Charles Whibley

Charles Whibley
Charles Whibley, English writer and journalist (1920)
Born	(1859-12-09)9 December 1859 Sittingbourne, Kent, England
Died	Hyères, France
Occupation	Writer and journalist
Spouse(s)	Ethel Whibley, née Ethel Birnie Philip (1896–1920) Philippa Whibley, née Philippa Raleigh (1927–1930)
Parent(s)	Ambrose Whibley and Mary Jean Davy

Charles Whibley (9 December 1859 – 4 March 1930) was an English literary critic, journalist, editor, translator and biographer. Whibley's style was described by Matthew as "often acerbic high-tory commentary". In literature and the arts, his views were progressive. He supported James Abbott McNeill Whistler (they had married sisters). He also recommended T. S. Eliot to Geoffrey Faber, which resulted in Eliot's being appointed as an editor at Faber and Gwyer. Eliot's essay Charles Whibley (1931) was contained within his Selected Essays, 1917-1932. Hilaire Belloc described Whibley as "not only a loyal and good man but also an excellent writer of peculiarly perfect English."

Biography

Early life

Mother of Pearl and Silver: The Andalusian (1888–1900), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Whibley was born 9 December 1859 at Sittingbourne, Kent, England. His parents were Ambrose Whibley, silk mercer, and his second wife, Mary Jean Davy. He was educated at Bristol Grammar School and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he took a first in classics in 1883.

Charles Whibley's immediate family included his brother Leonard Whibley, who was Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, from 1899–1910, and a lecturer in Classics (Ancient History). Charles also had a half-brother, Fred Whibley, copra trader, on Niutao, Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu), and a half-sister, Eliza Elenor, who was the wife of John T. Arundel, the owner of J. T. Arundel & Co. which evolved into Pacific Islands Company and later the Pacific Phosphate Company, which commenced phosphate mining in Nauru and Banaba Island (Ocean Island).

Whibley worked for three years in the editorial department of Cassell & Co, publishers. He shared a house with his brother Leonard Whibley, William Ernest Henley, and George Warrington Steevens.

Life in Paris

In 1894 Charles became the Paris correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette. This Tory evening paper conformed with Whibley's conservative political views.

In Paris Charles moved in the symbolist circles with Stéphane Mallarmé, Marcel Schwob, and Paul Valéry. He was a witness at the wedding of Marcel Schwob and Marguerite Moreno in England on 12 September 1900.

Marriage to Ethel Birnie Philip

In 1896 Charles married Ethel Birnie Philip in the garden of the house occupied by James McNeill Whistler at n° 110 Rue du Bac, Paris. The photographs of the wedding were taken by Louis Edmond Vallois, who had a studio at 99 rue de Rennes, Paris. Ethel Birnie Philip was the daughter of the sculptor John Birnie Philip and Frances Black. Before her marriage Ethel Whibley worked during 1893–4 as secretary to James McNeill Whistler. Whistler painted a number of full-length portraits of Ethel Whibley, including Mother of Pearl and Silver: The Andalusian, and portraits and sketches of her titled as Miss Ethel Philip or Mrs Ethel Whibley.

Hartrick (1939) describes Whibley as "an obviously English type, and therefore something of a red rag to Whistler". As the brother-in-law of James McNeill Whistler, Whibley was part of Whistler's intimate family circle, referred to as "Wobbles" in Whistler's correspondence. On one occasion Whistler mocked Whibley for describing himself as "something of a boulevardier" during his time in Paris. In 1897 Whistler created the cover design for Whibley's volume of essays A Book of Scoundrels. In 1917, Whibley gave the prestigious Leslie Stephen lecture, on Jonathan Swift, at Cambridge University. Herbert Read called it "perhaps the most understanding of modern interpretations of the man."

Later career

His wife, Ethel, died in 1920, and in 1927 Charles married Philippa Raleigh, the daughter of Walter Raleigh, Chair of English Literature at Oxford University.

In 1926, his close friend Lady Asquith edited The Ghost Book, an anthology of supernatural tales that included "Twelve O'Clock," one of his few attempts at writing fiction. The story has since been frequently reprinted.

Whibley contributed to the London and Edinburgh magazines, including The Pall Mall Magazine, Macmillan's Magazine, and Blackwood's Magazine. As a writer on Blackwood's Magazine, he was a prominent conservative columnist, as well as an influential literary figure, recruited by its editor William Blackwood III. He was a persistent critic of the system of state education. It was an open secret that Whibley contributed anonymously, to the Magazine, his Musings without Methods for almost thirty years. T. S. Eliot described them as "the best sustained piece of literary journalism that I know of in recent times".

Whibley was friends with William Ernest Henley and contributed to the Scots Observer (published in Edinburgh) and also to the National Observer (published in London) under Henley's editorship.

Whibley died on 4 March 1930 at Hyères, France, and his body was buried at Great Brickhill, Buckinghamshire.

A portrait of Charles Whibley (1925–26), by Sir G. Kelly, is held by Jesus College, Cambridge. A sketch of Charles Whibley is held by the National Portrait Gallery, London.

Works

• The Cathedrals of England and Wales (1888)
• A Book of Scoundrels (1897)
• Studies in Frankness (1898)
• The Pageantry of Life (1900)
• Musings Without Method: A Record of 1900–1901 (1902)
• William Makepeace Thackeray (1903)
• Literary Portraits (1904)
• William Pitt (1906)
• American Sketches (1908)
• The Letters of an Englishman (1911–1915; 2 volumes)
• Essays in Biography (1913)
• Jonathan Swift (1917; the Leslie Stephen Lecture, University of Cambridge, 26 May 1917)
• Political Portraits (1917–1923; 2 volumes)
• Literary Studies (1919)
• Lord John Manners and His Friends (1925; 2 volumes)

Selected publications

• "The Early Days of the Renaissance in Italy," The Magazine of Art, Vol. XII (1889)
• "The Elgin Marbles," The National Observer, Vol. V, No. 25 (1891)
• "Michelangelo," The Magazine of Art, Vol. XVI (1893)
• "The Encroachment of Women," The Nineteenth Century, Vol. XLI, No. 241 (1897)
• "Barbey d'Aurevilly," The New Review, Vol. XVI, No. 93 (1897)
• "Stéphane Mallarmé," Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. CLXIV, No. 997 (1898)
• "Language and Style," The Fortnightly Review, Vol. LXV (1899)
• "William Morris," Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, Vol.  CLXVI, No. 1005 (1899)
• "The Catholic Reaction in France," The Quarterly Review, Vol. CLXXXIX, No. 378 (1899)
• "Ivan Turgenev," The North American Review, Vol. CLXXIV, No. 543 (1902)
• "Rabelais en Angleterre," Revue des Études Rabelaisiennes, Vol. I (1903)
• "Thomas Hardy," Blackwood’s Magazine, Vol. CXCIII (1913)
• "The Spirit of France," Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. CCII, No. 1226 (1917)
• "Hazlitt v. 'Blackwood's Magazine'," Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. CCIV, No. 1235 (1918)
• "Charles Dickens," The Empire Review, Vol. XXXVII (1923)
• "Lord Chesterfield," The Criterion, Vol. II, No. 7 (1924)
• "Ben Jonson, the Man," Blackwood's Magazine, Vol. CCXVIII, No. 1321 (1925)

Collaborations

• A Book of English Prose, Character and Incident 1387–1649 (1894; with W. E. Henley)
• The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne (1894; introduction)
• An Æthiopian History, by Heliodorus (1895; introduction)
• Handy Andy: A Tale of Irish Life, by Samuel Lover (1896; introduction)
• The History of Comines (1897; introduction)
• In Cap and Gown: Three Centuries of Cambridge Wit (1898; introduction)
• History of Twelve Cæsars, by Suetonius (1899; introduction)
• Gargantua and Pantagruel, by Rabelais (1900; introduction)
• Twenty Select Colloquies of Erasmus (1900; translated by Sir Roger L'Estrange, with an introduction and notes by Whibley)
• True History, by Lucian (1902; introduction)
• The Golden Ass, by Apuleius (1903; introduction)
• Henry VIII, by Edward Hall (1904; introduction)
• Roundabout Papers, by William Makepeace Thackeray (1905; introduction)
• Lord George Bentinck: A Political Biography, by Benjamin Disraeli (1905; introduction)
• Essays, by William Hazlitt (1906; introduction)
• Poems of Lord Byron (1907; introduction)
• Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough (1913; introduction)
• Essays in Romantic Literature, by George Wyndham (1919; introduction)
• The Cambridge History of English Literature, Vol. VIII (1920; 2 chapters)
• The Satyricon of Petronius Arbiter (1922; translated by W. C. Firebaugh, with an essay by Whibley)
• Collected Essays of W. P. Ker (1925; introduction)
• Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1925; editor)
• The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan (1926; introduction)
• Letters Concerning the English Nation, by Voltaire (1926; introduction)
• Second Journal to Eliza, by Laurence Sterne (1929; foreword)
• A Facsimile Reproduction of a Unique Catalogue of Laurence Sterne's Library (1930; preface)

References

• Atkinson, Damian, ed. (2013). The Letters of William Ernest Henley to Charles Whibley, 1888-1903. Lewiston, N.Y: Queenston Press.
• Atkinson, Damian, ed. (2017). The Selected Letters of Charles Whibley: Scholar and Critic. London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
• Codell, Julie F., ed. (2003). Imperial Co-histories: National Identities and the British and Colonial Press. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, p. 96.
• Donovan, Stephen (2006). "The Muse of Blackwood’s: Charles Whibley and Literary Criticism in the World." In: Print Culture and the Blackwood Tradition. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 259–86.
• Eliot, T. S. (1932). Selected Essays, 1917–1932. London: Faber and Faber, pp. 403–15.
• Malcolm, D. O. (1967). "Whibley, Charles (1859-1930)." In: The Dictionary of National Biography: 1922-1930. London: Oxford University Press, pp. 905–7.

External links

• Works by Charles Whibley at Project Gutenberg
• Works by Charles Whibley at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
• Works by Charles Whibley at Hathi Trust
• Works by Charles Whibley at Gallica
• Works by Charles Whibley at Unz.com
• Charles Whibley at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database