over the door:
"'Unless the Lord build the house, their labor is but vain that build
it.' E.W. Godwin, P.S.A., built this one."
* * * * *
Justin McCarthy, the journalist and historian of _Our Own Times_,
stayed away from the Whistler dinner at the Criterion because his
friend Mortimer Menpes had been slighted. He met Whistler a few
evenings later at a dinner to Christie Murray. As they came together
Whistler remarked darkly:
"You're a bold man and a philanthropist; but remember, _Damien died_!"
And he had, just before, among the lepers of Molokai! Rather rough on
the claimant of Lemon Yellow!
* * * * *
The Fine Art Society once billed Whistler for incidentals to one of
his exhibitions, and thoughtfully included a pair of stockings worn by
an attendant named Cox.
"I shall pay for nothing of Cox's," said the artist, indignantly.
"Neither his socks, nor his 'ose, nor anything that is his."
* * * * *
One of his proofs, sold by Sotheby's in 1888--that of an early
etching--brought a good price, not on its merits, but for this line by
the artist, written on the margin: "Legs not by me, but a fatuous
addition by a general practitioner."
The "legs" were by Dr. Seymour Haden, Whistler's eminent
brother-in-law.
* * * * *
The eccentric relationship between Whistler and that self-destroyed
genius, Oscar Wilde, has been much portrayed. A characteristic meeting
was thus described by a correspondent of the London _Literary World_:
"Whistler and Wilde were to be the lions at a literary reception.
Unfortunately, the lions came too early, when the few previous
arrivals were altogether too insignificant to be introduced to them.
So they had to talk to each other. It was on a very warm Sunday
afternoon in the season, and Whistler, by the by, was wearing a white
'duck' waistcoat and trousers, and a fabulously long frock-coat, made,
I think, of black alpaca, and carrying a brass-tipped stick about four
feet long in his right hand, and a wonderful new paint-box, of which
he was proud, under his left arm. Neither of the lions took any notice
of what the other said. Finally, Wilde, who had spent the previous
summer in America, began: 'Jimmy, this time last year, when I was in
New York, all we men were carrying fans. It should be done here.'
Instead of replying, Whistler observed that he had just returned from
Paris, and that he always came by the Dieppe route, because it gave
you so much longer for painting sea effects. Whether Oscar thought he
was going to have an opportunity of scoring or what, he was tempted to
break through the contempt with which-he had treated Whistler's other
remarks. 'And how many did you paint in four hours, Jimmy?' he asked,
with his most magnificent air of patronage. 'I'm not sure,' said the
irrepressible Jimmy, quite gravely, 'but I think four or five
hundred."'
* * * * *
A London visitor at the Lambs Club recounted a new version of the
notable enmity which followed the friendship that had existed between
Whistler and Wilde. The latter one day asked the artist's opinion upon
a poem which he had written, presenting a copy to be read. Whistler
read it and was handing it back without comment.
"Well," queried Wilde, "do you perceive any worth?"
"It's worth its weight in gold," replied Whistler.
The poem was written on the very thinnest tissue-paper, weighing
practically nothing. The coolness between the two men is said to have
dated from that moment.
* * * * *
Walking up to Du Maurier and Wilde at the time the former was
portraying the Postlethwaites in _Punch_, Whistler asked, whimsically,
"I say, which of you invented the other, eh?"
* * * * *
When Oscar Wilde was married, this Whistler telegram met him at the
door of St. James's Church, Sussex Gardens:
"Fear I may not be able to reach you in time for ceremony--don't
wait."
* * * * *
"Heaven!" said Oscar once, when the two were together at
Forbes-Robertson's and a pert flash fell from the artist's lips. "I
wish I had said that!"
"Never mind, dear Oscar--you will," retorted Whistler.
* * * * *
When Lady Archibald Campbell sat for her portrait Lord Archibald was
quite uncomfortable at the idea, and made certain that it was a
condescension, not a commission. The painting was duly completed,
received its due of scathing criticism, and became famous. At this the
lady, meeting the artist, remarked:
"I hear my portrait has been exhibited everywhere and become famous."
"Sh-sh-sh!" he said. "So it has, my dear Lady Archibald, but every
discretion has been exercised that Lord Archibald could desire. Your
name is not mentioned. The portrait is known as 'The Yellow
Buckskin.'"
* * * * *
Carlyle told Whistler he liked his portrait because the painter had
given him "clean linen." Watts had made his collar green in a previous
portrait.
* * * * *
Sitting wearied Carlyle. One day as he left the studio he met little
Miss Alexander tripping in for her turn, and asked her name.
"I am Miss Alexander," she said, "and I am going to have my portrait
painted."
"Puir lassie, puir lassie," murmured the old philosopher, pityingly.
* * * * *
Whistler's interest was aroused when the Cyclopeans were building the
Savoy Hotel. "Hurry!" he said. "Where are my things? I must catch that
now, for it will never again be so beautiful."
* * * * *
His model once asked him:
"Where were you born?"
"I never was born, my child; I came from on high."
The model retorted:
"Now that shows how easily we deceive ourselves in this world, for I
should say you came from below!"
* * * * *
Invited once to dine with some eminences, the dinner-hour found him
busy with his brush and engrossed in his subject. A friend who was to
accompany him to the feast urged that it was frightfully late. "Don't
you think you had better stop?" he asked.
"Stop?" shrieked Whistler. "Stop when everything is going so
beautifully? Go and stuff myself with food when I can paint like this?
Never! Never! Besides, they won't do anything until I get there. They
never do."
* * * * *
Whistler was in a London shop one day when a customer came in who
mistook him for a clerk.
"I say, this 'at doesn't fit!"
"Neither does your coat," observed the painter, after eying him
critically.
* * * * *
A young woman student protested under criticism, "Mr. Whistler, is
there any reason why I shouldn't paint things as I see them?"
"Well, really, there is no statute against it; but the dreadful moment
will be when you see things as you painted them!"
"Britain's Realm," by John Brett, R.A., now in the National Gallery at
Millbank, made a stir when first exhibited at the Academy. It shows
the sea. Whistler walked into a wave of adulation one day during the
exhibition, and, affecting to "knock" with his knuckles, said
sardonically: "Ha! Ha! Tin! If you threw a stone on to this it would
make a rumbling noise!"
* * * * *
His early price for the use of one of his lithographs by a magazine
was ten guineas. Later he charged twenty, either sum being petty
enough. To one editor who tendered ten pounds he wrote:
"Guineas, M. le Rédacteur; guineas, not pounds!"
* * * * *
At a reception one evening in Prince's Hall he was introduced to
Henrietta Rae, whose painting "Psyche Before the Throne of Venus" had
made her notable. She had been described to him in advance as rather
weighty in figure.
"I don't think you're a bit too fat," was his encouraging greeting.
* * * * *
"Why have you withered people and stung them all your life?" asked a
lady.
"My dear," he said, "I will tell you a secret. Early in life I made
the discovery that I was charming; and if one is delightful, one has
to thrust the world away to keep from being bored to death."
* * * * *
During the Boxer troubles, when Pekin was under siege to rescue the
legations, he remarked:
"Dear! dear! I hope they will save the palace. All the Englishmen in
the world are not worth one blue china vase."
One evening at Pennell's Miss Annulet Andrews mentioned attending the
Royal Society soirée the evening before.
"Poor thing!" he said. "Poor, misguided child! Did you come all the
way to London to consort with such--well, what shall we call them?
Why, there isn't a fellow among them who had his h's five years ago!"
* * * * *
"You should be grateful to me," said Whistler to Leyland, after he had
painted the Peacock Room in the latter's house. "I have made you
famous. My work will live when you are forgotten. Still, perchance in
the dim ages to come you may be remembered as the proprietor of the
Peacock Room."
* * * * *
Whistler's butterfly was the moth of the silkworm borrowed from
Hokusai. Otto H. Bacher thought the addition of a sting to the
signature came from this incident at Venice: In 1880 he found a
scorpion and impaled it on his etching needle. As the little creature
writhed and struck, Whistler exclaimed: "Look at the beggar now! See
him strike! Isn't he fine? Look at him! Look at him now! See how hard
he hits! That's right--that's the way! Hit hard! And do you see the
poison that comes out when he strikes? Isn't he superb?"
* * * * *
Referring long after to his retirement from West Point, where he had
been a cadet for three years, the artist explained his fall by saying:
"If silicon had been a gas, I should have been a soldier!"
* * * * *
He was always proud of his West Point cadetship. "West Point is
America," he would say. Julian Alden Weir, son of Whistler's
instructor at the Academy, once dining with him in London, chanced to
remark that football had been introduced at the school. "Good God!"
cried Whistler. "A West Point cadet to be rolled in the mud by a
Harvard junior!"
* * * * *
When a student at the Point he had the habit of combing his long hair
in class with his fingers, which brought this frequent command from
Lieutenant Caleb Huse:
"Mr. Whistler, go to your room and comb your hair!"
* * * * *
Examined on history at West Point, he failed to recall the date of the
battle of Buena Vista. "Suppose," said the exasperated instructor,
"you were to go out to dinner and the company began to talk of the
Mexican War, and you, a West Point man, were asked the date of the
battle; what would you do?"
"Do?" was the reply. "Why, I should refuse to associate with people
who could talk of such things at dinner!"
* * * * *
He disliked the work of the riding class at West Point, and one day
wished to exchange his heavy horse for a lighter animal. The dragoon
in charge called out: "Oh, don't swap, don't you swap! Yours is a
war-horse!"
"A war-horse!" exclaimed the little cadet. "That settles it. I
certainly don't want him!"
"Yes, you do, sir," insisted the dragoon. "He's a war-horse, I tell
you, for he'd rather die than run!"
* * * * *
"Of course you don't know what fear is," observed Mortimer Menpes.
"Ah, yes, I do!" Whistler answered. "I should hate, for example, to be
standing opposite a man who was a better shot than I, far away out in
the forest, in the bleak, cold, early morning. Fancy me, the master,
standing out in the open as a target to be shot at. Pshaw! It would be
foolish and inartistic. I never mind calling a man out; but I always
have the sense to know he is not likely to come."
* * * * *
Mr. Howard Mansfield relates that while in London in the summer of
1900 with Mr. Whistler, reference was one day made to West Point. He
broke at once into enthusiastic praise of that institution, declaring
that there was no finer institution in the world, and adding that next
to it came the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Then he went on to say:
"What was it which really saved you in your late deplorable war with
the politest nation of Europe but the bearing of your naval gentlemen?
After the affair in that sea--what's its name?--off the island of
Cuba, when dear old Admiral Cervera was fished up like a dollop of
cotton out of an ink-pot and was received on one of your ships with
all the honors due to his rank, the officers all saluting and the crew
manning the yards, as it were--only they haven't any yards now--but
lined up in quite the proper way--why, it was splendid, just
splendid!"
* * * * *
Dining one night at a house where there were a number of his pictures
about the room, he could give attention to nothing but his own work.
When he left he begged that one painting be sent to his studio to be
revarnished. The unsuspecting hostess complied. Once delivered, she
could not get it back. Finally she wrote: "I can live no longer
without my beautiful picture, and I am sending to have it taken away."
"Isn't it appalling?" he cried to Menpes. "Just think of it! Ten years
ago this woman bought my picture for a ridiculously small sum, a mere
bagatelle, a few pounds; she has had the privilege of living with this
masterpiece for ten whole years, and now she has the presumption to
ask for it back again. Pshaw! The thing's unspeakable!"
* * * * *
"What a series of accidents!" was his comment on a row of Turners at
the National Gallery.
* * * * *
On another occasion, when he arrived at his host's house two hours
after the time set for dining, he found the meal well under way. "How
extraordinary!" he exclaimed to the amazed company.
"Really, I should think you could have waited a bit. Why, you're just
like a lot of pigs with your eating!"
* * * * *
Sir John E. Millais said to Whistler one day: "Jimmy, why don't you
paint more pictures? Put out more canvases!"
"I know better," was the shrewd reply. "The fool!" he muttered, as he
entered his studio. "He spreads himself on canvas on every possible
occasion, and, do you know, he called me Jimmy! Mind you, I don't know
the fellow well at all."
* * * * *
His "Nocturne in Blue and Gold, Valparaiso," was in the Hill
collection at Brighton. Whistler made Mr. Hill a visit which he thus
described: "I was shown into the galleries, and, of course, took a
chair and sat looking at my beautiful 'Nocturne'; then, as there was
nothing else to do, I went to sleep."
In this state Mr. Hill found him!
This sleeping habit was common with him when the company or the
goings-on failed to interest him. On one occasion his sweet snore
alarmed his neighbor, who nudged him and whispered:
"I say, Whistler, you must not sleep here!"
"Leave me alone!" commanded the artist, crossly. "I've said all I
wanted to. I've no interest at all in what you and your friends have
to say."
* * * * *
He once slumbered through a dinner where Edwin A. Abbey was a
fellow-guest. The next morning he blandly asked Mr. Chase:
"What did Abbey have to say last night? Anything worth while?"
When Dan Smith was at the beginning of his career as an illustrator he
was employed by an important lithographing house. One day, while
making a large picture of Antony and Cleopatra in the barge scene,
which was to be used by Kyrle Bellew and Mrs. James Brown Potter as a
poster for their joint starring tour, Whistler, accompanied by a
friend, visited the studio:
Whistler examined, with evident interest and approval, the canvas upon
which the youthful artist was at work, holding his glass to his eyes;
then, looking quizzically over it, remarked to his friend, "What a
mercantile wretch it is!"
* * * * *
Whistler presented a copy of his edition of _The Gentle Art of Making
Enemies_ to "Theodore Watts, the Worldling."
Asked why he started the unlucky school in the Latin Quarter, he
answered:
"It was for Carmen Rossi [long his model], poor little Carmen, who is
a mere child and has no money, and is saddled with the usual Italian
burden of a large, disreputable family--banditti brothers, a trifling
husband, and all the rest of it."
"Carmen" was then thirty years old; weight, one hundred and ninety
pounds. But she once had been his child-model.
* * * * *
A Scotch student in the class had worked out the face of an old
peasant woman illuminated by a candle. "How beautifully you have
painted the candle!" Whistler commended. "Good morning, gentlemen!"
* * * * *
One day, when the pupils had been sketching from life, he came upon
the work of one which, if it contained all of the truth, did not
contain all of the beautiful.
After gazing at it for some time Whistler observed to the student:
"Ah, well! You can hardly expect me to teach you morals." And he
walked away.
* * * * *
A carelessly kept palette was an abhorrence to the painter. He would
inspect those used by his class, and on the discovery of untidiness
uttered a reproof like this: "My friends, have you noticed the way in
which a musician cares for his violin? How beautiful it is? How well
kept? How tenderly handled? Your palette is your instrument, its
colors the notes, and upon it you play your symphonies!"
* * * * *
The colloquies with the class were spirited, sarcastic, interesting.
Here is a characteristic one:
_Question:_ "Do you know what I mean when I say tone, value, light,
shade, quality, movement, construction, etc.?"
_Chorus:_ "Oh, yes, Mr. Whistler!"
_Mr. Whistler:_ "I'm glad, for it's more than I do myself!"
* * * * *
He objected to smoking in the atelier, partly because it obscured the
light and partly because of its obfuscating qualities. In Paris a big
Englishman clouded the class-room with a copious discharge of smoke.
"My dear sir," said Whistler, gently, "I know you do not smoke to show
disrespect for my request that students refrain from smoking on the
days I come to them, nor would you desire to infringe upon the rules
of the atelier, but--er--it seems to me--er--that when you are
painting--er--you might possibly become so absorbed in your work as
to--er--let your cigar go out!"
Visiting Earl Stetson Crawford in his studio at Paris, he noted on the
wall a photographic copy of the Nicholson portrait of himself.
"Is that the best you have of me?" he asked. "Not that it is not very
beautiful and artistic and so on--but I say, come now, you don't think
it quite does me justice, do you?"
* * * * *
When the class was formed, so runs the tale, Whistler inquired of each
pupil with whom he had studied before.
"With Julian," said one.
"Couldn't have done better, sir," Whistler answered.
"With Chase," replied another.
"Couldn't have done better, sir."
"With Mowbray," answered a third.
"Couldn't have done better, sir," and so on.
He approached a student slightly deaf, who stammered in reply, "I beg
pardon?"
"Couldn't have done better, sir," responded Whistler, placidly,
passing on to the next.
* * * * *
"It suffices not, Messieurs," he once observed to the class, "that a
life spent among pictures makes a painter, else the policeman in the
National Gallery might assert himself."
* * * * *
A pupil told him proudly she had studied with Bouguereau.
"Bouguereau! Bouguereau! Who is Bouguereau?"
* * * * *
One young lady in the class offended him. She received a polite note,
signed with a neat butterfly, requesting her not to attend further.
"It was worth being expelled to get the note," she said. Whistler
heard of the comment.
"Well, they'll all have a note some day," he observed. His retirement
soon followed.
* * * * *
H. Villiers Barnett, editor of the _Continental Weekly_, when in the
employ of the _Magazine of Art_ visited the Dowdeswell Gallery at a
press view of the Venice pastels. He alone of the critics developed
some interest, and soon found himself alone with Whistler.
"I beg your pardon," said the latter, "but do you represent a
religious journal?"
"No," Barnett replied, jokingly, "mine is an out-and-out sporting
paper!"
"Oh," said Whistler, "that accounts for it."
"Accounts for what?"
"Well, you see," said Whistler, with an exquisite sneer, "I have been
watching you gentlemen of the press all morning. You are the only one
in the whole lot who seems to find anything here worth looking at, and
you have been taking such very serious interest that I was certain you
must be representing some church paper."
"Mr. Whistler," retorted Barnett, "make your mind easy. There is
nothing ecclesiastical about me nor the publication I have the honor
to represent; but all the same, for you this is the day of judgment!"
"I wish you good morning," rejoined the painter, pertly.
* * * * *
His "artistic" make-up of flat-brimmed hat, lemon-colored vest, curls,
eyeglass, and beribboned cane sometimes upset the cockney crowd.
R.A.M. Stevenson, cousin of Robert Louis, was working in his studio
one day when the bell rang violently. He ran to the door just in time
to rescue the symphony into which Whistler had turned himself from a
growling mob.
"For God's sake, Stevenson," said Whistler, "save me from these
howling brutes!"
He went home in a cab with all his trimmings.
* * * * *
Harper Pennington has revealed to us the origin of the "standing-room
only" joke. It appears that there was hardly ever any furniture in
Whistler's house. He was peculiarly parsimonious in the matter of
chairs. This led to a remark of Corny Grain's which became famous.
"Ah, Jimmy! Glad to see you playing to such a full house!" said Dick
(Corny) Grain when shaking hands before a Sunday luncheon, while
glaring around the studio with his large, protruding eyes, in search
of something to sit on.
"What do you mean?" asked Whistler.
"Standing-room only," replied the actor.
* * * * *
Henry Labouchere, who first met Whistler as a boy in Washington in the
fifties, when he himself was an attaché of the British Legation, took
the credit for bringing Whistler and his wife together. His story was
denied by Mrs. Whistler's relatives, but is interesting enough to be
recorded.
"I believe," wrote Mr. Labouchere in _Truth_, "I was responsible for
his marriage to the widow of Mr. Godwin, the architect. She was a
remarkably pretty woman and very agreeable, and both she and he were
thorough Bohemians.
"I was dining with them and some others one evening at Earl's Court.
They were obviously greatly attracted to each other, and in a vague
sort of way they thought of marrying, so I took the matter in hand to
bring things to a practical point.
"'Jimmy,' I said, 'will you marry Mrs. Godwin?'
"'Certainly.'
"'Mrs. Godwin,' I said, 'will you marry Jimmy?'
"'Certainly,' she replied.
"'When?' I asked.
"'Oh, some day,' said Whistler.
"'That won't do,' I said. 'We must have a date.'
"So they both agreed that I should choose the day, tell them what
church to come to for the ceremony, provide a clergyman, and give the
bride away.
"I fixed an early date and got them the chaplain of the House of
Commons to perform the ceremony. It took place a few days later. After
the ceremony was over we adjourned to Whistler's studio, where he had
prepared a banquet. The banquet was on the table, but there were no
chairs, so we sat on packing-cases. The happy pair, when I left, had
not quite decided whether they would go that evening to Paris or
remain in the studio.
"How unpractical they were was shown when I happened to meet the bride
the day before the marriage in the street.
"'Don't forget to-morrow,' I said.
"'No,' she replied; 'I am just going to buy my trousseau.'
"'A little late for that, is it not?' I asked.
"'No,' she answered, 'for I am only going to buy a tooth-brush and a
new sponge, as one ought to have new ones when one marries.'
"However, there never was a more successful marriage. They adored each
other, and lived most happily together, and when she died he was
broken-hearted indeed. He never recovered from the loss."
* * * * *
When Frederick Keppel, the American print expert, first called upon
the artist at the Tite Street studio, the famous portrait of Sarasate,
"black on black," stood at the end of the long corridor that he used
to form a vista for proper perspective of his work. Laying his hand on
Keppel's shoulder, he said:
"Now, isn't it beautiful?"
"It certainly is," was the reply.
"No," said he; "but isn't it _beautiful_?"
"It is indeed," said Keppel.
This was too mild a form of agreement. Whistler raised his voice to a
scream:
"D---n it, man!" he piped. "Isn't it BEAUTIFUL?"
Adopting the emphasis and the exclamation, Mr. Keppel shouted:
"D----n it, it is!"
This was satisfactory.
* * * * *
The proof-sheets of _The Gentle Art_, Whistler version, had just
arrived as Mr. Keppel called. "Read them aloud," he commanded, "so I
can hear how it sounds."
Mr. Keppel started in, but his elocution was not satisfactory.
"Stop!" Whistler cried. "You are murdering it! Let me read it to you!"
He read about two hours to his own keen delight, but was finally
interrupted by a servant announcing, "Lady ----."
"Where is she?" asked the artist.
"In her carriage at the door."
He went on reading until Mr. Keppel suggested that he had forgotten
the lady.