London Days Part 13

"Who's gone?" I asked.

"My old friend Thomas Carlyle. He lived with me many a year, and I sold him to-day for a base thousand pounds." This with a touch of sadness, permitting the monocle to drop into his right hand, and gazing reflectively at the fire. Then, with a sudden turn towards me: "The Mun-eeee-ci-pal Corrrrporration o' Glasgie has purchased it for its Arrt Museum." The monocle was thrust to the eye again where it seemed to flash the question, "What do you think of that?"

I thought very well of it, and said something to the effect that it was a wise city which knew enough to buy such a masterpiece.

"Surprising, is n't it?" said Whistler, and then he told me that a committee of braw Scots had called at his studio to conduct the negotiations for Glasgow. His mimicry of the baillies I will not try to reproduce here. Type cannot present it. Action, expression, accent, all are lost. It was a delightful imitation, and I shouted with laughter when Whistler mounted the climax of his story:

"'But Mr. Wheestler,' said one of the baillies, by way of expostulation over the price I had modestly suggested, 'but Mr. Wheestler, this is a moderrn {167} paainting, an' I ken that moderrn paintings mostly faade.'

"Behold me there," continued Whistler, "the b.u.t.terfly Rampant, hotly retorting, 'Gentlemen; you are mistaken. It is the d.a.m.nation of modern paintings that they do _not_ fade!'"

It was about the same time that France bought that other masterpiece, the portrait of "The Artist's Mother." Whistler came to tell me a few hours after the transfer to Paris had been arranged. He said quietly, as if he were touched deeply,

"France gives me honour, and I accept the invitation for Mother.

Mother goes to the Luxembourg, and, after my death, to the Louvre.

They pay her expenses, for what more does the _honorarium_ amount to?

It's only one hundred and twenty pounds. But one cannot sell one's Mother. She will be glad that I am represented in the Luxembourg, and later in the Louvre. I am glad it is Mother who will represent me."

And then, probably because he feared that he was dropping into sentiment, he broke off gaily with a jest about "another ghost who haunted the pavements of Chelsea", a critic stung to death by the b.u.t.terfly, "the late Harry Q--" still haunting t.i.te Street. "The late Harry", it may be said to children of the present hour, was quite as much alive as Whistler, and occupied--Whistler said "haunted"--the house which Jimmie had built and which he had lost in bankruptcy.

I had received from a friend in Boston a letter asking if I would "sound Whistler" about the {168} probability of his accepting a commission for the decoration of some part of the Public Library. The authorities hesitated about approaching him. They had an idea that his att.i.tude toward America was antagonistic, they knew he was "touchy"; they did not wish to submit a proposal, or to invite a suggestion, that might, ninety-nine chances to one, evoke a scornful reply. He might tell them he was not a housepainter. "You are a friend of his. Won't you find out how he would receive a proposal, and advise us how best to make an approach?"

One day when, like Rosalind, he was in "a coming-on disposition", I asked, "What is your real att.i.tude towards America?"

"I haven't any," said he. "How can a man have an att.i.tude toward a continent? Oh, there are the discerning; more of them, perhaps, over there than here. But there 's no 'public taste' there nor here. There never was 'public taste' anywhere. There's only the relation of beauty to the discerning. That's all. But the American mind is not closed.

The English mind is closed and bound. England wants art that tells stories. I want art that tells of beauty."

"If the discerning in America were to say, 'There's Whistler now, an American; we wish him to do a great public work'--for instance, a room in the Boston Library, or something like that,--well, would you accept?"

"Of course! It would be the evidence of discernment that I 've been waiting for. But there's no chance of it."

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"Yes, there is; I a.s.sure you there is."

"If that's true, I'd really like it. I'd like it immensely."

"Hand on heart?"

"Hand on heart!"

The offer came to him, but, as far as I know, he never carried out the work.

He left Chelsea soon after that, going to Paris to live. But before going to Paris he met, at my home, my dearest friend, of whom I shall write later. My friend is dead now, but he had produced then two excellent novels and a successful play. Whistler expressed an interest in him, and he looked in one evening to ask me if he might borrow the books. I lent them to him. Here is another aspect of his entertaining character. After he had been some months in Paris, I wrote to him reminding him of the volumes, which, for certain personal reasons, the author never permitted to be reprinted.

Fatal error!

Whistler never replied. I never saw him again. But that was Travel's fault, not mine. I never heard again from Whistler. And he never returned the books!

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CHAPTER XII

HENRY DRUMMOND

We were smoking churchwarden pipes and telling how Jock This and Sandy That had made their money. I hope the Free Kirk folk will not be scandalised by the revelation, especially by that of the churchwardens.

While Drummond lived I concealed this grievous sin, but now that he has been dead nigh upon a quarter of a century, I think he will fare no worse for it in heaven, whatever might have been the case in Glasgow in the early nineties. He wore a velvet smoking jacket, too, and we toasted our toes before his study fire on one of the worst nights it has ever been my fortune to see in Scotland or elsewhere. The wind was lifting roofs and toppling chimneys to the ground, and the rain was like streams from a thousand fire engines. There was never a better night for a fireside.

Jock This and Sandy That got into the conversation (not bodily but in essence) because their experiences ill.u.s.trated what Professor Drummond was saying about "getting on in the world." And he was saying these things because he liked talking other men's shop, not his own. The point he made was this: it is n't necessary to emigrate in order to {171} prosper. He had been talking to a group of young men about this that very day. He had a way with him when talking to young men.

"How do men get bored?" he asked. "I never get bored. I can be interested in something always. Time never drags on my hands. But Jock and Sandy can't get interested unless they are making more money, so they keep at it all the time. They are lost without their occupation. Money is a fine thing--to use. If you have n't it, the man who has it uses you as well as his money. Can we find the way to make money without becoming its slaves, as almost all men are who make it?"

In the early nineties Henry Drummond was what they call "one of the best sellers." Who reads him now? I ask for information. If his books had been fiction, we could understand that the fashion had changed in twenty years. But has the fashion changed in G.o.d?

Youth used to follow Drummond in troops. When he died more than the youth of Scotland mourned. But youth does not mourn long. It has in that respect the advantage of age, which usually makes new friends only with difficulty; youth has but to summon them, and they come. Drummond had an immense capacity for friendship. I have said he had a way with youth; yes, of both s.e.xes and all ages. But his greatest friends were young men; and his greatest friend of all was D. L. Moody, the revivalist.

Drummond was saying, as we sat before the fire, drawing clouds from churchwardens:

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"I don't believe in old saws, do you? Now there 's:

"'Early to bed, and early to rise, Make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.'

"What nonsense! Healthy, if you like, but how wealthy and how wise is the manual labourer?

"'Bed at dark, Up with the lark.'

"Suppose you work with a night shift? Try bringing up a generation on these old wives' tales. But they 're merely an example of our British habit of trying to rule by phrases instead of by ideas."

In the hall around the corner, I thought, they might suspect this sort of thing as inclining toward heresy. But you never can tell. "One man," as a proverb-muddled acquaintance of mine used to say, "one man may lead a horse to water, but another may not look over the fence."

They were still buying Drummond's books in large quant.i.ties,--"Natural Law in the Spiritual World" and "The Greatest Thing in the World." I liked to think that the slender gentleman with longish hair, who was sartorially British to the _nth_ power, could write things like that in the morning and in the evening keep me company with a churchwarden, and these were very long churchwardens, old style, and we smoked "Glasgow Mild." Drummond, being a sensible man, wanted, as I say, to talk some other man's shop. He wanted to talk mine but could not pin me down.

It was his shop I wanted. One of his young men with a literary {173} turn wished to go to America and become a journalist. Would I advise?

"Why America?" I enquired mildly. "You have admirable newspapers in Scotland. Besides, you were saying that 'it is n't necessary to emigrate in order to prosper.'"

"It's unkind to remind a man of his inconsistencies," said he.

"I would like to save a good Scot, especially if young, from the mutilations of American journalism. More especially if literary. Tell him to learn the trade at home first. He 'll be trained more thoroughly here. There they 'll put him 'on s.p.a.ce' to the uttermost ruin of any literary gift he may have. s.p.a.ce-writing means word-spinning--the more words the more money, if you have the knack of escaping the blue pencil. s.p.a.ce-work will knock seven-ways-for-Sunday any literary turn he may have. American journalism will do that, anyhow."

"Perhaps I 'd better kill him."

"My dear sir, your American experiences have done you good."