The New York herald., 1922-03-19
CHRONICLE AND
COMMENT

4 q
laugh, the screaming 'Ha. Ha.'-a
I terror to his enemies, and some
thing of a terror TO his friends also.
+! Not bit of real merriment in it.
but a trumpet assertion of Whis-
tiers presence and omnipresence.
There is the extraordinary preoccu-
patton with his own physical per-
sonality. In some respects no
doubt he was handsome. A good
authority declares that in early
youth he must have been "a pocket
Apollo At any rate. to use his pet
word, he was always amazing.
The white lock, whether he came by
! it by inheritance or accident, what
an ensign it was to blaze out the
coming of the Master. Just so Tom
Sawyer triumphed in his deleted
front TOOTH"
!; r IKE Poe, Whistler was liar.
IL Like Poe, his particular lies
had to do with his age and his
birthplace. Poe was born in BOs-
ton, and his early poem. "Tamer-
lane" was published as: by a Bos-
tonian" But in later life he denied
Boston. claiming other cities as his
birthplace. Baltimore was his ia
vorite. 1t was also one OF Whis-
tiers favorites. In fact, Whistler
was born in Lowell. ''He did not
like it, would have preferred his
mothers Southern dwelling place,
and sometimes implied he was born
in Baltimore. He declared in court
that he was born in st. Petersburg.
/ He once said to an inquisitive
model: My child, / never was born.
came from on high: and the
model answered, with a frivolous
impertinence that charmed him. L
should say you came from below
He was as reticent about his age as
he was about his birthplace
Su OW | should like to get some
IL glimpse of Henry James in
love-" exclaims Mr.. Bradford.
But this side of his life is com
pletely hidden from us. He makes
no allusion to it in the autobiogra-
ply, and there is no hint of it in
his letters. Yet his novels are sat
urated with love, contain, in fact,
little or nothing else, though it is
love quintescenced and alembicated
till it hardly knows itself. One
would suppose that there was plenty
OF it in his life. And his love let
ters would have been one of the
euriosities of literature. Fancy the
subtleties, the spiritual doublings,
the harassing doubts and questions
and qualifications, Yet this may be
~all wrong. and actual, absorbing
love might have. simplified and
clarified his soul beyond anything
else on earth. Who can say? Unless
some woman still lives who has
some of those letters. All that
comes to us is the lovely, searching,
pathetic suggestion in six words !:
stba .farxad rop,apoa 80 50, l;fa
IGF the Southern poet Sidney
~ Lanier. His large, sunny
cheerfulness was infectious, in
spired .cheerfulness in all about
him, even strangers. As one who
knew him well said: If he took his
place in a crowded horse car an ex-
hilarating atmosphere seemed to be
introduced by his breezy ways Or
as he himself expressed ii, from the
deeper, inner point of view. any
bitterness is therefore small and
unworthy of a poet Not but that
he had a temper. could feel poets
fiery indignation at wrong or mean
ness or injustice, as when he stood
up in his place in the middle of an
orchestra rehearsal and told the
conductor. who had spoken brutally
, to young woman at the piano, just
what he thought of him. But the