this is the most complete and handsome volume of its kind, and on account of its completeness and the readiness with which it imparts information that everybody needs and few possess, it is invaluable.”—Binghamton Republican.

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, 27 & 29 West 23d St., New York