London Days Part 12

Stopping the cab at the Tower House, in t.i.te Street, Whistler alighted, exclaiming:

"And the painter and his bride said 'come.' We are not out of the packing cases yet; but come in. I 've something to show you. You must stay and dine, or I won't show you what it is."

And we mounted to his flat.

Mrs. Whistler knew that I was accustomed to "Jimmie's" ways, and so she affected no surprise when she met us at the door and learned that I had come to dinner. She merely said, as if it were all in the day's work:

"We 've just moved in. Pardon the chairs. Let's make a housewarming of it."

It was easy to "pardon the chairs", for there were none to pardon,--in the drawing-room to which I was shown. There were only unpacked packing cases. And I sat on one. Whistler turned on the lights and then darted into another room from which he returned speedily, showing his roguish smile and carrying in his hands a bundle of printer's proofs which he laid beside me on my packing case. Standing over them, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his monocle into his eye, he said:

"There 's the thing I wanted to show you; my _magnum opus_: 'The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.' Do you mind looking 'em over, with an eye to correction, while you wait? My idea 's a brown paper cover like the 'Ten O'Clock.'"

And with that he darted out again, returning immediately with a box of cigars and a case filled with cigarettes.

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"Burnt offering to the High G.o.ds," he said. "I go to prepare the libations."

And he went.

Mrs. Whistler, after a few gracious words, went also, presumably to give directions for the table. I was left to myself, the packing cases, the proofs, and the cigars. My watch said seven thirty, and presently seven forty-five, and, on the heels of that, eight o'clock.

I was interested, but I was also hungry. But neither of the Whistlers had yet reappeared. Meantime I read on and on, admiring immensely and chuckling every minute or two over the stupidities, the jealousies, the ridiculous follies of mankind as revealed in "The Gentle Art." And it was nine o'clock! Jimmie came in with a fat bundle of newspaper clippings.

"Read!" he cried. "Some of these should be included, don't you think so? Hope you are not hungry!" Then he disappeared again.

I was too hungry to smoke.

There were sounds occasionally from beyond the closed door. Although noncommittal, they were encouraging; they at least indicated human presence and the probability, in an uncertain future, of food. At nine forty-five I had reached the end of the proofs, the press clippings, and almost of patience, when Jimmie came tripping in with pantomimic action which meant abas.e.m.e.nt and a plea for mercy. Then said he:

"I fear the Lord hath made me forgetful of time. But there 's atonement toward. Have you read 'em? Oh, Sheridan, Sheridan Ford, thou naughty {160} one, prepare for doom! Madame, I pray you do the honours."

And Mrs. Whistler, who had appeared behind him, enchanted me by saying, "Dinner is served."

It was ten o'clock! The Whistlerian hour.

I do not know what they had been doing. Had they been unpacking china and linen and chairs, while the maid foraged the neighbouring shops?

Had an unpremeditated feast produced itself by Jimmie's conjuring? Had Jimmie cooked the dinner while Mrs. Whistler arranged the table with its dainty ware, and silver, and soft linen, and shaded lights? Or had they reversed the parts? I shall never know. But there was the daintiest, most delicious dinner, most charmingly served, and there were two or three kindly wines, a coffee that the master himself had prepared, and a soothing _liqueur_ from his beloved Paris. It was a dinner that more than reconciled one to perishing on a packing case.

And through it all Whistler summed up his philosophy of life and art, as previously and subsequently he had set it forth elsewhere. We sat till long after midnight in high session, debating selections from press clippings which had been showered upon him by his "excellent Romeike." "Shall I put in this, or omit that? Here 's something too good to lose!" And so, with what he called "infinite jerriment", another portion of "The Gentle Art" began to take shape. In its further progress I had no hand, as I was off to America in a day or two, and Jimmie needed no aid in goading his solicitors to the pursuit of Sheridan Ford who had, Whistler {161} said, infringed his literary rights. The pursuit of Sheridan was an epic which aroused more than nine days' wonder; it led from London to Antwerp, from Antwerp to Paris, from Paris to New York and back to London again. The "Extraordinary Piratical Plot" was defeated, the "piratical edition"

was suppressed, and, in the early summer of 1890, there appeared, published by the graceful, sympathetic, and cordial aid of Mr. William Heinemann _The Gentle Art of Making Enemies as Pleasingly Exemplified in Many Instances, Wherein the Serious Ones of this Earth, Carefully Exasperated, Have Been Prettily Spurred On to Unseemliness and Indiscretion, While Overcome by an Undue Sense of Right_. The dedication was no less characteristic:

"To the rare Few, who, early in Life, have rid Themselves of the Friendship of the Many, these pathetic Papers are inscribed."

Upon my return from America I found the Whistlers established at Number 21 Cheyne Walk a few steps from my own door. It was not Whistler's good fortune to live long in any house, at any rate in those years. He had two years, or something less, at Tower House, and something less, I think, at Cheyne Walk, and, in April or May, 1892, he removed to Paris.

After that I saw him but seldom, for my wanderings upon the face of the planet were to increase and multiply. But during the '88-'92 period he was often in my home. It was his peculiarity and privilege not to come when he was asked, or expected, but invariably to arrive as a sudden gift from the G.o.ds, and for the most part {162} he chose the Sunday-evening "Smoke Talks" rather than the suppers, because at the latter he would be more likely to encounter some of "the Serious Ones of this Earth", already "carefully exasperated", in which case he would be bored, while at the former he would be sure to meet the choicest talkers at a late hour. He would drop in at eleven, or at midnight, and stay till two in the morning with half a dozen congenial beings who would not only relish his wit, but sparkle with their own, and who were capable of appreciating him as an artist without requiring explanatory charts and diagrams.

One such evening we had been talking of Carlyle, who had lived around the corner in Cheyne Row. Whistler told some pleasant anecdote of him.

"There!" exclaimed Theodore Wores, a disciple of Whistler's, "I always thought Carlyle was not so black as he 's painted."

Whistler sprang to his feet, and falling back in mock horror, cried, as he stared at Wores, "_Et tu, Brute?_"

The room shook with laughter.

On another occasion a well-known critic was laying down the law about somebody's "technique." He appealed to Whistler for confirmation.

"My dear fellow," said Whistler, "that's an opinion one would wish to express _diffidently_." Among his hearers was an artist accustomed to ill.u.s.trate in Punch some of the "Things one would wish to express differently."

You know what Whistler said to the Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward VII) at an Exhibition {163} of the Royal Society of British Artists.

Whistler, recently elected president, was showing the Prince around the galleries.

"What is the history of your Society?" asked the Prince.

"It has none, Sir; its history begins to-day," was the quick reply. It fitted like a glove. There were sleepy years behind; and anything you like later. Whistler stirred up the pools of somnolence. He did not stir them long, for the British artists of those days, whether or not they were interested in art, preferred Britons for presidents. I daresay they were right.

One afternoon he came to my flat with the tall bamboo wand which he often used, in Chelsea at any rate, instead of a walking stick. He was of a phenomenal slenderness, which was emphasised by the long wand, and the long, flat-brimmed hat, and the long, black, tight coat. He had yellow gloves, and his little soft shoes--his feet were the smallest I ever saw on a man--were the last word in daintiness. No London maker could have produced them. Jimmie was always, at all points, fastidious. He gesticulated more than any Briton, but his gesticulations were not Parisian, they were Whistlerian. He pointed dramatically to the ceiling and murmured, "White, all white."

"White." Then to the walls--"All white. And a white you can wash!

Londoners forget that they must live in their houses in winter. All their colours are dismal, and there 's no sun."

"Apropos?" I was about to enquire.

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"Didn't you tell me, the other day, that you intended redecorating this place?"

"Sometime, when my ship comes in."

"It doesn't need a ship. A navy wouldn't do for Cheyne Walk. May I offer a suggestion?"

"The knowledge of a lifetime," said I, quoting his famous. .h.i.t at the Ruskin trial.

"Very well then; I 'll come in."

And he went all around the flat, pointing here and there with his bamboo wand, and saying, "Such-and-such a colour here, and such a line there. My dear boy, this is the whole secret,--tone and line. The good colour--the right one--and the good line--the right one--cost no more than the wrong. People overlook these things; they forget them, they ignore them altogether, and then have the misfortune to live.

They don't go mad, because they 're British. And you 'll not, because you 'll have the right colour and the right line. Come. Let's walk.

I 'm free for the evening. We 'll dine at the Club."

That was Whistler, Whistler the neighbour, the phase of him that I knew quite as well as any other phase. Later on, when I "did up" my flat, I remembered the details of his suggestions, and carried them out. The result was that I had one of the most delightful flats in London.

The appreciation of those who understood warmed his heart. He had had to fight his way from the beginning against the least imaginative, the stodgiest, the narrowest, the most unsympathetic criticism, and the most prejudiced, because the least {165} enlightened public (as to art) in the world. But his fighting was not for his own hand merely; he was the champion of art as against ignorance, complacent or aggressive.

It is difficult to believe now that for many years in the last century Whistler's work was opposed with rancour, or bitterly derided. Now the world salutes his memory as that of a master; then he was called a c.o.xcomb, a charlatan, an impostor, excepting by "the rare Few" who had rid themselves of the blighting ignorances of the many. There were many pigmies who, because they walked on stilts, were thought to be giants in those days. Their stilts warped, or broke long ago, their lights have dimmed with the pa.s.sing years, or their names are remembered merely as having been targets for Whistler's wit. Had he not "killed" these men, their existence would have been forgotten.

As I have said already, it was not Whistler the fighter, nor Whistler the "airy-incomprehensible" whom I saw most frequently in Carlyle Mansions, but Whistler the neighbour. I do not remember that any one has ever written of him in that character. He used to drop in on dreary, rainy evenings when, he said, "the world depressed" him, or when some happy stroke of fortune had gratified him. Or he would come on moonlit nights and gaze from my high windows where the views of Thames were quite remarkable, and drop his fighting mood, his satire, his b.u.t.terfly attributes. I had called him "the b.u.t.terfly with the sting." The phrase pleased him. "Yes, there you have me," he said.

{166} But he would drop the sting, and the monocle, and the air of the sprite, and would be quite human, almost "One of the serious of this Earth." One night he came jubilantly, and no sooner had he lost himself in a grandfather's chair by the fireplace, than he said, with a kind of moan:

"He's gone!"