The Seven O'Clock Lecture

editor's note: The following represents the acceptance speech for the inaugural Watson Brown Prize for best book published on the Civil War era. Tad Brown, president of the Watson-Brown Foundation, awarded the prize for the 2009 book, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War. Reproduced in whole, the remarks were given at the annual banquet of the Society of Civil War Historians (SCWH), held during the Southern Historical Association meeting last November in Charlotte. The SCWH judges and administers the book prize.

With most awards, having acknowledged one's debts and bowed politely, the honoree is allowed to skip merrily off the stage singing tra-la tra-la, and everyone is free to go about their business. Not so with the Watson Brown Award. Instead, I have been asked, for the next thirty minutes, to say something Learned and Profound, or L&P, as it is known in the trade.

And you, my friends, having accepted the largesse of Mr. Tad Brown and partaken of the feast, are now obliged to sit and listen to me pretending to be L&P for the next thirty minutes. So, you see how we have all been sucked into this thing.

But here is the real problem: What am I to say? I tell you, this has been a worry to me since April, when Brother George Rable telephoned to say that I would receive the award. "Congratulations!" he said, in his usual ebullient way, only then to spoil it all by explaining that, in return, the Society would expect me to perform.

Well, I knew I would not be talking about guerrillas. You can imagine how tired I am of those chappies. Been there, done that, as the saying goes. So, I thought, and I pondered, until suddenly, the clouds parted and a heavenly light shone down upon me. Inspiration! and its name was "Whistler." As many of you know, I have been working for several years on a biography of James McNeill Whistler, the American artist (1834–1903), and so, as I have done often of late, I took my cue from the man known as the Butterfly. Bear with me.

On a chilly February evening in 1885, Whistler gave a public lecture in London, where he then lived, at the Prince's Hall, Piccadilly. He had chosen to speak at the unorthodox hour of 10 p.m. and so called his presentation "The Ten O'Clock Lecture." He spoke of art, of the nature of art, and of the role of the artist in society. He was not so much L&P as E&T, Educated and Thoughtful. The lecture is still in print and remains one of the very best statements of its kind. I recommend it to you. All E&T people should read it.

Meantime, back in Piccadilly, an audience nearly as distinguished as this one packed the six-hundred-seat Prince's Hall. To Whistler's right, seated in the sixth row, was erstwhile friend Oscar Wilde, the Irish poet, essayist, and playwright. That was three rows behind Whistler's younger brother, Dr. William Whistler, who, some twenty-odd years earlier, had served as an assistant surgeon in the Army of Northern Virginia. To James Whistler's left, in the second row, sat a fellow American, the former Jennie Jerome, by then, Lady Randolph Churchill. Her ten-year-old son, Winston, was away at school, and, given the hour, should have been in bed asleep; but one never knew with Winston. Assorted friends, patrons, students, and journalists filled the center of the hall, all of them eager to hear what one of the foremost, and least predictable, celebrities of the day would say.

Whistler had slaved over his lecture, writing numerous drafts and reading them aloud to friends to test their reactions to both words and gestures. Yet, for all his preparation, and in dramatic contrast to his usual confident manner, Whistler was nervous. He began apologetically, with words appropriate to my own situation. "It is with great hesitation and much misgiving," he said, "that I...