Putnam Patriot

"JIMMY" WHISTLER OF POMFRET

Among the busts unveiled in the Hall of Fame the other day was that of James McNeil Whistler, a gentleman of temperament and artistic ability whose fame as a personality lingers, unlike that of many another artist, side by side with his genius as a painter and etcher. Whatever Mr. Pennell, Whistler's biographer may have said of his Continental life and exploits, there remain a few venerable ladies and gentlemen to whom the great Whistler is still "Jimmy" Whistler of Pomfret. When he was a boy Whistler lived in the house in Pomfret which is now the rectory of Holy Trinity Church. Thence he went to West Point, where he was none too good a cadet, and afterwards to Europe for fame, fights with Ruskin and others and a career of international artistic acclaim. In an admirable article which she contributed to The Patriot some years ago, Miss Boult of Pomfret, outlined, after considerable research, the schoolboy years of Whistler in Windham County. Mrs. Charles W. Grosvenor still remembers "Jimmy" as a mischievous fellow, and the late Miss Amaryllis Mathewson remarked of him, "What I best remember about Jimmy Whistler is that the teacher never got the better of him." The late Mrs. Cavely, a delightful character in Pomfret's tradition, told, in a letter now preserved in the Library of Congress, how she and Jimmy Whistler together had thrown corn-cobs through all of the windows of a house that stood across from the present site of Holy Trinity Church. Perhaps this exploit was a forewarning of "The Importance of Making Enemies."