Documents associated with: Abdullah, Abu
Record 2 of 2
System Number: 07883
Date: [October 1882?][1]
Author: JW
Place: [London]
Recipient: Francis Cowley Burnand[2]
Place: [London]
Repository: Library of Congress
Call Number: Manuscript Division, Pennell-Whistler Collection, PWC 1/10/1
Document Type: ALS
I hear my dear Burnand that you have fallen under the fascinations of the modern Macaire[3] - otherwise Boabdil el Chico[4]! alias "The Owl[5]" - known to you as Charles Augustus Howell!! -
Also that as a matter of course you are are full of admiration and ardour - [p. 2] ready to fight in his cause -
My dear we have all gone through the phase - You are only a little late - that is all -
Ask Pelegrini[6] [sic] - and Mitford[7] and hosts of others - and meanwhile as I hear that poor Kicky[8] and Charles Keen[9] [sic] are looked upon coldly as deriders of our hero, I have promised to send the accompanying "Paddon Papers[10]" -
If you have twenty minutes to spare read them quietly through, - Envoi and all, letting letting them unfold their tale gradually, and if you are greatly bored try and forgive
Yours always
[butterfly signature]
'Whistler -[11]'
This document is protected by copyright.
Notes:
1. [October 1882?]
Dated by reference to publication (see below).
2. Francis Cowley Burnand
Francis Cowley Burnand (1836-1917), barrister, dramatist and journalist [more].
3. Macaire
Robert Macaire was a clever, ruthless rogue and dandy, played by the actor Frédérick Lemaître (1800-1876), in L'Auberge des Adrets, Théâtre Ambigu-Comique, 1823. The story of Macaire and his companion Bertrand was told in the 1830s in a series of political cartoons in Le Charivari, scripted by Charles Philipon (1806-1862), journalist, printmaker and caricaturist [more], with lithographs by Honoré Victorin Daumier (1808-1879), caricaturist, printmaker, painter, and sculptor [more] (see Maurice, Arthur Bartlett and Frederic Taber Cooper, History of the Nineteenth Century in Caricature, London, 1904).
4. Boabdil el Chico
Abu Abdullah, or 'Boabdil', the last Moorish ruler of Granada (1482-1492).
5. The Owl
Charles Augustus ('Owl') Howell (1840? - d.1890), entrepreneur [more].
6. Pelegrini
Carlo Pellegrini (1839-1889), alias 'Ape', cartoonist for Vanity Fair, designer and lithographer [more].
7. Mitford
Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford (1837-1916), Lord Redesdale (1886), diplomat, Secretary of the Office of Works, and collector [more].
8. Kicky
George Louis Palmella Busson Du Maurier (1834-1896), author and caricaturist [more].
9. Charles Keen
Charles Samuel Keene (1823-1891), etcher, cartoonist and illustrator [more].
10. Paddon Papers
Whistler, James McNeill, Correspondence. Paddon Papers. The Owl and the Cabinet, London, [1882].
11. Whistler
Written in another hand.