Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-05-11
The Immortal Mother
Running Blockade Dd Mother Rkd Her Life Go Her Son. 7he
Went Also Curious Immortality
and Symbol Motherhood Is Told This Mothers Day Story

when he came to Mrs. Whistler with
the captains message, was whiStling
with unnecessary loudneSS tune that
he thought was "My Bonny Lies Over
the Ocean," and that Mrs. Whistler Laid
her hands on his lean shoulders and
asked him if he were good boy. The
boy blushed and Mr.. Hill and Mrs.
Whistler were sure that he was not q
bad boy, and she said as much to the
master of the Advance after she had
thanked him for coming so magnifl-
Gently through the blockade. And Mr..
Hill remembered that when they had
arrived in Liverpool the boy blushed
nightly when Mrs. Whistler kissed him
good-by and hoped that he would come
safely home to his mother.
TT was in this fashion that Mrs. Anna
Mathilda Mcneil Whistler, at once
the most celebrated and the most OBJ
scure woman of American birth, took
leave of her native shores for the last
time. Her last glimpse of the mouth of
Cape Fear River, beside which she was
born, was lighted by the glare of the
guns of the Federal feet early in 1864,
when, serenely, she ran the gamut Of
death through the blockade to a curious
sort Of anonymous Immortality.
In that one heroic enterprise many
lesser women might have got for them
selves a sort of legendary renown. 1t
is no small thing to have been the only
woman to brave the incredible dangers
of running the blockade of the might
lest feet ever assembled and to have
come through it serenely and unframed.
Women did not, ordinarily, do such
things in the middle of the last CEN
fury. Mrs. Whistler might at least
have been famous.
It is a curious sort of immortality to
which this mother went through the
concentrated fury of $50 ships of war.
She was not in search of any sort of
fame, any sort of immortality. It was
simply that beyond the ring of ships
and death was her boy Jamie, who
needed her when he had come from
Paris to London in the early 1905 to
begin his career as an artist and con-
troversialist.
Five million prints of a picture that
was called, simply, 1.-The Mother" have
been printed and have made their way
to every corner of the earth. Univer-
sally the woman in this painting is the
embodiment of motherhood--this slight,
serene woman who smiled and was not
afraid when death rained about her.
For the mother of James McNeill
Whistler has come to be the mother Of
mankind.
Almost always she had been the
mother. Oldest of five children of a
distinguished North Carolina family;
she had maternal duties thrust upon
her early, when her own mother died.
Still a girl, she became the mistress Of
the ancient house of the McNeills Of
Bladen, in North Carolina, and was
charged with the care of her younger
sisters and one brother. The latter be-
came Maj. William Gibbs MCNEIL Of
the United States Army, thus breaking
the traditions of the family for a hun
dred years in America.
the McNeills, since they came to Amer
1873 from the Isle Of Skye, had been
rs and physicians. Long before theFRevo-
the Donald McNeill of that day had
great brick mansion on the plantation
, Cape Fear River. Sons Of the family
educated at Princeton and in Scotland.
McNeills brother, William Gibbs McNeill,
lie last of his clan, and it was through
rat his sisters horizon was widened un-
has become the anonymous, but uni
symbol of motherhood.
one vacation during his years at West
int he brought a classmate home with
George Washington Whistler. And
years later, Whistler became a wild
he again met the serene, motherly
sister of his friend and married her.
the family had removed to New York,
DR.. McNeill, with characteristics that
e made his grandson a fantastic figure
other sphere, had attracted wide
e.
/ Mathilda MCNEIL married Maj George
lgton Whistler and became the mother
les Mcneil Whistler. The biographies
son are curiously reticent about her.
throughout his life she Is there,
warm, gray shadow in the background
existence. She was there when the
went to Russia when the boy was O
;, weak lad. Her diary Of that t1me