line between art and literature, to his incursion as "brilliant
amateur" into the region of letters, to his denial of the possibility
of an artistic period or an art-loving people, and to much else
besides. All this might have passed, but Swinburne went further.
He questioned the seriousness of Whistler. He twisted Whistler's
meaning to suit his weighty humour, and then, in a surprising vein of
insolence, re-echoed the popular verdict. The witty tongue must be
thrust into the smiling cheek, he thought, when Whistler wrote, "Art
and Joy go together," which meant, according to Swinburne, that tragic
art is not art at all.
"'Arter that, let's have a glass of wine,' said a famous countryman
of Mr. Whistler's, on the memorable occasion when he was impelled
to address his friend Mr. Brick in the immortal words, 'keep cool,
Jefferson, don't bust.' The admonition may not improbably be required
by the majority of readers who come suddenly and unawares upon this
transcendent and pyramidal pleasantry. The laughing muse of the
lecturer, '_quam Focus circumvolat_,' must have glanced round in
expectation of the general appeal, 'After that, let us take breath.'
And having done so, they must have remembered that they were not in a
serious world; that they were in the fairyland of fans, in the paradise
of pipkins, in the limbo of blue china, screens, pots, plates, jars,
joss-houses, and all the fortuitous frippery of Fusiyama."
This is quoted as an example of Swinburnian humour. The rest of the
article is offensive and ridiculous--the brilliant poet but ponderous
prose writer trying to be funny--with references to the "jester of
genius," to the "tumbler or clown," to the "gospel of the grin." It was
this that hurt--that Swinburne, the poet, "also misunderstood," could
laugh with the crowd at the "eccentricity" and levity of Whistler.
Swinburne's criticism was easy to answer, and was answered in two
of the comments printed, with extracts from the article, in _The
Gentle Art_. "That tragic art is not art at all" is, Whistler wrote,
Swinburne's "own inconsequence," and this _Reflection_ appears on the
opposite margin:
"Is not, then, the funeral hymn a gladness to the singer, if the verse
be beautiful?
"Certainly the funeral monument, to be worthy the Nation's sorrow
buried beneath it, must first be a joy to the sculptor who designed it.
"The Bard's reasoning is of the People. The Tragedy is _theirs_. As one
of them the _man_ may weep--yet will the artist rejoice, for to him is
not 'a thing of beauty a joy for ever'?"
To the _World_ Whistler wrote the letter called "Freeing a Last Friend"
in _The Gentle Art_. It is short, the sting in the concluding paragraph:
"Thank you, my dear! I have lost a _confrère_; but then, I have gained
an acquaintance--one Algernon Swinburne--'outsider'--Putney."
The letter was sent to Swinburne before it appeared in the _World_. We
have been told that it was received at Putney one Sunday morning when
Mr. Watts-Dunton was to breakfast with Whistler. Suspecting that the
letter might not be friendly, Mr. Watts-Dunton took it, unopened, with
him to Chelsea and begged Whistler to withdraw it. Whistler refused.
Mr. Watts-Dunton left the house without breakfasting, and the same day
the letter was delivered to Swinburne, who, after reading it, pale with
rage, swore that never again would he speak to Whistler. As a result,
Mr. Watts-Dunton, we believe, was at pains to avoid Whistler, fearful
of a rupture with him. Mr. Meredith had discovered years before that
the springs in Whistler were prompt for the challenge, and it cannot be
denied that he had reason to see a challenge in Swinburne's article.
How much it hurt he did not conceal in _The Gentle Art_, where the
extracts from Swinburne are followed immediately by _Et tu, Brute_, and
there is nothing more dignified, almost pathetic, in the volume:
"... Cannot the man who wrote _Atalanta_, and the _Ballads
Beautiful_--can he not be content to spend his life with _his_ work,
which should be his love, and has for him no misleading doubt and
darkness, that he should so stray about blindly in his brother's flower
beds and bruise himself!...
"Who are you deserting your Muse, that you should insult my Goddess
with familiarity, and the manners of approach common to the reasoners
in the market-place? 'Hearken to me,' you cry, 'and I will point out
how this man, who has passed his life in her worship, is a tumbler and
a clown of the booths, how he who has produced that which I fain must
acknowledge, is a jester in the ring!'
"Do we not speak the same language? Are we strangers, then, or, in our
Father's house are there so many mansions that you lose your way, my
brother, and cannot recognise your kin?...
"You have been misled, you have mistaken the pale demeanour and joined
hands for an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual
earnestness. For you, these are the serious ones, and, for them, you
others are the serious matter. Their joke is their work. For me--why
should I refuse myself the grim joy of this grotesque tragedy--and,
with them now, you are all my joke!"
And Swinburne, in pitiful spite, we have been told, burned Whistler's
letters, and tried to sell _La Mère Gérard_ which Whistler had given
him. Later, Mr. Watts-Dunton is said to have stated that Whistler asked
Swinburne to write the article, and also that he tried to make peace
between them.
CHAPTER XXIX: THE BRITISH ARTISTS. THE RISE. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
EIGHTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SIX.
In the autumn of 1884, Whistler joined the Society of British Artists.
Years later, when a British Artist was dining with us, Whistler came
in. "A delightful evening," he said, towards midnight, the British
Artist having gone, "but what was it for the British Artist sitting
there, face to face with his late President?" And then, he told us how
he became connected with the Society:
"Well, you know, one day at my studio in Chelsea, a deputation
arrived--Ayerst Ingram and one or two others. And there they were--and
I received them charmingly, of course--and they represented to me that
the British Artists' was an old and distinguished Society, possibly
as old as the Academy, and maybe older, and they had come to ask me
if I would do them the honour of becoming a member. It was only right
I should know that the Society's fortunes were at a low ebb, but they
wished to put new life into it. I felt the ceremony of the occasion.
Whatever the Society was at the moment, it had a past, and they were
there with all official authority to pay me a compliment. I accepted
the offer with appropriate courtesy. As always, I understood the
ceremonial of the occasion--and then, almost as soon as I was made a
member I was elected President."
In the summer of 1906 Sir Alfred East, President of the British
Artists, and the Council, with the courtesy Whistler would have
approved, gave us permission to consult the minute-books. The first
mention of Whistler is in the minutes of the half-yearly general
meeting, November 21, 1884, held at the Suffolk Street Galleries, when
it was proposed "that Mr. Whistler be invited to join the Society as
a member. A discussion took place concerning the law of electing Mr.
Whistler by ballot, when it was proposed by Mr. Bayliss, seconded
by Mr. Cauty, that the law relating to the election of members be
suspended." This was carried, and the _Times_ (December 3, 1884) said:
"Artistic society was startled by the news that this most wayward,
most un-English of painters had found a home among the men of Suffolk
Street, of all people in the world."
Whistler had never belonged to any society in England, and had never
been asked, though we believe he was a Freemason; at any rate he had
a pair of sleeve buttons with masonic emblems--apparently--on them.
He was fifty, an age when most men have "arrived" officially, if they
"arrive" at all. Up to this moment he had stood apart from every school
and group and movement in the country. He was as much a foreigner
as when he came, a quarter of a century before, from Paris. He was
a puzzle to the people, more American than English in appearance,
manners, and standards. His short, slight figure, dark colouring and
abundant curls, his vivacity of gesture, his American accent, his
gaiety, his sense of honour, his quick resentment of an insult, were
foreign and, therefore, to be suspected, and his personality increased
the suspicion with which his art was regarded. Recent writers have
analysed his work and pointed out where it is American, French,
Japanese. But to his contemporaries it did not matter what these
tendencies were, the result was not English. His art, in its aims and
methods, was different from theirs, to them he seemed in deliberate
opposition, ruled by caprice, straining after novelty and notoriety.
When Whistler came to England, art was the Academy, an Academy that
had strangled the traditions of art and set up sentiment and anecdote.
Wilkie explained the ideal of the nineteenth-century Academician when
he said that "to know the taste of the public--to learn what will
best please the employer--is, to an artist, the most valuable of
all knowledge"; and the Royal Academy has only carried on the canny
tradition. The classic machines of Leighton, Tadema, and Poynter
appealed to the artless scholar; the idylls of Millais, Marcus Stone,
and Leslie to the artless sentimentalist. Watts preached sermons
for the artless serious, Stacy Marks raised a laugh in the artless
humorist, Herbert and Long edified the artless pious. Every taste was
catered to. Everybody could understand, and art had never been so
popular in England. The Academy became a social power. As art was the
last thing looked for on the walls, so the artist was the last thing
looked for in the Academician. The situation is summed up in Whistler's
reply to a group of ladies who were praising Leighton:
"He is such a wonderful musician! such a gallant colonel! such a
brilliant orator! such a dignified President! such a charming host!
such an amazing linguist!" they chorused. "H'm, paints, too, don't he,
among his other accomplishments?" said Whistler.
It was an extraordinary state of affairs. "Art," was little more than
an excuse for intrigues and trivialities. Men who were thought daring
in rebellion and leaders of secessions did not improve matters. The
Pre-Raphaelites were absorbed in subject, though it was of another
kind, and though they paid greater attention to technique and preached,
as reformers always have, a return to Nature. Their insistence upon
detail and finish, instead of opening their eyes, closed them more
hopelessly by making it a duty to see nothing save unimportant facts,
and to copy these like a machine. The exception, Alfred Stevens, who
neither stooped to the taste of public or patron, nor confused the
artist with the missionary, was as complete a pariah as Whistler, and
he died unknown and unrecognised.
[Illustration: THE BEGGARS
ETCHING. G. 194
By permission of the Fine Art Society
(_See page 199_)]
[Illustration: THE RIALTO
ETCHING. G. 211
By permission of Messrs. Dowdeswell
(_See page 199_)]
The position in France was different. French officialism respected
tradition. The art of the academic painters might be frigid,
conventional, dull, but it was never petty and trivial, never strove to
please by escape from drawing and colour. Gleyre, Ary Scheffer, Couture
were the masters Whistler found in Paris. Their successors--Gérôme,
Jean-Paul Laurens, Bouguereau, Bonnat--did not altogether throw their
dignity as artists to the winds of popularity, or sacrifice it to
social ambition. The rebels in France were not actuated by moral or
literary motives, but broke away from conservatism. Rebellion sent
Holman Hunt to Palestine, Rossetti to mediævalism, Burne-Jones to
legend; it kept Courbet at home, for the true was the beautiful and
truth was to be found in the life and the people about him. Moreover,
the painter was to see these things through, not a microscope, but his
eyes. No man who looks upon a broad landscape can count the blades of
grass in a field, or the leaves of ivy on a wall, or the stars in the
heavens; the eye can take in only the whole, enveloped in atmosphere,
bathed in light, shrouded in darkness, all things keeping their
places in their planes. While in England the artist was searching the
Scriptures and the Encyclopædia for subject, in France he was training
his eye to see things as they are and his hand to render them. This
preoccupation with Nature, and the study of tone, gave artists new
pictorial and technical problems, and subject counted for nothing
except as an aid to their right solution. It is curious to contrast
the work of the men in France and England of the same generation as
Whistler. Fantin-Latour grouped his friends about the portrait of
Delacroix, Leighton rearranged a procession of early Florentines
carrying the Madonna of Cimabue through his idea of the streets. Manet
noted the play of light and colour in the bull-rings of Spain, Tadema
rebuilt on his canvas what he thought were the arenas of ancient Rome.
Degas chose his models among the washerwomen and ballet-girls of modern
Paris, Rossetti borrowing his subjects from Dante.
Whistler, from his first picture, was as preoccupied with the beauty in
the "familiar" as his French fellow students. What might have happened
had he remained in France, it is idle to discuss. Coming to England
he developed in his own way, and this was a way with which English
painters had no sympathy. He was so isolated that nothing has been more
difficult for the historian of modern art than to place, to classify
him. Some authorities have included him among the Realists. His work
eventually differed from that of Courbet and Courbet's disciples, but
he was always as much a realist as they in his preference for the world
in which he lived, and in his study of the relations of the things he
found in it. He never wavered, except when he painted the Japanese
pictures, and then he was not led astray by anecdote or sentiment, but
by the beauty that had drifted from Japan into his house and studio.
London, dirty, gloomy, despised by most artists, with its little
shops and taverns in the fog-bound streets; the Thames, with its ugly
warehouses and gaunt factories in the mist-laden night; the crinolines
of the sixties; the clinging, tight draperies of the seventies,
became beautiful as he saw them. He made no effort to reform Nature,
only reserving his right to select the elements that were beautiful
and could be brought together, as notes in music, to create harmony,
putting into practice his teaching of _The Ten O'Clock_. He sought
colour, mass, not detail. The Pre-Raphaelites wanted to leave out less
than a camera, he wanted to put in no more than came within his vision.
He turned his back on history and archæology, and filled his canvas
with beauty of line and form. And he struggled to perfect his technical
methods, to make of them a perfect medium by which to express this
beauty, to reconcile what he could see in Nature with what his brush
could render. The Pre-Raphaelites laboured over their canvas, inch by
inch; he painted his whole picture at once that unity might result.
The Academicians lost their way in literary labyrinths; he lingered
on the river, learning its secrets, he watched the movement, the pose
of people about him. The modern exhibition forced most painters into
violent colour and exaggerated action, he made no concession, though he
was ready to submit his pictures to the same tests as theirs.
It was inevitable that his English contemporaries could make nothing of
him and his work. The Academician saw but emptiness in his paintings.
To the Pre-Raphaelites they were slovenly and superficial. Holman
Hunt said of him that he knew where to leave off, and was careful in
the avoidance of difficulties; Millais thought him "a great power
of mischief among young men, a man who had never learnt the grammar
of his art." The critics took their cue from the painters, the more
willingly because art criticism then meant analysis of the subject of
a picture, and there was no subject in Whistler's work to analyse. Yet
he never objected to subject. It was only the blind critics and the
blind painters of the day who said he did, and their stupidity is still
aped. The great pictures for him were Velasquez's _Meniñas_ Franz Hals'
_Family_, Tintoretto's _Milky Way_: the greatest subject-pictures in
the world. All he objected to was the cheap drivel or sentiment of the
painter whose mind or whose audience never rose above Mummie's Darling
or the Mustard Pot, the real British school trampled on by Hogarth.
The public, following their leaders, were convinced that Whistler's
work was empty, slight, trivial, an insult to their intelligence,
unless they took it as a jest. Nothing explains the popular conception
of him better than the readiness to see eccentricity even in methods
which he, "heir to all the ages," had inherited. His long-handled
brushes and his manner of placing sitter and canvas were eccentric,
though they had been Gainsborough's a century before. To say that a
picture was finished from the beginning was no less eccentric, though
it was Baudelaire's axiom that the author foresees the last line
of his work when he writes the first. It is easier to make than to
lose the reputation for eccentricity, fatal to success in a land of
conservatism. Whistler saw the Englishmen who had studied in Paris
with him laden with honours; Poynter a prosperous painter, Leighton a
perfect President, Du Maurier the popular idol of _Punch_, Armstrong a
State functionary at South Kensington, while he remained, officially,
on the outside, at fifty less honoured than at twenty-five, because, it
was said, that he had not realised the promise of his youth.
In one respect his position had changed. His contemporaries did not
alter their opinion, but younger artists accepted him and his teaching
unquestioningly for a time. Though doubted and mistrusted, he had
never been without influence. To look over old reviews and notices of
exhibitions is to find references to the effect of his example. In the
_Art Journal_ (June 1887), Sir Walter Armstrong traced the growing
influence of French on English art to the Paris Universal Exhibition of
1867 and to Whistler. But artists of the new generation went further
than the admission of his influence; with the enthusiasm of youth,
they proclaimed his greatness. He was their master--the one master in
England. After his return from Venice, when his fortunes were at their
lowest and the public held him in most contempt, this enthusiasm began
to make itself heard and felt in the studios and the schools.
The British Artists, uncertain of their future, took desperate
remedies. The Society was old, with distinguished chapters in its
history. It was formed by one of the first groups who realised the
necessity for an association in self-defence against the monopoly of
the Academy. It dated back to the beginning of the nineteenth century.
With the old Water Colour Society, it was considered only second in
rank to the Academy. Its gallery was in Suffolk Street, near enough to
the Academy to profit by any overflow of visitors, until the Academy
moved from Trafalgar Square to Piccadilly. The old Water Colour Society
was more independent, because it is devoted to a branch of art never
acknowledged by the Academy, though every Academician tries to sneak
in. But the British Artists suffered from this removal, and found
a formidable rival in the Grosvenor Gallery. In Whistler, with his
following, they seemed to see the man to drag them from the mire into
which they had sunk. The older members hesitated--afraid of Whistler,
afraid of the Academy, afraid of themselves. But the younger members
carried the day.
Whistler worked hard for the Society from his election till his
resignation. He attended his first meeting on December 1, 1884, and
interested himself immediately in the affairs of the Society, though,
according to Mr. Ludovici, this was the last thing the Society expected
of him. He promptly invited his President and fellow members to
breakfast in Tite Street, and, as promptly, was put on a committee for
a smoking concert, a dull and ponderous function. He sent to the Winter
Exhibition (1884-85) two pictures, _Arrangement in Black, No. II._, the
portrait of Mrs. Louis Huth, not exhibited in London since 1874, and a
water-colour, _A Little Red Note, Dordrecht_; in the Summer Exhibition
(1885) he showed the _Sarasate_ for the first time. Mr. Cole wrote in
his diary:
"_October 19th_ (1884). M. and I went to tea with Whistler to see his
fine full-length of Sarasate, the violinist, for next year's Academy."
But whatever his original intention may have been, the _Sarasate_
went to Suffolk Street with several small Notes and Harmonies. If, in
electing him, the British Artists hoped to attract attention to their
exhibition, they were not disappointed. "The eccentric Mr. Whistler
has gone to a neglected little gallery, the British Artists, which
he will probably bring into fashion," Mr. (now Sir) Claude Phillips
wrote in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ (July 1885), and this is what
happened. The distinction of the _Sarasate_ could not be denied. But
in his other work he was pronounced "vastly amusing," the _Pall Mall
Gazette_ seizing this occasion to remind him of "Dr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes' virtuous determination never to be as funny as he could. It is
so bad for the young." Soon Whistler proposed that Sunday receptions
should be given in the gallery, and that medals should be awarded. He
got Mr. Menpes in as a water-colourist, thus establishing distinct
sections in the Society, a scheme he carried out in the International
Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers, and he suggested that
photographs of pictures shown should be sold in the gallery, an idea
copied all over the world. For the Winter Exhibition of 1885-86 he had
another interesting group, including the _Portrait of Mrs. Cassatt_ and
a _Note in Green and Violet_. The _Mrs. Cassatt_ has not been exhibited
in England since, and is one of the least known of his portraits. Mr.
Cassatt, who was among the few believers in Whistler at this period,
came from Paris to London in April 1883, especially to have it painted,
and was with Mrs. Cassatt during the sittings at 13 Tite Street. She
has vivid memories of the brilliant talk between the two men. It is
amusing that Whistler, after having told them the story of _The Peacock
Room_, should have himself arranged for them to see it, and that then
they heard Leyland's story. Mrs. Cassatt wanted to be painted in an
evening gown. Mr. Cassatt preferred her riding habit. "The very thing,"
said Whistler, and so in her riding habit and tall hat she stands on
the canvas. Perhaps it was because of her disappointment that she could
not see a likeness in the portrait. Whistler realised this, but, he
told her, "After all, it's a Whistler." Mr. Cassatt, punctilious in
these matters, paid Whistler for the painting before he returned to
America. Two years passed, and still no portrait. Whistler had probably
kept it back for the British Artists. Mr. Cassatt at last wrote.
They had their reward for the delay. A letter of apologies came from
Whistler and was followed by a case, with not only the portrait in it,
but _The Chelsea Girl_, a painting as little known, and now reproduced
for the first time as far as we have record.
At the British Artists the _Note in Green and Violet_, a small pastel
of a nude, created a far greater sensation than the portrait. About a
month before the show opened, the late J. C. Horsley, R.A., had read,
during a Church Congress, a paper no one would have given a thought to
had not Whistler immortalised it. Horsley said:
"If those who talk and write so glibly as to the desirability of
artists devoting themselves to the representation of the naked human
form, only knew a tithe of the degradation enacted before the model
is sufficiently hardened to her shameful calling, they would for
ever hold their tongues and pens in supporting the practice. Is not
clothedness a distinct type and feature of our Christian faith? All art
representations of nakedness are out of harmony with it."
Whistler answered with "one of the little things that Providence
sometimes sent him": "_Horsley soit qui mal y pense_," he wrote on a
label, and fastened it to the _Note in Green and Violet_. The British
Artists were alarmed, for to enter Suffolk Street was not to abandon
hope of the Academy. The label was removed, not before it had been
seen. The critic of the _Pall Mall_ referred to it as Whistler's
"indignant protest against the idea that there is any immorality in the
nude." Whistler, who knew when ridicule served better than indignation,
wrote: "Art certainly requires no 'indignant protest' against the
unseemliness of senility. _Horsley soit qui mal y pense_ is meanwhile
a sweet sentiment--why more--and why 'morality'?" But the critic could
not understand, and he was discovered one day "walking in Pall Mall
with the nude on his arm."
The revenue of the Society had been rapidly decreasing, a deficit of
five hundred pounds had to be faced. To meet it Whistler proposed that
the luncheon to the Press be discontinued. It was an almost general
custom then to feast the critics at press views of picture exhibitions.
But in few was the cloth more lavishly spread than at the British
Artists', in few were boxes of cigars and whiskies-and-sodas placed so
conveniently. The younger critics resented it, the old ones lived for
it. Press day, the dreariest in the year at the Royal Academy, was the
most delightful at the British Artists', they said. Mr. Sidney Starr
tells a story of one, when Whistler had not hung his picture, but only
the frame:
"Telegrams were sent imploring the placing of the canvas. But the only
answer that came was, 'The Press have ye always with you; feed my
lambs.' A smoking-concert followed during the exhibition. At this, one
critic said to the Master, 'Your picture is not up to your mark, it is
not good this time.' 'You should not say it isn't good; you should say
you don't like it, and then, you know, you're perfectly safe; now come
and have something you do like, have some whisky,' said Whistler."
[Illustration: PORTRAITS OF MAUD
OIL (DESTROYED)
From photographs lent by Pickford R. Waller, Esq.
(_See page 206_)]
[Illustration: JUBILEE MEMORIAL
ILLUMINATION
In the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle
(_See page 264_)]
In the place of the luncheon, Whistler suggested a Sunday breakfast
when members should pay for themselves and their guests. But members
were horrified; his motion was lost.
In April 1886, Mr. William Graham's collection came up for auction at
Christie's. The sale brought to it the buyers and admirers of Rossetti,
Burne-Jones, Holman Hunt, many of whose pictures Graham had bought.
Whistler's _Nocturne in Blue and Silver (Blue and Gold), Old Battersea
Bridge_ belonged to him. When it appeared "there was a slight attempt
at an ironical cheer, which being mistaken for serious applause, was
instantly suppressed by an angry hiss all round," and it was sold for
sixty pounds to Mr. R. H. C. Harrison. Whistler acknowledged through
the _Observer_ (April 11, 1886), "the distinguished, though I fear
unconscious, compliment so publicly paid." Such recognition rarely, he
said, came to the painter during his lifetime, and to his friends he
spoke of it as an unheard-of success, the first time such a thing had
happened. The hisses in their ears, the British Artists were dismayed
by his one contribution to the Summer Exhibition of 1886. This was
a _Harmony in Blue and Gold_, a full-length of a girl in draperies
of blue and green, leaning against a railing and holding a parasol,
an arrangement, like the _Six Projects_, uniting classic design with
Japanese detail. The draperies were transparent, and to defy Horsley
and the British Matron was no part of the British Artists' policy. They
were doubtless the more shocked when they read the comments in the
Press. The most amusing revelation of British prudery, worth preserving
as typical, appeared in the _Court and Society Review_ (June 24, 1886)
in a letter, signed "A Country Collector," protesting against the
praise of Mr. Malcolm Salaman, who was the art critic of that paper:
"I am invited to gaze at an unfinished, rubbishy sketch of a young
woman, who, if she is not naked, ought to be, for she would then be
more decent.... The figure is more naked than nude: the colour what
there is of it, is distinctly unpleasant. For my part, sir, I will
not believe in Mr. Whistler; my daughters have commanded me to admire
him--I will _not_ admire him. How they can quietly stare at the
ill-painted, sooty-faced young woman in 'blue and gold' passes me. But
things are altered now, and my girls gaze with critical calmness and
carefully balanced _pince-nez_ on that which would have sent their
grandmothers shrieking from the gallery."
And Whistler, he declared, was a "poseur" and the picture "a colossal
piece of pyramidal impudence."
Whistler was not represented at the Grosvenor, and at the _Salon_ only
by the _Sarasate_, which went afterwards to the "XX" Club in Brussels.
His show in 1886 was at Messrs. Dowdeswell's Gallery. They exhibited
and published for him the _Set of Twenty-Six Etchings_, twenty-one of
the plates done in Venice, the other five in England, the price fifty
guineas. With the prints he issued the often-quoted _Propositions_,
the first series; the laws, as he defined them, of etching. He said
that in etching, as in every other art, the space covered should be in
proportion to the means used for covering it, and that the delicacy of
the needle demands the smallness of the plate; that the "Remarque,"
then in vogue, emanated from the amateur; that there should be no
margin to receive a "Remarque"; and that the habit of margin also came
from the outsider. For a few years these _Propositions_ were accepted
by artists. At the present time they are ignored or defied, and the
bigger the plate the better pleased is the etcher and his public. Later
in the year, in May, Messrs. Dowdeswell arranged in their gallery a
second series of _Notes--Harmonies--Nocturnes_. A few were in oil, a
few in pencil, but the larger number were pastels and water-colours.
They were studies of the nude, impressions of the sea at Dieppe and
Dover, St. Ives and Trouville, the little shops of London and Paris,
the skies and canals of Holland. Whistler decorated the room in Brown
and Gold, choosing the brown paper for the walls, designing the
mouldings of the dado. Mr. Walter Dowdeswell has the sketch of the
scheme in raw umber, yellow ochre, raw sienna, and white; he has also
preserved the brown-and-yellow hangings, and the yellow velarium. On
the cover for the mantelpiece, the Butterfly, placed to one side, is
without a sting. "Where is the sting?" Mr. Dowdeswell asked. "That,"
Whistler said, "is in my waistcoat pocket. I am keeping it for the
critics." The exhibition was received with mingled praise and blame,
and it would not have been a success financially had not Mr. H. S.
Theobald, K.C., purchased all that earlier buyers left on Messrs.
Dowdeswell's hands.
In the following summer Mr. Burr refused to stand again for the
Presidency, and at a General Meeting (June 1, 1886), Whistler was
elected. The excitement was intense. Whistler alone was calm and
unmoved. Mr. Ingram, a scrutineer, remembers coming for Whistler's
vote and being so excited that Whistler tried to reassure him: "Never
mind, never mind, you've done your best!" The meeting adjourned to
the Hogarth Club for supper. "_J'y suis, j'y reste_," Whistler wired
his brother. The comic papers were full of caricatures, the serious
papers of astonishment. He was hailed as "President Whistler" by his
friends, and denounced by members of the Society as an artist with no
claim to be called British. Younger painters rushed to his support,
and one French critic, Marcel Roland, prophesied that, "_l'oeuvre de
Whistler ne quittera son atelier que pour aller tout droit s'ennuyer à
jamais sur les murs des grandes salles du Louvre. La place est marquée
entre Paul Véronèse et Vélasquez._" It was suggested by Mr. Malcolm
Salaman that "all the rising young painters to whom we must look for
the future of British art will flock to the standard of Mr.--why not
Sir James--Whistler, rather than to that of Sir Frederick Leighton"--a
prophecy fulfilled in the early days of the International, while the
question as to whether Whistler would have accepted a knighthood has
lately been discussed. He would doubtlessly, could he have done so
without losing his American citizenship, but he would not have sold his
citizenship for it. Honorary rank and British orders could have been
conferred upon him, as they are often upon foreign politicians, social
nonentities, or useful financiers without loss of their citizenship.
But in British orders, as Lord Melbourne said of the Garter, "there is
no damn question of merit about it."
Whistler intended going to America in the fall, but the journey was
postponed. He wrote to the _World_ (October 13, 1886), "this is no time
for hesitation--one cannot continually disappoint a Continent," and he
settled down to the task of directing the fortunes of a Society which
looked to him for help, its members divided among themselves in their
confidence in him as President.
CHAPTER XXX: THE BRITISH ARTISTS. THE FALL. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
EIGHTY-SIX TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-EIGHT.
According to the constitution of the British Artists the President,
though elected in June, does not take office until December. Whistler
presided for the first time on December 10, 1886, and from that day
he was supported devotedly by one faction and opposed fiercely by the
other.
For the Winter Exhibition (1886-87) he decorated the galleries with
the same care as his own shows. He put up a velarium, he covered the
walls with muslin. The muslin gave out, leaving a bare space under the
ceiling. "But what matter?" he said, "the battens are well placed, they
make good lines," and they became part of the decoration. He would
allow no crowding, the walls were to be the background of good pictures
well spaced, well arranged. He urged the virtue of rejection. Mr.
Starr says, "He was oblivious to every interest but the quality of the
work shown." He told Mr. Menpes, one of the Hanging Committee, "If you
are uncertain for a moment, say 'Out.' We want clean spaces round our
pictures. We want them to be seen. The British Artists' must cease to
be a shop."
This was resented. The modern exhibition is a shop, and as long as
most painters have their way a shop it will remain. He exhibited
_Nocturne in Brown and Gold_ (afterwards _Blue and Gold_), _St. Mark's,
Venice_--he told the members on varnishing day that it was his best;
_Harmony in Red: Lamplight_, Mrs. Godwin, and _Harmony in White and
Ivory_, Lady Colin Campbell, a beautiful portrait of a beautiful
woman, one of many that have disappeared. It was not finished when
Whistler sent it in, an excuse for dissatisfied members to propose its
removal. The question was not put to the meeting when the matter came
up, but a proposition to define the rights of the President and the
President-elect was carried.
One of Whistler's first acts was to offer to loan the Society five
hundred pounds to pay its debts. Mr. Starr describes him, "during this
time of fluctuating finances, pawning his large gold _Salon_ medal one
day, lending five hundred pounds to the British Artists the next. He
often found 'a long face and a short account at the Bank,' he said one
day."
He did everything he could to increase the prestige of the Society.
All that was charming was to be encouraged, all that was tedious was
to be done away with. He got distinguished artists to join: Charles
Keene, Alfred Stevens, and the more promising younger men. He allowed
several to call themselves in the catalogue "pupils of Whistler," and
to make drawings of the gallery and his pictures for the illustrated
papers. The sketches of _Sarasate_ in the _Pall Mall's Pictures of
1885_, and of _Harmony in Blue and Gold_, and his exhibition at
Dowdeswell's gallery in _Pictures of 1886_ are by him. But after this
Mr. Theodore Roussel, Mr. Walter Sickert, Mr. Sidney Starr made the
drawings for reproduction. He gave the Art Union, organised by the
Society, a plate, _The Fish Shop--Busy Chelsea_, one year, and another,
a painting done at St. Ives. In the March meeting (1887) he proposed
a limit of size for exhibits, he contributed twenty pounds towards
a scheme of decoration, and he presented four velvet curtains for
the doorways in the large room. There is a drawing, showing curtains
and velarium, by Mr. Roussel in the _Pall Mall's Pictures of 1887_.
Whistler's early _Nocturne in Blue and Gold, Valparaiso Bay_; _Nocturne
in Black and Gold, The Gardens_ (Cremorne); _Harmony in Grey, Chelsea
in Ice_, were hung, and with them his latest, _Arrangement in Violet
and Pink, Portrait of Mrs. Walter Sickert_. This is the first of the
two portraits he painted of Mrs. Sickert, and from her we learned that
it was destroyed.
Most of the members regarded the President's innovations as an
interference with their rights. He might pay their debts, that was one
thing; it was another to make their gallery beautiful by chucking their
pictures. Their resentment increased on the occasion of a visit from
the Prince of Wales. Whistler stayed late the day before to finish the
decoration. When the members came, doors and dados were painted yellow.
Whistler, with whom great fault was found, refused to have anything
further to do with the decorations, though they were unfinished. There
was fright carried that evening to a smoking-concert at the Hogarth
Club, where everybody was talking of the arrangement in yellow. He
was telegraphed for. "So discreet of you all at the Hogarth" was his
answer, and he did not appear until it was time to meet the Prince,
though in the meantime members tried to tone down the yellow. Whistler
told us:
"I went downstairs to meet the Prince. As we were walking up, I a
little in front with the Princess, the Prince, who always liked to be
well informed in these matters, asked what the Society was--Was it an
old institution? What was its history? 'Sir, it has none, its history
dates from to-day!' I said."
But the old members say that when the Prince went downstairs with one
of them his remark was: "Who is that funny little man we have been
talking to?"
The dissatisfaction was brought before a meeting, when a proposition
was made and passed "that the experiment of hanging pictures in an
isolated manner be discontinued," and that, in future, enough works be
accepted to cover the vacant space above and below the line--in fact,
that the gallery be hung as before. It is said that some members made
an estimate of the amount of wall-space left bare, and calculated the
loss in pounds, shillings and pence.
We saw this exhibition, though we did not see Whistler. We remember
the quiet, well-spaced walls, and the portrait of Mrs. Sickert, also
works by Dannat and William Stott. It should not be forgotten that the
British Artists' was arranged and hung by Whistler years before there
was any idea of artistic hanging in German Secessions--we believe,
before there were any Secessions. Whistler had applied to his own shows
the same method of spacing and hanging, and decorating the walls with
an appropriate colour-scheme. It had occurred to no one before him that
beautiful things should be shown beautifully, and it is not too much
to say that the attention given to-day to the artistic arrangement
of picture exhibitions is due entirely to Whistler. The resurrection
of the velarium, designed, made, and hung after his scheme, has
revolutionised the lighting of picture galleries, though in very few is
his scheme intelligently followed.
1887 was Queen Victoria's Jubilee, and every society of artists
prepared addresses to Her Majesty; Whistler could not permit his
Society to appear less ceremoniously loyal. His account to us was:
"Well, you know, I found that the Academy and the Institute and the
rest of them were preparing addresses to the Queen, and so I went to
work too, and I prepared a most wonderful address. Instead of the
illuminated performances for such occasions, I took a dozen folio
sheets of my old Dutch paper. I had them bound by Zaehnsdorf. First
came the beautiful binding in yellow morocco and the inscription to
Her Majesty, every word just in the right place--most wonderful. You
opened it, and on the first page you found a beautiful little drawing
of the royal arms that I made myself; the second page, an etching of
Windsor, as though 'there's where you live!' On the third page the
address began. I made decorations all round the text in water-colour,
at the top the towers of Windsor, down one side a great battleship
plunging through the waves, and below, the sun that never sets on the
British Empire--What? The following pages were not decorated, just the
most wonderful address, explaining the age and dignity of the Society,
its devotion to Her Glorious, Gracious Majesty, and suggesting the
honour it would be if this could be recognised by a title that would
show the Society to belong specially to Her. Then, the last page; you
turned, and there was a little etching of my house at Chelsea--'And
now, here's where I live!' And then you closed it, and at the back of
the cover was the Butterfly. This was all done and well on its way and
not a word was said to the Society, when the Committee wrote and asked
me if I would come to a meeting as they wished to consult me. It was
about an address to Her Majesty--all the other Societies were sending
them--and they thought they should too. I asked what they proposed
spending--they were aghast when I suggested that the guinea they
mentioned might not meet a twentieth of the cost. But, all the time,
my beautiful address was on its way to Windsor, and finally came the
Queen's acknowledgment and command that the Society should be called
Royal--I carried this to a meeting and it was stormy. One member got up
and protested against one thing and another, and declared his intention
of resigning. 'You had better make a note of it, Mr. Secretary,' I
said. And then I got up with great solemnity, and I announced the
honour conferred upon them by Her Gracious Majesty, and they jumped up
and they rushed towards me with outstretched hands. But I waved them
all off, and I continued with the ceremonial to which they objected.
For the ceremonial was one of their grievances. They were accustomed to
meet in shirt-sleeves--free-and-easy fashion which I would not stand.
Nor would I consent to what was the rule and tradition of the Society.
I would not, when I spoke, step down from the chair and stand up in
the body of the meeting, but I remained always where I was. But, the
meeting over, then I sent for champagne."
Whistler, as President of the British Artists, was invited to the
Jubilee ceremonies in Westminster Abbey, and in Mr. Lorimer's painting
he may be seen on one side of the triforium, Leighton on the other.
_Jubilee in the Abbey_, an etching, gives his impressions. He was asked
also to the State garden-party at Buckingham Palace, and to the Naval
Review off Spithead, when he made the _Naval Review_ series of plates
and at least one water-colour in a day. Naturally, when the Royal
Academy neglected to invite him to their _soirée_, though hitherto they
had always invited the President of the British Artists, he resented it
as an insult not only to himself, but to the Society. "It really was a
pretty little recognition of my own personality beneath the cloak of
office," he wrote in an often-quoted letter to Leighton, then President
of the Royal Academy.
The year before, Mr. Ayerst Ingram had proposed that the Society
should give a show of the President's work to precede their Summer
Exhibition of 1887. This had met with so many objections that though
the motion was not withdrawn as Whistler wanted, it was dropped. After
the new honours were obtained by him for the Society, and while he
was travelling in Belgium and Holland, an effort was made to revive
the scheme. Mr. Ingram did what he could. Mr. Walter Dowdeswell acted
as honorary secretary, guarantors were found, owners of pictures
were written to. February and March 1888 was the time appointed,
but Whistler doubted the sincerity of the Society and would not
risk anything less than an "absolute triumph of perfection" for an
undertaking made in the name of the British Artists or his own. To him
no success was worse than failure. At the end of September nothing
definite had been arranged, and Whistler told Mr. Ingram that his
"solitary evidence of active interest could hardly bring about a result
sufficient to excuse such an eleventh-hour effort."
He was right. The opposition in the Society was strong, and many
members were in open warfare with their President. They refused to
support him in his proposition that no member of the Society should
be, or should remain, a member of any other Society, and when he
followed this with the proposition that no member of the Royal Society
of British Artists who was a member of any other Society should
serve on the Selecting or Hanging Committee, they again defeated him.
Nor did they persuade him to reconsider the formal withdrawal, on
November 18, of his permission to show his works. He sent, however,
several water-colours and the twelve etchings of the _Naval Review_
to the Winter Exhibition (1887-88), and four lithographs from the
_Art Notes_ published that autumn by the Goupils. They were described
in the _Magazine of Art_ (December 1887) as mere lead pencil "notes
reproduced in marvellous _facsimile_," which gave Whistler his chance
for a courteous reminder in the _World_ to "the bewildered one." The
critic might inquire, he said; "the safe and well-conducted one informs
himself." Within the Society he had once more to contend against the
opposition to his hanging and spacing, and a fresh grievance was
that space was filled with the work of Monet, as yet hardly known
in England. One of the older members, when he looked at Whistler's
_Red Note_, declared, "If he can do that, I'll forgive him--he can
do anything." But few could forgive so easily. They objected that
"Whistler would have his way, and didn't mind if he made enemies in
getting it," and they began to whisper that in the matter of the
memorial he had been dictatorial. The situation is best described in
the words of Mr. Holmes to us: "With a little more of Disraeli and a
little less of Oliver Cromwell, Whistler would have triumphed."
The crisis came in April 1888, before the Summer Exhibition. It was
suggested that the Council communicate with the President as to the
removal of temporary decorations which he had designed and they had
paid for. One decoration the Society did not object to was a velarium,
since it meant no loss of wall-space, and when Whistler removed this
they ordered a new one. Whistler, through his secretary, explained to
the Committee that the velarium was his patent--"a patent taken out
by the Greeks and Romans" is Mr. Ingram's comment. Whistler got out
an injunction; when the Committee, with their order for the velarium,
hurried to Hampton's shop, his secretary was at their heels in a hansom
with the injunction; the secretary arrived with them at Liberty's, but
somehow they managed, in the end, to evade him. A velarium was made and
put up, and they proceeded to get rid of their President. At a meeting
on May 7 a letter, signed by eight members whose names do not appear
in the minutes, was read, asking President Whistler to call a meeting
to request Mr. James A. McNeill Whistler to resign his membership
in the Society, and he called the meeting and signed the minutes.
The President made a speech, in which he claimed that his action in
the matter of the velarium was not inimical to the welfare of the
Society, but the speech was not recorded. He permitted no one to speak
in opposition, and the subject was dropped. At the special meeting
called by him the same month there was an exhaustive discussion.
Whistler declared his position. His opponents presented an array of
lawyer's letters, which they said showed that Whistler had threatened
injunctions, had greatly impeded the Executive in the decoration of
the galleries, and had influenced many distinguished people to keep
away from the private view. A vote was taken for his expulsion, though
Mr. Ingram proposed a vote of censure in its place. Whistler refused
at first to put the motion to expel himself, but finally was compelled
to do so. There were eighteen votes for, nineteen against it, and nine
members did not vote. The votes, Whistler said, when he addressed the
meeting after the ballot, showed that the Society approved of his
action. Mr. Francis James at once proposed a vote of censure on those
who had signed the letter, but this was not carried. On June 4, at the
annual election, when a whip had been sent round to all members, Wyke
Bayliss was elected President, and Whistler resigned from the Society,
congratulating the members on the election: "Now, at last, you must be
satisfied. You can no longer say you have the right man in the wrong
place!"
Mr. Starr recalls his saying: "Now I understand the feelings of all
those who, since the world began, have tried to save their fellow men."
The minority resigned, as Mr. Menpes, foreseeing the inevitable, had
a month earlier, which led to Whistler's comment on "the early rat
who leaves the sinking ship." All who had joined the Society with him
left it with him, and he said "the Artists came out and the British
remained."
Mr. Menpes describes a supper of the Artists after the meeting at the
Hogarth Club. He says he was taken back into favour, and joined the
party. "What are you going to do with them all?" he asked. "Lose them,"
said Whistler. But he did not lose them all. One or two stayed by him
to the end.
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LADY MEUX
HARMONY IN PINK AND GREY
OIL
In the possession of H. C. Finch, Esq.
(_See page 211_)]
[Illustration: THE SALUTE, VENICE
WATER-COLOUR
In the possession of B. B. MacGeorge, Esq.
(_See page 202_)]
Whistler, according to the constitution, held office till December,
and till December he retained his post. During this time there were
meetings. At one he addressed Bayliss as Baily--to his disgust--but,
on this occasion at least, Bayliss had an idea and replied, "Yes, Mr.
Whistle!" At a meeting on November 28 Whistler made a statement of
his relations with the Society, and his objects and aims concerning
it, only referred to in the minutes, and he gave up the chair to Wyke
Bayliss. He had been President two years, a member four. After November
28, 1888, his name appears in the official records only twice: first
on January 4, 1889, in connection with a dispute over the notice board
outside the gallery, and then on July 20, 1903, when Wyke Bayliss
stated "that, acting on the feeling that it would be the wish of the
Society, he had ordered a wreath to be sent in the name of the Society
on the occasion of the funeral of Mr. Whistler."
The newspapers were not so shy of the President as the minute-books.
The difference between Whistler and the Society found the publicity
which he could never escape. He said to the men who resigned with him,
"Come and make history for posterity," and, as usual, he saw that the
record was accurate. He had hardly left the Society when the notice
board, with the Butterfly and the lion which he had painted, was
altered; he immediately wrote a letter to state the fact in the _Pall
Mall Gazette_. Reporters and interviewers gave the British Artists'
reasons for their late President's resignation and his successor's
qualifications for the post. Whistler lost no time in explaining his
position and giving his estimate of the new President. It cannot be
said too often that his letters to the Press, criticised as trivial and
undignified, were written deliberately that "history might be made."
Many pages of _The Gentle Art_ are filled with his relations with the
British Artists. The gaiety of his letters was mistaken for flippancy,
because the more solemn and ponderous the "enemies" became, the more
"joyous" he grew in disposing of them. He did not spare the British
Artists. The _Pall Mall_ undertook to describe the disaster of the
"Whistlerian policy" in Suffolk Street by statistics and to extol the
strength of Wyke Bayliss:
"The sales of the Society during the year 1881 were under five
thousand pounds; 1882, under six thousand; 1883, under seven thousand;
1884, under eight thousand; 1885 (the first year of Mr. Whistler's
rule), they fell to under four thousand; 1885, under three thousand;
1887, under two thousand; and the present year, 1888, under one
thousand.... The new President ... is ... the hero of three Bond Street
'one-man exhibitions,' a board-school chairman, a lecturer, champion
chess-player of Surrey, a member of the Rochester Diocesan Council, a
Shakespearean student, a Fellow of the Society of Cyclists, a Fellow of
the Society of Antiquarians, and public orator of Noviomagus."
Whistler's answer, serious in intention, gay in wording, pointed out
"the, for once, not unamusing 'fact' that the disastrous and simple
Painter Whistler only took in hand the reins of government at least a
year after the former driver had been pitched from his box and half the
money-bags had been already lost! From eight thousand to four thousand
at one fatal swoop! and the beginning of the end had set in!... 'Four
thousand pounds!' down it went; three thousand pounds, two thousand
pounds--the figures are Wyke's--and this season, the ignominious 'one
thousand pounds or under' is none of my booking! And when last I saw
the mad machine it was still cycling down the hill."
Whistler was disappointed, though he did not show it. He was seldom
invited to join anything, nor did he rush to accept the rare
invitation. He would take no part in the Art Congress started in the
eighties, despite an effort to entangle him; he would do no more than
"bestow his benison" upon the movement in 1886 to organise a National
Art Exhibition, led by Walter Crane, Holman Hunt, and George Clausen.
But to the British Artists he had given his time and energy during four
years, he had dragged the Society out of the slough in which it was
floundering and made its exhibitions the most distinguished and most
talked-about in London. Wyke Bayliss, who never understood him, wrote:
"Whistler's purpose was to make the British Artists a small, esoteric
set; mine was to make it a great guild of the working artists of this
country."
Whistler said: "I wanted to make the British Artists an art centre;
they wanted to remain a shop."
Wyke Bayliss and his successor were knighted, as Presidents of Royal
Societies usually are; Whistler, who obtained the title and charter of
the Society, was ignored.
Ten years later, as President of the International Society of
Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers, he not only recommended, but carried
out his schemes and theories: the decoration of the galleries, the
refusal of bad work no matter who sent it, the proper hanging of the
pictures accepted, the making of the exhibitions into artistic events,
the interesting of the public in them, the insistence that each artist
should only support his own Society's exhibitions and should belong to
no other Society. He was dictatorial, but without a dictator nothing
can be done, and at the British Artists each British Artist wanted
to lead. His Presidency began in mistrust and ended in discord. For
Whistler it had an advantage, especially abroad, where artists began to
regard him with deference.
CHAPTER XXXI: MARRIAGE. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-EIGHT.
"I don't marry," Whistler said, "though I tolerate those who do." But
before he left the British Artists' he did marry. His wife was Beatrix
Godwin, widow of E. W. Godwin, the architect of the White House and for
years Whistler's champion in the Press. Godwin died on October 6, 1886,
and Whistler married on August 11, 1888.
Mrs. Whistler was the daughter of John Birnie Philip, remembered as
one of the sculptors who worked on the awful Albert Memorial. She was
large, so that Whistler was dwarfed beside her, dark and handsome,
more foreign in appearance, but not in person, than English. Whistler
delighted in a tradition that there was gipsy blood in her family.
She had studied art in Paris and with him, and he was proud of her as
a pupil. Her work included several decorative designs, and a series
of etchings made to illustrate the English edition of Van Eeden's
_Little Johannes_. Only a few of the plates were finished, and of these
some proofs were shown in the first exhibition of the International
Society and in the Paris Memorial Exhibition, while Mr. Heinemann had
the intention of publishing a series of illustrations which she and
Whistler drew on the wood.
Mr. Labouchere held himself responsible for the marriage, and told the
story in _Truth_ (July 23, 1903):
"I believe that I am responsible for his marriage to the widow of Mr.
Godwin, the architect. She was a remarkably pretty woman and very
agreeable, and both she and he were thorough Bohemians. I was dining
with them and some others one evening at Earl's Court. They were
obviously greatly attracted to each other, and in a vague sort of way
they thought of marrying. So I took the matter in hand to bring things
to a practical point. 'Jemmy,' I said, 'will you marry Mrs. Godwin?'
'Certainly,' he replied. 'Mrs. Godwin,' I said, 'will you marry Jemmy?'
'Certainly,' she replied. 'When?' I asked. 'Oh, some day,' said
Whistler. 'That won't do,' I said, 'we must have a date.' So they both
agreed that I should choose the day, what church to come to for the
ceremony, provide the clergyman, and give the bride away. I fixed an
early date, and got the then Chaplain of the House of Commons [the Rev.
Mr. Byng] to perform the ceremony. It took place a few days later.
"After the ceremony was over, we adjourned to Whistler's studio, where
he had prepared a banquet. The banquet was on the table, but there were
no chairs. So we sat on packing-cases. The happy pair, when I left, had
not quite decided whether they would go that evening to Paris or remain
in the studio. How unpractical they were was shown when I happened to
meet the bride the day before the marriage in the street:
"'Don't forget to-morrow,' I said. 'No,' she replied, 'I am just going
to buy my trousseau.' 'A little late for that, is it not?' I asked.
'No,' she answered, 'for I am only going to buy a new toothbrush and a
new sponge, as one ought to have new ones when one marries.'"
The wedding took place at St. Mary Abbott's, Kensington, in the
presence of Dr. and Mrs. Whistler, one of Mrs. Godwin's sisters, Mrs.
Whibley, and three or four others. Mr. Labouchere gave the bride away
and Mr. Jopling-Rowe was best man. Whistler had recently left 454
Fulham Road and the Vale, with its memories of Maud, for the Tower
House, Tite Street, and the suddenness of his marriage gave no time
to put things in order. There were not only packing-cases in the
dining-room--usually one of the first rooms furnished in every house
he moved into--but the household was in most respects unprepared for
the reception of a bride. The wedding breakfast was ordered from the
Café Royal, and the bride's sister hurriedly got a wedding cake from
Buszard's.
The rest of the summer and autumn was spent in France, part of the time
in Boulogne. Mr. and Mrs. Cole, on
"_August 27_ (1888). Met Jimmy and his wife on the sands: they came up
with us to Rue de la Paix, down to bathe. Jimmy sketching on sands; the
W.'s turned up after lunch. With Jimmy to the iron and rag _marché_
near Boulevard Prince Albert [no doubt in search of old paper as well
as of subjects]. He sketched (water-colours) a dingy shop. Later we
dined with them at the Casino. Pleasant _parti à quatre_. Jimmy in
excellent form. Leaving to-morrow."
From Boulogne they went to Touraine, stopping at Chartres, most of
the time lost to their friends, as they intended to be lost. It was
Whistler's first holiday. He was taking it lazily, he wrote to Mrs.
William Whistler, in straw hat and white shoes, rejoicing in the grapes
and melons, getting the pleasure out of it that France always gave him.
But he got more than pleasure. He brought back to London about thirty
plates of Tours and Loches and Bourges, and settled down in London to
wind up his connection with the British Artists'.
Whistler was devoted to his wife, who henceforth occupied a far more
prominent position in his life than could have been imagined. Indeed
his life was entirely changed by his marriage. He went less into
society and had less time for his art. During months he was a wanderer,
and while he wandered his painting stopped. Not that Mrs. Whistler was
indifferent to art. She was sympathetic. He liked to have her in the
studio; when she could not come he brought the pictures he was painting
home for her to see. He consulted her in his difficulties, she shared
his troubles, she rejoiced in his triumphs. But it cannot be denied
that the period of great schemes came to an end with his marriage.
Although later he painted exquisite pictures, there are no canvases
like the _Mother_ and _Carlyle_, the _Sarasate_ and _The Yellow
Buskin_. This was no doubt the result partly of his pleasure in his new
domestic conditions, partly of circumstances that prevented him from
remaining long enough in one place for continuous work to be possible.
An artist must give himself entirely to his work, or else have a very
different temperament from Whistler's. After a year or so in London and
two or three happy years in Paris which Mrs. Whistler said she did not
deserve, her health necessitated wandering again.
Commissions at last came, but Mrs. Whistler's illness left him no
chance to carry them out. He said to us one day: "Now, they want these
things; why didn't they want them twenty years ago, when I wanted to do
them, and could have done them? And they were just as good twenty years
ago as they are now."
Few large portraits begun during these years were completed. And after
his wife's death he struggled in vain to return to the old conditions
of continuous effort to which the world owes his greatest masterpieces.
It is true that his work never deteriorated till the last, that, as he
said, he brought it ever nearer to the perfection which alone could
satisfy him. He never produced anything finer in their way than _The
Master Smith_ and _The Little Rose of Lyme Regis_, painted towards
the end of his married life, or the series of children's heads of his
latest years. But these were planned on a smaller scale and required
less physical effort than the large full-lengths and the decorative
designs he longed to execute, but was never able to finish, sometimes
not even to begin. Whistler, with advancing years, became more sure
of himself, more the master, but circumstances forced him to find his
pleasure and exercise his knowledge in smaller work.
CHAPTER XXXII: THE WORK OF THE YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY TO EIGHTEEN
NINETY-TWO.
These years were full, for though few large paintings were completed,
there were many small oils, water-colours, pastels, etchings, and
lithographs. Whistler, going and coming in England or on the Continent,
had trunks and bags with compartments for his colours, plates, and
lithographic materials. It is impossible to say, he did not know, the
exact number of small works he produced during this period.
He had used water-colour since his school-days, but, until he went to
Venice, not to any extent. Some of the Venetian drawings show that he
was then scarcely master of it. But the results he finally got, both in
figure and landscape, were admirable. He touched perfection in many
a little angry sea at Dieppe, or note in Holland, or impression of
Paris. As not many are dated it may never be known when this mastery
was reached. He probably would not have been sure of the dates. We
have gone through drawers of the cabinet in his studio with him, when
he expressed the utmost surprise on finding certain things that he had
forgotten, and was unable to say when they were painted or drawn. He
suffered from this confusion and realised the importance of making a
complete list of his works, with their dates and there were various
projects and commencements. After several attempts he found it took too
much time. We know that he asked Mr. Freer to trace his pictures in
America and Mr. D. Croal Thomson to do the same in England. Miss Birnie
Philip finally swore in the Law Courts that what he wanted was for us
to prepare a complete catalogue.
Between 1880 and 1892 he made ninety plates in England. They begin
with _Regent's Quadrant_. Then follow little shops in Chelsea, Gray's
Inn, Westminster, the Wild West (Earl's Court), Whitechapel, Sandwich,
the Jubilee, and many figure subjects. There is also the _Swan and
Iris_, the copy of an unfinished picture by Cecil Lawson for Mr. Edmund
Gosse's _Memoir_ of the painter (1883), another unsuccessful attempt
at reproduction. It was the only plate, since those published by the
Junior Etching Club, made as an illustration _Billingsgate_ was issued
in the _Portfolio_ (1878) and Hamerton's _Etching and Etchers_ (1880),
_Alderney Street_ in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ (1881), _La Marchande
de Moutarde_ in _English Etchings_ (1888), but these were etched with
no idea of their publication in magazine or book.
The English plates are simple in subject, and they have been therefore
dismissed as unimportant by unimportant people. But many are
delightfully composed and full of observation. Whistler carrying the
small plates about with him, sketched on copper, with the knowledge of
a lifetime, the subjects he found as other artists sketch on paper.
Three etchings were made at the Wild West probably in an afternoon;
one at Westminster Abbey during the Jubilee Service of 1887; and ten
to thirteen of the Jubilee Naval Review in a day--plates that prove
triumphantly his power of giving his impressions with a few lines of
his etching-needle.
In the autumn of 1887 he went to Belgium with Dr. and Mrs. William
Whistler, stopping at Brussels, Ostend, and Bruges. In Brussels he
etched the Hôtel de Ville, the Guildhalls, the little shops and streets
and courts, intending to issue the prints as a set. M. Octave Maus, who
knew him, says "he was enchanted with the picturesque and disreputable
quarter of _les Marolles_ in the old town. He was frequently to be met
in the alleys which pour a squalid populace into the old High Street,
engaged in scratching on the copper his impressions of the swarming
life around him. When the inquisitive throng pressed him too hard,
the artist merely pointed his graver at the arm, or neck, or cheek of
one of the intruders. The threatening weapon, with his sharp spiteful
laugh, put them at once to flight."
Sometimes Dr. and Mrs. Whistler found him, safe out of the way of the
crowd, in the bandstand of the Grande Place, where several of the
plates were made. These are another development in technique. With the
fewest, the most delicate, lines he expressed the most complicated and
the most picturesque architecture. The plates were probably bitten with
little stopping-out, and they are printed with a sharpness that shows
their wonderful drawing. M. Duret has said to us that in them Whistler
gives "_les os de l'architecture_." A very few proofs were pulled. The
set was never issued.
The etchings described as in Touraine are those done on his wedding
journey and at other times. They also have never been published as a
set. As in Belgium, great architecture suggested his subjects, and
his treatment shows that if, as a rule, he refrained from rendering
architecture, it was from no desire to evade difficulties, as ignorant
critics suppose. The line is more vital and the biting more powerful
than in the Belgian plates.
The year after his marriage (1889) he etched seventeen plates in and
around Dordrecht and Amsterdam, including _Nocturne--Dance House_,
_The Embroidered Curtain_, _The Balcony_, _Zaandam_, in which he
surpassed Rembrandt in Rembrandt's subject. His success is the more
surprising because scarcely anywhere does the artist sketch under such
difficulties as in Holland. The little Dutch boys are the worst in the
world, and the grown people as bad. In Amsterdam, the women in the
houses on one of the canals, where Whistler worked in a boat, emptied
buckets of water out of the windows above him. He dodged in time, but
had to call on the police, and, he told us, the next interruption was
a big row above, and "I looked up, dodging the filthy pails, to see
the women vanishing backward being carried off to wherever they carry
people in Holland. After that, I had no more trouble, but I always had
a policeman whenever I had a boat."
[Illustration: THE YELLOW BUSKIN ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK
OIL
In the Wilstach Collection, Memorial Hall, Philadelphia
(_See page 215_)]
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF M. THÉODORE DURET
ARRANGEMENT IN FLESH-COLOUR AND PINK
OIL
In the Metropolitan Museum, New York
(_See page 217_)]
In the Dutch plates he returned to the methods perfected at Venice in
_The Traghetto_ and _The Beggars_. After he brought them back to London
he was interviewed on the subject in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ (March 4,
1890), and is reported to have said:
"First you see me at work on the Thames. Now, there you see the crude
and hard detail of the beginner. So far, so good. There, you see,
all is sacrificed to exactitude of outline. Presently and almost
unconsciously I begin to criticise myself and to feel the craving of
the artist for form and colour. The result was the second stage, which
my enemies call inchoate and I call Impressionism. The third state I
have shown you. In that I have endeavoured to combine stages one and
two. You have the elaboration of the first stage and the quality of the
second."
Though we hesitate to accept the words as his, this is an interesting
statement and a suggestive description. In some of the Dutch plates
there is more detail than in the Venetian, and yet form is expressed
not by the detail of the Thames series but by line. No etcher had got
such fullness of colour without a mass of cross-hatching that takes
away from the freshness. It is interesting to contrast his distant
views of the town of Amsterdam and the windmills of Zaandam with
Rembrandt's etchings of the same subjects, and to note the greater
feeling of space and distance that Whistler gives. The work is more
elaborate and delicate than in previous plates, so delicate sometimes
that it seems under-bitten. But his method necessitated this. He drew
with such minuteness that hardly any of the ground, the varnish, was
left on the plates, and when he bit them, he could only bite slightly
to prevent the modelling from being lost. He never had been so
successful in applying his scientific theories to etching, and rarely
more satisfied with the results. His first idea was to publish the
prints in a set, through the Fine Art Society, but the Fine Art Society
were so foolish as to refuse. A few were bought at once for the South
Kensington and Windsor Collections, and several were shown in the
spring of 1890 at Mr. Dunthorne's gallery. About this time we returned
to London, and J. commenced to write occasionally in the London Press,
succeeding Mr. George Bernard Shaw as art critic on the _Star_. This is
his impression, written when he saw them (April 8):
"I stepped in at Dunthorne's the other afternoon to have a look at the
etchings of Amsterdam by Mr. Whistler. There are only eight of them,
I think, but they are eight of the most exquisite renderings by the
most independent man of the century. With two exceptions they are only
studies of very undesirable lodgings and tenements on canal banks,
old crumbling brick houses reflected in sluggish canals, balconies
with figures leaning over them, clothes hanging in decorative lines,
a marvellously graceful figure carelessly standing in the great
water-door of an overhanging house, every figure filled with life
and movement, and all its character expressed in half a dozen lines.
The same houses, or others, at night, their windows illuminated and
casting long trailing reflections in the water, seemed to be singularly
unsuccessful, the plate being apparently underbitten or played out.
At any rate that was the impression produced on me. [We know now and
have explained the reason for this.] Another there was, of a stretch of
country looking across a canal, windmills beyond drawn as no one since
Rembrandt could have done it, and in his plate the greatest of modern
etchers has pitted himself against the greatest of the ancients, and
has come through only too successfully for Rembrandt. There are three
or four others, I understand, not yet published, but this certainly
is the gem so far. The last is a great drawbridge, with a suggestion
of trees and houses, figures and boats, and a tower in the distance,
done, I believe, from a canal in Amsterdam. This is the fourth
distinct series of etchings which Mr. Whistler has in the last thirty
or thirty-five years given the world: the early miscellaneous French
and English plates; the Thames series, valued by artists more than by
collectors, though even to the latter they are worth more than their
weight in gold; the Venetian plates; and now these; and between while,
portraits as full of character as Rembrandt's, studies of London and
Brussels, and I know not what else besides have come from his ever busy
needle. Had Mr. Whistler never put brush to canvas, he has done enough
in these plates to be able to say that he will not altogether die."
That was J.'s opinion then, and he has not had to change it. During
1890 Whistler made a large number of lithographs, excellently
catalogued by T. R. Way, who printed most of them and was,
consequently, qualified for the task. Three, _The Winged Hat_, _The
Tyresmith_, and _Maunder's Fish Shop, Chelsea_, were published this
year in the short-lived occasional weekly _The Whirlwind_, edited by
Herbert Vivian and Stuart Erskine "in the Legitimist cause" and to
their own great amusement. Drawings by Sidney Starr after three of
Whistler's pictures appeared, and the editors boasted in their own
pages within a few weeks that the lithographs, issued for a penny,
could be had only for five shillings. Five guineas would now be nearer
the price.
Another lithograph, _Chelsea Rags_, came out in the January number
(1892) of the _Albemarle_, a monthly edited by Hubert Crackanthorpe and
W. H. Wilkins, one of those gay experiments in periodical literature no
longer made in this sad land. The four were called _Songs on Stone_,
the later title for a proposed portfolio of lithographs in colour which
Mr. Heinemann announced but never issued.
CHAPTER XXXIII: HONOURS. EXHIBITIONS. NEW INTERESTS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN
EIGHTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN NINETY-ONE.
Official recognition of Whistler in England was followed by official
honours abroad. While President of the British Artists he was asked
for the first time to show in the International Exhibition at Munich
(1888). He sent _The Yellow Buskin_ and was awarded a second-class
medal. The best comment was Whistler's letter of acknowledgment to the
Secretary, whom he prayed to convey to the Committee his "sentiments
of tempered and respectable joy" and "complete appreciation of the
second-hand compliment." But soon after he was elected an Honorary
Member of the Bavarian Royal Academy, and, a year later, was given a
first-class medal and the Cross of St. Michael. In 1889 he was made
Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and received a first-class medal at
the Paris Universal Exhibition. Another gold medal was awarded to him
at Amsterdam, where he was showing the _Mother_, _The Fur Jacket_,
and _Effie Deans--Arrangement in Yellow and Grey_. We have heard that
Israels and Mesdag, who were little in sympathy with Whistler, objected
to giving him a medal, but James Maris insisted. The year before
Mr. E. J. Van Wisselingh had bought from Messrs. Dowdeswell _Effie
Deans_, which he had seen in the Edinburgh International Exhibition
of 1886, though it was skied. He sold it within a short time to Baron
Van Lynden, of The Hague, then making his collection, bequeathed by
the Baroness Van Lynden in 1900 to the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam. The
picture is almost the only one to which Whistler gave a literary title,
except the pastel _Annabel Lee_. _Effie Deans_ is apparently a portrait
of Maud, and it belongs to the period of _The Fur Jacket_ and _Rosa
Corder_. The Butterfly was added later. The painting was not signed
when bought by Baron Van Lynden, who, hearing from Van Wisselingh
that Whistler was in Holland, asked him to sign it. Whistler not only
did so, but we believe then added the quotation from the _Heart of
Midlothian_ written at the bottom of the canvas: "She sunk her head
upon her hand and remained seemingly unconscious as a statue," the only
inscription on any of his paintings that we have seen. Walter Sickert
says that it was added by some one else, but as Whistler saw the
picture in 1902 and made no objection to it, Mr. Sickert's statement
scarcely seems correct.
Few things pleased Whistler more than the honours from Amsterdam,
Munich, and Paris. To celebrate the Bavarian medal and decoration
his friends gave him a dinner at the Criterion, May 1, 1889. Mr.
E. M. Underdown, Q.C., was in the chair, and Mr. W. C. Symons hon.
secretary. Two Royal Academicians, Sir W. Q. Orchardson and Mr. Alfred
Gilbert, were present, and also Sir Coutts Lindsay, Stuart Wortley,
Edmund Yates--Atlas, who never failed him--and many others. Whistler
was moved, and not ashamed to show it. Stuart Wortley, in a speech,
said that Whistler had influenced every artist in England; Orchardson
described him as "a true artist"; and this time Atlas spoke, not only
with the weight of the _World_ on his shoulders, but with praise and
affection. Whistler began his speech with a laugh at this "age of rapid
results when remedies insist upon their diseases." But his voice is
said to have been full of emotion before the end:
"You must feel that, for me, it is no easy task to reply under
conditions of which I have so little habit. We are all even too
conscious that mine has hitherto, I fear, been the gentle answer that
sometimes turneth not away wrath.... It has before now been borne
in upon me that in surroundings of antagonism I may have wrapped
myself for protection in a species of misunderstanding, as that other
traveller drew closer about him the folds of his cloak the more
bitterly the winds and the storm assailed him on his way. But, as with
him, when the sun shone upon him in his path, his cloak fell from his
shoulders, so I, in the warm glow of your friendship, throw from me
all former disguise, and, making no further attempt to hide my true
feeling, disclose to you my deep emotion at such unwonted testimony of
affection and faith."
This was the only public testimonial he ever received in England,
and one of the few public functions at which he assisted. He seldom
attended public dinners, those solemn feasts of funeral baked meats
by which "the Islander soothes his conscience and purchases public
approval." We remember that he did not appear at the first dinner of
the Society of Authors, where his place was beside ours--a dinner given
to American authors, at which Lowell presided. J. recalls an artists'
dinner at which Whistler was seated on one side of the chairman and
Charles Keene on the other. Some brilliant person had placed Sir
Frederick Wedmore next to Whistler, who had more fun at the dinner than
the critic. He rarely was seen in the City, and rarely was asked in
Paris. As an outsider, he was never invited to the Academy. Even little
private functions, like the Johnson Club, to which J. has taken him, he
did not care for. It is so easy to be bored, so difficult to be amused,
on such occasions. He preferred not to run the risk.
Of gentle answers that turn not away wrath there were plenty in 1889.
At the Universal Exhibition in Paris, Whistler, an American, naturally
proposed to show with Americans. _The Yellow Buskin_ and _The Balcony_
were the pictures he selected; he sent twenty-seven etchings, knowing
that, in a big exhibition, a few prints make no effect. The official
acknowledgment was a printed notice from General Rush C. Hawkins,
"Cavalry Officer," Commissioner for the American Art Department:
"Sir,--Ten of your exhibits have not received the approval of the jury.
Will you kindly remove them?"
Whistler's answer was an immediate journey to Paris, a call on General
Hawkins, the withdrawal of all his prints and pictures, to the
General's embarrassment. Whistler wrote afterwards to the _New York
Herald_, Paris edition: "Had I been properly advised that the room was
less than the demand for place, I would, of course, have instantly
begged the gentlemen of the jury to choose, from among the number, what
etchings they pleased."
Twenty-seven etchings, unless specially invited, were rather a
large number to send to any exhibition. He had been already asked
to contribute to the British Section, and to it he now took the
two pictures and ten prints. Though General Hawkins' action is as
incomprehensible as his appointment to such a post, Whistler made a
mistake. There is no doubt that, had his seventeen accepted prints
remained in the American Section, he would have had a much better
show than in the English, where only ten were hung and where, for
etching, Seymour Haden, and not Whistler, was awarded a _Grand
Prix_. "Whistler's Grievance" got into the papers, and the letters
and interviews remain in _The Gentle Art_. If in 1889 he identified
himself with the British, it was due solely to the discourtesy, as
he considered it, of his countrymen. There was no denial of his
nationality, and, though later always invited to show in the British
Section of International Exhibitions, he always refused when there was
an American Section.
In 1888 the New Gallery took over the played-out traditions of the
Grosvenor, but Whistler did not follow to Regent Street. His _Carlyle_,
several drawings, and many etchings went to the Glasgow International
Exhibition that year, and he was well represented at the first show
of the Pastel Society at the Grosvenor. He was more in sympathy with
the New English Art Club than any other group of artists. It was then
youthful and enthusiastic, most of the younger men of promise or talent
belonged, and it might have accomplished great things had its founders
been faithful to their original ambition. Whistler was never a member,
but he sent a _White Note_ and the etching of the _Grande Place,
Brussels_, to the exhibition in 1888, and _Rose and Red_, a pastel, in
1889, when he was elected by the votes of the exhibitors to the jury.
To the infinite loss of the club he never showed again. In the same
year (1889), at the Institute of the Fine Arts at Glasgow, the _Mother_
strengthened the impression made by the _Carlyle_ the year before;
there was a show of his work in May at the College of Working Women in
Queen Square, London; and _The Grey Lady_ was included in an exhibition
at the Art Institution, Chicago, in the fall.
The show at Queen Square was remarkable. It is said to have been
"organised by Mr. Walter Sickert, by permission of Miss Goold (head of
the College), and opened by Lord Halsbury." There had not been such a
representative collection of his work since his exhibition of 1874.
The _Mother_, _Carlyle_, _Rosa Corder_, _Irving_ were there, many
pastels and water-colours, and many etchings of all periods from the
Thames Series to the last in Touraine and Belgium. We have never seen
a catalogue. We remember how it impressed us when we came to the fine
Queen Anne house in the quiet, out-of-the-way square, how indignant we
were to find nobody but a solitary man and a young lady at the desk,
and how urgently we wrote in the _Star_ that, "if there were as many
as half a dozen people who cared for good work, they should go at
once to see this exhibition of the man who has done more to influence
artists than any modern." There is a legend of Whistler's coming one
day, taking a picture from the wall and walking away with it, despite
the protest of the attendant and the Principal of the College, wishing,
so the legend goes, to carry out the theory he was soon to assert that
pictures were only "kindly lent their owners." But the story of his
making off with it across the square, followed by the college staff
screaming "Stop thief!" and being nearly run in by a policeman, is
a poor invention. His desire, however, to keep his pictures in his
possession, his hope that those who bought them would not dispose of
them, was growing, and his disgust when they were sold, especially at
increased prices, was expressed in his answer to some one who said,
"Staats Forbes tells me that that picture of yours he has will be the
last picture he will ever part with." "H'm," said Whistler, who had had
later news, "it is the last picture he has."
In March 1890 Whistler moved to No. 21 Cheyne Walk, an old house with
a garden at the back, farther down the Embankment, close to Rossetti's
Tudor House. It was panelled from the street door to the top. A cool
scheme of blue and white decorated the dining-room, where there was one
perfect painting over the mantel, and, Mr. Francis James has told us,
the _Six Projects_ hung for a while on the walls. The drawing-room on
the first floor was turned into a studio, there was a bedroom above,
but the rest of the house was empty and bare. From M. Gérard Harry we
have an explanation of this bareness:
"I remember a striking remark of Whistler's at a garden-party in his
Chelsea house. As he caught me observing some incompletely furnished
rooms and questioning within myself whether he had occupied the house
more than a fortnight or so: 'You see,' he said, with his short laugh,
'I do not care for definitely settling down anywhere. Where there is
no more space for improvement, or dreaming about improvement, where
mystery is in perfect shape, it is _finis_--the end--death. There is
no hope, nor outlook left.' I do not vouch for the words, but that was
certainly the sense of a remark which struck me as offering a key to
much of Whistler's philosophy, and to one aspect of his original art."
On September 24, 1890, Mr. Cole, calling at Cheyne Walk, "found him
painting some excellent portraits--very strong and fine." What all
these were it is difficult to say, though one was the well-known
_Harmony in Black and Gold--Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac_,
Whistler's fourth portrait of a man in evening dress. Another may have
been the second portrait never finished, which Montesquiou described
to Edmond de Goncourt, who made a note of it in his _Journal_ (July 7,
1891):
"Montesquiou tells me that Whistler is now doing two portraits of him:
one is in evening dress, with a fur cloak over his arm, the other in a
great grey cloak with a high collar, and, just suggested, a necktie of
a mauve not to be put into words, though his eyes express the colour
of it. And Montesquiou is most interesting to listen to as he explains
the method of painting of Whistler, to whom he gave seventeen sittings
during the month spent in London. The first sketch-in of his subject is
with Whistler a fury, a passion: one or two hours of this wild fever
and the subject emerges complete in its envelope. Then sittings, long
sittings, when, most of the time, the brush is brought close to the
canvas but does not touch it, is thrown away, and another taken, and
sometimes in three hours not more than fifty touches are given to the
canvas, every touch, according to Whistler, lifting a veil from the
sketch.
"Oh, sittings! when it seemed to Montesquiou that Whistler, by that
intentness of observation, was draining from him his life, something of
his individuality, and, in the end, he was so exhausted that he felt
as if all his being was shrinking away, but happily he discovered a
certain _vin de coca_ that restored him after those terrible sittings."
J. went only once to No. 21 Cheyne Walk. Then it was to consult
Whistler concerning Sir Hubert von Herkomer's publication of
photogravures of pen-drawings in _An Idyl_, and description of them
as etchings. Whistler received J. in the white-panelled dining-room,
where he was breakfasting on an egg. Sickert came in and was at once
sent out--with a letter. Whistler felt the seriousness of the offence,
and he lent his support to W. E. Henley's _National Observer_, in which
the affair was exposed and in which also the Queen was called upon to
remove Herkomer from his post as Slade Professor at the University of
Oxford.
From this time J. saw Whistler oftener, meeting him in clubs, in
galleries, in friends' houses, occasionally at Solferino's, the
little restaurant in Rupert Street which was for several years the
meeting-place, a club really, for the staff of the _National Observer_.
Nobody who ever lunched there on Press day at the Academy, or the New
English Art Club, or the New Gallery is likely to forget the talk round
the table in the corner. Never have we heard R. A. M.--"Bob"--Stevenson
more brilliant, more paradoxical, more inspiriting than at these midday
gatherings. Whistler's first encounter with Henley's paper, then
edited in Edinburgh, was a sharp skirmish which, though he afterwards
became friendly with Henley, he never forgot nor forgave. Henley was
publishing a series of articles called _Modern Men_, among whom he
included Whistler, "the Yankee with the methods of Barnum." The policy
of the _National Observer_ was to fight, everybody, everything, and it
fought with spirit. But it had no patience with the battles of others.
Of Whistler the artist it approved, but not of Whistler the writer of
letters, whom it pronounced rowdy and unpleasant. "Malvolio-Macaire"
was its name for him. At last, in noticing Sheridan Ford's _Gentle
Art_, of which we shall presently have more to say, it continued in
the same strain, and a copy of the paper containing the review, "with
proud mark, in the blue pencil of office," was sent to Whistler. He
answered with a laugh at "the thick thumb of your editorial refinement"
pointed "in deprecation of my choice rowdyism." Two things came of
the letter--one amusing, the other a better understanding. Whistler's
answer finished with a "regret that the ridiculous 'Romeike' has not
hitherto sent me your agreeable literature." Romeike objected; he had
sent eight hundred and seven clippings to Whistler: he demanded an
apology. Whistler gave it without hesitation: he had never thought of
Romeike as a person, and he wrote, "if it be not actionable permit me
to say that you really are delightful!!" No one could appreciate the
wit, the fun of it all better than Henley, and he was the more eager
to meet Whistler. His account of the meeting, when it came about, was
coloured by the enthusiasm that made Henley the stimulating person
he was. "And we met," he would say, throwing back his great head and
laughing with joy, though he gave no details of the meeting. Henley
managed to find "the earnest of romance" in everything that happened to
him. "And there we were--Whistler and I--together!" he would repeat, as
if it were the most dramatic situation that could be imagined.
The bond between them was their love of the Thames. Henley was the
first to sing the beauty of the river that Whistler was the first
to paint, and when he wrote the verses (_No. XIII._ in _Rhymes and
Rhythms_) that give the feeling, the magical charm of the Nocturnes, he
dedicated them to Whistler. Big and splendid as a Viking, exuberant,
emphatic, Henley was not the type physically to interest Whistler. The
sketch of him (made in 1896) is one of Whistler's least satisfactory
lithographs, and only six impressions were pulled. But their relations
were cordial, and when the _National Observer_ was transferred to
London and Henley returned with it, Whistler sometimes came to the
dinners of the staff at Solferino's. Henley had gathered about him the
younger literary men and journalists: Rudyard Kipling, "Bob" Stevenson,
J. M. Barrie, Marriott Watson, G. S. Street, Vernon Blackburn,
Fitzmaurice Kelly, Arthur Morrison, Charles Whibley, Kenneth Grahame,
George W. Steevens. After Mr. Astor bought the _Pall Mall Gazette_
its staff was largely recruited from the _National Observer_, and Mr.
Henry Cust, the editor, and Mr. Ivan-Muller, the assistant editor,
joined the group in the room upstairs. When dinner was over and Henley
was thundering at his end of the table, the rest listening, Whistler
sometimes dropped in, and the contrast between him and Henley added
to the gaiety of the evening: Henley, the "Burly" of Stevenson's
essay on _Talk and Talkers_, "who would roar you down ... bury his
face in his hands ... undergo passions of revolt and agony"; Whistler,
who would find the telling word, let fly the shaft of wit that his
eloquent hands emphasised with delicate, graceful gesture. His "Ha ha!"
rose above Henley's boisterous intolerance. When "Bob" Stevenson was
there--"Spring-Heel'd Jack"--the entertainment was complete. But each
of the three talked his best when he held the floor, and we have known
Whistler more brilliant when dining alone with us. From Solferino's,
at a late hour when Henley, as always in his lameness, had been helped
to his cab, Whistler and J. would retire with "Bob" Stevenson and a
little group to the Savile, where everything under heaven was discussed
by them, Professor Walter Raleigh, Reginald Blomfield, and Charles
Furse frequently joining them, and they rarely left until the club was
closed. Whistler would, in his turn, be seen to his cab on his way
home, and a smaller group would listen to "Bob" between Piccadilly and
Westminster Bridge, waiting for him to catch the first morning train to
Kew.
Whistler seldom left without some parting shot which his friends
remembered, though he was apparently unconscious of the effects of
these bewildering little sayings as he returned to his house in Cheyne
Walk. There he was often followed by his new friends and often visited
by the few "artists" he had not cared to lose, especially Mr. Francis
James and Mr. Theodore Roussel. A few Followers continued to flutter
at his heels. Portraits of some of those who came to 21 Cheyne Walk
are in the lithograph of _The Garden_: Mr. Walter Sickert, Mr. Sidney
Starr, Mr. and Mrs. Brandon Thomas. Mr. Walter Sickert had married
Miss Ellen Cobden, and she was a constant visitor. So also were Henry
Harland, later editor of the _Yellow Book_, and Mrs. Harland; Wolcot
Balestier, the enterprising youth who set out to corner the literature
of the world, and who, with Mr. S. S. McClure, was bent on syndicating
everybody, including Whistler; Miss Carrie Balestier, now Mrs. Rudyard
Kipling; an American journalist called Haxton, with a stammer that
Whistler adored to the point of borrowing it on occasions, though he
never could manage the last stage when words that refused to be spoken
had to be spelled. Another was André Raffalovitch, a Russian youth
and poet, whose receptions brought together many amusing as well as
fantastic elements of London society. But the most intimate friend he
made at this period was Mr. William Heinemann, and this brings us to
the great event of 1890, the publication of _The Gentle Art of Making
Enemies_.
CHAPTER XXXIV: "THE GENTLE ART." THE YEAR EIGHTEEN NINETY.
For years Whistler's letters to the papers puzzled the people. George
Moore laboured to account for them in _Modern Painting_ by an elaborate
theory of physical feebleness, and George Moore has been taken
seriously in the provinces and America. One glimpse of Whistler at the
printing-press, sleeves rolled up showing two strong arms, and the
theory and the theorist would have been knocked out. The letters were
not an eccentricity; they were not a weakness. From the first, written
to the _Athenæum_ in 1862, they had one aim, "to make history." Buried
in the papers, they were lost; if the history were to be made they must
be collected. They were collected and edited as _The Gentle Art of
Making Enemies as Pleasingly Exemplified in Many Instances, Wherein the
Serious Ones of this Earth, Carefully Exasperated, Have Been Prettily
Spurred on to Unseemliness and Indiscretion, While Overcome by an Undue
Sense of Right_.
The book, born of years of fighting, was ushered into the world by a
fight. The work of collecting and arranging the letters was undertaken
by Mr. Sheridan Ford, an American journalist in London. Whistler said
that Ford only helped him. Ford said that the idea was his, that he,
with Whistler's approval, was collecting and editing the letters for
a publication of his own. We give Ford's story and that of one who
followed it at the time, Mr. J. McLure Hamilton, and this we are better
pleased to do because Whistler misunderstood Mr. Hamilton's part in
the matter, and credited him with a malice and enmity that few men
could be so incapable of as he. Whistler would never consent to meet
him and could not understand why we should not agree in his view of
Mr. Hamilton as "a dangerous person." By accident they did meet in our
flat. Whistler was dining with us, Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton called in the
evening. Other people were there, and they simply ignored one another;
chance had blundered in its choice of the moment for the meeting. We
think Whistler would have felt the unfairness of his judgment of Mr.
Hamilton's conduct could he have read Mr. Hamilton's version which he
has sent us:
"In the spring of 1889 I met Mr. and Mrs. Sheridan Ford. Sheridan Ford
was writing for the _New York Herald_, and Mrs. Sheridan Ford had been
interesting picture-dealers in the work of Swan, Clausen, Melville, and
others. Ford had a very strong taste for art, and seemed to be opposed
to all forms of trickery, and was engaged on a series of articles which
appeared in the _New York Herald_, London edition, upon Whistler and
his work. He was also the author of _Art, a Commodity_, a pamphlet
widely read both in England and America. He came to me one day, and
told me of an idea that he thought could be carried out with advantage
to himself and Whistler. He suggested that the letters which Whistler
had been publishing from time to time in the Press should be published
in book form. The title was to be _The Gentle Art of Making Enemies_,
and was, I understood, Ford's. Whistler and he had talked the matter
over, and it was agreed between them that Ford should collect the
letters, edit them with remarks of his own, and publish the book for
his own profit.
"The work went on for some months, and occasionally Ford would bring me
letters that he had unearthed from the newspaper files at the British
Museum to read. I was not acquainted with Whistler, but from what
Ford told me I understood that Whistler was as much interested in the
progress of the book as Ford. The latter seemed to be looking forward
with great eagerness to the production of a book which could not fail
to amuse the art world.
"One morning Ford came to me at Alpha House in great distress. He
brought with him a letter from Whistler requesting him to discontinue
the making of the book, and containing a cheque for ten pounds in
payment for the trouble that he had had in collecting the materials.
The book at that time was almost complete, and the preface written.
After a prolonged talk with him upon all the bearings of the case,
I concluded that Whistler's change of mind had been determined by
the discovery that there would be too much credit and profit lost to
him if he allowed Ford to bring out the work, and that probably Mrs.
Whistler had suggested to Whistler that it would be a great gain to him
if he were to issue the letters himself. Ford asked me what I would
advise him to do. I replied that I personally would not go on with the
book, but that if he were careful to omit _all copyright matter_ he
would be perfectly justified in continuing, after having, of course,
returned the cheque to Whistler. I have no doubt that Ford asked the
advice of others, for soon he brought me the advance proofs to read,
and I spent a great deal of time going over them, sometimes suggesting
alterations and improvements. A note from Ford reached me telling
me that the book was finished, and asking my permission to dedicate
it to me. I wrote, in reply, that I did not wish the work dedicated
to me. Ford found a good publisher who was willing to undertake the
publication of the work, and, as far as I could see, everything was
going on satisfactorily, when one morning Ford called to see me and
told me that Whistler had discovered the printer and had threatened to
proceed against him if he did not immediately destroy the sheets, and
he (Whistler) found and seized the first sewn-up copy (or leaves) with
my name on the dedication page, in spite of the refusal I had given.
[The dedication was as follows: "Dedicated to John McLure Hamilton, A
Great Painter and a Charming Comrade. In Memory of Many Pleasant Days."
The proposed title was _The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. J. McNeill
Whistler as the Unattached Writer. With Some Whistler Stories Old and
New. Edited by Sheridan Ford. Brentano's. London, Paris, New York,
Washington, Chicago, 1890_. Both dedication and title we have seen in
Ford's handwriting.]
"This brought at once a letter from Whistler to me, in which he
abruptly accused me of assisting Ford in wronging him. I replied in a
few words denying his allegations. At this interview Ford's manner was
strange, and for several weeks after he was confined to his house, a
natural consequence of seeing all his hopes shattered. He had foreseen
in the successful production of _The Gentle Art of Making Enemies_ the
opening of a happy and profitable career in letters. After his recovery
Mr. and Mrs. Ford went away, pursued by the relentless activity of
Whistler. In the end, the so-called 'pirated edition,' paper-bound,
appeared in Mechlin or some other Continental city and was more or less
clandestinely offered for sale in England. Whistler's handsome volume
appeared almost simultaneously.
"While these incidents were progressing, I was asked to dine at the
Hogarth Club, and it had evidently been prearranged that I should
meet Whistler after dinner in the smoking-room. This was my first
introduction to the great master. We talked Art and commonplace, but
he never touched upon the subject of the book, and as I was quite sure
the meeting had been arranged in order that he might discuss with me
Ford's conduct, I could not understand his silence. Our next meeting
was at a _conversazione_ held at the Grosvenor Galleries, when we both
freely discussed together the whole question before Melville, who
was displeased at the attitude I took with Whistler. I frankly told
him that I thought he had done Ford a great wrong in withdrawing the
editorship of the book which rightly belonged to him."
Sheridan Ford, persisting that Whistler had conferred on him the right
to publish the collection, announced the simultaneous publication of
his book in England and America. The English publishers, Messrs. Field
and Tuer, of the Leadenhall Press, supposed that Ford was acting for
Whistler when he brought them the MS., which at that time is said
to have been called _The Correspondence of James McNeill Whistler_.
The text was set up and cast, the type distributed; they were ready
to print when they discovered their mistake. "We then sent for the
person in question," they wrote to Messrs. Lewis and Lewis, Whistler's
solicitors, "and told him that until he obtained Mr. Whistler's
sanction, we declined to proceed further with the work."
Sheridan Ford went to Antwerp, and had the book printed there. Sir
George Lewis followed and seized the edition at the printers on the day
of publication, when vans for its distribution were at their door. The
two thousand copies were carried off by the _Procureur du Roi_. The
matter came before the Belgian Courts in October 1891, M. Edmond Picard
and _Maître_ Maeterlinck, cousin of Maeterlinck the poet, appearing for
Whistler. M. Harry, of the _Indépendance Belge_, described Whistler
in the witness-box, with the eyes of a Mephistopheles flashing and
sparkling under the thick eyebrows, his manner easy and gay, his French
fluent and perfect. He was asked his religion and hesitated. The
Judge, thinking to help him, suggested, "A Protestant, perhaps?" His
answer was a little shrug, as much as to say, "I am quite willing. You
should know. As you choose!" He was asked his age--even the Belgian
reporter respected his objection to having any. Judgment was given for
him. Sheridan Ford was sentenced to a fine of five hundred francs or
three months' imprisonment; to three thousand francs damages or three
months more; to the confiscation of the two thousand copies, and to
costs. After the trial Whistler was taken to the cellars of the Palais
de Justice, and shown the confiscated copies, stored there with other
fraudulent goods, by the law of Belgium destined to perish in dampness
and gloom.
The affair has not been forgotten in Belgium--nor has Whistler.
One impression has been written for us by M. Edmond Picard, the
distinguished Senator, his advocate:
"_En me demandant de parler de l'illustre et regretté Whistler,
vous ne désirez certes pas que j'ajoute mon lot à la riche pyramide
d'admiration et d'éloges définitivement érigée à sa gloire._
"_Il ne peut s'agir, dans votre pensée que de ce que je pourrais
ajouter de spécial et de pittoresque à la Biographie du Grand Artiste._
"_Si j'ai beaucoup vu et aimé ses oeuvres, je n'ai qu'entrevu son
originale personne._
"_Voici deux traits intéressants qui s'y rapportent._
"_Il y a quelques années il s'inquiéta d'une contrefaçon qu'un étranger
habitant Anvers avait perpétré en Belgique de son curieux livre, 'L'Art
charmant de se faire des ennemis.' Je le vis un jour entrer dans mon
cabinet et il me dit avec un sourire sarcastique, 'Je souhaiterais que
vous fussiez mon avocat dans cette petite affaire parcequ'on m'a dit
que vous pratiquez aussi bien que moi l'art charmant de se faire des
ennemis.'_
"_Le procès fut gagné à Anvers avec la collaboration de mon confrère,
M. Maeterlinck, parent du poète qui honore tant notre pays. On célébra
chez lui cette victoire. Quand Whistler, héros de la fête, arriva dans
l'hospitalière maison, il s'attardait dans l'antichambre. La bonne
qui l'avait reçu vint, avec quelque effarement, dire en flamand au
salon où l'on attendait, 'Madame, c'est un acteur; il se coiffe devant
le miroir, il se pommade, il se met du fard et de la poudre!' Après
un assez long intervalle, Whistler parut, courtois, correct, ciré,
cosmétiqué, pimpant comme le papillon que rappêle son nom et qu'il mit
en signature sur quelques-uns des billets qu'il écrivit alors à ses
conseils._
"_Et voilà tout ce que je puis vous offrir._
"_J'ai demandé à M. Maeterlinck les documents qu'il pouvait avoir
conservés de cet épisode judiciaire. Ses recherches ont été vaines.
Alors que d'innombrables pièces insignifiantes ont été conservées,
le Hasard qui se permet tout à fait disparaître ces précieuses
épaves._"[10]
The "Extraordinary Piratical Plot," as Whistler called it in _The
Gentle Art_, did not end in Antwerp. Sheridan Ford took the book to
Paris, where it was issued by Delabrosse et Cie, 1890, though it is
said by Mr. Don C. Seitz to have been printed in Ghent; in Antwerp,
Mr. Ford recently told an interviewer--this edition we have seen;
while other copies, with the imprint of Frederick Stokes and Brother,
were sent to the United States. Sir George Lewis suppressed the Paris
edition and prevented the importation of the book into England, and
Messrs. Stokes cabled to London that their name was used without their
permission. The balance of the edition is stated to have been destroyed
by fire. Copies through the post reached England, sent to newspapers
for review and to individuals supposed to be interested, among whom we
were included. In June 1890 a so-called "second edition" from Paris was
received by some papers. Mr. Seitz says that hardly any copies are in
existence. Sheridan Ford says that nine thousand were sold. But that
was the last heard of it, and Sheridan Ford's book was killed.
Judging from the facts, Whistler treated Ford badly, but Sheridan Ford
acted in defiance of Whistler, and in the Paris edition published an
article so vile that papers refused to print it. Three versions are
given as to the cause of the quarrel. The first is that Mrs. Whistler
interfered and told Whistler to take the work over himself; the second
is Sheridan Ford's statement that Whistler wished M. Duret to prepare
the book; and the third is the suggestion of Mr. Seitz that the
difference arose over the insertion of a letter of Oscar Wilde's. As
this letter was printed in Whistler's edition, Mr. Seitz's conclusions
are of little value and his assertions differ from Sheridan Ford's
contemporary tale. Whistler's version, published by Sheridan Ford in
the letter dated August 18, 1889, is: "I think, for many reasons, we
would do well to postpone the immediate consideration of the proposed
publication for a while. At this moment I find myself curiously
interested in certain paintings, the production of which might
appropriately be made anterior to mere literature." We have heard that
he was urged to come to this decision by Mr. Theodore Roussel, who told
him he ought to prepare the book, pay Sheridan Ford, and get rid of
him. Whistler obtained possession of Sheridan Ford's work, or rather
of his letters collected by Sheridan Ford, arranged them, commented on
them, and published them in his own fashion. Sheridan Ford's book is
undistinguished; Whistler's contains on every page evidence of his care
in carrying out his ideas of book decoration.
Whistler, who was delighted with Mr. William Heinemann's artistic
instinct, sympathy, enthusiasm, and quick appreciation of his
intention, gave him the book to publish. From the day their agreement
was signed the publisher entered into the matter with all his heart.
Whistler's fights were his fights, Whistler's victories his victories.
Whistler was flattered by his understanding of things and came daily
almost to take out his "publisher, philosopher, and friend," as he
described Mr. Heinemann, to breakfast at the Savoy. He would arrive
at eleven, when the business man had hardly got into the swing of his
morning's work. Was it not preposterous that there should be other
books to be prepared, other matters to be thought of, while this
great work of art was being born? The Savoy balcony overlooking the
Embankment was, at so early an hour, deserted, and there they could
discuss, change, and arrange every detail without interruption. Hours
were spent often over a single Butterfly, and usually Whistler's
pockets were full of gay and fantastic entomological drawings.
Whistler was constantly at the Ballantyne Press, where the book
was printed. He chose the type, he spaced the text, he placed the
Butterflies, each of which he designed to convey a meaning. They
danced, laughed, mocked, stung, defied, triumphed, drooped wings over
the farthing damages, spread them to fly across the Channel, and
expressed every word and every thought. He designed the title-page; a
design contrary to established rules, but with the charm, the balance,
the harmony, the touch of personality he gave to everything, and since
copied and prostituted by foolish imitators who had no conception of
its purpose. Mr. MacCall, of the Ballantyne Press, has told us of his
interest and has a proof of it in a collection of Butterflies and proof
sheets covered with Whistler's corrections. Here, too, as everywhere
by those he worked with, he is remembered with affection, and the
printers were delighted to profit by his suggestions. The cover was in
brown, with a yellow back. The title, though attributed to Sheridan
Ford, can be traced to Whistler's speech at the Criterion dinner and
the gentle answer that turneth not away wrath. The dedication is: "To
the rare Few, who, early in Life, have rid Themselves of the Friendship
of the Many, these pathetic Papers are inscribed."
The book was published in June 1890 and has gone through eight
editions, Messrs. John M. Lowell and Co., and then Messrs. Putnam's
Sons, issuing it in America. It met the fate of all his works.
The Press received it with the usual smile at Mr. Whistler's
eccentricities, and here and there a word of praise and appreciation
said with more courage than of old. To the multitude of readers it was
a jest; to a saving remnant it was serious, to none more serious than
to Whistler, who knew it would live with the writings of Cellini, Dürer
and Reynolds.
_The Gentle Art_ is an artistic autobiography. Whistler gave the
sub-title _Auto-Biographical_ to one section--he might have given it to
the whole. He had a way, half-laughing, half-serious, of calling it his
Bible. "Well, you know, you have only to look and there it all is in
the Bible," or "I am afraid you do not know the Bible as you should,"
he often said to us in answer to some question about his work or his
life. The trial, the pamphlets, _The Ten O'Clock_, the _Propositions_,
the letters, the catalogues take their place and appear in their proper
sequence, not as disconnected, inconsequent little squibs and the
elaborate bids for notoriety they were supposed to be. The book, which
may be read for its wit, is really his Manifesto.
He included also the criticisms and comments that had provoked him into
print, for his object was to expose the stupidity and ridicule he was
obliged to face, so that his method of defence should be understood.
To read the book is to wonder the more that there should have been
necessity for defence, so simple and right is his theory, so sincere
and reverent his attitude. We have spoken of most of the different
subjects in it as they appeared. The collection intensifies the effect
each made individually. Everything he wrote had the same end: to show
that "art should be independent of all clap-trap; should stand alone,
and appeal to the artistic sense of eye or ear, without confounding
this with emotions entirely foreign to it, as devotion, pity, love,
patriotism, and the like. All these have no kind of concern with
it, and that is why I insist on calling my works 'arrangements' and
'harmonies.'"
It was for the "knowledge of a lifetime" his work was to be valued,
he told the Attorney-General in court. In this paragraph, and in this
answer, you have the key to _The Gentle Art_. Fault may be found
with arguments; facts and methods may be challenged. But analysis,
description, technical statement, and explanation are so many proofs
of his belief in the independence of art and of his surrender to that
untiring devotion which the "goddess" demands of her disciples.
It would seem impossible that his statement of simple truths should
have been suspected, were it not remembered that art in England
depended mostly on "clap-trap" when Whistler wrote, and that his
manner of meeting suspicion was intended to mystify. He took care that
his book should be the expression not only of his belief but of his
conception of art. Stupidity in critics and public hurt him as much as
insincerity in artists, and when confronted with it he was pitiless.
Dullness, too, he could not stand. He met it with "joyousness": to be
"joyous" was his philosophy of life and art, "where all is fair," and
this philosophy to the multitude was an enigma. His letters to the
Press are apt to be dismissed as shrill, cheap, thin, not worthy a
great artist, still unworthier of his endeavour to immortalise them. It
is true that he might have omitted some things from _The Gentle Art_,
though the names and ridicule he found for the "Enemies" will stick to
them for ever. But Whistler thought "history" would be half made if he
did not leave on record both the provocation he received and his gaiety
of retaliation. When the battle was won and recognition came he wrote
to Atlas from Paris: "We 'collect' no more." _Messieurs les Ennemis_
had no longer to fear for their "scalps." Oftener than not the wit is
cruel in its sting. We have quoted the "F F F ... Fool" letter. There
are others more bitter, because gayer on the surface, to Tom Taylor,
for instance that final disposing of him:
"Why, my dear old Tom, I never _was_ serious with you even when you
were among us. Indeed, I killed you quite, as who should say without
seriousness, 'A rat! A rat!' you know, rather cursorily."
Whistler had the power of expressing himself in words which is rare
with artists. He could write, he had style. Literature, no less than
art, was to him a "dainty goddess." He worked out his shortest letter
as carefully as a portrait or a Nocturne, until all trace of labour in
it had disappeared. People, awed by the spectacle of Ruskin wallowing
amid the many volumes of _Modern Painters_ without succeeding in
the end in saying what he wanted, could not believe that Whistler
was saying anything that mattered when he said in a few pages what
he wanted with no sign of labour. In his notes to _Truth_ and the
_World_, as in _The Ten O'Clock_, he reveals his knowledge of the
Scriptures, while his use of French which displeased his critics, his
odd references, his unexpected quotations, are placed with the same
unerring instinct as the Butterfly on his canvas. He chose the right
word, he made the division of paragraphs effective, punctuation was
with him an art. It is difficult to give examples, because there are
so many. _The Ten O'Clock_ is full of passages that show him at his
best, none finer than the often-quoted description of London "when the
evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil." The
_Propositions_ and _The Red Rag_ are as complete, as simple and direct
as his prints. The book, as an exposition of his beliefs and doctrines,
ranks with Reynolds' _Lectures_; as a chronicle of an artist's
adventures, it is as personal and characteristic as the _Memoirs
of Cellini_. We have been criticised for devoting so much space to
Whistler's wit and his writings, but as a wit and writer Whistler will
live. He was a many-sided man, not a lop-sided painter.
The period of the preparation and publication of _The Gentle Art_ was
one of unimportant quarrels. In each case there was provocation. Of two
or three so much was made at the time that they cannot be ignored. One,
in 1888, was with Mr. Menpes, who, making no secret of it, has recorded
its various stages until the last, when the Follower adopted the
Master's decorations and arrangements in his own house. His _Home of
Taste_ was paragraphed in the papers, and Whistler held him up to the
world's ridicule as "the Kangaroo of his country, born with a pocket
and putting everything into it." The affair came to a crisis not long
after the _Times_ Parnell disclosures, and Whistler wrote to him: "You
will blow your brains out, of course. Pigott has shown you what to do
under the circumstances, and you know your way to Spain. Good-bye."
Once afterwards, at a public dinner, Whistler saw Mr. Menpes come into
the room on Mr. Justin McCarthy's arm: "Ha ha! McCarthy," he laughed as
they passed him. "Ha ha! You should be careful. You know, Damien died."
In 1890 Augustus Moore, brother of George, was added to the list
of "Enemies." The cause was an offensive reference to Godwin, Mrs.
Whistler's first husband, in _The Hawk_, an insignificant sheet Moore
edited. Whistler, knowing that he would find him at any first-night,
went to Drury Lane for the autumn production, _A Million of Money_,
and in the foyer hit Moore with a cane across the face, crying, "Hawk!
Hawk!" There was a scrimmage, and Whistler, as the man who attacked,
was requested to leave the house. The whole thing was the outcome of
a sense of honour, a feeling of chivalry, which is not now understood
in England, though it would have been found magnificent in the days
of duels. The comic papers made great fun of the episode, and the
serious ones lamented the want of dignity it showed. No one understood
Whistler's loyalty and his devotion to the woman he had married.
[Footnote 10: See Appendix at end of volume.]
CHAPTER XXXV: THE TURN OF THE TIDE. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN NINETY-ONE AND
EIGHTEEN NINETY-TWO.
The world owed him a living, Whistler said, but it was not until 1891
that the world began to pay the debt with the purchase of the _Carlyle_
for Glasgow and the _Mother_ for the Luxembourg.
While the _Carlyle_ was at the Glasgow Institute in 1888, Mr. E. A.
Walton and Sir James Guthrie made up their minds to try to keep it for
the city. Since the attempt to secure it for Edinburgh, the Glasgow
School had become a power, and as they proclaimed themselves followers
of Whistler, it was only right they should do everything to retain
the picture in Glasgow. A petition was presented to the Glasgow
Corporation, signed by a long list of names of influential people,
which greatly pleased Whistler, for they included Gilbert, Orchardson,
Millais, Walton, Guthrie, and many others. The price asked by Whistler
was a thousand guineas, and a deputation from the Corporation came to
call on him in London. Whistler told us:
"I received them, well, you know, charmingly, of course. And one who
spoke for the rest asked me if I did not think I was putting a large
price on the picture--one thousand guineas. And I said, 'Yes, perhaps,
if you will have it so!' And he said that it seemed to the Council
excessive; why, the figure was not even life-size.' And I agreed. 'But,
you know,' I said, 'few men are life-size.' And that was all. It was
an official occasion, and I respected it. Then they asked me to think
over the matter until the next day, and they would come again. And
they came. And they said, 'Have you thought of the thousand guineas
and what we said about it, Mr. Whistler?' And I said, 'Why, gentlemen,
why--well, you know, how could I think of anything but the pleasure of
seeing you again?' And, naturally, being gentlemen, they understood,
and they gave me a cheque for the thousand guineas."
What Whistler meant by "life-size" he has explained. "No man alive is
life-size except the recruit who is being measured as he enters the
regiment, and then the only man who sees him life-size is the sergeant
who measures him, and all that he sees of him is the end of his nose;
when he is able to see his toes, the man ceases to be life-size."
Before the _Carlyle_ went to Glasgow Whistler wished to show it in
London, where, except in Queen Square, it had not been seen since
the Grosvenor Exhibition of 1877, and it was exhibited at the Goupil
Gallery. Mr. D. Croal Thomson, then director of the Gallery, saw that
the tide was turning, and suggested offering the _Mother_ to the
Luxembourg. In Paris there was a sluggish sort of curiosity and the
beginning of a sort of appreciation. During the last ten years Whistler
had shown at the _Salon_ his _Lady Meux_, the _Mother_, _Carlyle_,
_Miss Alexander_, _The Yellow Buskin_, _M. Duret_, _Sarasate_, and
in 1891 his _Rosa Corder_ was in the new _Salon_; but save for the
third-class medal awarded the _Mother_ in 1883 his pictures received
no official recognition, and while several scarcely known Americans
were made full members of the _Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts_ he
was at first simply an Associate. Many of his smaller works had been
seen at different times in the Petit Gallery. At Mr. Croal Thomson's
suggestion the _Mother_ was sent to Messrs. Boussod Valadon in Paris,
and subscriptions for the purchase were opened. Before any amount worth
mentioning was subscribed the French Government, on the initiative
of M. Georges Clémenceau and by the advice of M. Roger Marx, bought
it for the nation. M. Bourgeois, the Minister of Fine Arts, had some
doubt as to the possibility of offering for so fine a masterpiece
the small price that the nation could afford. But Whistler set him
at ease on this point, writing to him that it was for the _Mother_,
of all his pictures, he would prefer so "solemn a consecration," and
that he was proud of the honour France had shown him. The price paid
was four thousand francs. Whistler told Mr. Cole, November 14, 1891,
that his pleasure was in the fact of "his painting of his mother
being 'unprecedentedly' chosen by the Minister of Beaux-Arts for the
Luxembourg," and France that same year bestowed upon him an honour he
valued higher than almost any he ever received, by making him Officer
of the Legion of Honour. But the choice was not unprecedented, pictures
of other American artists having already been purchased, while the
honour had already been bestowed upon American artists now forgotten.