"Whistler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... deck of a handsome yacht named the Whistler. She was as clean cut as a craft could be, and carried a spread of snowy white sails which would have gladdened the heart ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... his hands and throwing out his arms with a satisfied gesture, he rose and walked to the fireplace, over which hung a large portrait of his mother and several photographs, one of these taken in the exact attitude and costume of the painting of Whistler's mother in the Luxembourg gallery. M. Paul was proud of the striking resemblance between the two women. For some moments he stood before the fine, kindly face, and then he said aloud, as if speaking to ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... landscapes, 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 caught and pictured for ever. Let us look, too, at his 'Valparaiso,' bathed in a brilliant ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... 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 ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... one or two 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 loud, ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... became known the world over. It has long been a favorite restaurant with men like Rodin, the sculptor—and Colin, the painter—and the late Falguiere—and Jean Paul Laurens and Bonnat, and dozens of others equally celebrated—and with our own men, like Whistler and Sargent and Harrison, and ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... basin which deepens towards the centre in successive steps, is an adaptation of the pattern of a well-known oriental fountain. All is equally black in this pool, and the border unfortunately is barely distinguishable from the water. After a dinner party at which Sir E. Burne-Jones, Mr. Whistler, Mr. Albert Moore, and many others were present, I recollect how, when we were smoking and drinking coffee in this hall, somebody, excitedly discoursing, stepped unaware right into the fountain. Two large Japanese gold tench, whose somnolent existence ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... 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 ...
— Adventures in the Arts - Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets • Marsden Hartley
... 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 plainly meant to strike the popular judgment. Whistler's pictures ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... Hub to play this closing series, and that its true condition was kept a secret by the management, one writer going so far as to say that Manager Ewing's brother John was at that time disabled by a sprained ankle, while Rusie was suffering from a bruised leg, and also that Whistler had been playing at first base so well that Ewing thought he could afford to give Conner a day or two off, all of which may have been true, though I am free to confess right now that I do not ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... 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
... 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, under various titles, ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... technique and arrangement his pupils 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 ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... Penny Whistler, grudge That I your instrument debase: By worse performers still we judge, And give that fife a ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... suspicion upon several occasions. But the police could gather no positive evidence against him, at any time. The robbery of the Hailesbury gallery at London, when the famous Whistler portrait of the Duchess of Winterton was cut from its frame, was traced almost to his door. But the scent died out before they could clinch the matter, and he escaped. It was believed that the thing was planned by him and ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... prematurely low sun struggling through the haze, as Raffles and I emerged from the nether regions at Westminster Bridge, and stood for one moment to admire the infirm silhouettes of Abbey and Houses in flat gray against a golden mist. Raffles murmured of Whistler and of Arthur Severn, and threw away a good Sullivan because the smoke would curl between him and the picture. It is perhaps the picture that I can now see clearest of all the set scenes of our lawless life. But ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... 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 ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... called them tributes. The neighbors said it was the doctor first, then Emmeline, then the undertaker—the undertaker never got in ahead of Emmeline but once, and then she hung fire on a rhyme for the dead person's name, which was Whistler. She warn't ever the same after that; she never complained, but she kinder pined away and did not live long. Poor thing, many's the time I made myself go up to the little room that used to be hers and get out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... rule) either "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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... up with what Steptoe considered to be mettle. Though the picture she presented was stamped on his mind as resembling the proud mien of the girl in Whistler's Yellow Buskin, he didn't think of that ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... and the stalwart-man stand near us to-night; they are in half-light, leaning against the rail, looking out into the darkness. I wished Whistler might have seen them; he alone could have caught the soft night colours—the black so velvety and colourful, blurred into the dark blue of the night sky, with never the suggestion of an outline, and just one touch of subdued warm colour on the bend of her neck. Sometimes her scarf floats lightly ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... of interest. The sky was throbbing with carmine and gold, and the varying lights of green and white, reflected in a river sentinelled on either side by high black buildings and pointed towers, left an impression on me of Whistler-like beauty. ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... art can lay just claim to having more than their share of whim, but the musical profession has no reason to be abashed, for it is a good second. However, the actor's and the musician's art are often not far separated. In speaking to James McNeil Whistler of a certain versatile musician, a lady once said, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... nearer it came and mellower and mellower it grew. He had never before heard anyone whistle so beautifully. It was like a song, but it was evident that someone was entering their happy valley, and in that wilderness who could come but an enemy? Nearer and nearer the whistler drew and the musical note of the whistling and its echoes filled ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... 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 of the reproductions astonished ...
— A Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward Bok
... too amazed for speech, for this was the first time she herself had ever heard the young whistler. "Father calls her the dearest little nuisance in town. She is one of the most original pieces I ever saw in my life—always into mischief, and always trying to help someone. But truly, I had no idea she could whistle like that. Mr. Strong, what ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... whistle of antelope's horn that he 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 ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... ask you which are the most famous American game birds, you may answer without hesitation, 'Bob White, Ruffed Grouse, and Woodcock'—the whistler, the drummer, and the sky dancer—all three good Citizens ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... 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
... 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
... 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, accepted a contract to effect this. They were to have the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 455 - Volume 18, New Series, September 18, 1852 • Various
... on the point 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 ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... no 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 soda-water (with the mark of Schweppe, no less) stood ready on a butler's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other artists and 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 ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... and was indulging in the philosophical reflection that a real and quite unaccountable miracle, the more universal the better, would be the most splendid justification of life I could possibly conceive, when the whistler began again, only a few yards ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... many critical souls, James McNeill Whistler for one, who had no patience with other English resorts. It pleased us, too. It was ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... 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
... 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 himself ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... libellous, and as plaintiff he got a farthing damages, without costs; very much, it is understood, to his critic's disgust, and little to his own satisfaction, as is evident from the character of the pamphlet he wrote afterwards in retaliation, entitled "Whistler versus Ruskin: Art and ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... placidly among the 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
... them; but we 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... 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 'em, time and agin she's done it, I'm tellin' ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... Fantin-Latour. This homage had its uses. The disciples became a swelling, noisy chorus, and in 1904 the Cezanne room was thronged by overheated enthusiasts who would have offered violence to the first critical dissident. The older men, the followers of Monet, Manet, Degas, and Whistler, talked as if the end of the world had arrived. Art is a serious affair in Paris. However, after Cezanne appeared the paintings of that half-crazy, unlucky genius, Vincent van Gogh, and of the gifted, brutal Gauguin. And in the face of such offerings ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... then a taxi whirred through the sloppy street, but there were few wayfarers. Once a boy passed whistling, and the man at the window above stiffened a little, as if in some fashion the careless melody stirred him, but as the whistler turned the corner he relaxed again with his head back, and resumed his attitude ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... ridiculously when we depart from the Greek standard. Your Whistler never achieved fame until he stopped reproducing bits of nature and devoted his ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... by the American school, and yet 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 ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Painting • John C. Van Dyke
... climbed the 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 to ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... Hudson, the college tonsor and common 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 ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... what of the particular form of wizardry practised so successfully by the celebrated Mrs. Whistler, one of whose names is, according to the Talmud, that ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... The whistler must have felt my presence, for the air suddenly stopped in the middle of a bar. An unbounded curiosity seized me to know who the fellow could be. So I started in and finished ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... Burns; for when Burns confessed excess he did not defend it. But he has cast a gigantic shadow on our literature, and was as certainly a genius as Poe. Also he had humour, which Poe had not. And if any one still smarting from the pinpricks of Wilde or Whistler, wants to convict them of plagiarism in their "art for art" epigrams—he will find most of what they said said better in Murder as One ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... not withstand this dynamic little stranger. He did not sue; he invited: he did not invite; he commanded. He was twenty-one years old. He wore spectacles that flashed more than any other pair ever seen. He was a wit. He was brimful of ideas. He knew Whistler. He knew Daudet and the Goncourts. He knew every one in Paris. He knew them all by heart. He was Paris in Oxford. It was whispered that, so soon as he had polished off his selection of dons, he was going to include a few undergraduates. It was a proud day for me when I—I was included. I liked ...
— Enoch Soames - A Memory of the Eighteen-nineties • Max Beerbohm
... Whistler's case were these: Mrs. Whistler has singular absence of mind, and on the last Sunday she attended church Dr. Dox began to read from the Scriptures the account of the Deluge. Mrs. Whistler was deeply attentive; and when the doctor came to the story of how it rained for so many days and nights, ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... 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
... from the shelter of a porch to hearken, as those boyish lips sent forth in flute-like tones the melody of "Home, Sweet Home." Hearkening, he followed, fearing he should lose the music which impressed him, all unknowing why; and as the whistler left the last village house behind him and set out to run over the long stretch of lonely road, which lay between that and the Mansion, ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... laughs were heard on the smallest provocation. Certainly the vision that met Felicity in the mirror was exhilarating enough. Dressed in the softest of blues, with a large brown hat on her golden hair, she looked like a pastel—a combination of the vagueness, remoteness, and delicacy of a Whistler with the concrete piquancy of a sketch in ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... SET IT DOWN."—"Mr. J. McN. WHISTLER," it was remarked by one of his visitors on the closing day of his recent Exhibition, "has in his Catalogue put down all unfavourable criticisms." How, in this respect, would all of us like to imitate ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 23, 1892 • Various
... "It's so like Whistler!" she exclaimed, with a wave towards the shore, as she shook Rachel by the hand, and Rachel had only time to look at the grey hills on one side of her before Willoughby introduced Mrs. Chailey, who took the lady ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... was no next station. All the art of a 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 made on him. With a little hesitation, ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... of shell," he said, in answer to our queries. "The one that burst there," he pointed with his whip towards the field where the shrapnel had exploded: "'Twas only a whistler." ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... "but I see all these people chiefly as men and women who are shut out of things: books and pictures and plays and music and all the decent things. I don't believe that if they had the chance they would all read Meredith and admire Whistler and go to see Shaw's plays and want to listen to Wagner ... that's not the point, and anyhow the middle and the upper classes are not all marvellously cultured. My point is that their lives are such that they don't even know of Meredith and Whistler and Shaw and Wagner. ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... Beckley, or Becksley, in Sussex, there are portraits on glass, In a window, of 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 frontispiece to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... 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 at himself ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... cloud upon the soul, when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity, and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay. Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old indeed when you and I were young. They twisted even decent sin ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... almost everything depends on personal interpretation—on the gesture, the walk, the gaze, the tone of a Siddons, the ruse smile of a Coquelin, the exquisite, vibrant intonation of a Bernhardt. 'English Art?' exclaimed Whistler, 'there is no such thing! Art is art and mathematics is mathematics.' Whistler erred. Precisely because Art is Art, and Mathematics is Mathematics and a Science, Art being Art can be English or French; and, more than this, must be the personal expression of an Englishman or a Frenchman, as ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... 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 ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... 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. ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham |
