System Number: 05021
Date: 5 April 1892
Author: Francis Gerard Prange[1]
Place: [London]
Recipient: JW
Place: [Paris]
Repository: Glasgow University Library
Call Number: MS Whistler P661
Document Type: ALS
5 April 1892
[crown over circular belt with rose, thistle and shamrock crest:]
THE REFORM CLUB
Mon cher Maitre,
Your charming note[2] has given me more pleasure than any thing has done for long days & I shall always treasure it. Thank you for your kind consent to our wishes & thank you doubly for the sentence in which you conveyed it.
Your words "good fellowship of the few" made me very dreamy - dear Whistler - truly I rejoice to say that I never doubted and when I saw your Symphony[3] in [p. 2] White the other day - the first of your creations which the faithful remember and I recollected the years glidden away & the kindlinesses of long ago. - the crowded room disappeared. & I saw ghosts.
The Exhibition[4] was a deep pleasure to me and the Catalogue delighted my heart - & made me laugh like a boy.
Certes! have I read your letter to Atlas[5] anent Jones[6] a r a y d as "You like it"
And now - your words have made me homesick for sun & cheeriness. Our Archie[7] returns towards the [p. 3] middle of this month. I want to meet him in Paris & see you at the same time under a kindlier sky. Will you be there all April?
I have written Shannon[8] & Archie and shall show them your letter - I won't send it - for I do not trust them sufficiently
Dear Whistler - I serre[9] your hands & am
yrs cordially
F G Prange
P. T. O.
[p. 4] The Reform Club. is always my best address:
This document is protected by copyright.
Notes:
1. Francis Gerard Prange
Francis Gerard Prange (b. ca 1843), London art dealer [more].
3. Symphony
Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl (YMSM 52).
4. Exhibition
Nocturnes, Marines and Chevalet Pieces, Boussod, Valadon & Cie, Goupil Gallery, London, 1892.
5. Atlas
Edmund Hodgson Yates (1831-1894), novelist, 'Atlas' columnist and editor-proprietor of the World [more]. JW's letter to him on 26 March 1892 (#11430) was published in the World. See Whistler, James McNeill, [Letter to Atlas], The World: A Journal For Men and Women, no. 926, vol. 36, 30 March 1892, p. 22.
6. Jones
Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833-1898), painter and designer [more], mentioned in JW's letter, op.cit.
7. Archie
Archibald James Stuart-Wortley (1849-1905), painter, first President of the Society of Portrait Painters [more]. They wished JW to exhibit with the Society of Portrait Painters.
8. Shannon
James Jebusa Shannon (1862-1923), genre and portrait painter [more].
9. serre
Fr., shake.