UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

The Corresponence of James McNeil Whistler
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Documents associated with: health (JW)
Record 129 of 172

System Number: 09088
Date: [10 February 1901][1]
Author: JW
Place: [Corsica]
Recipient: Charles Lang Freer[2]
Place: [Detroit]
Repository: Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow
Call Number: GLAHA 46308
Document Type: ALfd[3]


Dear Mr Freer -

You will be amazed to find me calmly writing from Napoleons Bonaparte's[4] Island! - Happily you know that it is not my way to seek my effects in the [trappings?] glories of others ... Well they Still "Napoleon[5] and I" .... Enfin - curiously enough you speak of this health of mine .. and it is because of it that I am away from my work shops - and have wandered, seeking sun and warmth

which I abstain[6] from presenting in person just now because of my delicate feeling which you so well remember

I would bring them in person but

The Delicacy of feeling, you well you know, alone prevents my presenting this in person just now. the delicate feeling you know in me -

[p. 2, drawing[7]]


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Notes:

1.  [10 February 1901]
Dated from other versions of this letter (#01520 and #03190). Also dated by Merrill (see below).

2.  Charles Lang Freer
Charles Lang Freer (1856-1919), industrialist, collector and founder of the Freer Gallery of Art [more].

3.  ALfd
The final version of this letter was published in Merrill, Linda, With Kindest Regards. The Correspondence of Charles Lang Freer and James McNeill Whistler, 1890-1903, Washington and London, 1995, no. 44, pp. 133-35.

4.  Bonaparte's Island
JW visited Algiers, Marseilles, and finally Napoleon's birthplace, Corsica, in the winter in 1900 to 1901.

5.  Napoleon
Napoléon Bonaparte (1769-1821), Emperor of France [more].

6.  which I abstain
'which I abstain ... know in me' were written at a different time, upside down on the same sheet, to an unidentified recipient on an unknown subject.

7.  drawing
Adam and Eve (M.1697), a study connected with a competition for Pears' soap.