OIL
In the possession of Miss Kinsella
From a photograph by M. Dornac
These worries occupied his time and tried his temper. But he was overwhelmed late in 1894 by a trouble infinitely more tragic. His wife was taken ill with the terrible disease, cancer. They came to London to consult the doctors in December. First they stayed at Long's Hotel in Bond Street, Mrs. Whistler surrounded by her numerous sisters, the two Paris servants, Louise and Constant, in attendance; then Mrs. Whistler was under a doctor's care in Holles Street, and Whistler stopped with his brother in Wimpole Street. Those who loved him would like to forget his misery during the weeks and months that followed. Work was going on somehow; not painting, that waited in Paris, but lithography—several portraits of Lady Haden, a drawing in Wellington Street, and others. But he told Mr. Way afterwards that he wanted them all destroyed; he should not have worked when his heart was not in it: "It was madness on my part." He brought proofs to show us. Almost every afternoon he would take J. to Way's, where the lithographs were being transferred to the stone and printed. He would lunch or dine with us, keeping up his brave front, though we knew what was in his heart. He had not been in his "Palatial Residence" two years before it was closed, and the canvases were left untouched in the "Stupendous Studio." New honours and new successes came: in 1894 the Temple Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy, in 1895 a Gold Medal from Antwerp, and innumerable commissions. It was just as fortune smiled that the blow fell.
The Eden trial, which struck many as an unnecessary and almost farcical episode in his life, distracted him during these tragic months. His work ceased for weeks at a time, and he devoted himself to the case. His journeys to Paris were frequent and his correspondence enormous. The case was fought out in the courts of France. It arose out of the uncertainty as to the price which Sir William Eden should pay for his wife's portrait. He was introduced to Whistler by Mr. George Moore, to whom Whistler had mentioned one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds for a sketch in water-colour or pastel. Whistler became interested in his sitter and made a small full-length oil, for which he would have asked a far larger sum. His irritation can be understood when Sir William Eden attempted to make him accept as "a valentine"—for it was paid on February 14—one hundred pounds in a sealed envelope. Whistler felt that the amount should have been left to him to decide. He refused to give up the picture, he cashed the cheque, and he did not return the money until legal proceedings were taken by the Baronet. Before the case came into court he wiped out the head. Even his friends thought that Whistler made a grave mistake and prejudiced his case when he cashed the cheque, instead of throwing it after the Baronet, who, on his hasty retreat from the studio, Whistler said, protested and threatened all the way down the six flights, while he from the top urged the Baronet not to expose his nationality by so unseemly a noise in a public place.
Whistler went to Paris for the trial before the Civil Tribunal on March 6, 1895. His advocates were Maître Ratier, by whose side he sat in court, and Maître Beurdeley, a collector of his etchings. Sir William Eden failed to appear. Whistler was ordered to deliver the portrait as painted, a penalty to be imposed in case of delay; to refund twenty-five hundred francs, his lowest price; to pay in addition one thousand francs damages. The judge stated that he was in honour bound not to deface the portrait after he had completed it, and that an artist must carry out his contract.
To Whistler the judgment was unjust; he appealed in the Cour de Cassation, and the matter dragged on until after Mrs. Whistler's death. In England "An Artist" (J.) tried to raise a fund to pay the expenses of the trial, in order "to show in some practical form artists' appreciation for the genius of James McNeill Whistler." His appeal was responded to by only one other artist, Mr. Frederick MacMonnies, and was as unsuccessful as the subscription started after the Ruskin trial in 1878.
Mr. George Moore had been the go-between when the portrait was commissioned, Sir William Eden's ally in the legal business, and a conspicuous figure in the newspaper muddle. After the trial Whistler wrote Moore a scathing letter. Moore's answer was to taunt Whistler with old age. This was published in the Pall Mall Gazette and reprinted in French papers. Whistler was in France and he sent Moore a challenge. Whistler's seconds were M. Octave Mirbeau and M. Viélé-Griffin. Their challenge remained unanswered, but after several days Moore relieved his feelings to a reporter. London looked upon the challenge as Whistler's crowning joke. It was no joke to Moore, who was sufficiently conversant with French manners to know how his conduct would be received in Paris. Whistler's seconds sent a procès verbal to the Press, stating that they had waited eight days for an answer, and not having received one, they considered their mission terminated.
Thus before the world Whistler kept up the game, though in the Rue du Bac life was a tragedy. Mrs. Whistler had returned more ill than ever. Miss Ethel Philip was married from the house early in the summer to Mr. Charles Whibley, and her sister, Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, took her place.
After the trial Whistler went back to work. He sent The Little White Girl to the International Exhibition at Venice; he exhibited the second portrait of Mrs. Sickert at the Glasgow Institute; he chose six lithographs for the Centenary Exhibition in Paris. A head of Carmen, his model, was ready for the Portrait Painters in London. When in the late summer he returned to England, and, with Mrs. Whistler, settled at the Red Lion Hotel, Lyme Regis, he arranged a show of his lithographs in London. The Society of Illustrators, of which he was Vice-President, was preparing an anthology, The London Garland, edited by W. E. Henley, illustrated by members, and published by Messrs. Macmillan. J. asked him to contribute an illustration to a sonnet of Henley's. But he had to abandon this plan and allow a Nocturne to be reproduced. He made several lithographs at Lyme Regis: glowing forges, dark stables with horses an animal painter would envy, the smith, and the landlord. "Absolute failures, some," he told us sadly; "others, well, you know, not bad!" Two of the pictures painted at Lyme Regis are masterpieces: The Little Rose of Lyme Regis and The Master Smith. In these he solved the problem of carrying on his work as he wished until it was finished. There also he painted the only large landscape we know of: the white houses of the town, the hill-side with trees beyond.
While he was still in Dorset a prize was awarded him at Venice. Several prizes in money were given in different sections to artists of different nationalities. Whistler was awarded two thousand five hundred francs by the City of Murano, the seventh on the list. He knew the "enemies," foresaw the prattle there would be of the seventh-hand compliment, and forestalled it by explaining in the Press how the prizes had been awarded, his being equal to the first.
The exhibition of his lithographs was held at the Fine Art Society's in December 1895. Seventy were shown, mostly of the work of the last few years, and J. wrote an introduction to the catalogue, the only time he asked anybody to "introduce" him. There were no decorations in the gallery, nor was the catalogue in brown paper, save twenty-five copies, but the prints were in his frames. English artists became interested in lithography because they were asked to contribute to the Centenary Exhibition in Paris, and, at the call of Leighton, they tried their hands at it, more or less unsuccessfully. The contrast was great between their work shown at Mr. Dunthorne's gallery and Whistler's, whose prints alone are destined to live.
Whistler derived little pleasure from his triumph. The winter was spent moving from place to place. His plans were made to go to New York to consult an American specialist, forgetting as well as he could "the vast far-offness" of America. But he stayed in London, first at Garlant's Hotel, then in apartments in Half-Moon Street, later at the De Vere Gardens Hotel, and then at the Savoy. Work of one sort or another marked these moves: the lithograph of Kensington Gardens from the De Vere Hotel; at the Savoy most pathetic drawings of his wife, The Siesta and By the Balcony, and the Thames from the hotel windows. He had during the first months no studio in London. He worked for a while in Mr. Walter Sickert's; Mr. Sargent lent his early in 1896, when there was talk of a lithograph of Cecil Rhodes and a portrait of Mr. A. J. Pollitt, of whom he made a lithograph, though the painting, begun later in Fitzroy Street, was destroyed.
He interested himself in the experiments of others. In the winter of 1895 J. was asked by the Daily Chronicle to edit the illustration of a series of articles on London in support of the Progressive County Council. It was an event of importance to illustrators, process-men, and printers: the first effort in England for the artistic illustration of a daily paper. The Daily Graphic was illustrated, but its draughtsmen were trained to adapt their drawings to the printer. The scheme now was to oblige the printer to adapt himself to the illustrator. Every illustrator of note in London contributed. Burne-Jones' frontispiece to William Morris' News from Nowhere was enlarged and printed successfully. J. asked Whistler to let him try the experiment of enlarging one of the Thames etchings. Whistler was interested. Black Lion Wharf was selected and printed in the Daily Chronicle, February 22, 1895, the very day of the month, Washington's Birthday, when, ten years later, the London Memorial Exhibition opened. With its publication the success of the series was complete, not politically, for the twenty-four drawings were said to have lost the Progressives twenty-five seats. The etching stood the enlarging superbly. J. made the proprietors pay for the print, the first time Whistler was paid for the use of one of his works not made as an illustration.
Whistler came to us almost daily. Late one afternoon he brought his transfer-paper, and made a lithograph of J. as he sprawled comfortably, and uncomfortably had to keep the pose, in an easy-chair before the fire. Whistler made four portraits in succession of J. and one of E., each in an afternoon. He drew on as the light faded, and the portrait of E. was done while the firelight flickered on her face and on his paper. Then he told us he had taken a studio in Fitzroy Street to paint a large full-length of J. in a Russian cloak—The Russian Schube—which he thought the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts might like to have. But J. was called away, Mrs. Whistler grew rapidly worse, the scheme was dropped never to be taken up again.
On other afternoons he and J. would go to Way's, where the Savoy drawings were put on the stone. The lithotint of The Thames was done on a stone sent to the hotel. Drawings made in Paris, Lyme Regis, London were transferred and gone all over with chalk, stump, scraper. He worked in a little room adjoining Mr. Way's office, the walls of which were covered with pastels and water-colours by him and C. E. Holloway. There he drew the portraits of Mr. Thomas Way in the firelight, never stopping until dark, when Mr. Way would bring out some rare old liqueur, and there was a rest before he hurried back to the Savoy. His nights were spent sitting up by his wife. He slept a little in the morning and usually came to us in the afternoon, at times so exhausted that we feared more for him than for her.
The studio at No. 8 Fitzroy Street was a huge place at the back of the house, one flight up, reached by a ramshackle glass-roofed passage. The portrait of Mr. Pollitt was started and one of Mr. Robert Barr's daughter, which has disappeared. Mr. Cowan sat again, and another was begun of Mr. S. R. Crockett, who describes the sittings:
"I don't think he liked me at first. Someone had told him I was a Philistine of Askelon.... He told me lots about his early times in London and Paris, but all in fragments, just as the thing occurred to him. Like an idiot, I took no notes. Lots, too, about Carlyle and his sittings, as likely to interest a Scot. He had got on unexpectedly well with True Thomas, chiefly by letting him do the talking, and never opening his mouth, except when Carlyle wanted him to talk. Carlyle asked him about Paris, and was unexpectedly interested in the cafés, and so forth. Whistler told him the names of some—Riche, Anglais, Véfour, and Foyot and Lavenue on the south side. Carlyle seemed to be mentally taking notes. Then he suddenly raised his head and demanded, 'Can a man get a chop there?'
"Concerning my own sittings, he was very particular that I should always be in good form—'trampling' as he said—otherwise he would tell me to go away and play.... Mr. Fisher Unwin had arranged for a lithograph, but Whistler said he would make a picture like a postage stamp, and next year all the exhibitions would be busy as anthills with similar 'postage stamp' portraits. 'Some folk think life-size means six foot by three; I'll show them!' he said more than once. I wanted to shell out as he went on, and once, being flush (new book or something), I said I had fifty pounds which was annoying me, and I wished he would take it. He was very sweet about it, and said he understood. Money burnt a hole in his pocket, too, but he could not take any money, as he might never finish the work. Any day his brush might drop, and he could not do another stroke.
"It was a bad omen! His wife grew worse. He sent me word not to come. She died, and I never saw him after. I wish you could tell me what became of that picture. He called it The Grey Man."
This is another example of Whistler's repetition of titles. Mr. Cowan's portrait, painted the same year, was The Grey Man too. Of Mr. Crockett's, Whistler said to us that Crockett was delighted with it as far as it had gone, and he was rather pleased with it himself. He painted several of these small full-lengths, which were to show the fallacy of the life-size theory and of the belief that the importance of a portrait depends on the size of the canvas. Kennedy, after the portrait destroyed in Paris, stood for a second, now in the Metropolitan Museum; Mr. Arnold Hannay for another; C. E. Holloway for The Philosopher, which Whistler considered particularly successful.
In the spring Whistler moved his wife from the Savoy to St. Jude's Cottage, Hampstead Heath, rented from Canon and Mrs. Barnett. After this he began to give up hope. It was a sad day when for the first time he admitted, "We are very, very bad." And we understood that the end was near the afternoon when he, the most fastidious, appeared wearing one black and one brown shoe, and explaining that he had a corn. But, indeed, many times it seemed as if in his despair he did not know what he was doing. The last day Mr. Sydney Pawling met him walking, running across the Heath, looking at nothing, seeing no one. Mr. Pawling, alarmed, stopped him. "Don't speak! Don't speak! It is terrible!" he said, and was gone. That was the end.
Mrs Whistler died on May 10 and was buried at Chiswick on the 14th. We have heard that the funeral was arranged for the 13th, but Whistler, objecting to the date, postponed it a day, and Mrs. Whistler was buried on her birthday. He never would do anything on the 13th if he could help it.
We were abroad, but the first Sunday after E.'s return he came and asked her to go with him to the National Gallery. There he showed her the pictures "Trixie" loved, standing long before Tintoretto's Milky Way, her favourite. There was no talk about pictures—Canaletto was barely looked at—there was no talk about anything, and the tragedy that could not be forgotten was never referred to. But M. Paul Renouard was in the Gallery and came to Whistler with the word of comfort, from which he shrank. During the first few months after Mrs. Whistler's death, in the shock of his sorrow and loss, Whistler made her sister, Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, his ward, and drew up a new will appointing her his heiress and executrix; eventually cancelling his former bequests, and leaving everything to her absolutely.
Whistler stayed a short time at Hampstead with his sisters-in-law, and then went to Mr. Heinemann at Whitehall Court, where he remained, on and off, for two or three years, spending only the periods of Mr. Heinemann's absence at Garlant's Hotel or in Paris. He was with us day after day. Little notes came from the studio to ask if we would be in and alone in the evening, and, if so, he would dine with us. At first he would not join us if we expected anyone. He liked to sit and talk, he said, but he could not meet other people. He saw few outside the studio, except Mr. Heinemann, Mr. Kennedy, and ourselves. We went to the studio, and often he and J. sketched together in the streets.
For these sketching expeditions Whistler prepared beforehand the colours he wanted to use, and if the day turned out too grey or too radiant for his scheme nothing was done. The chosen colours were mixed, and little tubes, filled with them, were carried in his small paint-box, which held also the tiny palette with the pure colours arranged on it, his brushes, and two or three small panels. Many studies were made. The most important was of St. John's, Westminster. He loved the quiet corner, now destroyed, and he went there many times. He worked away, his top hat jammed down on his nose, sitting on a three-legged stool, his paint-box on his knee, the panel in it, beginning at once in colour on the panel, usually finishing the sketch in one afternoon, though he took two over the church. The painting was simply done, commencing with the point of interest, the masses put in bigly, the details worked into them. Just as in the studio, five minutes after he had begun he became so absorbed in his work that he forgot everything else until it grew too dark to see. When ladies would come and recognise him, he stopped, got up, and spoke to them, always charmingly.
He made little journeys during the summer, one to Rochester and Canterbury, with Mrs. Whibley and Miss Birnie Philip. But, disgusted with the inns and the food, he came back after a day or so. Another was with Mr. Kennedy, who writes us:
PORTRAIT
DRAWINGS ON WOOD
In the Pennell Collection, Library of Congress, Washington
Loaned by Mrs. Mortimer Menpes
"It was agreed that Whistler and myself should go to France. Neither of us had any idea where we were going except to Havre. We arrived in the early morning, and after he got shaved and had coffee, we took the boat to Honfleur, which, as you know, has a tidal service. 'Do you know where we are going?' I said to him. 'No, I don't,' said he. 'Well,' said I, 'there is a white-whiskered, respectable-looking old gentleman; perhaps he knows the lay of the ground. Tip him a stave.'
"So Whistler asked him about the hotels in Honfleur. There were two—the Cheval Blanc on the quay, and the Ferme de St. Siméon on the outskirts. The Cheval was so dirty that I got the only cab, and, piling the luggage on it ourselves, drove off to the farm. Fortunately, there were two vacant rooms, and we stayed there a week. The cooking was excellent, and, of course, Madame knew who Monsieur Vistlaire was. Whistler used to kick up a row every night with me about the 'ridiculous British' to divert his mind, I imagine, and sometimes my retorts were so sharp that I said to myself, 'All is over between us now.' But he used to bob up serenely in the morning, as if nothing had happened, and after déjeuner he would take his small box of colours and paint in the large church. I used to stroll about the town and look in occasionally to see that he came to no harm. It was here that he said he was going over to Rome some day, and when I said, 'Don't forget to let me know, so that I may be on hand to see you wandering up the aisle in sackcloth and ashes, with a candle in each hand, or scrubbing the floor!' he said, in a tone of horrified astonishment, 'Good God! O'K., [11] is it possible? Why, I thought they would make me a hell of a swell of an abbot, or something like that.'
"It was amusing to see him manœuvre to get near the big kitchen fire, overcoat on. He was a true American in his liking for heat, and the way he would sidle into the kitchen, which opened on out-of-doors, all the time mildly flattering Madame, was very characteristic. We went to Trouville one day on the diligence, and had a capital déjeuner at the Café de Paris, before which Whistler said, 'We must do this en Prince, O'K.!' 'All right, your Highness, I'm with you!' Afterwards, on the beach, he went to sleep on a chair, leaning back against a bath-house, his straw hat tipped on his nose. It was funny, but sleep after luncheon was a necessity to him. Coming back to London, in the harbour of Southampton, after listening to the usual unwearying talk against the British, I said, 'Oh, be reasonable!' 'Why should I?' said he."
The Ferme de St. Siméon has been called the Cradle of Impressionism. It was here that Boudin lived and most of the Impressionists came, and round about they found their subjects.
Later on Whistler spent a few days at Calais in the Meurice, Sterne's Hotel, where he was miserable. Then he tried to find J. at Whitby, where they missed each other, and where he said the glitter of the windows made the town look like the Crystal Palace.
Whistler recovered slowly, and journeys helped him less than work in the studio, where, by degrees, he returned to the schemes so sadly interrupted. We remember his coming to us with Mr. Kennedy one Sunday afternoon, bringing up our three flights of stairs The Master Smith to show it to us once again before it went to America. Mr. Kennedy had captured it, fearful of a touch being added. It was placed on one chair, Whistler, on another facing it, wretched at the thought of parting with it. It was always a wrench to let a picture go.
After a while he did not mind meeting a few people. A man he liked to see was Timothy Cole. There was a great scheme that he should make a series of drawings on wood and Cole engrave them. Cole brought the blocks prepared for him to draw on. But that is the last we or Cole heard about it, though we saw the blocks frequently at Fitzroy Street. Mr. Cole says:
"I did not speak to him more than once after I had given him the wood blocks. I did not think it prudent to press him about the matter, fearing he might get disgusted and give it up.... The blocks were the size of the Century page."
Cole gave Whistler some of his prints, and they pleased Whistler very much, though he rarely cared to own the pictures and prints of other artists. Once when an etcher gave him a not very wonderful proof, he tore it up, saying, "I do not collect etchings, I make them! I do not collect the works of my contemporaries!" With the exception of his portrait by Boxall we never saw a scrap of anyone else's work about his studio or his house, save the forgery someone sent him which he kept and hung for a while. Another side to Mr. Cole was his endless practical jokes. He used to do extraordinary things, to Whistler's amusement. On one point only they were not in sympathy: Mr. Cole's theories of diet. One evening at dinner Cole told us that he and his family were living chiefly on rhubarb tops, they have such a "foody" taste, his son thought. "Dear me, poor fellow," said Whistler, "it sounds as if once, long long ago, he had really eaten, and still has a dim memory of what food is!" "And spinach," Cole added, "it's fine. We eat it raw, it's wonderful the things it does for you!" "But what does it do for you?" Whistler asked, and Cole began a dissertation on the juices of the stomach. "Well, you know," Whistler told him, "when you begin to talk about the stomach and its juices, it's time to stop dining." After that, Cole managed to dismiss his theories and dine like other people when with us.
Professor John Van Dyke was in London that fall, and Whistler was willing to come to meet him. A long darn in a tablecloth afterwards bore witness to the animation of one of those dinners—Whistler's knife brought down sharply on the table to emphasise his argument. The subject was Las Meniñas, which he had never seen, which everyone else had seen. Velasquez painted the picture just as you see it, he maintained; no one agreed. Perspectives and plans were drawn on the unfortunate cloth, chairs were pushed back, the situation grew critical. Whistler was forced to yield slowly, when, of a sudden, his eyes fell on Van Dyke's feet in long, pointed shoes, then the American fashion, their points carried to a degree of fineness no English bootmaker could rival. "My God, Van Dyke, where did you get your shoes?" Whistler asked. We could not go on fighting after that; defeat was avoided. Though Whistler had never been to Madrid, it seemed as if he had seen the pictures, so familiar was he with them, and though he was at times not right about them, his interest was endless. We remember "Bob" Stevenson telling him, to his great delight, how, one summer day with J. in the Long Gallery of the Prado where Las Meniñas then hung, an old peasant dressed in faded blue-green came and sat down on the green bench in front, and straightway he became part of the picture, so true was its atmosphere. There are legends of Whistler's descent into a Casa des Huespedes in Madrid with Sargent and J., but J. never was there and Sargent denies it. It is another legend. Whistler could get more from a glance at a photograph than most painters from six months' copying.
Another evening Claude was the subject—Claude compared to Turner. Whistler could never see the master Englishman adored in Turner; not because of Ruskin, for Mr. Walter Greaves told us that years before the Ruskin trial Whistler "reviled Turner." Mr. Cole in 1896 was engraving Turners in the National Gallery, and Whistler insisted on their inferiority to the Claudes, so amazingly demonstrated in Trafalgar Square, where Turner invited the comparison disastrous to him. The argument grew heated, and Whistler adjourned it until the next morning, when he arranged to meet Cole and J. in the Gallery. Whistler compared the work of the two artists hanging side by side, as Turner wished:
"Well, you know, you have only to look. Claude is the artist who knows there is no painting the sun itself, and so he chooses the moment after the sun has set, or has hid behind a cloud, and its light fills the sky, and that light he suggests as no other painter ever could. But Turner must paint nothing less than the sun, and he sticks on a blob of paint—let us be thankful that it isn't a red wafer, as in some of his other pictures—and there isn't any illusion whatever, and the Englishman lifts up his head in ecstatic conceit with the English painter, who alone has dared to do what no artist would ever be fool enough to attempt! And look at the architecture. Claude could draw a classical building as it is; Turner must invent, imagine architecture as no architect could design it, and no builder could put it up, and as it never would stand up—the old amateur!"
They went on to the Canalettos and Guardis Whistler could not weary of—to Canaletto's big red church and the tiny Rotunda at Vauxhall with the little figures, from which Hogarth learned so much. Whistler always acknowledged Guardi's influence, though it had not led him in Venice to paint pictures like Guardi or Canaletto either. And he never tired of pointing out that great artists like Guardi and Canaletto and Velasquez, who were born and worked in the South, did not try to paint sunlight, but kept their work grey and low in tone. That day at the National Gallery, before he could finish explaining the similarity between his work and Guardi's, the talk came to an end, for half the copyists in the room had left their easels. He stopped. He could not talk to an audience which he was not sure was sympathetic. Sure of sympathy, he would talk for ever in praise of the luminosity of Claude, the certainty of Canaletto, the wonderful tone of Guardi, the character and colour of Hogarth. Another Italian about whom he was enthusiastic was Michael Angelo Caravaggio, admiring his things in the Louvre. Whistler maintained that the exact knowledge, the science, of the Old Masters was the reason of their greatness. The modern painter has a few tricks, a few fads; these give out, and nothing is left. Knowledge is inexhaustible. Tintoretto did not find his way until he was forty. Titian was painting in as masterly a manner in his last year as in his youth. And speaking of the cleverness—a term he hated—of the modern man, he said:
OIL
In the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
"Think of the finish, the delicacy, the elegance, the repose of a little Terborgh, Vermeer, Metsu. These were masters who could paint interiors, chandeliers, and all the rest; and what a difference between them and the clever little interiors now!"
In the autumn Whistler established Miss Birnie Philip and her mother in the Rue du Bac and returned to Mr. Heinemann's flat at Whitehall Court, making it so much his home that before long he was laughingly alluding to "my guest Heinemann." It is not likely that the two would ever have parted had not Mr. Heinemann married and even then Whistler stayed with him as long as his health remained good, dependent on the friendship formed late in life with a man many years younger. When Mr. Heinemann was away he complained that London was duller and blacker than ever. Whistler shrank from condolence in his great grief or from a revival of the memories of those terrible weeks. His host was careful or we would invite Whistler to us if anybody was expected at Whitehall Court. After three or four years Mr. Heinemann's married life ended abruptly, and Whistler at once suggested that they should go back to the old way. Mr. Heinemann took another flat in Whitehall Court with this idea. But before the plan could be realised Whistler died.
In the autumn of 1896 Mr. Henry Savage Landor, back from Japan and Korea, also stayed with Mr. Heinemann; "a rare fellow, full of real affection," Whistler said of him. They sat up for hours together night after night. Whistler slept badly, and Mr. Landor can do with less sleep than most people. There was a skull in the drawing-room that Mr. Landor tells us Whistler sketched over and over again, while they talked till morning. When they drew the curtains it was day; then Whistler dressed, breakfasted, and went to the studio. He brought us stories of Mr. Landor; the way in which he would start for the ends of the earth as if to stroll in Piccadilly, "leaving the costume of travel to the Briton crossing the Channel"; or, in light shoes, "outwalk the stoutest-shod gillie over Scotch moors." Then Whistler brought us Mr. Landor, with whom our friendship dates from the morning when, at Whistler's request, he sat Japanese fashion on the floor in front of our fire, a rug wrapped round him for kimono, and devoured imaginary rice with pencils for chopsticks. When Mr. Landor had his horrible experiences in Thibet and the story of his tortures was telegraphed to Europe, Whistler was the first to send him a cable rejoicing at his escape. Whistler also took a fancy while in Whitehall Court to Mr. Heinemann's brother Edmund who was, Whistler said, "something in the City," who saw to one or two investments for him, and whom he christened the "Napoleon of Finance" and described as "sitting in a tangled web of telegraphs and telephones." He never had invested money before, and it was with pride that he deposited at the bank his scrip and collected his dividends. To end a discussion about the City Mr. Edmund Heinemann once said to him, "You ain't on the Stock Exchange!" "Well," said Whistler, "you just thank your stars, Eddy, I ain't, because if I was there wouldn't be much room for you! What!"
Evening after evening he would linger in the studio until he could see no longer; keeping dinner waiting at Whitehall Court, so that no time could ever be fixed. Arriving, he would mix cocktails, an art in which he excelled and must have learned in the days when he stayed away from the Coast Survey. If it did not suit him to dine at Whitehall Court he would write or wire to say he could dine with us if we liked; or that he had amazing things to tell us; should he come? or that he was sure we were both wanting to see him; or Heinemann's servant, Payne, would announce his coming; or he would drive straight from the studio, reaching us sometimes before the notes he had sent, or with the wires unsent in his pocket; almost the only time we have known him willingly not to dress for dinner. On rare occasions he came in after we had dined, demanded the fortune du pot of our small establishment, and was content no matter how meagre that fortune might prove, though if it included "a piece of American cake," or anything sweet, he was better pleased. He grumbled only over our Sunday supper, which was cold in English fashion, out of deference to Bowen, our old English servant. Then he would bring Constant, his valet, model, and cook, to make an onion soup or an omelette. Constant was succeeded by a little Belgian called Marie, who was supposed to look after the studio, and who, when he stayed at Garlant's and we dined with him there, would be summoned to dress the salad and make the coffee. It was not long after this that, by the doctor's advice, he gave up coffee and stopped smoking too. Few men ever ate less than Whistler, but few were more fastidious about what they did eat. He made the best of our English cooking while it lasted, but he was glad when Bowen was replaced by Louise and then Augustine, who were French and who could make the soups, salads, and dishes he liked, and who did not hesitate to scold him when he was late and ruined the dinner.
These meetings must have been pleasant to Whistler as to us; there were weeks when he came every evening. On his arrival he might be silent, but after his nap he would begin talking, and his talk was as good on the last evening with us as on the first. We shall always regret that we made no notes of what he said, though the charm of his talk would have eluded a shorthand reporter. Much can never be forgotten. In "surroundings of antagonism" he wrapped this talk as well as himself in "a species of misunderstanding" and deliberately mystified, bewildered, and aggravated the company. But when disguise was not necessary, and he talked at his ease, he impressed everyone with his sanity of judgment, breadth of interest, and keenness of intellect. His reading was extensive, though we never ceased to wonder when he found time for it, save during sleepless nights. His talk abounded in quotations, especially from the Bible, that "splendid mine of invective," he described it. His diversity of knowledge was as unexpected as his extensive reading, and we felt that he knew things intuitively, just as by some uncanny faculty he heard everything said about him. When he chose he held the floor and was then at his best. "I am not arguing with you, I am telling you," he would say, and he would lose his temper, which was violent as ever, but he was friendlier than before when it was over. He liked to hear the last gossip, and reproached us if we had none for him. More than once he told E. her discretion amounted positively to indiscretion; he was sure she had a cupboard full of skeletons, and some day, when she was pulling the strings of one carefully to put it back in place, the whole lot would come rattling down about her ears. And so, the shadow of sorrow in the background, the evenings went by that winter in the little dining-room which had been Etty's studio where the huge Edinburgh pictures were painted.
The Eden affair was still dragging on, and Whistler was disgusted to find English artists as afraid to support him as at the Ruskin trial. One day in Bond Street he met a Follower, just returned to town, arm-on-arm with "the Baronet." The Follower at once left a card at Fitzroy Street. Whistler wrote "Judas Iscariot" on it and sent it back to him. A few weeks later the New English Art Club hung Sir William Eden's work, and with it, he said, "their shame, upon their walls." He complimented them, much to their discomfort, on their appetite for "toad." To clear the air, which had become sultry in the art clubs and studios, we invited Professor Fred Brown and Dr. D. S. MacColl to meet him one evening at dinner, and discuss things. Professor Brown had another engagement. Dr. MacColl came, and Whistler, who did not mind how hard a man fought if he fought at all, continued on terms with him. But the New English Art Club he never forgave.
A show of J.'s lithographs of Granada and the Alhambra was arranged at the Fine Art Society's during December 1896, and for the catalogue Whistler wrote an introductory note, and another for a show of Phil May's drawings in the same gallery. He designed the cover for Mr. Charles Whibley's Book of Scoundrels, and also two covers for novels by Miss Elizabeth Robins, Below the Salt, for which he drew a silver ship, and The Open Question, for which he devised shields; all three books published by Mr. Heinemann. The design for the Book of Scoundrels was a gallows, drawn in thin lines, with rope and noose attached. Henley, to whom it was shown, asked whether the gallows should not have been drawn with a support. Whistler's comment was: "Well, you know, that's the usual sort of gallows, but this one will do. It will hang all of us. Just like Henley's selfishness to want a strong one!" an allusion to Henley's size.
(See page 257)
During the winter Whistler met Sir Seymour Haden for the last time at a dinner given by the Society of Illustrators (of which both were Vice-Presidents) to Mr. Alfred Parsons, on his election to the Royal Academy. It was Whistler's first appearance in public since his wife's death, and as we had persuaded him to go, never anticipating any such meeting, we were annoyed to think that we had exposed him to the unpleasantness of it, or Haden either, for we had had no part in their quarrels. However, as soon as Whistler saw Haden he woke up and began to enjoy himself. His laugh carried far. Haden heard it, and may have seen the three monocles on the dinner-table. He looked toward the laugh, dropped his spoon in his soup-plate, and left. Later Whistler was called upon to make a speech and could not get out of it. But it was an anti-climax. The event of the dinner was over.
At Christmas he went with Mr. and Mrs. T. Fisher Unwin and ourselves to Bournemouth, where our hotel was an old-fashioned inn, selected from the guide-book because it was the nearest to the sea. We breakfasted in our rooms, we met at lunch to order dinner, and the rest of the day Whistler insisted must be spent getting an appetite for it—wandering on the cliffs, he with his little paint-box. But the sea was on the wrong side, the wind blew the wrong way, he could do nothing. Some days we took long drives. One damp, cold, cheerless afternoon we stopped at a small inn in Poole. The landlady, watching Whistler sip his hot whisky and water, was convinced he was somebody, but was unable to place him. "And who do you suppose I am?" Whistler asked at last. "I can't exactly say, sir, but I should fancy you was from the 'Alls!" Aubrey Beardsley was then at Boscombe, a further stage in his brave fight with death, and we went to see him. But the sight of the suffering of others was too cruel a reminder to Whistler, and he shrank from going to Beardsley.
Dinner was the event of the day, and it would have proved a disaster had Whistler not seen humour in being expected to eat it, so little was it what he thought a dinner should be. On Christmas Day he was melancholy and stared at the turkey and bread sauce, the sodden potatoes and soaked greens: "To think of my beautiful room in the Rue du Bac, and the rest of them there, eating their Christmas dinner, having up my wonderful old Pouilly from my cellar."
But we had something else to talk about. In the Saturday Review of that week, December 26, there was an article, signed Walter Sickert, that was of interest to us all.