Arts and Letters

When Charles Dana Gibson died in December last, for many of us a warm, bright, and steady light went out: the afterglow endures. If I speak this morning of Dana Gibson as a man, rather than of his work, it is because the latter has been so universally recognized that I could add little; but of Dana Gibson as a man and a friend of many years there is much I could say. I must be forgiven if this tribute is rather personal.

Most of us know his history. He was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1867. When he was a small boy his family moved to Flushing, Long Island, where he spent the greater part of his youth. There he wandered the countryside—then more open than it is today—hunting, fishing, boating, and learning the secrets that nature offers to those who are eager to learn. When the 1939 World's Fair was proposed on the Flushing Meadows, he told me that there was not a spring or bog or a water-hole he did not know by heart. "Tell Bob Moses I'll show him where he can find solid ground in that marsh. I've been up to my neck in most of it." He learned less from books than from nature and men, though he once said that in his school days he had been a conscientious, if not studious, pupil; he never went to college.

His early attempts to break into the art world met, as is all too common, with meager success, but he knew what he wanted to do and had inherited from a long line of New England ancestors industry and perseverance. We have often heard that his ability, as a youngster, to cut silhouettes with a pair of scissors first brought his artistic qualities into notice, but I was astonished one evening a year ago, when I dropped in for a talk, to find him alone with a sheet of paper and a pair of scissors cutting out strange unrecognizable shapes which, by bending and twisting, turned into three dimensional paper sculpture. The art of sculpture has always intrigued me, but to have the farseeing imagination to know how a weird flat piece of paper could be transformed into a most lifelike elephant or hippopotamus—in the round—was beyond my comprehension.

I never knew Dana Gibson in the heyday of his career, when he was telling the world how to behave and how to dress; or with gentle satire showing some of our more opulent citizens how foolish they were; or when he was the young man about town—a companion sought for by writers and artists. If I remember rightly, I first met him at "Mirador," in Virginia—that nest where so many charming Langhornes found their wings, and which he robbed. On first meeting him, I, as a younger man, worshipped the great and successful artist, but as the years went by admiration turned to love: he was above all a lovable man. His experiences with many kinds and conditions of men, and the knowledge gained of the virtues and failings that govern them, had given him rare understanding and wisdom. He could be critical without malice. He had a simple, almost childlike admiration for those he felt reached his high standard of courage and decency. I never heard him bitter except when he spoke of some businessman who had, he thought, betrayed his trust: then he could be scathing.

He had another admirable quality: he could wrap his wisdom in small packages—a few words sufficed to tell a long story or bring an end to a discussion that was getting out of hand. Once, when some distinguished foreigners were present at his house his charming wife had been expatiating longer than he thought tactful on the virtues of their son Langhorne's book The Battle of Jutland. She told how writers and naval men alike had agreed what a wonderful book it was. In a lull, Dana quietly said: "When my brother was 21 years old he shot a polar bear. The polar bear was six feet long from the tip of its nose to where its tail should have been. For a year my mother said the polar bear was six feet long; at the end of 18 months the polar bear had grown to 12 feet, and at the end of two years, believe it or not, it was 18 feet long." This story put an end to further remarks on The Battle of Jutland. As his wife wrote me after his death: "He laughed with me and at me"—but his was always good-humored laughter. Another instance of his ability to sum up a situation briefly occurred last October, when the pros and cons of a fourth term for the President were being debated. "Now look here,” he said, “there’s a poker game going on; Stalin, Chiang Kai-shek, Churchill, and Roosevelt are sitting around the table; suddenly Roosevelt gets up and another takes his place; Churchill cups his ear and says to the newcomer, 'Excuse me, what's your name?'" I voted for a fourth term.

Whether because in his younger days he had had his surfeit of society, I do not know, but in his later years he hugged his fireside. It required a major effort to entice him from home. Sometimes, if the company was small or a movie was the bait, he could be lured; or sometimes induced to go to a monthly meeting at the Century, where he was always such a welcome companion.

He loved the house in 71st Street, which McKim had designed for him so expensively in the days when Life was paying well; but above all he loved his Seven Hundred Acre Island at Islesboro, where his children and his grandchildren gathered for their summer vacations, where he had his boats and his garden—so lovingly tended by his wife—where he could spend his days painting in the open, or building in local stone, with his own hands, playhouses for the grandchildren—charming buildings, which any architect would be proud to have designed. He delighted in having young people about him and had a magical understanding of youth. In his last year or two he gave up sailing, and sat on the shore watching the yacht races and worrying lest the grandchildren's inexperience would lead to some disaster. This anxiety for their safety was, I think, often more of a strain than he admitted.

Having given up pen and ink as a medium, he threw himself with all his energy into painting, and produced an astonishing number of canvases. Because his black and white work had met with such success, his fellow artists—perhaps unconsciously—drew comparisons to the disparagement of his work in color; but to many his paintings had the same quality he displayed with pen and ink—a swift appraisal of the essentials without too meticulous study of detail. Being a modest and mentally honest man, he was conscious of his limitations, but he loved his new-found freedom with the brush; so with the exception of the true artist's natural discontent with his accomplishment, Dana's last years were happy ones. He was doing what he had always wanted to do—paint for the love of it—the work was not for sale.

His was a full and useful life and he leaves in the hearts of his many friends a fragrant memory.