Whistler Stories

Found - Whistler Stories (Harper, New York 1913) put together by Don C Seitz. Many of the stories associated with the artist James McNeill Whistler are ironic

jokes about his incredible self regard ('...responding to an admirer who stated that there were only two great painters – Velasquez and himself. “Why drag in Velasquez.”') or withering put downs. This exchange with Oscar Wilde is a good example of the latter:

Wilde asked the artist's opinion upon a poem which he had written, presenting a copy to be read. Whistler read it and was handing it back without comment. 
“Well," queried Wilde, “do you perceive any worth?" 
“It's worth its weight in gold," replied Whistler. 
The poem was written on the very thinnest tissue-paper,

Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde

From a large spiritualist collection this curiosity Psychic Messages from Oscar Wilde (Psychic Book Club, London 1924) published 24 years after his death and purporting to be spirit communications from purgatory with the great writer. Why Oscar was in purgatory and not heaven is not explained (although he famously said 'I don't want to go to heaven. None of my friends are there.') One of the communicants, Eric Dingwall (described online as '...a man of many parts – psychical researcher, librarian, book and antique collector, anthropologist, sexologist, intelligence operative) was no mere gullible spiritualist and occasionally they get Oscar's tone...his damning opinion of Joyce's recently published Ulysses is interesting, but it seems more likely Oscar would have approved...

COPY OF AUTOMATIC SCRIPT OBTAINED MONDAY,

JUNE 18TH, 1923.

Present.-Mr. V., Mrs. Travers Smith, Mr. B., Mr. Dingwall (Research
Officer of the Society for Psychical Research), Miss Cummins.

Mr. V. was the automatist, Mrs. T.S. touching his hand.

Oscar Wilde. Being dead is the most boring experience in life. That is,if one excepts being married or dining with a schoolmaster. Do you doubt my identity? I am not surprised, since sometimes I doubt it myself. I might retaliate by doubting yours. I have always admired the Society for
Psychical Research. They are the most magnificent doubters in the world. They are never happy until they have explained away their spectres. And one suspects a genuine ghost would make them exquisitely uncomfortable. I have sometimes thought of founding an academy of celestial doubters...which might be a sort of Society for Psychical Research among
the living. No one under sixty would be admitted, and we should call ourselves the Society of Superannuated Shades. Our first object might well be to insist on investigating at once into the reality of the existence of, say, Mr. Dingwall.

Mr. Dingwall, is he romance or reality?

Notes and Queries - 2 Queries

Notes and Queries is a British periodical. It was originally subtitled "a medium of inter-communication for literary men, artists, antiquaries, genealogists, etc". Its motto was "When found, make a note of", from the catchphrase of Capt. Cuttle, a character in Dickens' Dombey and Son (1848). Dickens himself was a contributor, as were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Skeat and Frederick Rolfe (Baron Corvo.) Most contributors were pseudonymous or anonymous. Ironically it was first produced to combat the perceived lowering of intellectual standards caused by 'railway mania' - but the trains allowed for its swift printing and distribution. Parallels with the web are often made - some referring to it as the 'Victorian Internet.'


The most intriguing section was 'Queries' where contributors asked for information on subjects they were studying. A typical query on London history from one 'E.F.R.'


The Strand Maypole.—What was the ultimate fate of the "tall Maypole" which "once o'erlooked the Strand"?  The answer came in the next issue. ***

166 years later Jot101's motto 'found it, read it, posted it' echoes Captain Cuttle's "When found,make a note of" and in the same spirit here are a couple of queries:


Somewhere  Oscar Wilde wrote the most significant thing in British history was the leather trousers of some royal personage. Not sure where he wrote this and what he actually said. Possibly in undergraduate notes.

Colin Wilson wrote that it was hard to imagine a potentially happier situation than a young millionaire lying on his yacht in the Aegean with all the summer still ahead of him. Possibly girls were lying by his side...Where was this? It might have been in a book of essays - some on H P Lovecraft.

***It was taken down about the year 1717, when it was found to measure a hundred feet. It was obtained by Sir Isaac Newton, and borne on a carriage, for timber, to Wanstead, in Essex, the seat of the Earl of Tylney, where, under the direction of the Reverend Mr. Pound Breton, it was placed in the Park, for the erection of a telescope, the largest then in the world, presented by a French gentleman to the Royal Society.