He took part in the fun. He went to regattas, picnicked, and was rowed

and punted about. At Hampton he met Mr. William Nicholson, whom Mr.

Heinemann had asked down with the idea of his adding a portrait of

Whistler to the series that began with his woodcut of Queen Victoria in

the _New Review_. Later Mr. Nicholson, in the Fitzroy Street studio,

made a study of Whistler in evening dress, recalling the _Sarasate_,

and it appeared in the _Review_.

It was the summer of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. Whistler could

not come to us from Garlant's without passing through streets hung

with tawdry wreaths and draggled festoons; Trafalgar Square buried in

platforms, seats, and advertisements, Nelson on his column peering

above. The decorations were an unfailing amusement to him, an excuse

for an estimate of "the Island and the Islander," and the talk about

the British, an annoyance, we are afraid, to some of his friends and

more of his enemies. One evening he sketched for us his impression of

the Square, with Nelson "boarded at last." "You see," he said, "England

expects every Englishman to be ridiculous," and the sketch appeared in

the _Daily Chronicle_.

He again went to the Naval Review, and this time saw it from Mr.

George Vanderbilt's yacht. No etchings were made, though we believe he

did a water-colour or pastel. Instead, he wrote some of his saddest

letters, yet he said with a gleam of glee: "It was wonderful, just

like Spain, just like Velasquez at some great function, for there was

Philip," whom Mr. Vanderbilt resembled, as the portrait proved till

he changed and ruined it. "There was the Queen, Mrs. Vanderbilt; there

was I, the Court Painter, and, why, even the dwarfs," as he described

appropriately two well-known Americans on board.

In July we proposed to cycle across France to Switzerland, and the

night before we started Whistler, M. Boldini, and Mr. Kennedy dined

with us to say good-bye. Boldini was leaving London the next day, and

by the end of the evening Whistler made up his mind to come as far

as Dieppe, and as he would never, if he could help it, go alone, he

decided that Mr. Kennedy must come too. Next morning we all arrived at

the station save Whistler. Even his baggage came, but not till we were

reduced almost to nervous collapse, not till the train was starting,

did he saunter unmoved--his straw hat over his eyes--down the platform,

followed humbly by the pompous station-master and amazed porters,

looking for our carriage. No sooner had we started than he was in the

best of spirits and enjoyed every minute of the journey, most when on

the boat he found a camp of enemies also on the way to Dieppe, to his

delight and their discomfort. At Dieppe we had to get our bicycles

through the customs, the others took a cab, and when we reached the

hotel we were received regally and given a whole suite, Boldini having

hinted to the _patron_ we were royalty travelling incognito, they in

attendance. Almost at once Whistler got out his little colour-box and

started for a shop front in a narrow street he knew. But first he

had to find another kind of shop where he could buy a rosette of the

Legion of Honour, for his had been lost or forgotten, and he would

have thought it wanting in respect to appear without it in France. The

shopkeeper, to whom he explained, said, "All right, _monsieur_, here is

the rosette, but I have heard that story before." Whistler was furious,

but in the end had to laugh. His dread of illness was again shown, for

Beardsley, dying, was in the town, and without knowing it we passed

his window and Beardsley saw us. When afterwards we called, Whistler

refused to come, and it was well he did. Beardsley, however, was not

the only person in Dieppe Whistler would not meet.

We had only our cycling costumes, we were staying at the Hôtel Royal.

When he came down to dinner, very late of course, he was correct in

evening dress, the rosette in place, and we thought there was a

suggestion of hesitation, but it was only a suggestion. He gave his arm

to E., who was in short cycling skirt, J. in knickerbockers, and as we

went into the dining-room he turned to her, and, to a question that had

never been asked, answered clearly, "_Mais oui, Princesse_," and after

that he had all the attention he wanted. Every tourist stared, and we

were escorted to our seats by the _patron_, and for the rest of the

evening, when he was not talking to the _Princesse_, he was giving good

advice to the head waiter. The evening and the night were diversified

periodically by Boldini's practical jokes, which did not keep Whistler

from being down early in the morning to see us off. "Well, you know,

can't I hold something?" he offered, as E. mounted her bicycle, and as

he watched us wheel along the sea-front, he told Mr. Kennedy, "After

all, O'K., ... there's something in it!" We asked Mr. Kennedy to pay

our bill, and M. Boldini had some trouble with his. The result was that

when Whistler and Kennedy counted up their joint funds, they found they

had just about enough money to get back to London, and they left.

In the autumn Whistler was in Paris, the Eden case in the Cour de

Cassation being fixed for November 17. It was heard before Président

Périvier, Maître Beurdeley for the second time defending Whistler. Mr.

Heinemann came from London, and was with him in court. Judgment was

given on December 2. The affair had been talked about, and the court

was crowded. The judgment went as entirely in Whistler's favour as, in

the Lower Court, it had gone against him. He was to keep the picture,

on condition that he made it unrecognisable as a portrait of Lady

Eden, which had been done; Sir William Eden was to have the hundred

guineas back, which already had been returned and 5 per cent. interest;

Whistler was to pay one thousand francs damages with interest and the

cost of the first trial, and "the Baronet" to pay the costs of appeal.

Mr. MacMonnies, who also was with Whistler in court, remembers that

"it was decided by the judges that the picture should be produced when

needed. Mr. Whistler whispered in my ear, 'MacMonnies, take the picture

and get out with it.' As we sat under the judges' noses, and the

court-room was packed with admirers and enemies and court officials,

I made a distinct spot as I walked down the aisle with _the_ picture

under my arm. And Whistler showed his admirable generalship in the

case, as not one of the _gendarmes_ could stop me. So all anybody

could do was to watch it disappear out of the door."

Whistler said to us that the _Procureur de la République_ was splendid;

that the whole affair was a public recognition of his position; that

the trial made history, established a precedent, proving the right of

the artist to his own work; that a new clause had been added to the

_Code Napoléon_; that he had "wiped up the floor" with "the Baronet"

before all Paris, his intention from the first. He wished it to be

known that in the law of France he would go down with Napoleon:

"Well, you know, take my word for it, Joseph, the first duty of a good

general when he has won his battle is to say so, otherwise the people,

always dull--the Briton especially--fail to understand, and it is an

unsettled point in history for ever. Victory is not complete until the

wounded are looked after and the dead counted."

The trial over, he wanted immediately to make a beautiful little book

of it, and he began to arrange the report with his "Reflections"

for publication. During many months proofs of _The Baronet and the

Butterfly_ filled his pockets. As he had read pages of _The Ten

O'Clock_ to Mr. Alan S. Cole, so he read pages of _The Baronet and the

Butterfly_ to us, and sometimes to the Council of the International

after the meetings, a mistake, for there were members who had not the

intelligence to understand it or him. His care was no less than with

_The Gentle Art_. Every note, every Butterfly, was thought out and

placed properly. "Beautiful, you know. Isn't it beautiful?" he would

say, when a page or a paragraph pleased him, and nothing pleased him

more than the Butterfly following the "Reflection" on page 43. There

he quotes George Moore: "I undertook a journey to Paris in the depth

of winter, had two shocking passages across the Channel _and spent

twenty-five pounds_. All this worry is the commission I received for my

trouble in the matter."

Whistler's "Reflection" was: "Why, damme, sir! he must have had a

Valentine himself--the sea-saddened expert." This was followed by the

Butterfly, "splendid--actually rolling back with laughter, you know!"

A new feature was the toad printed over the Dedication: "To those

_confrères_ across the Channel who, refraining from intrusive

demonstration, with a pluck and delicacy all their own 'sat tight'

during the struggle, these decrees of the judges are affectionately

dedicated."

Below, a Butterfly bows and sends its sting to England. The tiny toad

is the only realistic drawing in his books, and to make it realistic he

needed a model. He thought of applying at the Zoological Gardens, was

promised one by Mr. Wimbush, a painter in the same house, and finally

his stepson, Mr. E. Godwin, found one. He put the toad in a paper box,

forgot all about it, and was shocked when he heard it was dead.

"You know, they say I starved it. Well, it must have caught a fly or

two, and I thought toads lived in stone or amber--or something--for

hundreds of years--don't you know the stories? Perhaps it was because I

hadn't the amber!"

_The Baronet and the Butterfly_ was published in Paris by Henry May,

May 13, 1899. Whistler objected to the date, but on the 13th it

appeared, and the result justified his superstition. It did not attract

much attention. When we saw him in Paris that month he seemed to think

the fault was with the critics who were keeping up the played-out

business of "misunderstanding and misrepresentation." But the interest

in the Eden trial had never been as great as he fancied, and the

report is dull reading, because there were no witnesses and so no

cross-examination which would in England have given him the opportunity

of "scalping" his victim. The Ruskin trial in _The Gentle Art_ is full

of Whistler's answers in court; _The Baronet and the Butterfly_ is made

up of the speeches of advocates and judges. In the marginal notes, the

Dedication, the Argument, he is brilliant and witty, and the Butterfly

as gay as ever. There is no Whistler in the speeches, that is the

trouble.

The book was one of many schemes that occupied him during these

years. The International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers

was organised, and the _Atelier Carmen_ in Paris was planned, both

so important that their history is reserved for other chapters. A

venture from which he hoped great things was his endeavour to dispense

with the middleman in art. Hitherto he had been glad to trust his

affairs to dealers. "I will lay the golden eggs, you will supply the

incubator," he told one, whose version of the arrangement was that when

the incubator was ready Whistler would not give up the golden eggs.

He could not reconcile himself to the large sums gained by buying

and selling his work since 1892. Over the sale of old work he had no

control; the sale of new he determined to keep in his hands. He would

be his own agent, set up his own shop, form a trust in Whistlers. We

think it was in 1896 he first spoke to us about it, delighted, sure

he was to succeed financially at last. In 1897 rumours were spread of

a "Whistler Syndicate." In 1898 advertisements of the "Company of the

Butterfly" appeared in the _Athenæum_--the Company composed, as far

as we knew, of James McNeill Whistler. Two rooms were taken on the

first floor at No. 2 Hinde Street, Manchester Square, close to the

Wallace Gallery. They were charming. A few prints were hung. A picture

or two stood on easels. To go to Whistler in the studio for his work

was one thing; it was quite another to go to a shop run by no one knew

who, half the time shut, and deserted when open. We doubt if anything

was ever sold there, we never saw a visitor in the place. Soon the

rooms were turned over to Mr. Heinemann for a show of Mr. Nicholson's

colour-prints, and after that no more was heard of the "Company of the

Butterfly."

There was another reason for starting it. So many people came to the

studio for so many reasons that he had to keep them out, and his idea

was that those who wanted to buy pictures should go to the "Company

of the Butterfly," and buy them there without interrupting him. But

no shop could dispose of the constant visits from the curious, from

photographers asking for his portrait, journalists begging for an

interview, literary people anxious to make articles or books about him.

They would write to arrange a certain hour and appear without waiting

for a reply. One, who had written to say he was coming with a letter of

introduction, on his arrival found the door fastened and heard Whistler

whistling inside, and that was all the indignant visitor heard or saw

of him. There is a story of an American collector who, calling one day

when not wanted, and after wasting much time, asked:

"How much for the whole lot, Mr. Whistler?"

"Five millions."

"What?"

"My posthumous prices!"

[Illustration: STUDY IN BROWN

OIL

In the possession of the Baroness de Meyer

(_See page 359_)]

[Illustration: STUDY OF THE NUDE

PEN DRAWING

In the possession of William Heinemann, Esq.

(_See page 360_)]

And there are stories of Whistler's ways of meeting the hordes who

tried to force themselves into the studio. Mr. Eddy tells one:

"An acquaintance had brought, without invitation, a friend,

'a distinguished and clever woman,' to the studio in the Rue

Notre-Dame-des-Champs. They reached the door, both out of breath

from their long climb. 'Ah, my dear Whistler,' drawled C----, 'I

have taken the liberty of bringing Lady D---- to see you. I knew you

would be delighted.' 'Delighted, I'm sure! Quite beyond expression,

but'--mysteriously, and holding the door so as to bar their

entrance--'my dear Lady D----, I would never forgive our friend for

bringing you up six flights of stairs on so hot a day to visit a studio

at one of these--eh--pagan moments when'--and he glanced furtively

behind him, and still further closed the door--'it is absolutely

impossible for a lady to be received. Upon my soul, I should never

forgive him.' And Whistler bowed them down from the top of the six

flights and returned to the portrait of a very sedate old gentleman

who had taken advantage of the interruption to break for a moment the

rigour of his pose."

The "Company of the Butterfly" never relieved him of the visitors who

were more eager to see him than his work. But this he did not discover

until he had devoted to the venture far more time than he had to spare

during the crowded years of its existence.

CHAPTER XLII: BETWEEN LONDON AND PARIS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN

TO NINETEEN HUNDRED.

After his marriage Whistler was unfortunate in his choice of apartments

and studios. The Studio in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, on the sixth

floor, was the worst for a man with a weak heart to climb to; the

apartment in the Rue du Bac, low and damp, was as bad for a man who

caught cold easily. He was constantly ill during the winter of 1897-98,

which he passed mostly in Paris. Influenza kept him in bed in November,

from January to March he was dull and listless as never before, save in

Venice after the _scirocco_; he said, "I am so tired--I who am never

tired!"

Whistler's heart, always weak, began to trouble him. He had been ill

before, but, nervous as he was about his health, he never realised

his condition. We have known him, when too ill to work, get up out of

bed in order to accomplish something important. A few years before,

confined with quinsy to his brother's house, forced to write what he

wished to say on a slate, when someone he did not want to see was

announced, he forgot that he could not talk and yelled, "Send him

away!" We have known, too, an invitation to dinner from a certain rich

American to rout him out of bed and to cure him temporarily. It was

this endeavour never to be ill, never to give in, that was one of the

causes of his final breakdown. Illness suggested death, and no man ever

shrank more from the thought or mention of death than Whistler. There

was in life so much for him to do, so little time in which to do it. He

would tell his brother it was useless for doctors to know so much if

they had not discovered the elixir of life. "Why not try to find it?"

he asked the Doctor. "Isn't it in the heart of the unknown? It must be

there."

In the studio he worked harder than ever. Illness made him foresee that

his time was short, and he was goaded by the thought of the things to

finish. When he was in London we were distressed by his fatigue at the

end of the day, but he said he was like the old cart-horse that could

keep going as long as it was in traces, but must drop the minute it

was free. While he was in Paris, his letters were full of the "amazing

things" going on in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. He said: "Really,

you know, I could almost laugh at the extraordinary progress I am

making, and the lovely things I am inventing--work beyond anything I

have ever done before."

He was only beginning to know and to understand, he told us. All that

had gone before was experimental.

There were new portraits. In 1897 he had begun one of Mr. George

Vanderbilt--"The Modern Philip"--a full-length in riding habit, whip

in hand, standing against a dark background. The canvas was sent from

Paris to London, just as Whistler and Vanderbilt happened to be in

one place or the other. Not one of his portraits of men interested

Whistler so much; certainly not one was finer when we first saw it in

London, but it was a wreck in the Paris Memorial Exhibition of 1905.

Like others of this period, it had been worked over. He painted Mrs.

Vanderbilt, _Ivory and Gold_, shown in the _Salon_ of 1902, one of the

first of the several ovals he was now doing. Carmen, his model, sat.

Portraits started a year or so later were of his brother-in-law, Mr.

Birnie Philip, and of Mr. Elwell, an American painter whom he had known

for some time. In May 1898, in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, he showed

us the full-length of himself in long overcoat, called _Gold and Brown_

in the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1900 and, as we have said, never

seen afterward. We own a pen-drawing he made of it. It was far from

successful, and before he finished it Miss Marian Draughn, an American,

began to pose for him--his "Coon Girl" he called her. She was sent to

him by Gibson and Phil May.

He painted many children. He loved children. Ernest G. Brown remembered

Whistler's thoughtfulness and consideration when his daughter sat for

_Pretty Nelly Brown_, one of the most beautiful of the series. We have

the same story from Mr. Croal Thomson, of whose daughter, _Little

Evelyn_, Whistler made a lithograph. When he went to her father's

house at Highgate, Evelyn would run to meet him with outstretched

hands, her face lifted to be kissed, and while he worked the other

children would come and look on. Mr. Alan S. Cole has told us that once

Whistler found his three little daughters decorating the drawing-room

and hanging up a big welcome in flowers for their mother, who was to

return. He forgot what he had come for and helped, as eager and excited

as they, and stayed until Mrs. Cole arrived. He was walking from the

Paris studio one day with Mrs. Clifford Addams and saw some children

playing; he made her stop, "I must look at the babbies," he said, "you

know, I love the babbies!" Later, during his last illness, he liked

to have Mrs. Addams' own little girl, Diane, in the studio. And there

are portraits of Brandon Thomas' baby and _Master Stephen Manuel_ that

show his pleasure in painting his small sitters. The children of the

street adored him; the children of Chelsea and Fitzroy Street, who

were used to artists, knew him well. There was one he was for ever

telling us about, of five or six, who frightened while she fascinated

him. "I likes whusky," she confided one day when she was posing, "and

I likes Scoatch best!" She described her Christmas at home: "Father

'e was drunk, mother was drunk, sister was drunk, I was drunk, and we

made the cat drunk, too!" A still younger child gave him sittings, a

baby of not more than three, the model for many of the pastels. She

and her mother were resting one afternoon, Whistler watching her every

movement. "Really," he said, "you are a beautiful little thing!" She

looked up at him, "Yes, I is, Whistler," she lisped. And there is the

old story: "Where did you come from, Mr. Whistler?" "I came from on

high, my dear." "H'm, never should have thought it," said the child;

"shows how we can deceive ourselves." But his popularity with children

did not help him one Sunday afternoon, the only time it is possible to

sketch with comfort in the City, when he went with J. to make a study

of Clerkenwell Church tower, which was about to be restored. They drove

to the church, but the light was bad and the colour not right, so they

wandered off to Cloth Fair--until a little while ago the most perfect,

really the only, bit of old London. Though Whistler had worked there

many times, this afternoon the children did not approve of him. After

a short encounter in which they, as always, got the better, Whistler

and J. retired to another cab, followed by any refuse that came handy.

But the children he painted, _The Little Rose of Lyme Regis_, _The

Little Lady Sophie of Soho_, _Lillie in our Alley_, the small Italian

waifs and strays, were his friends, and no painter ever gave the grace

and feeling of childhood, or of girlhood as in _Miss Woakes_, more

sympathetically.

He was as absorbed in a series of nudes. Few of his paintings towards

the end satisfied him so entirely as the small _Phryne the Superb,

Builder of Temples_, which he sent to the International in 1901 and to

the _Salon_ in 1902. The first time he showed it to us he asked:

"Would she be more superb--more truly the builder of Temples--had I

painted her what is called life-size by the foolish critics who bring

out their foot-rule? Is it a question of feet and inches when you look

at her?"

[Illustration: BLUE AND CORAL THE LITTLE BLUE BONNET

OIL

Formerly in the possession of Wm. Heinemann, Esq.

(_See page 361_)]

[Illustration: ROSE AND GOLD LITTLE LADY SOPHIE OF SOHO

OIL

In the Charles L. Freer Collection, National Gallery of American Art

(_See page 362_)]

He intended to paint an Eve, an Odalisque, a Bathsheba, and a Danaë,

the designs to be enlarged on canvas by his apprentices, Mr. and Mrs.

Clifford Addams, but this was never done. Suggestions were in the

pastels of figures, for which he found the perfect model in London.

When not in the studio, he kept sketching her from memory, and he was

in despair when she married and went to some remote colony, but before

she went he gave her some beautiful silver. These pastels are many

and perfect. They are drawings on brown paper--studies or impressions

of the model in infinite poses. In some she stands with her filmy

draperies floating about her or falling in long, straight folds to

her feet; in others she lies upon a couch, indolent and lovely; she

dances across the paper, she bends over a great bowl, she sits with

her slim legs crossed and a cup of tea in her hand, she holds a fan

or a flower; but whatever she may be doing or however she may rest,

she is but another expression of the beauty that haunted Whistler, the

beauty that was the inspiration of the _Harmonies in White_ and the

_Six Projects_. Many poses are suggested in lithographs, etchings, and

water-colours; none show greater tenderness than when she returned

with her child. He put his own tenderness into the encircling hands of

the mother holding the baby on her knee, he found the most rhythmic

lines when, standing, she balanced herself to clasp the child the more

closely to her. Nothing could be slighter than the means by which the

effect is produced, the figures drawn in black upon the brown paper,

the colour--blue, or rose, or violet--suggested in the gauzy draperies

or the cap or handkerchief knotted about the curls. But they have the

exquisiteness of Tanagra figures and are as complete.

All this work was done with feverish concern about mediums and

materials and methods He usually sat now as he worked, and he wore

spectacles, sometimes two pairs, one over the other. He was never so

thoughtful in the preparation of his colours and his canvas. At last

the knowledge was coming to him, he said again and again. And he was

never more successful in obtaining the unity and harmony he had always

sought, in hiding the labour by which it was obtained, and in giving

to his painting the beauty of surface he prized so highly. Because in

painting he tried to carry on the same subject, the same tradition,

superficial critics accused him of repeating himself, or mistook his

later for earlier works, like the critic of the _Times_ who, in writing

of his pictures at the International Society's Exhibition of 1898,

referred to "old works ... among which _The Little Blue Bonnet_ is the

least known," a remark Whistler printed in the _édition de luxe_ of

the catalogue, with the explanation that the painting had come "fresh

from the easel to its first exhibition," and that therefore "the 'plain

man' is, once more, profoundly right, and we see again the advantage of

memory over mere artistic instinct in the critic." The small portraits

and marines of the nineties are as fine as anything he ever did. The

fact that for all these pictures he used frames of the same size and

the same design helped--unintentionally on his part--to confuse critics

accustomed to the flamboyant vulgarity, utter inappropriateness, and

complete indifference to scale in the frames of most painters. But

then there are not half a dozen painters in a generation who have the

faintest idea of decoration. Whistler, Puvis de Chavannes, and John

La Farge are almost the only decorators whose names may be mentioned

among moderns. Though some of Whistler's portraits are more elaborate,

not one is more powerful or more masterly as a study of character, and

therefore more individual, than _The Master Smith of Lyme Regis_. When

it is contrasted with _The Little Rose_, the embodiment of simple,

sweet, healthy childhood, and _The Little Lady Sophie of Soho_ and

_Lillie in our Alley_, the sickly atmosphere of the slums reflected in

their strange beauty, and these again with the exuberant colour and

life of _Carmen_, there can be no question of the variety in Whistler's

later work, though a certain manner, that might have grown into

mannerism, became more marked. There was a similarity in the general

design. Most were heads and half-lengths, and, except in the finest,

nose, eyes, and mouth were alike in character, and hands were badly

drawn and clumsily put in. The colour was beautiful and he exulted in

it, but at the very last he must have known as well as anybody that his

power of work was leaving him.

Whistler spent the summer of 1898 chiefly in London, going first to Mr.

Heinemann's at Whitehall Court, then to Garlant's Hotel. The delightful

evenings of the year before began again for us, and there was a fresh

interest for him in the war between the United States and Spain. "It

was a wonderful and beautiful war," he thought, "the Spaniards were

gentlemen," and his pockets were filled with newspaper clippings to

prove it. If we pointed out a blunder on the part of our soldiers, if

we gave chance a share in our victories, he was furious:

"Why say if any but Spaniards had been at the top of San Juan, we never

would have got there? Why question the _if_? The facts are all that

count. No fight could be more beautifully managed. I am telling you!

I, a West Point man, know. What if Cervera did get whipped? What if he

was pulled up from the sea looking like a wad of cotton that had been

soaked in an ink-bottle? What of it? Didn't the whole United States

Navy, headed by the admirals, receive him as the Commander of the

Spanish Fleet should be received?"

He was going out more and seeing more people. But his interest in

society was less, and evidently he preferred the quiet of the evenings

with us. Chance encounters in our flat were often an entertainment.

One we recall most vividly was with Frederick Sandys, whom he had not

met for thirty years. Sandys was with us in the late afternoon when

Whistler knocked his exaggerated postman's knock that could not be

mistaken, followed by the resounding peal of the bell. They gave each

other a chilly recognition and sat down. Sandys was agitated, but there

was no escape. Whistler looked like Boldini's portrait, but soon they

began to talk, and they talked till the early hours of the morning as

if they were back at Rossetti's, Sandys in the white waistcoat with

gold buttons, but bent with age, Whistler straight and erect, but

wrinkled and grey.

He returned to Paris late in the autumn, settling there for the winter.

Except for his attacks of illness, there was but one interruption to

his work. Mr. Heinemann was married at Porto d'Anzio in February 1899,

and Whistler went to Italy as best man. This was his only visit to

Rome. He was disappointed. To us he described the city as "a bit of

an old ruin alongside of a railway station where I saw Mrs. Potter

Palmer." And he added:

"Rome was awful--a hard sky all the time, a glaring sun and a strong

wind. After I left the railway station, there were big buildings more

like Whiteley's than anything I expected in the Eternal City. St.

Peter's was fine, with its great yellow walls, the interior too big,

perhaps, but you had only got to go inside to know where Wren got his

ideas--how he, well, you know, robbed Peter's to build Paul's! And I

liked the Vatican, the Swiss Guards, great big fellows, lolling about,

as in Dumas; they made you think of D'Artagnan, Aramis, and the others.

And Michael Angelo? A tremendous fellow, yes; the frescoes in the

Sistine Chapel, interesting as pictures, but with all the legs and arms

of the figures sprawling everywhere, I could not see the decoration.

There can be no decoration without repose; a tremendous fellow, but not

so much in the David and other things I was shown in Rome and Florence

as in that one unfinished picture at the National Gallery. There is

often elegance in the _loggie_ of Raphael, but the big frescoes of the

_stanze_ did not interest me."

Velasquez's portrait of _Innocent X._ in the Doria Palace he,

apparently, did not see.

During the journey to Porto d'Anzio, Princess ----, one of the wedding

guests, who heard vaguely that Whistler was an artist, inquired of him:

"_Monsieur fait de la peinture, n'est-ce pas?_"

"_Oui, Princesse._"

"_On me l'avait dit. Moi aussi, j'en fais, Monsieur._"

"_Charmant, Princesse, nous sommes des collègues._"

On the way back from Rome Whistler stopped at Florence, and of his stay

there Mr. J. Kerr-Lawson wrote us the account:

"The McNeill has been here and just gone--we had him lightly on our

hands all day yesterday.

"We didn't 'do' Florence, for there was a fierce glaring sun and a

horrible _Tramontana_ raging, so we spent the best of the morning

trying to write a letter in the rococo manner to the Syndic of Murano

quite unsuccessfully. [This was after the awards in the Venice

International Exhibition.]

"After luncheon I took him down to the Uffizi. We seemed to be the only

people rash enough to brave the awful wind, for we saw no one in the

Gallery but a frozen _Guardia_. He--poor fellow--was brushed aside by

a magnificent and truly awe-inspiring gesture as we approached that

battered and begrimed portrait in which Velasquez still looks out upon

the world which he has mastered with an expression of superbly arrogant

scorn in the Portrait Gallery.

"It was a dramatic moment--the flat-brimmed _chapeau de haut forme_

came off with a grand sweep and was deposited on a stool, and then

the Master, standing back about six feet from the picture and drawing

himself up to much more than his own full natural height, with his left

hand upon his breast and the right thrust out magisterially, exclaimed,

'_Quelle allure!_' Then you should have seen him. After the solemn

act of homage, when he had resumed his hat, we relaxed considerably

over the lesser immortals of this crazy and incongruous Valhalla--what

an ill-assorted company! How did they all get together? Liotard, the

Swiss, jostles Michael Angelo, Giuseppe MacPherson rubs shoulders

with Titian, Herkomer hangs beside Ingres, and Poynter is a pendant

to Sir Joshua. There are the greatest and the least, the noblest and

the meanest brought together by the capricious folly of succeeding

directors and harmonised by that touch of vanity that makes the whole

world kin.

"One wonders whom they will ask next. Certainly not Whistler. They knew

quite well he was here, but not the slightest notice was taken of him.

_En revanche_, every now and then some vulgar mediocrity passes this

way, and then the foolish Florentines are lavish with their laurels."

Whistler had not been long dead when J. received an inspired letter

from Florence asking him if he could obtain Whistler's portrait for the

Uffizi. His answer was that had they appreciated Whistler they might

have asked him while he was alive, but as they had not had the sense or

the courage to do so, they had better apply to his executrix. As yet

there is no portrait of Whistler in the Uffizi.

After absences from his studio Whistler discovered again that pictures

and prints were disappearing. It worried him, and he tried to trace

and recover them. We have little doubt that, at times, Whistler lost

prints through his carelessness. We know that once his method of drying

his etchings between sheets of blotting paper thrown on the floor was

disastrous. One morning an artist came to see us bringing a number

of beautiful proofs of the second Venice Set, in sheets of blotting

paper as he had bought them from an old rag and paper man in Red Lion

Passage, who thought they could be no good because the margins were

cut down and so sold them for a shilling apiece. The artist admitted

that he did not care for them, and we offered him half-a-crown. "Oh,"

he said, "as you are willing to give that, now I shall find out what

they are really worth." He got sixty pounds for them, but several of

the prints separately have since sold for much more. Accidents like

this would account for some of the things Whistler thought were stolen.

A few works that had disappeared were recovered during his lifetime.

But shortly after his death there was a sale at the Hôtel Drouot in

which missing paintings, drawings, plates, prints, and even letters

were dispersed. Only those who were near him can realise how much

this troubled and annoyed him during his last years. At the same time

he began to suffer from another of the evils of success. Pictures,

somewhat resembling his and attributed to him appeared at auctions, and

others were sent to him for identification or signature by persons who

had purchased them. If he knew beforehand that one of these fakes was

coming up in the auction-room, he would send and try to stop the sale,

or, if submitted to him, he would not give it back. Neither expedient

met with marked success. At present there is a factory of Whistlers

in full operation, while oils and water-colours and drawings ascribed

to him without the slightest reason have been openly sold at auction,

despite the protests made against such swindles.

Whistler could not stay long from London, and the early summer of 1899

saw him back at Garlant's and visiting Mr. Heinemann at Weybridge.

He was in town for the sequel to the Eden affair. He heard that, on

July 15, there was to be a sale of Sir William Eden's pictures at

Christie's. He went to it and came to us afterwards.

"Really, it has been beautiful. I know you will enjoy it. It occurred

to me in the morning--the Baronet's sale to-day--h'm--the Butterfly

should see how things are going! And I went home, and I changed my

morning dress, my dandy straw hat, and then, very correct and elegant,

I sauntered down King Street into Christie's. At the top of the

stairway someone spoke to me. 'Well, you know, my dear friend,' I said,

'I do not know who you are, but you shall have the honour of taking

me in.' And on his arm I walked into the big room. The auctioneer

was crying, 'Going! Going! Thirty shillings! Going!' 'Ha ha!' I

laughed--not loudly, not boisterously, it was very delicately, very

neatly done. But the room was electrified. Some of the henchmen were

there; they grow rigid, afraid to move afraid to glance my way out of

the corners of their eyes. 'Twenty shillings! Going!' the auctioneer

would cry. 'Ha ha!' I would laugh, and things went for nothing and

the henchman trembled. Louis Fagan came across the room to speak to

me--Fagan, representing the British Museum, as it were, was quite the

most distinguished man there. And now, having seen how things were,

I took Fagan's arm. 'You,' I said, 'may have the honour of taking me

out.'"

He dined with us the next evening and found Mr. Harry Wilson, whose

brother-in-law, Mr. Sydney Morse, was the friend upon whose arm

Whistler had entered the auction-room. Mr. Wilson was full of the

story, and confirmed the "electric shock" when Whistler appeared.

He ran over to Holland once during the summer. Part of the time he was

at Pourville, near Dieppe, where he had taken a house for Miss Birnie

Philip and her mother. The sea was on the right side at Dieppe, of

which he never tired; at Madame Lefèvre's restaurant he could get

as good a breakfast as in Paris; and many small marines, oils, and

water-colours were done before bad weather drove him away.

Though it is not always easy to identify the place or the time to which

his small marines belong, for they cover a number of years, probably

more were made at Dieppe than anywhere else. When he did not care to

work from the shore there were boatmen who would take him out beyond

the breakers, where he could get the effect he wished at the height

above the water that suited him. He used to be seen calmly painting

away in a dancing row-boat, the boatman holding it as steadily as he

could. There is as much of the bigness of the ocean in these little

paintings, which show usually only the grey or blue or green, but ever

recurring, swell of the wave, or a quiet sea with two or three sails on

the horizon, as in any big marines that ever were painted. He explained

his method to his apprentice, Mrs. Addams. When the wave broke and the

surf made a beautiful line of white, he painted this at once, then all

that completed the beauty of the breaking wave, then the boat passing,

and then, having got the movement and the beauty that goes almost as

soon as it comes, he put in the shore or the horizon.

In Paris, during the winter of 1899-1900, he took two small rooms at

the Hôtel Chatham, where the last three years he had often stayed,

afraid to risk the dampness of the Rue du Bac. But they were inner

rooms with no light and scarcely any ventilation, though most swell and

more expensive, unless, perhaps, the lady who used to come to massage

him was included. He had fewer friends in Paris than in London, and

he was often lonely. He would go to see Drouet and say, "_Tu sais, je

suis ennuyé._" And Drouet, to amuse him, would get up little dinners,

at which all who were left of the old group of students met again. One

was given in honour of Becquet, whom Whistler had etched almost half a

century before. A wreath of laurels was prepared. During dinner Drouet

said he had met many great men, but, _pour la morale_, none greater

than Becquet, who was moved to tears, and the laurel wreath was offered

to him by Whistler, and Becquet fairly broke down; he "would hang it on

the walls of his studio, always to have it before him," he said.

Once Drouet took Whistler to the fair at Neuilly, made him ride in a

merry-go-round. Whistler lost his hat, dropped his eye-glass. "What

would London journalists say if they could see me now?" he asked. They

generally dined at Beaujé's, in the Passage des Panoramas, to which

Drouet and other artists, literary men, and barristers went. Whistler

renewed his intimacy with Oulevey, whom he had barely seen since

the early Paris days. Madame Oulevey's memories are, above all, of

Whistler's dining with them in the Passage des Favorites at the other

end of the Rue Vaugirard, when he wore his pumps and, a storm coming up

and not a cab to be found in their quarter, and they had to keep him

for hours. His pumps left an impression on Drouet, too, who was sure

it was because Whistler wore them by day and could not walk in them

that he was so often seen driving through the streets in a cab. And

he seemed so tired then, Drouet said, half the time lying back, fast

asleep. Fantin, the most intimate of his early associates, he met but

once and then by chance.

In February news came of the death of his brother, Doctor Whistler.

Alexander Harrison writes us:

"I chanced to call upon him half an hour after he had received the news

and, with a quivering voice and tears in his eyes, he told me that he

considered me a friend and told me his sad loss and asked me to dine

with him."

The two brothers had been devoted since boyhood, and Whistler felt

the Doctor's death acutely. It made him the more ready to rejoin his

friends in London, and two months later found him staying with Mr.

Heinemann, who had moved from Whitehall Court to Norfolk Street.

There E. dined to meet him the evening after his arrival. Mr. Arthur

Symons gives, in his _Studies in Seven Arts_, his impression of the

dinner, and of Whistler:

"I never saw anyone so feverishly alive as this little old man, with

his bright withered cheeks, over which a skin was drawn tightly, his

darting eyes, under their prickly bushes of eyebrow, his fantastically

creased black and white curls of hair, his bitter and subtle mouth,

and, above all, his exquisite hands, never at rest."

[Illustration: MODEL, WITH FLOWERS

PASTEL

In the possession of J. P. Heseltine, Esq.

(_See page 360_)]

[Illustration: GIRL, WITH A RED FEATHER

OIL

In the possession of the Executors of J. Staats Forbes

(_See page 360_)]

To us the idea of his age was never present. He seemed the youngest

wherever he was. But to those who saw him for the first time it was

evident that he was growing old. And he had been before the public for

so long that people got an exaggerated idea of his age. Mr. Symons

continues:

"Some person officially connected with art was there, an urbane

sentimentalist; and after every official platitude there was a sharp

crackle from Whistler's corner, and it was as if a rattlesnake had

leapt suddenly out."

When the "urbane sentimentalist" remarked that "there never was such

a thing as an art-loving people, an artistic period," Whistler said:

"Dear me! It's very flattering to find that I have made you see at

last. But really, you know, I shall have to copyright my little things

after this!"

When someone objected to the good manners of the French, because they

were all on the surface, Whistler suggested, "Well, you know, a very

good place to have them."

CHAPTER XLIII: THE INTERNATIONAL. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN TO

NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THREE.

That artists should hold Exhibitions of International Art was

Whistler's idea. He had always hoped for a gallery where he could show

his work in his own way with the work of men in sympathy with him.

Often, and years before, he talked to us of this. It mattered little

to him where the gallery should be, in New York or London, Paris or

Berlin: the exhibition should not be local or national, but an Art

Congress for the artists of the world. This was his aim. The men whom

he wished to have associated with him lived mostly in London, where now

the greater part of his time was spent, and London seemed the place

for the first exhibition. He and Mr. E. A. Walton tried to lease the

Grosvenor Gallery, and when they failed they turned to the Grafton.

But again there were difficulties, and nothing definite was done until

1897, when a young journalist, who was painting, Mr. Francis Howard,

conceived the idea of promoting a company to hold an exhibition at

Prince's Skating Club, Knightsbridge. As the artists were to incur

no financial responsibilities and to have complete artistic control,

Whistler consented to co-operate. The first meeting, the minutes

record, was on December 23, 1897, and John Lavery, E. A. Walton, G.

Sauter, and Francis Howard were present. Whistler, who had been

consulted, at first agreed that members of the Royal Academy and other

artistic bodies should be admitted, and at the second meeting, February

7, 1898, Mr. Alfred Gilbert, R.A., took the chair. A circular, unsigned

and undated, was then issued calling attention to a proposed exhibition

of International Art, and on it appeared the names of James McNeill

Whistler, Alfred Gilbert, Frederick Sandys, John Lavery, James Guthrie,

Arthur Melville, Charles W. Furse, Charles Ricketts, C. Hazlewood

Shannon, E. A. Walton, Joseph Farquharson, Maurice Greiffenhagen, Will

Rothenstein, G. Sauter, Francis Howard. It stated, with a clumsiness

Whistler could hardly have passed had he seen the circular beforehand,

that the object of the Society was the much-needed "organisation

in London of Exhibitions of the finest Art of the time ... the

non-recognition of nationality in Art, and the hanging and placing

of works irrespective of such consideration.... The Exhibitions,

filling as they will an unoccupied place in the cosmopolitan ground of

International Art, will not be in opposition to existing institutions."

An Executive Council appointed itself, and on February 16, 1898,

Whistler was unanimously elected Chairman. The most distinguished

artists of every nationality were invited to join an Honorary Council.

The Executive, to which J., on Whistler's nomination, was elected in

March, was to have entire charge of the affairs of the exhibition.

There were to be no ordinary members, but only honorary members by

invitation.

Jealousies and preferences immediately crept in. Mr. Gilbert resigned,

which was much to be regretted, and several other English members

withdrew from the Council, which speedily became as international

as the name of the society, the International Society of Sculptors,

Painters, and Gravers, into which it formed itself two months later

(April 23), when officers were elected, and Whistler, proposed by Mr.

Lavery and seconded by Mr. J. J. Shannon, was chosen President, Mr.

Lavery Vice-President, and Mr. Francis Howard, Honorary Secretary.

The International was the second society of artists over which Whistler

presided. Only ten years had passed since his resignation from the

British Artists, but the change in his position before the world was

great. The British Artists, an old and decrepit body, had chosen him

as President in the hope that his "notoriety" and his following of

young men would bring the advertisement they needed; the International,

a young, vigorous organisation, elected him because they knew that no

other artist could give them such distinction and distinguished foreign

artists such assurance that their work would be hung in a country

where previously, through fear of competition and insular prejudice,

it had been rejected. In the eighties Whistler was mistrusted; in

the nineties he was acknowledged as one of the great artists of the

century. The change in his position was not greater than his influence

on contemporary art. This influence had been pointed out by the few

for some years past. But the last decade had strengthened it until it

could no longer be denied. The younger generation had accepted him in

the meanwhile, admitted their debt to him, and proclaimed it openly in

their work. The New English Art Club abjured subject and sentiment for

the "painter's poetry" wherever it might lurk, whether in the London

bus transformed by the London atmosphere, or in the _Lion-Comique_,

transfigured on the music-hall stage; though, as Whistler once said,

the New English Art Club was "only a raft," while the International was

to be a "battleship" of which he would take command. The Glasgow School

accepted his teaching and then copied his technique, in some cases

pushing imitation to folly. But still, all that was healthiest and

best in the art of the country came from these two groups, and members

of both had made an international reputation before the International

was founded. Even in the Academy anecdote had lost for an interval

its pre-eminence, and it looked as if Academicians might begin to

understand that the painter's sole object need not be to tell a story.

Besides, there were two artists, R. A. M. Stevenson and J., writing

upon art, and they taught young men to have faith in Whistler, and the

"new criticism was born," and D. S. MacColl was the name of the first

and only child.

Nor was Whistler's influence confined to England. From the early

eighties, when the jury was becoming more representative at the old

_Salon_, the pictures he sent to it had been hung. From the early

nineties the new _Salon_ gave them prominence. Other recent influences

in France had waxed and waned. The realism of Bastien-Lepage, which

sank into photography with painters of less accomplishment, and the

square brush-mark were already _vieux jeu_. Impressionism had swamped

itself in chemical problems, and the technique of the Impressionists

had been degraded to the exaggerations and absurdities of the

_Rose-Croix_, to be swamped in turn by the latest fad of all. Whistler

brought with him technical sanity, a feeling for beauty and reverence

for tradition, and he, who had been called the most eccentric of

_poseurs_ in paint, led the way back to dignity and reticence in art,

from which he had never swerved. His example was revealed in the work

of artists of every nationality, either by frank imitation or else

by their attitude towards Nature or the reserve of their technique.

Because of this universal recognition, he was best qualified for the

Presidency of an International Society of Artists.

The honour was paid him by no official body. Officially, to the last,

he was destined to go without due recognition. In France he was an

ordinary _Sociétaire_ of the _Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts_.

The National Academy of Design in America was as indifferent to him

as the Royal Academy in England. His membership in the Academies of

Dresden, Munich, Rome, and Scotland was a compliment--a compliment

he could and did appreciate--but it carried no responsibilities and

required no active work, and almost all these honours came after the

International was started. But the new society, if not official,

included on its executive the strongest outsiders in Great Britain,

and had the support of the most distinguished men of his profession

throughout the world. Their choice of him was an acknowledgment of his

supremacy as artist and an expression of confidence in him as leader,

and he took no less pleasure in their tribute than trouble not to

disappoint their expectations. His experience with the British Artists

was a help in constituting the Society. The sole authority rested

with the Executive Council, the members of which elected themselves

and could not be got rid of except by their voluntary resignation or

expulsion. Theoretically the idea was magnificent, if the narrowest

and most autocratic. "Napoleon and I do these things," Whistler said,

and Suffolk Street had taught him that an intelligent autocrat is

the best leader possible. His policy, if autocratic, was broad. In

most societies painting held a monopoly, but, in his, sculpture and

"graving" should have equal importance. All his rules were far-seeing

and practical, and the decline of the Society since his death is due

to the disregard of them: a disregard which his associates still on the

Council who are true to his memory cannot prevent--or forget.

The first exhibition was opened in May 1898. The Skating Rink at

Knightsbridge was divided into three large and two small galleries.

Whistler's scheme of decoration was adopted, and the hanging was more

perfect than any up to that time even on the Continent. The President's

velarium, without question of patent, was used, and he designed the

seal for the Society and the cover of the catalogue. The artistic

success of the show could not be questioned. No such collection of

modern art had been seen in London, a proof that Whistler was as

broad as the painters and the populace were sure he was narrow. The

"Why drag in Velasquez?" story is often quoted by the ignorant and

the foolish and the stupid. In this Exhibition he dragged in everyone

of eminence, for, though the ignorant and the foolish and the stupid

may never understand, the "Why drag in Velasquez?" was uttered only

for their benefit. Whistler showed a group of early pictures: _At

the Piano_, _La Princesse du Pays de la Porcelaine_, _Rosa Corder_,

with later works: _The Philosopher_, _The Little Blue Bonnet_, his

own half-length portrait in a white jacket, _Brown and Gold_. The

sculpture was as interesting as the painting. There were drawings and

engravings. Besides, his idea was to have special exhibitions, and

Aubrey Beardsley, who had just died, was honoured. Before the show was

over delegates were sent, and communications received, from Paris and

Venice asking for an exchange of exhibitions.

Whistler came from Paris for the opening, a quiet affair as the

endeavour to obtain the presence of the Prince of Wales failed, and

he lunched with the Council on the opening day and attended one or

two Sunday afternoon receptions. He agreed that a fine illustrated

catalogue should be published by Mr. Heinemann, with _The Little Blue

Bonnet_, in photogravure, as frontispiece. If the first exhibition was

a complete artistic success it proved a complete financial failure. But

luckily the Society had no pecuniary responsibility.

Whistler knew it is impossible for a man to serve actively in two rival

societies; he had said so to the British Artists; and he determined

that members of the Council of the International who were members of

other societies must leave the Society, or, if not, he would. His

decision was precipitated by a new election to the Council. He was in

Paris, and the fact that two members of the Council, Lavery and J.,

left London at an hour's notice for the Rue du Bac to arrange matters

with him shows how anxious he was for the welfare of his Society. They

arrived early in the morning. Whistler was not up, but sent word that

they must breakfast with him in the studio. During breakfast he talked

of everything but the Society; after breakfast he made them listen

to a Fourth of July spread-eagle oration squeaked out of a primitive

gramophone that somebody had given him and that he loved; and it was

not until twenty minutes before they had to start back that he referred

to the Council. Then he had all his plans ready, and he stated what he

proposed to do, and what he wanted done, what must be done--we might

add, what was done. And not only at every crisis, but in every detail,

he directed the management of the Society, and he demanded that every

report, every project should be submitted to him. He expected the

deference due to him as President, and in return he gave his unswerving

support. Even during his last illness nothing was done without his

knowledge and approval.

The second International Exhibition, or "Art Congress," was held at

Knightsbridge from May to July 1899. The President came over when the

hanging was finished. It was arranged this year that a special show of

his etchings should be made, and a small room was decorated and called

the White Room. As Whistler was in Paris, he asked J. and Mrs. Whibley

to go to the studio and select the prints. J. chose a number that had

not been seen before, principally from the _Naval Review Series_.

Whistler, for some reason, resented the selection when he saw the

prints on the walls. The Committee were in consternation and sent for

J. Whistler said to him:

"Now look what you have done!"

"But what have I done? Have I done you any harm?"

And that was the end of it. His objection may have been because he

feared, as we remember his saying of these prints another time, that

they were "beyond the understanding of the abomination outside." But

his fury lasted only for the moment, and he and Lavery and J. passed a

good part of the night at work in the gallery on the catalogue.

Whistler received on the opening day, and in the evening the first of

the Round Table Council dinners was held at the Café Royal, Sir James

Guthrie presiding. In an admirable speech he expressed not only the

delight of the Council at being able to enlist the sympathy and aid of

Whistler, but their love and appreciation for the man and his work. The

sympathy then existing between the President and most of the Council

was genuine, and he appreciated it as much as they did. After dinner

a few of the Council went with him to Sir John Lavery's, where he was

staying, and there he read _The Baronet and the Butterfly_, which had

just appeared in Paris. This, because of absence or ill-health, was the

only Council dinner he went to, though for a time there was one every

year, and at several Rodin presided.

To the second exhibition the President sent several small canvases

recently finished. Again the infallible critics discussed them as

promising works of the past, and were made to eat their words, and

again in the catalogue Whistler quoted the _Times_, and to its

opinion of to-day of "... the vanished hand which drew the _Symphony

in White_ and _Miss Alexander_" compared its opinion "of the moment"

of those two pictures, when the _Miss Alexander_ suggested a sketch

left "before the colours were dry in a room where the chimney-sweeps

were at work," and was "uncompromisingly vulgar." "Other Times, other

lines!" was Whistler's comment. Three illustrated catalogues were

published by Messrs. W. H. Ward and Company. Whistler's _Chelsea

Rags_ and _Trouville_ were both included in the ordinary editions,

and the _Little Lady Sophie of Soho_ and _Lillie in our Alley_ were

added to the _édition de luxe_. The catalogues until 1910, when even

Whistler's _format_ was discarded, are the most interesting issued by

any society. The second exhibition was less of a success financially

than the first, and the Society of Artists came near being involved in

the crash which overtook the financing company. To avoid complications

Whistler insisted that the Society should have an Honorary Solicitor

and Treasurer, and Mr. William Webb was appointed.

In the first and second exhibitions the art of the world was

represented as it never had been before in England,[12] as it never

has been since. In both, attempts to attract the public with music

and receptions and entertainments were made, but Whistler objected to

music, saying that the two arts should be kept separate, that people

who came to hear the music could not see the pictures, and people who

came to see the pictures would not want to hear the music. There were

misunderstandings with the proprietor and the promoters, the former

wishing to see some of his friends represented, and the latter to see

some of their money back, and the outlook was gloomy. Whistler wrote a

memorable letter in which he said that he, as commander, proposed to

repel pirates and sink their craft, and they never openly got aboard,

though a few stowaways did creep in.

No show was held in 1900, the Paris Universal Exhibition taking

up the members' energy, and not until the autumn of 1901 was the

third exhibition opened at the Galleries of the Royal Institute in

Piccadilly. There had been official and other changes. Professor Sauter

had been made Honorary Secretary, _pro tem._, and the Society, which

up till now had consisted of the Council only, admitted Associates,

and with their election the international character began to wane,

for, out of thirty-two Associates elected, twenty-eight were resident

in Great Britain. This exhibition was the first to be financially

successful. The President sent seven small paintings and pastels.

_Phryne the Superb_ was reproduced in the catalogue, as well as _Gold

and Orange--The Neighbours_, and _Green and Silver--The Great Sea_.

Professor Sauter devoted himself to furthering the International

idea of the President, and under his Secretaryship the Society held

exhibitions of its English members' work in Budapest, Munich, and

afterwards in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and St. Louis. On

June 11, 1903, Professor Sauter was relieved temporarily of the

Secretaryship and J. took his place. Within a few weeks it was his sad

duty to call a meeting to announce to the Society the loss they had

sustained by the death of their President.

The Council determined to follow the traditions of Whistler and to

honour his memory. Not only were the American exhibitions held, but

the Society organised a show of British art in Dusseldorf, and made

arrangements for a Memorial Exhibition of the President's works in

London. In the autumn of 1903 M. Rodin accepted the Presidency, and

the fourth exhibition, the first held in the New Gallery, was opened

in January 1904, in which the late President was represented by the

_Symphony in White, No. III._, lent by Mr. Edmund Davis; _Rose and

Gold--The Tulip_, lent by Miss Birnie Philip; _Valparaiso_, lent by Mr.

Graham Robertson; _Symphony in Grey--Battersea_, lent by Mrs. Armitage;

and _Study for a Fan_, lent by Mr. C. H. Shannon.

[Illustration: A FRESHENING BREEZE

OIL

In the possession of J. S. Ure, Esq.

(_See page 367_)]

[Illustration: LILLIE IN OUR ALLEY

BROWN AND GOLD

OIL

In the possession of J. J. Cowan, Esq.

(_See page 361_)]

In 1905 the most important and successful show in the career of the

International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers was given;

the Memorial Exhibition of the works of James McNeill Whistler.

For complete success it lacked only the co-operation of Whistler's

executrix, which the Council originally understood was promised,

but which was ultimately withheld. Still, it was the most complete

exhibition of his works ever given, superior from every point of

view to the small show at the Scottish Academy the previous year, in

many respects to the Boston show of the same year, and to the Paris

Memorial Exhibition, 1905, which was disappointing. As can be seen from

the elaborate catalogue, more especially the beautifully illustrated

_édition de luxe_ published by Mr. Heinemann, the exhibition at the New

Gallery contained nearly all the principal oil-paintings, the largest

collection of etchings ever shown together, all but one or two of the

lithographs, and many of the pastels, water-colours, and drawings.

[Footnote 12: Sir Henry Cole, in the early sixties, had five

international shows at South Kensington.]

CHAPTER XLIV: THE ACADÉMIE CARMEN. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN NINETY-EIGHT TO

NINETEEN HUNDRED AND ONE.

In the autumn of 1898 a circular issued in Paris created a sensation

in the studios. Whistler was going to open a school, the _Académie

Whistler_. The announcement was made by his model, Madame Carmen

Rossi. Whistler at once wrote from Whitehall Court, where he was

staying (October 1, 1898), to the papers "to correct an erroneous

statement, or rather to modify an exaggeration, that an otherwise

_bona fide_ prospectus is circulating in Paris. An _atelier_ is to be

opened in the Passage Stanislas, and, in company with my friend, the

distinguished sculptor, Mr. MacMonnies, I have promised to attend its

classes. The _patronne_ has issued a document in which this new Arcadia

is described as the _Académie Whistler_ and further qualified as the

Anglo-American School. I would like it to be understood that, having

hitherto abstained from all plot of instruction, this is no sudden

assertion in the _Ville Lumière_ of my own. Nor could I be in any way

responsible for the proposed mysterious irruption in Paris of whatever

Anglo-American portends. 'American,' I take it, is synonymous with

modesty, and 'Anglo,' in art, I am unable to grasp at all, otherwise

than as suggestive of complete innocence and the blank of Burlington

House. I purpose only, then, to visit, as harmlessly as may be, in turn

with Mr. MacMonnies, the new academy which has my best wishes, and, if

no other good come of it, at least to rigorously carry out my promise

of never appearing anywhere else."

Whistler had nothing to do with the financial management, everything

with the system of teaching, and he said that he proposed to offer the

students his knowledge of a lifetime. It may be, as we have heard,

that he had been asked, with MacMonnies, to criticise the work of Ary

Renan's or Luc-Olivier Merson's students, and that this gave him the

idea of visiting a school under his own direction.

The Passage Stanislas is a small street running off the Rue

Notre-Dame-des-Champs; No. 6, a house of two storeys and a courtyard

or garden at the back which was afterwards covered with glass. Over

the front door the sign _Académie Whistler_ did appear, but only for a

short time. The glazed courtyard became a studio, and there was another

above to which a fine old staircase led. The house had been built, or

adapted, as a studio, and, except that the walls were distempered, no

change was made. The rooms were fitted up with school furniture; for

this, we believe, Whistler advanced the money. Within a few days a

vast number of pupils had put their names down, deserting the other

_ateliers_ of Paris. Some left the English schools, and still others

came from Germany and America. Whistler was delighted, telling us that

students were coming in squads, that the Passage was crowded, and that

owners of carriages struggled with _rapins_ and prize-winners to get in.

Miss Inez Bate (Mrs. Clifford Addams), who was among the earliest to

put down her name, who remained in the school till the end and who

became Whistler's apprentice, has not only told us the story of the

_Académie Carmen_, but has given us her record of it and of Whistler's

methods of teaching, written at his request and partially corrected by

him. It is the record of his "knowledge of a lifetime," for he taught

in the school the truths he had been years formulating, and is of the

greatest importance, as valuable a document as the treatise of Cennino

Cennini. In the future Mrs. Addams' statement, revised by Whistler,

will live.

He insisted on seriousness. The _Académie Carmen_ was not to be like

other schools; instead of singing, there was to be no talking; smoking

was not allowed; the walls were not to be decorated with charcoal;

studio cackle was forbidden; if people wanted these things, they could

go back from whence they came. He was to be received as a master

visiting his pupils, not as a good fellow in his shirt-sleeves. For the

first weeks things did not go very well. Carmen was not used to her

post, the students were not used to such a master, and Whistler was not

used to them. A _massier_ was appointed, and the men and women who had

been working together were separated and two classes formed. Within a

short time Mrs. Addams was chosen _massière_, a position she held until

the school closed. She writes:

"The _Académie_ began its somewhat disturbed career in the fall of

1898. A letter was received from Mr. Whistler announcing that he would

shortly appear, and, on the day appointed, the _Académie Carmen_ had

the honour of receiving him for the first time. He proceeded to look at

the various studies, most carefully noting under whose teaching and in

what school each student's former studies had been pursued.

"Most kindly something was said to each, and to one student who

offered apology for his drawing, Mr. Whistler said simply, 'It is

unnecessary--I really come to learn--feeling you are all much cleverer

than I.'

"Mr. Whistler, before he left, expressed to the _Patronne_ his wish

that there should be separate _ateliers_ for the ladies and gentlemen

and that the present habit of both working together should be

immediately discontinued.

"His second visit was spent in consideration of the more advanced

students. One, whose study suffered from the introduction of an

unbeautiful object in the background, because it happened to be there,

was told that, 'One's study, even the most unpretentious, is always

one's picture, and must be, in form and arrangement, a perfect harmony

from the beginning.' With this unheard-of advice, Mr. Whistler turned

to the students, whose work he had been inspecting and intimated that

they might begin to paint, and so really learn to draw, telling them

that the true understanding of drawing the figure comes by having

learned to appreciate the subtle modellings by the use of the infinite

gradation that paint makes possible.

"On his third visit he turned to one student and picked up her palette,

pointing out that being the instrument on which the painter plays his

harmony, it must be beautiful always, as the tenderly-cared-for violin

of the great musician.

"He suggested that it would be a pleasure to show them his way of

painting, and if this student could, without too much difficulty,

clean her palette, he would endeavour to show them 'the easiest way of

getting into difficulties.'

"And it was then that Mr. Whistler's palette was given. His whole

system lies in the complete mastery of the palette--on the palette the

work must be done before transferring one note on to the canvas.

"He recommended the small oval palettes as being easy to hold. White

was placed at the top edge in the centre, in generous quantity, and to

the left came in succession yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt sienna, raw

umber, cobalt, and mineral blue; while to right, vermilion, Venetian

red, Indian red, and black. Sometimes the burnt sienna would be placed

between the Venetian and Indian red, but generally the former placing

of colours was insisted upon.

"A mass of colour, giving the fairest tone of the flesh, would then be

mixed and laid in the centre of the palette near the top, and a broad

band of black curving downward from this mass of light flesh-note

to the bottom, gave the greatest depth possible in any shadow, and

so, between the prepared light and the black, the colour was spread,

and mingled with any of the various pure colours necessary to obtain

the desired changes of note, until there appeared on the palette a

tone-picture of the figure that was to be painted, and at the same

time a preparation for the background was made on the left in equally

careful manner.

"Many brushes were used, each one containing a full quantity of

every dominant note, so that when the palette presented as near a

reproduction of the model and background as the worker could obtain,

the colour could be put down with a generous flowing brush.

"Mr. Whistler said, 'I do not interfere with your individuality. I

place in your hands a sure means of expressing it, if you can learn

to understand, and if you have your own sight still.' Each student

prepared his or her palette, in some the mass of light would exceed the

dark, in others the reverse would be the case. Mr. Whistler made no

comments on these conditions of the students' palettes: 'I do not teach

art; I teach the scientific application of paint and brushes.' His one

insistence was that no painting on the canvas should be begun until

the student felt he could go no further on the palette; the various

and harmonious notes were to represent, as nearly as he could see, the

model and background that he was to paint.

"Mr. Whistler would often refrain from looking at the students' canvas,

but would carefully examine the palette, saying that there he could see

the progress being made, and that it was really much more important

for it to present a beautiful appearance, than for the canvas to be

fine and the palette inharmonious. He said, 'If you cannot manage your

palette, how are you going to manage your canvas?'

"These statements sounded like heresy to the majority of the students,

and they refused to believe the reason and purpose of such teaching,

and as they had never before received even a hint to consider the

palette of primary importance, they insisted in believing that this was

but a peculiarity of Mr. Whistler's manner of working, and that, to

adopt it, would be with fatal results!

"The careful attempts to follow the subtle modellings of flesh placed

in a quiet, simple light, and therefore extremely grey and intricate in

its change of form, brought about necessarily, in the commencement of

each student's endeavour, a rather low-toned result. One student said

to Mr. Whistler that she did not wish to paint in such low tones, but

wanted to keep her colour pure and brilliant; he answered, 'then keep

it in the tubes, it is your only chance at first.'

"They were taught to look upon the model as a sculptor would, using the

paint as a modeller does his clay; to create on the canvas a statue,

using the brush as a sculptor his chisel, following carefully each

change of note, which means 'form'; it being preferable that the figure

should be presented in a simple manner, without an attempt to obtain

a thousand changes of colour that are there in reality, and make it,

first of all, _really and truly exist in its proper atmosphere_, than

that it should present a brightly coloured image, pleasing to the eye,

but without solidity and non-existent on any real plane. This, it

will be seen, was the reason of Mr. Whistler's repeated and insistent

commands to give the background the most complete attention, believing

that by it alone the figure had a reason to exist.

"Mr. Whistler would often paint for the students.

"Once he modelled a figure, standing in the full, clear light of the

_atelier_, against a dull, rose-coloured wall. After spending almost

an hour upon the palette, he put down with swift, sure touches, the

notes of which his brushes were already generously filled, so subtle

that those standing close to the canvas saw apparently no difference

in each successive note as it was put down, but those standing at the

proper distance away noticed the general turn of the body appear, and

the faint subtle modellings take their place, and finally, when the

last delicate touch of light was laid on, the figure was seen to exist

in its proper atmosphere and at its proper distance within the canvas,

modelled, as Mr. Whistler said, 'in painter's clay,' and ready to be

taken up the next day and carried yet further in delicacy, and the next

day further still, and so on until the end.

"And he insisted that it was as important to train the eye as the

hand, that long accustoming oneself to seeing crude notes in Nature,

spots of red, blue, and yellow in flesh where they are not, had harmed

the eye, and the training to readjust the real, quiet, subtle note of

Nature required long and patient study. 'To find the true note is the

difficulty; it is comparatively easy to employ it when found.'

"He once said that had he been given at the commencement of his

artistic career what he was then offering, his work would have been

different. But he found in his youth no absolute definite facts, and

he 'fell in a pit and floundered,' and from this he desired to save

whom he could. 'All is so simple,' he would say, 'it is based on proved

scientific facts; follow this teaching and you _must_ learn to paint;

not necessarily learn art, but, at least, absolutely learn to paint

what you see.'

"He also demanded the student to abandon all former methods of

teaching, unless in harmony with his own, and to approach the science

as taught by himself in a simple and trustful manner.

"The students, used to having any little sketch praised, and finding

such efforts remained unnoticed by Mr. Whistler, while an intelligent

and careful, though to their eyes stupid, attempt to model in simple

form and colour would receive approbation, grew irritated, and the

majority left for a more congenial atmosphere.

"It was pointed out that a child, in the simple innocence of infancy,

painting the red coat of the toy soldier red indeed, is in reality

nearer the great truth than the most accomplished trickster with his

clever brushwork and brilliant manipulation of many colours.

"'Distrust everything you have done without understanding it. It is not

sufficient to achieve a fine piece of painting. You must know _how_

you did it, that the next time you can do it again, and never have to

suffer from that disastrous state of the clever artist, whose friends

say to him, what a charming piece of painting, do not touch it again,

and, although he knows it is incomplete, yet he dare not but comply,

_because he knows he might never get the same clever effect again_.

"'Remember which of the colours you most employed, how you managed

the turning of the shadow into the light, and if you do not remember

scrape out your work and do it all over again, for one _fact_ is worth

a thousand misty imaginings. You must be able to do every part equally

well, for the greatness of a work of art lies in the perfect harmony of

the whole, not in the fine painting of one or more details.'

"It was many months before a student produced a canvas which showed a

grasp of the science he had so patiently been explaining. Mr. Whistler

delighted in this, and had the canvas placed on an easel and in a

frame that he might more clearly point out to the other students the

reason of its merit; it showed primarily an understanding of the two

great principles; first, it represented a figure _inside_ the frame

and surrounded by the atmosphere of the studio, and secondly, it was

created of one piece of flesh, simply but firmly painted and free from

mark of brush. As the weeks went on, and the progress in this student's

work continued, Mr. Whistler finally handed over to her [Mrs. Addams]

the surveillance of the new-comers and the task of explaining to them

the first principles of his manner.

"The _Académie_ had the distinction of causing the rumour that

something was being taught there, something definite and absolute.

"A large number of students who had been in the _Académie_ for a short

time and left, returned, dissatisfied with other schools, that they

might once more satisfy themselves that nothing was to be learned there

after all.

"Mr. Whistler allowed this to continue for some time, but finally, the

fatigue of such constant changes caused him to issue an order that the

_Académie Carmen_ should be tried but once.

"The students in the men's life-class were constantly changing.

On Christmas Day, Mr. Whistler invited them to visit him in his

_atelier_ and showed them many of his own canvases in various stages

of completeness; explaining how certain results had been obtained, and

how certain notes had been blended, and assuring them that he used the

science he was teaching them, only that each student would arrange

it according to his own needs as time went on, begging them not to

hesitate to ask him any question that they wished, or to point out

anything they failed to understand. There was an increased enthusiasm

for a few weeks, but gradually the old spirit of misunderstanding and

mistrust returned, and the men's class again contained but few students.

"Another disappointment to them was that Mr. Whistler explained when

they showed him pictures they had painted with a hope to exploit as

pupils of the Master in the yearly _Salon_, that this was impossible,

that their complete understanding of the Great Principles and the

fitting execution of their application could not be a matter of a few

months' study, and he told them he was like a chemist who put drugs

into bottles, and he certainly should not send those bottles out in his

name unless he was quite satisfied with, and sure of, the contents.

"The last week of the first year arrived, and Mr. Whistler spent

the whole of each morning at the _Académie_. The supervision of one

student's work was so satisfactory that he communicated with her,

after the closing of the _Académie_, to announce that he desired to

enter into an apprenticeship with her, for a term of five years, as

he considered it would take fully that time to teach her the whole of

his Science and make of her a finished craftsman; with her artistic

development he never for a moment pretended to interfere--'that,' he

said, 'is or is not superb--it was determined at birth, but I can teach

you _how to paint_.'

"So, on the 20th of July (1899), the Deed of Apprenticeship [with Mrs.

Addams] was signed and legally witnessed, and she 'bound herself to her

Master to learn the Art and Craft of a painter, faithfully to serve

after the manner of an Apprentice for the full term of five years, his

secrets keep and his lawful commands obey, she shall do no damage to

his goods nor suffer it to be done by others, nor waste his goods, nor

lend them unlawfully, nor do any act whereby he might sustain loss,

nor sell to other painters nor exhibit during her apprenticeship nor

absent herself from her said Master's service unlawfully, but in all

things as a faithful Apprentice shall behave herself towards her said

Master and others during the said term.... And the said Master, on his

side, undertakes to teach and instruct her, or cause her to be taught

and instructed. But if she commit any breach of these covenants he may

immediately discharge her.'

"Into the hands of his Apprentice--also now the _massière_--Mr.

Whistler gave the opening of the school the second year, sending all

instructions to her from Pourville, where he was staying.

"Each new candidate for admission should submit an example of his or

her work to the _massière_, and so prevent the introduction into the

_Académie_ of, first, those who were at present incompetent to place

a figure in fair drawing upon the canvas; and secondly, those whose

instruction in an adverse manner of painting had gone so far that

their work would cause dissension and argument in the _Académie_.

Unfortunately, this order was not well received by some, though the

majority were willing to accede to any desire on the part of Mr.

Whistler.

"A number absolutely refused to suffer any rule, and preferred to

distrust what they could not understand, and the talk among the

students of the _Quartier_ was now in disparagement of the _Académie_.

"Compositions were never done in the school. It was so much more

important to learn to paint and draw, for, as Mr. Whistler said, 'if

ever you saw anything really perfectly beautiful, suppose you could

not draw and paint!'--'The faculty for compositions is part of the

artist, he has it, or he has it not--he cannot acquire it by study--he

will only learn to adjust the composition of others, and, at the

same time, he uses his faculty in every figure he draws, every line

he makes, while in the large sense, composition may be dormant from

childhood until maturity, and there it will be found in all its fresh

vigour, waiting for the craftsman to use the mysterious quality in his

adjustment of his perfect drawings to fit their spaces.'

"The third and last year (1900) of the _Académie Carmen_ was marked

at its commencement by the failure to open a men's life-class. Mr.

Whistler had suffered so greatly during the preceding years from their

inability to comprehend his principles and also from the short time the

students remained in the school, that at the latter part of the season

he often refused to criticise in the men's class at all. He would call

sometimes on Sunday mornings and take out and place upon easels the

various studies that had been done by the men the previous week, and

often he would declare that nothing interested him among them and that

he should not criticise that week, that he could not face the fatigue

of the 'blankness' of the _atelier_.

"The _Académie_ was opened in October 1900 by a woman's life-class

which was well attended. The school had been moved to an old building

in the Boulevard Montparnasse, but shortly after Mr. Whistler was taken

very ill and he was forced to leave England on a long voyage. He wrote

a letter to the students that never reached them, then, from Corsica,

another, with his best wishes for the New Century, and his explanation

of the doctor's abrupt orders. The _Académie_ was kept open by the

Apprentice until the end of March (1901), but the faith of the students

seemed unable to bear further trials, and after great discontent at

Mr. Whistler's continued absence and a gradual dwindling away of the

students until there were but one or two left, the Apprentice wrote of

this to Mr. Whistler."

Whistler wrote from Ajaccio a formal letter of dismissal to the few

students left, kissing the tips of their rosy fingers, bidding them

Godspeed and stating the case that history might be made. The reading

of the letter by the _massière_ in the _atelier_ closed the school, and

an experiment to which Whistler brought enthusiasm, only to meet from

the average student the distrust the average artist had shown him all

his life. One of the last things he did before the close was to make

an apprentice also of Mr. Clifford Addams, the one man who remained

faithful. And in his case, too, a Deed of Apprenticeship was drawn up

and signed.

The story of the _Académie_ is carried on in the following letter from

Mr. Frederick MacMonnies, concerning his connection with it:

"... I had always heard so much about his being impossible, but the

more I saw of him the more I realised that anyone who could quarrel

with him must be written down an ass.

"An instance of his rare straightforwardness and frankness in

friendship occurred in the Carmen School. He used to come up to my

studio just before breakfast, and we would go off to Lavenue's or the

Café du Cardinal.

"One morning he said he had a great affair on hand. Carmen was going to

open the school and he had agreed to teach, a thing he had always said

was shocking, useless, and encouragement of incapables. He suggested I

help him out with teaching the sculptor pupils and the drawing, so I

gladly agreed.

"All the schools in Paris were deserted immediately, and the funny

little studios of Carmen's place were packed with all kinds of boys and

girls, mostly Americans, who had tried all styles of teaching.

"Mr. Whistler, having a full sense of a picturesque _grande entrée_,

did not appear until the school was in full swing about a week after

the opening, and until the pupils had passed the palpitating stage and

were in a dazed state of expectancy and half collapsed into nervous

prostration. The various samples of such awaiting him represented the

methods of almost every teacher in Paris.

"He arrived, gloves and cane in hand, and enjoyed every minute of

his stay, daintily and gaily touching very weighty matters. A few

days after his arrival I went to the school and found the entire crew

painting as black as a hat--delicate, rose-coloured pearly models

translated into mulattoes, a most astonishing transformation. As time

went on the blackness increased. Finally, one day, I suggested to one

of the young women who was particularly dreary, to tone her study up.

She informed me she saw it so. I took her palette and keyed the figure

into something like the delicate and brilliant colouring, much to her

disgust. When I had finished, she informed me, 'Mr. Whistler told me to

paint it that way.' I told her she had misunderstood, that he had never

meant her to paint untrue. Several criticisms among the men of the same

sort of thing, and I left.

"Of course, all this was carried to Whistler, and a few days later

after breakfast, over his coffee, he waved his cigarette towards me

and said, 'Now, my dear MacMonnies, I like you--and I am going to talk

to you the way your mother does (he used to play whist in Paris with

my mother, and they made a most amusing combination). Now, you see,

I have always believed there has been something radically wrong with

all this teaching that has been going on in Paris all these years in

Julian's and the rest. I decided years ago the principle was false.

They give the young things men's food when they require pap. My idea is

to give them three or four colours--let them learn to model and paint

the form and line first until they are strong enough to use others. If

they become so, well and good; if not, let them sink out of sight.' I

suggested the doubt that their eyes might in this way be trained to see

wrong. No, he did not agree with that. Anyway, I apologised, and said I

was a presuming and meddlesome ass, and if I had known he was running

his school on a system, I would have remained silent. If you could have

seen the charming manner, the frank kindness and friendly spirit with

which he undertook to remonstrate, you would understand how much I

admired his generous spirit.

"Few men under the circumstances (I being very much his junior) would

not have made a great row and got upon their high horses, and we would

have quit enemies.

"Later, I found that the sculptor pupils did not arrive in droves to

be taught by me, and the drawing criticisms unnecessary, as the school

had become a tonal modelling school and my criticisms superfluous. I

proposed to Mr. Whistler that I was _de trop_, and that it could only

be properly done by him. He agreed and I left.

"M. Rodin (or his friends) wished to take my place, but Mr. Whistler,

I heard, said he could not under any circumstances have anyone replace

MacMonnies, as it might occasion comment unfavourable to me. Now I

consider that one of the rarest of friendly actions, as I knew he would

not have objected to Rodin otherwise.

"A canny, croaking friend of mine, who hated Whistler and never lost an

opportunity of misquoting and belittling him, dropped in at my house

a few nights after my resignation from the school, quite full up with

croaks of delight that we had fallen out, as he supposed, and that the

row he had long predicted had finally come. I laughed it off, and after

dinner a familiar knock, and who should be ushered in but Mr. Whistler,

asking my mother to play another game of whist.

"A rather amusing thing occurred in my studio.

"A rich and spread-eagle young American got into a tussle of wits with

Whistler--neither had met before (Whistler, however, knew and liked his

brother)--on the advantage of foreign study and life abroad.

[Illustration: THE COAST OF BRITTANY ALONE WITH THE TIDE

OIL

Formerly in the possession of Ross Winans, Esq.

(_See page 67_)]

[Illustration: THE SEA, POURVILLE

OIL

In the possession of A. A. Hannay, Esq.

(_See page 366_)]

[Illustration: THE FUR JACKET

ARRANGEMENT IN BLACK AND BROWN

OIL

(Picture in progress)

From a photograph lent by Pickford R. Waller, Esq.

(Completed picture)

In the Worcester Museum, Massachusetts

(_See page 432_)]

I cannot remember all the distinguished and amusing arguments or the

delightful appreciation of the French people of Whistler, or of the

rather boring and rather brutal jabbing of the young man. At any rate,

Whistler defended himself admirably, always keeping his temper, which

the young man wished him to lose in order to trip him up. I saw that

Whistler was bored and tried to separate them, but it had gone too far.

Finally, Whistler held out his hand and with his charming quizzical

smile said, 'Good-bye, oh, ah, I am so glad to have met you--on account

of your brother!'

"The year before Whistler died, in December, I went to America on a

short trip. I hadn't been home for a number of years. Whistler had

always said he would go back with me some time, so I telegraphed him

at Bath to induce him to come with me. He replied by telegram, 'Merry

Xmas, _bon voyage_, but I fear you will have to face your country

without me.'"

To anyone familiar with art schools Whistler's idea appeared

revolutionary, but he knew that he was carrying on the tradition of

Gleyre. Art schools are now conducted on such different principles

that a comparison may be useful. Usually the student is not taught to

do anything. The master puts him at drawing, telling him, after the

drawing is finished, where it is wrong. The student starts again and

drops into worse blunders because he has not been told how to avoid the

first. If he improves, it is by accident, or his own intelligence, more

than by teaching. At length, when the pupil has learned enough drawing

to avoid the mistakes of the beginner, and to make it difficult for the

master to detect his faults, he is put at painting, and the problem

becomes twice as difficult for the student. In drawing, each school

has some fixed method of working, nowhere more fixed than at the Royal

Academy, which leads to nothing--or Paris. In painting, the professor

corrects mistakes in colour, in tone, in value, which is easier than

to correct drawing, and the student becomes more confused than ever,

for he is in colour less likely than in drawing to tumble unaided on

the right thing. As to the use of colours, the mixing of colours, the

arrangement of the palette, the handling of tools--these are never

taught in modern schools. The result is that the new-comer imitates the

older students--the favourites--and shuffles along somehow. Any attempt

on the part of the master to impress his character on the students

would be resented by most of them, and any attempt at individuality

on their part would be resented by the master, for the official art

school, like the official technical school, is the resort of the

incompetent. The Royal Academy goes so far as to change the visitors

in its painting schools--that is, the teachers--every month, and the

confusion to the student handed on from Mr. Sargent to Sir Hubert von

Herkomer and then to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema can hardly be imagined.

For this sort of art school Whistler had no toleration--its product is

the amateur or Academician. When he was asked, "Then you would do away

with all the art schools?" Whistler answered, "Not at all, they are

harmless, and it is just as well when the genius appears that he should

find the fire alight and the room warm, an easel close at hand and the

model sitting, but I have no doubt he'll alter the pose!"

Whistler would have liked to practise the methods of the Old Masters.

He would have taught the students from the beginning, from the grinding

and mixing of the colours. He believed that students should work with

him as apprentices worked with their masters in earlier times. Artists

then taught the student to work as they did. How much individuality,

save the master's, is shown in Rubens' canvases, mostly done by his

pupils? So long as Van Dyck remained with Rubens he worked in Rubens'

manner, learning his trade. When he felt strong enough to say what he

wanted to say in his own way as an accomplished craftsman, he left

the school and set up for himself. Raphael was trained in Perugino's

studio, helped his master, and, when he had learned all he could there,

opened one of his own. And this is the way Whistler wished his students

to work with him. The misfortune is that he made the experiment when

it was too late to profit by the skill of the pupils whom he wished to

train to be of use to him. He knew that it would take at least five

years for students to learn to use the tools he put in their hands, and

the fact that, at the end of three years, when the school closed, a few

of his pupils could paint well enough for their painting to be mistaken

for his shows how right he was. If, after five years, they could see

for themselves the beauty that was around them, they would by that time

have been taught how to paint it in their own way, for what he could do

was to teach them to translate their vision on to canvas. Mr. Starr

says that Whistler "told me to paint things exactly as I saw them.

'Young men think they should paint like this or that painter. Be quite

simple, no fussy foolishness, you know, and don't try to be what they

call strong. When a picture smells of paint,' he said slowly, 'it's

what they call strong.'"

Had his health been maintained, had he not been discouraged because

students mostly came to him with the desire to do work which looked

easy, great results would have been accomplished. His regret was that

students did not begin with him. Mrs. Addams has told us of the great

success of one, Miss Prince, who had never been in an art school. She

had nothing to unlearn. She understood, and, at the end of a year,

had made more progress than any. There were exceptions among the more

advanced, men who to-day are well-known artists and who, looking back,

admit how much they learned. Frederick Frieseke, Henry S. Hubbell, and

C. Harry White passed through the school. One of the few Frenchmen was

Simon Bussy, who describes Whistler as _très distingué, très fin, très

autoritaire_, though not so stimulating a master as Gustave Moreau,

under whom he had been studying. But the greater number of students,

elementary or advanced, thought that Whistler was going to teach them,

by some short cut, to arrive at distinction. When they found that,

though the system was different, they had to go through the same

drudgery as in any school, they were dissatisfied and left. Moreover,

the strict discipline and the separation of the sexes were unpopular.

Nor could they understand Whistler. Many of his sayings remembered by

them explain their bewilderment.

One day, Whistler, going into the class, found three new pupils. To

these he said:

"Where have you studied?"

"With Chase."

"Couldn't have done better!"

"And where have you studied?"

"With Bonnat."

"You couldn't have done better!"

"Where have you studied?"

"I have never studied anywhere, Mr. Whistler."

"I am sure you could not have done better!"

To the young lady who told him that she was painting what she saw, he

answered, "The shock will come when you see what you paint!"

To the man who was smoking, he said, "Really, you had better stop

painting, for you might get interested in your work, and your pipe

would go out!"

Of a superior amateur he inquired, "Have you been through college? I

suppose you shoot? Fish, of course? Go in for football, no doubt? Yes?

Well, then I can let you off for painting."

We asked Whistler how much truth there was in these stories. His answer

was: "Well, you know, the one thing I cannot be responsible for in my

daily life is the daily story about me."

But he admitted they were, in the main, true. He added one incident we

have heard from no one else that explains a peculiarity to which we

have referred. In Venice, he said, he got into the habit, as he worked

on his plates, of blowing away the little powder raised by the needle

ploughing through the varnish to the copper, and, unconsciously, he

kept on blowing when painting or drawing. Once, after he had painted

before the students and had left the studio, there was heard in the

silence a sound of blowing. Then another student began blowing away as

he worked, and so they went on. "Well," they said, "already we have _la

manière_, and that is much." Whistler heard of it and broke himself of

the habit. One day he saw on the wall in the men's studio, written in

charcoal:

"_I bought a palette just like his,

His colours and his brush.

The devil of it is, you see,

I did not buy his touch._"

Whistler's methods and manner confused the average students who came,

but his faith in his system was as great as the students' unbelief.

He suggested that his criticisms of their work should be recorded

on a gramophone. He thought of opening another class in London. The

only time E. saw the _Académie_, towards the beginning of the second

year, the whole place was full of life and go. In the end, the want of

confidence in him, his illness, and his absence broke up the school.

But he sowed seed which will bring forth a thousandfold. For, just

as his theory of art is now recognised as he stated it in _The Ten

O'Clock_, so will his practice, proved by his work and teaching, be

accepted in the future.

CHAPTER XLV: THE BEGINNING OF THE END. THE YEAR NINETEEN HUNDRED.

In the spring of 1900 an event of great importance in our relations

with Whistler occurred. Towards the end of May he asked us to write

his Life. Now that his fame was established, a great deal, indeed far

too much, was written about him. Unauthorised publications appeared

or were in preparation, and it was evident that more would follow.

Whistler shrank from being written about by people not in sympathy with

him or incapable of understanding him. He was, and is, to many critics

and commentators a riddle or an affront. Mistakes were made, facts

were distorted. Mr. Heinemann suggested, first that he should write

his autobiography, then that his biography should be written with his

authority by someone in whom he had confidence. Mr. Heinemann thought

of Henley, but Whistler objected. Mr. Charles Whibley was proposed by

Mr. Heinemann, but again Whistler objected. It was after this that

either Mr. Heinemann or Whistler mentioned the name of Joseph Pennell.

We had been abroad for a few days, and returned to London on May 28

to find a letter from Mr. Heinemann telling J. of this "magnificent

opportunity." No one could appreciate more fully the honour as well as

the responsibility. J. saw Whistler at once, and said, "You are the

modern Cellini and you should write it yourself."

Whistler had neither the time nor patience, but he promised to

contribute what he could to J.'s book. We knew that while staying at

Whitehall Court he had written two, or perhaps more, autobiographical

chapters at Mr. Heinemann's suggestion. Miss Birnie Philip, after the

first edition of our _Life_ was published, though we had proved our

authority in the English Law Courts, wrote to the _Times_ (November 24,

1908) that Whistler "stated his objections to biographers in a fragment

written in 1896 of what was intended to be the story of his life. The

following passages will make his opinions clear:

"'Determined that no mendacious scamp shall tell the foolish truths

about me when centuries have gone by, and anxiety no longer pulls

at the pen of the "pupil" who would sell the soul of his master, I

now proceed to take the wind out of such speculator by immediately

furnishing myself the fiction of my own biography, which shall remain,

and is the story of my life....

"'Curiously, too, I find no grief in noting the closing of more than

one middle-aged eye that I had before now caught turned warily upon me

with a view to future foolscap improved from slight intimacy....

"'How tiresome, indeed, are the Griswolds of this world, and how

offensive. Pinning their unimportant names on the linen of the great

as they return the intercepted wash, they go down to Posterity with

their impudent bill, and Posterity accepts and remembers them as the

unrequited benefactors of ungrateful genius!'"

This, according to Miss Birnie Philip, was written in 1896. Whistler

added to the record, Mr. Heinemann says, while living with him at

Whitehall Court. But Whistler soon found the task beyond him, and so,

changing his mind on the subject, asked J. to write the story of his

life and his work in 1900.

Almost immediately it was arranged that E. should collaborate and that

we should do the book together. Whistler promised to help us in every

way and, when in the mood, to tell us what he could about himself and

his life, with the understanding that we were to take notes. He was not

a man from whom dates and facts could be forced. His method was not

unlike that of Dr. Johnson, who, when Boswell asked for biographical

details, said, "They'll come out by degrees as we talk together."

Whistler had to talk in his own fashion, or not at all; we were to

listen, no matter where we met or under what conditions. It was also

agreed that there were to be two volumes, one devoted to his life, the

other to his work, and that photographs should be taken of the pictures

in his studio to illustrate the volumes. Whistler's pictures were being

carried off only too quickly, and whatever we needed for illustration,

or as a record, would have to be photographed at once.

The duty of making the notes fell to E., and, from that time until his

death, she kept an account of our meetings with him. He was true to

his promise. We were often in the studio, and he spent evening after

evening with us. Sometimes we dined with him at Garlant's Hotel or at

the Café Royal, sometimes we met at Mr. Heinemann's, but usually he

dined with us in Buckingham Street, coming so frequently that he said

to us one June evening:

"Well, you know, you will feel about me as I did in the old days about

the man I could never ask to dinner because he was always there! I

couldn't ask him to sit down, because there he always was, already in

his chair!"

Once he told E. to write to J., who was out of town, that he was

living on our staircase. During those evenings he gave us many facts

and much material used in previous chapters. He began by telling us of

the years at home, his student days in Paris, his coming to Chelsea,

and, though dates were not his strong point, we soon had a consecutive

story of that early period. Every evening made us wish more than ever

that he could have written instead of talking, for we soon discovered

the difficulty of rendering his talk. He used to reproach J. with

"talking shorthand," but no one was a greater master of the art than

himself. And so much of its meaning was in the pause, the gesture, the

punctuating hands, the laugh, the adjusting of the eye-glass, the quick

look from the keen blue eyes flashing under the bushy eyebrows. The

impression left with us from the close intercourse of this summer was

of his wonderful vitality, his inexhaustible youth. As yet illness had

not sapped his energy. He was sixty-six, but only the greyness of the

ever-abundant hair, the wrinkles, the loose throat suggested age. He

held himself as erect, he took the world as gaily, his interests were

as fresh as if he were beginning life. Some saw a sign of feebleness in

the nap after dinner, but this was a habit of long standing, and after

ten minutes, or less, he was awake, revived for the talk that went on

until midnight and later.

Whistler wished us to have the photographing in the studio begun

without delay. Our first meeting, after the preliminaries were settled,

was on June 2, 1900; on the 6th the photographer and his assistant were

in Fitzroy Street with J. to superintend. It took long to select the

things which should be done first, Mr. Gray, the photographer, picking

out those which he thought would come best, Whistler preferring others

that Gray feared might not come at all, though the idea was that, in

the end, everything in the studio should be photographed. Whistler

found himself shoved in a corner, barricaded behind two or three big

cameras, and he could scarcely stir. He grew impatient, he insisted

that he must work. As the light was not good for the photographer,

some canvases were moved out in the hall, some were put on the roof,

but the best place was discovered to be Mr. Wimbush's studio in the

same building. Whistler went with J. through the little cabinets where

pastels and prints were kept, and decided that a certain number must be

worked on, but that the others could be photographed. Then they lunched

together with Miss Birnie Philip, Gray photographing all the while, and

then Whistler's patience was exhausted and everybody was turned out

until the next day, when Gray came again. And the next day, and many

next days, J. would go to Fitzroy Street and Whistler would say, "Now

you must wait," and he would wait in the little ante-room with Marie,

and Whistler would talk away through the open door until J. was brought

into the studio to see the finishing-touches added to the day's work.

This explains the beginning of our difficulties and the reason why our

progress was not rapid.

We have spoken of the fever of work that had taken hold of Whistler.

He dreaded to lose a second. He was rarely willing to leave the studio

during the day or, if he did, it was to work somewhere else, as when

he went to Sir Frank Short's and, as he told us the same evening,

pulled nineteen prints before lunch, and all the joy in it came back,

but he did not return in the afternoon, because, "well, you know, my

consideration for others quite equals my own energy." For himself he

had no consideration, and his work seldom stopped. We remember one

late afternoon during the summer, when he had asked us to come to the

studio, finding tea on the table and Whistler at his easel. "We must

have tea at once or it will get cold," he said, and went on painting.

Ten minutes later he said again, "We must have tea," and again went

on painting. And the tea waited for a half-hour before he could lay

down his brushes, and then it was to place the canvas in a frame and

look at it for another ten minutes. When an invited interruption was

to him a hindrance, he could not but find Mr. Gray, with his huge

apparatus, a nuisance. A good many photographs, however, were made at

Fitzroy Street, and Whistler helped to get permission for pictures to

be photographed wherever the photographing did not interfere with his

work. In England, America, and on the Continent many pictures which

had not been reproduced, and to which access could be obtained, were

photographed.

Nothing interested Whistler more this year than the Universal

Exhibition in Paris, and he and Mr. John M. Cauldwell, the American

Commissioner, understood each other after a first encounter. Mr.

Cauldwell, coming to Paris to arrange the exhibition, with little

time at his disposal and a great deal to do, wrote to ask Whistler to

call on a certain day "at 4.30 sharp." Whistler's answer was that,

though appreciating the honour of the invitation, he regretted his

inability to meet Mr. Cauldwell, as he never had been able and never

should be able to be anywhere "at 4.30 sharp," and it looked as if the

unfortunate experience of 1889 might be repeated. But when Whistler met

Mr. Cauldwell, when he found how much deference was shown him, when he

saw the decoration and arrangement of the American galleries, he was

more than willing to be represented in the American section. He sent

_L'Andalouse_, the portrait of Mrs. Whibley, _Brown and Gold_, the

full-length of himself, and, at the Committee's request, _The Little

White Girl_, never before seen in Paris. He brought together also a

fine group of etchings, and when he learned that he was awarded a

_Grand Prix_ for painting and another for engraving, he was gratified

and did not hesitate to show it. The years of waiting for the official

compliment did not lessen his pleasure when it came. Rossetti retired

from the battle at an early stage, but Whistler fought to the end

and gloried in his victory. He was dining at Mr. Heinemann's when he

received the news, and they drank his health and crowned him with

flowers, and he enjoyed it as fully as the _fêtes_ of his early Paris

days. J. was awarded a gold medal for engraving, and we suggested

that the occasion was one for general celebration, which was complete

when Timothy Cole, another gold medallist, appeared unexpectedly as

we were sitting down to dinner. Mr. Kennedy was one of the party,

and Miss Birnie Philip came with Whistler, and the little dinner was

the ceremony he knew how to make of reunions of the kind. He was

pleased when he heard that his medals were voted unanimously and read

out the first with applause. A story in connection with the awards,

told over our table some months later by John Lambert returning from

Paris, amused him vastly. Though it was agreed that the first medals

should not be announced until all the others were awarded, the news

leaked out and got into the papers. At the next meeting of the jury,

Carolus-Duran, always gorgeous, was more resplendent than ever in a

flowered waistcoat. He took the chair, and at once, with his eye on

the American jurors, said that there had been indiscretion. Alexander

Harrison was up like a shot: "_A propos des indiscrétions, messieurs,

regardez le gilet de Carolus!_"

During this time Whistler was paying not only for his rooms at the

Hôtel Chatham in Paris, but for one at Garlant's Hotel, in addition

to the apartment in the Rue du Bac where Miss Birnie Philip and her

mother lived the greater part of the year, for the studios in the Rue

Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Fitzroy Street, and lastly, for the "Company

of the Butterfly" in Hinde Street. It was no light burden, though he

had a light way of referring to his "collection of _châteaux_ and

_pieds-à-terre_." His pockets were as full as he had wanted them, but

he could not get used to their not being empty. Once, afraid he could

not meet one of his many bills for rent, he asked a friend to verify

his bank account, with the result that six thousand pounds were found

to be lying idle.

Whistler, as a "West Point man," followed the Boer War with the same

interest he had shown in the Spanish War. It was a "beautiful war"

on the part of the Boers, for whom he had unbounded admiration. From

Paris, through the winter, he sent us, week by week, Caran d'Ache's

cartoons in the _Figaro_. In London he cut from the papers despatches

and leaders that reported the bravery of the Boers and the blunders of

the British, and carried them with him wherever he went. His comments

did not amuse the "Islanders," whom, however, he knew how to soothe

after exasperating them almost beyond endurance. One evening J. walked

back with him to Garlant's, and they were having their whisky-and-soda

in the landlady's room while Whistler gave his version of the news of

the day, which he thought particularly psychological. Then suddenly,

when it seemed as if the landlady could not stand it an instant longer,

he turned and said in his most charming manner, "Well, you know, you

would have made a very good Boer yourself, madam." As he said it, it

became the most amiable of compliments, and the evening was finished

over a dish of choice peaches which she hoped would please him. Another

evening, the Boers were on the point of kindling a fatal war between

himself and a good friend, when a bang of his fist on the table

brought down a picture from the wall of our dining-room, and in the

crash of glass the Boers were forgotten. No one who met him during the

years of the war can dissociate him from this talk, and not to refer

to it would be to give a poor idea of him. If he had a sympathetic

audience, he went over and over the incidents of the struggle; the

wonder of the despatches; Lord Roberts' explanation that all would have

gone well with the Suffolks on a certain occasion if they had not had a

panic. Mrs. Kruger receiving the British Army while the Boers retired,

supplied with all they wanted, though they went on capturing the

British soldiers wholesale; General Buller's announcement that he had

made the enemy respect his rear. When he was told of despatches stating

that Buller, on one occasion, had retired without losing a man, or a

flag, or a cannon, he added, "Yes, or a minute." He repeated the answer

of a man at a lecture, who, when the lecturer declared that the cream

of the British Army had gone to South Africa, called out, "Whipped

cream." The blunderings and the surrenderings gave Whistler malicious

joy, and he declared that as soon as the British soldier found he

was no longer in a majority of ten to one, he threw up the sponge or

dropped the gun. He recalled Bismarck's saying that South Africa would

prove the grave of the British Empire, and also that the day would come

when the blundering of the British Army would surprise the world, and

he quoted "a sort of professional prophet" who predicted a July that

would bring destruction to the British: "What has July 1900 in store

for the Island?" he would ask.

There was no question of his interest in the Boers, but neither could

there be that this interest was coloured by prejudice. He never forgot

his "years of battle" in England, when, alone, he met the blunderings,

mistakes, and misunderstandings of the army of artists, critics, and

the public. In his old age, as in his youth, he loved London for its

beauty. His friends were there, nowhere else was life so congenial,

and not even Paris could keep him long from London. But it was his

boast that he was an American citizen, that on his father's side he was

Irish, a Highlander on his mother's, and that there was not a drop of

Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins. He had no affection for the people who

persisted in their abuse and ridicule until, confronted by the Goupil

Exhibition of 1892, they were compelled--however grudgingly--to give

him his due. This was one reason why he expressed the wish that none

of his pictures should form part of an English national collection,

or remain in England, and emphasised the fact that his sitters at the

end were American or Scotch. He conquered, but the conquest did not

make him accept the old enemies as new friends. In the position of the

Boers he no doubt fancied a parallel with his own when, alone, they

defied the English, who, on the battlefield as in the appreciation

of art, blundered and misunderstood. Whistler's ingenuity in seeing

only what he wanted to see and in making that conform to his theories

was extraordinary. He could not be beaten because, for him, right on

the other side did not exist. He came nearest to it one evening when

discussing the war, not with an Englishman, but with an American and

an officer into the bargain, whom he met in our rooms, and who said

that there was always blundering at the opening of a campaign, as at

Santiago, where two divisions of the United States Army were drawn up

so that, if they had fired, they must have shot each other down. It

was a shock, but Whistler rallied, offered no comment, and was careful

afterwards to avoid such dangerous ground.

Prejudice coloured all his talk of the English, whose characteristics

to him were as humorous as his were incomprehensible to them. It

was astonishing to hear him seize upon a weak point, play with it,

elaborate it fantastically, and then make it tell. The "enemies"

suffered from his wit as he from their density. His artistic sense

served him in satire as in everything else. One favourite subject was

the much-vaunted English cleanliness. He evolved an elaborate theory:

"Paris is full of baths and always has been; you can see them,

beautiful Louis XV. and Louis XVI. baths on the Seine; in London,

until a few years ago, there were none except in Argyll Street, to

which Britons came with a furtive air, afraid of being caught. And the

French, having the habit of the bath, think and say nothing of it,

while the British--well, they're so astonished now they have learned to

bathe, they can't talk of anything but their tub."

The Bath Club he described as "the latest incarnation of the British

discovery of water." His ingenious answer was ready when British virtue

was extolled. He repeated to us a conversation at this time with Madame

Sarah Grand. She said it was delightful to be back in England after

five or six weeks in France, where she had not seen any men, except

two, and they were Germans, whom she could have embraced in welcome. A

Frenchman never would forget that women are women. She liked to meet

men as comrades, without thought of sex. Whistler told her: "You are to

be congratulated, madam--certainly, the Englishwoman succeeds, as no

other could, in obliging men to forget her sex."

A few days after, he reported another "happy" answer. He was with three

Englishmen and a German. One of the Englishmen said, "The trouble

is, we English are too honest; we have always been stupidly honest."

Whistler turned to the German: "You see, it is now historically

acknowledged that whenever there has been honesty in this country,

there has been stupidity."

His ingenuity increased with the consternation it caused, and the

"Islander" figured more and more in his talk.

The excitement in China this summer interested him little less than

affairs in South Africa. He was indignant, not with the Chinese for

the alleged massacres at Pekin, but with Americans and Europeans for

considering the massacres an outrage that called for redress. After

all, the Chinese had their way of doing things, and it was better to

lose whole armies of Europeans than to harm the smallest of beautiful

things in that great wonderful country. He said to us one day:

"Here are these people thousands of years older in civilisation than

us, with a religion thousands of years older than ours, and our

missionaries go out there and tell them who God is. It is simply

preposterous, you know, that for what Europe and America consider a

question of honour one blue pot should be risked."

Another evening when he said this to a larger audience, one of the

party asked him if art did not always mark the decadence of a country.

"Well, you know," said Whistler, "a good many countries manage to go to

the dogs without it."