NOCTURNE
LITHOTINT. W. 5
From a print lent by T. R. Way, Esq.
CHAPTER XXVI: AMONG FRIENDS.
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN CONTINUED.
Whistler said he could not afford to keep a friend, but he was never without many. A photograph taken in his studio in 1881 shows him the centre of a group, of whom the others are Julian and Waldo Story, sons of W. W. Story; Frank Miles, a painter from whom great things were expected; and the Hon. Frederick Lawless, a sculptor. In the background is a little statuette everybody wanted to know the merit of, explained one day by Whistler, "Well, you know—why, you can take it up and—well, you can set it down!" Mr. Lawless writes us that Whistler modelled the little figure, though we never heard that he modelled anything, and Professor Lantéri says he never worked in the round. Mr. Pennington suggests that the statuette was by Mr. Waldo Story, but Mr. Lawless says:
"When Whistler lived in his London studio he often modelled graceful statuettes, and one day he put up one on a vase, asking me to photograph it. I said he must stand beside it. He said, 'But we must make a group and all be photographed,' and that I was to call out to his servant when to take the lid off the camera, and when to put it back. I then developed the negative in his studio."
Mr. Francis James, often at 13 Tite Street, has many memories, specially of one summer evening when Coquelin aîné and a large party came to supper and Whistler kept them until dawn and then took them to see the sun rise over the Thames, a play few had ever performed in.
For two or three years no one was more with Whistler than Sir Rennell Rodd. He writes us:
"It was in '82, '83 that I saw most of him. Frank Miles, Waldo and Julian Story, Walter Sickert, Harper Pennington, and, at one time, Oscar Wilde, were constantly there. Jimmy, unlike many artists, liked a camarade about the place while he was working, and talked and laughed and raced about all the time, putting in the touches delicately, after matured thought, with long brushes. There was a poor fellow who had been a designer for Minton—but his head had given way and he was already quite mad—used to be there day after day for months and draw innumerable sketches on scraps of brown paper, cartridge boards, anything—often full of talent, but always mad. Well, Jimmy humoured him and made his last weeks of liberty happy. Eventually he had to be removed to an asylum, and died raving mad. I used to help Whistler often in printing his etchings. It was very laborious work. He would manipulate a plate for hours with the ball of the thumb and the flat of the palm to get just the right superficial ink left on it, while I damped the paper, which came out of old folio volumes, the first and last sheets, with a fairly stiff brush. And often, for a whole morning's work, only one or two prints were achieved which satisfied his critical eye, and the rest would be destroyed. There was a Venetian one which gave him infinite trouble in the printing.
"He was the kindest of men, though he was handy with his cane. In any financial transaction he was scrupulously honourable, though he never had much money at his disposal.
"We had great fun over the many correspondences and the catalogues elaborated in those days in Tite Street.... He was demoniacal in controversy, and the spirit of elfin mischief was developed in him to the point of genius.... Pellegrini was much at Whistler's in those days, and in a way the influence of Whistler was fatal to him. His admiration was unbounded and he abandoned his art, in which, as Jimmy used to say, 'he had taught all the others what none of them had been able to learn,' and took to trying to paint portraits in Whistler's manner without any success.
"One of the few modern painters I have ever heard him praise was Albert Moore, and I am not sure that was not to some extent due to a personal liking for the man. It always struck me his literary judgments, if he ever happened to express any, were extraordinarily sound and brilliant in summing up the merits or demerits of a writer.
"He had an extraordinary power of putting a man in his place. I remember a breakfast which Waldo Story gave at Dieudonné's. Everyone there had painted a picture, or written a book, or in some way outraged the Philistine, with the exception of one young gentleman, whose raison d'être there was not so apparent as were the height of his collars and the glory of his attire. He nevertheless ventured to lay down the law on certain matters which seemed beyond his province, and even went so far as to combat some dictum of the master's, who, readjusting his eye-glass, looked pleasantly at him, and said, 'And whose son are you?'"
For two or three years Oscar Wilde was so much with Whistler that everyone who went to the studio found him there, just as everyone who went into society saw them together. Wilde had come up from Oxford not long before the Ruskin trial, with a reputation as a brilliant undergraduate, winner of the Newdigate prize, and he now posed as the apostle of "Beauty." Many a reputation is lost between Oxford and London, but his was strengthened. Oscar's witty sayings were repeated and his youth seemed to excuse his pose. Whistler impressed him. At Oxford Wilde had followed Ruskin, and broken stones on the road which was to lead the young to art; he had read with Pater, he had accepted the teaching of Morris and Burne-Jones, and their master Rossetti. But Ruskin was impossible to follow, Pater was a recluse, Rossetti's health was broken, the prehistoric Fabians, Morris and Burne-Jones, were the foci of a little group of their own. When Wilde came to London Whistler was the focus of the world. Whistler was sought out, Wilde tried to play up. In Tite Street blue and white was used, not as a symbol of faith, but every day; flowers bloomed, not as a pledge of "culture," but for their colour and form; beauty was accepted as no discovery, but as the aim of art since the first artist drew a line and saw that it was beautiful. Whistler knew all this. Wilde fumbled with it.
Whistler was flattered by Wilde. He was looked upon as the world's jester when Wilde fawned upon him. Other young men gathered about Whistler had name and reputation to make. But Wilde's name was in every man's mouth; he glittered with the glory of the work he was to do. He was the most promising poet of his generation and he was amusing. There was a charm in his personality. We remember when we met him on his lecture tour in America, and hardly knew whether the magnificence on the platform where, in velvet knickerbockers, he faced with calmness rows of college boys each bearing a lily, and stood with composure their collective emotion as he sipped a glass of water, was more wonderful than his gaiety when we talked with him afterwards. It has been said that he gave the best of himself in his talk. If Whistler liked always to have a companion, his pleasure was increased when he found someone as brilliant. Wilde spent hours in the studio, he came to Whistler's Sunday breakfasts, he assisted at Whistler's private views. Whistler went with him everywhere. There were few functions at which they were not present. At receptions the company divided into two groups, one round Whistler, the other round Wilde. It was the fashion to compare them. To the world that ran after them, that thought itself honoured, or notorious, by their presence, they seemed inseparable.
The trouble began when Whistler discovered how small was Wilde's knowledge of art; he could never endure anybody in the studio who did not understand. Whistler wrote of Wilde as a man "with no more sense of a picture than of the fit of a coat." The Gentle Art shows that Whistler was furious with Wilde's borrowing from him. That Wilde took his good where he found it is neither more nor less than what has always been done—what Whistler did. But the genius, from the good thus taken, evolves something of his own. Wilde was content to shine personally and let the great things expected of him wait. When it was a question of wit, there was no one to whom Wilde could go except Whistler. It is all expressed in the old story: "I wish I had said that, Whistler." "You will, Oscar, you will." In matters of art Wilde had everything to learn from Whistler, who, though ever generous, resented Wilde's preaching in the provinces the truths which he had taught for years. This is all in The Gentle Art. "Oscar" had "the courage of the opinions ... of others!" and again: "Oscar went forth as my St. John, but, forgetting that humility should be his chief characteristic and unable to withstand the unaccustomed respect with which his utterances were received, he not only trifled with my shoe, but bolted with the latchet!"
Mr. Cole, in 1884, noted in his diary that Whistler "was strong on Oscar Wilde's notions of art which he derived from him (Jimmy)." Mr. Herbert Vivian tells the story of a dinner given by Whistler after Wilde had been lecturing:
"'Now, Oscar, tell us what you said to them,' Whistler kept insisting, and Wilde had to repeat all the phrases, while Whistler rose and made solemn bows, with his hand across his breast, in mock acceptance of his guests' applause.... The cruel part of the plagiarism lay in the fact that, when Whistler published his Ten O'Clock, many people thought it had all been taken from Wilde's lecture."
Whistler grew more and more exasperated by the use Wilde made of him. Their intimacy was closest in the early eighties when Whistler was bewildering the world deliberately; Wilde copied him clumsily. The world, that did not know them, mistook one for the other and thought Whistler as much an æsthete as Wilde. When Patience was produced, and when it was revived a few years ago, Bunthorne, who was Wilde, appeared with Whistler's black curls and white lock, moustache, tuft, eye-glass, and laughed with Whistler's "Ha ha!" Whistler, seeing Wilde in a Polish cap and "green overcoat befrogged and wonderfully befurred," desired him to "restore those things to Nathan's, and never again let me find you masquerading the streets of my Chelsea in the combined costumes of Kossuth and Mr. Mantalini!" To be in danger of losing his pose before the world was bad enough, but to be mistaken for another man who rendered him ridiculous was worse. No one has summed up the position better than the Times in a notice of Wilde's Collected Works:
"With a mind not a jot less keen than Whistler's, he had none of the conviction, the high faith, for which Whistler found it worth while to defy the crowd. Wilde had poses to attract the crowd. And the difference was this, that while Whistler was a prophet who liked to play Pierrot, Wilde grew into a Pierrot who liked to play the prophet."
If Whistler ever played Pierrot, it was with a purpose. Where art was concerned he was serious. Wilde was serious about nothing. His two topics were "self and art," and his interest in both was part of his bid for notoriety. He might jest about himself, but flippancy, if art was his subject, was to Whistler a crime. The only way he showed his resentment was by refusing to take Wilde seriously about anything. Even when Wilde was married, he was not allowed to forget, for Whistler telegraphed to the church, "Fear I may not be able to reach you in time for the ceremony. Don't wait." Later, in Paris, he called Wilde "Oscar, bourgeois malgré lui," a witticism none could appreciate better than the Parisians. As soon as he began to make a jest of Wilde he ended the companionship to which, while it lasted, London society owed much gaiety.
The relation between Whistler and artists now coming to the studio was less that of friends than of Master and Followers, as they called themselves. He was forty-six when he returned from Venice, and there were few men of the new generation who shared none of the doubts of his contemporaries, but believed in him. The devotion of this group became infatuation. They were ready to do anything for him. Families became estranged and engagements were broken off because of him. They fought his battles; ran his errands, spied out the land for him; published his letters, and read them to everybody. They formed a court about him. They exaggerated everything, even their devotion, and became caricatures of him, as excessive in imitation as in devotion. He denied the right of any, save the artist, to speak authoritatively of art; they started a club to train the classes—Princes, Prime Ministers, Patrons, Ambassadors, Members of Parliament—to blind faith in Master and Followers. Whistler mixed masses of colours on the palette, keeping them under water in saucers. The Followers mixed theirs in vegetable dishes and kept them in milk-cans, labelled Floor, Face, Hair, Lips. He had a table-palette; they adopted it, but added hooks to hang their cans of paint on. He used his paint very liquid—the "sauce" of the Nocturnes; they used such quantities of medium that as much went on the floor as on the canvas, and, before a picture was blocked in, they were wading in liquid masterpieces. Many of his brushes were large; they worked with whitewash brushes. They copied his personal peculiarities. One evening at a dinner when he wore a white waistcoat and all the buttons, because of the laundress, came out, a Follower, seeing it buttonless, hurried from the room, and returned with his bulging, sure that he was in the movement.
Whistler accepted their devotion, and, finding them willing to squander their time, monopolised it. There was plenty for everybody to do in the studio. If they complained that he took advantage of them, he proved to them that the fault was theirs. Mr. Menpes writes:
"We seldom asked Whistler questions about his work.... If we had, he would have been sure to say, 'Pshaw! You must be occupied with the Master, not with yourselves. There is plenty to be done.' If there was not, Whistler would always make a task for you—a picture to be taken into Dowdeswells', or a copper plate to have a ground put on."
No one respected the work of others more than Whistler. But if others did not respect it themselves and made him a present of their time he did not refuse. If he allowed the Followers to accompany him in his little journeys, it was because they were so eager. When he went with Walter Sickert and Mortimer Menpes to St. Ives, in the winter of 1883-84, they were up at six o'clock because it pleased him; they dared not eat till he rang the bell. They prepared his panels, mixed his colours, cleaned his brushes, taking a day off for fishing if Whistler chose, abjuring sentiment if he objected. Whistler saw the humour in their attitude and was the more exacting. The Followers were not allowed their own opinions. Once, when Walter Sickert ventured to praise Leighton's Harvest Moon at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition, Whistler, hearing of it, telegraphed: "The Harvest Moon rises over Hampstead [where Sickert lived], and the cocks of Chelsea crow." The Followers, however, knew that if they were of use to Whistler, he was of infinitely more use to them, and that submission to his rule and exposure to his wit were a small price to pay. Mr. Sickert tells another story. He and Whistler were once printing etchings together, when the former dropped a copper plate. "How like you!" said Whistler. Five minutes afterwards the improbable happened. Whistler, who was never clumsy, dropped one himself. There was a pause. "How unlike me!" was his remark.
Mr. Menpes, who, in Whistler as I Knew Him, makes more of the follies than the privileges of the Followers, cannot ignore their debt. They worked for him not only in the studio, but in the street, hunting with him for little shops, corners and models, painting at his side, walking home with him after dinner or supper at the club, learning from him to observe and memorise the night. To them he was full of kindliness, when to the world he often seemed insolent and audacious, and after his death—even before—some denied him. Later Whistler said that the Followers were there in the studio; yes, but they never painted there; they were kept well in the background.
American artists, in London or passing through, began to make their way to the studio. Otto Bacher records in 1883 Whistler's friendliness, the pictures in the studio, their dinners together. In 1885 Mr. John W. Alexander came, commissioned by the Century to make a drawing of him for a series of portraits. Whistler posed for a little while, though unwillingly, and criticised the drawing so severely that Mr. Alexander tore it up. After that, he says, Whistler posed like a lamb. Mr. Harper Pennington has written for us his reminiscences of those years:
"... Whistler was more than kind to me. Through him came everything. He introduced me right and left, and called me 'pupil'; took me about to picture shows and pointed out the good and bad. I remember my astonishment the first occasion of his giving unstinted praise to modern work, on which he seldom lavished positives. It was at the Royal Academy before one of those interiors of Orchardson's. Well, he stood in front of the canvas, his hat almost on his nose, his 'tuft' sticking straight out as it did when he would catch his nether lip between his teeth, and, presently, a long forefinger went out and circled round a bit of yellow drapery, 'It would have been nice to have painted that,' he said, as if he thought aloud.
"Another day we rushed to the National Gallery—'just to get the taste out of our mouths,' he said—after a couple of hours' wandering in the Royal Academy wilderness of Hardy Annual Horrors. Whistler went at once to almost smell the Canalettos, while I went across the Gallery, attracted by the Marriage à la Mode. It was my first sight of them. Up to that day I had supposed that what I was told and had read of Hogarth was the truth—the silly rubbish about his being only a caricaturist, so that when confronted with those marvels of technical quality, I fairly gasped for breath, and then hurried over to where Whistler had his nose against the largest Canaletto, seized his arm, and said hurriedly, 'Come over here.' 'What's the matter?' said he, turning round. 'Why! Hogarth! He was a great painter!' 'Sh—sh!' said he (pretending he was afraid that someone would overhear us). 'Sh—sh! Yes, I know it, ... but don't you tell 'em!' Later, Hogarth was thoroughly discussed and his qualities pointed out with that incisive manner which one had to be familiar with to understand.
"Whistler was reasonable enough and preferred a joke to a battle any day. Often he came to me in the King's Road, breathing vengeance against this or that person, but when he went away it was invariably with a fin sourire and one of his little notes. His clairvoyance in the matter of two notes to Leighton was made manifest at my writing-table. The P.R.A. wrote a lame explanation to Whistler's first query as to why he had not been invited to the Academy soirée, as President of the R.S.B.A., ex-officio, or as Whistler. He came into my room one morning early—before I, sluggard, was awake!—and read to me an outline of a note he meant to write, and then wrote it with grace of diction and dainty composition, and the pretty balanced Butterfly for signature. When that was done, he turned to me (I was dressing then) and said: 'Now, Har-r-rpur-r-r.' (He liked to burr those r's in 'down-east' fashion.) 'Now, Har-r-rpur-r-r, I know Leighton, he will fumble this. He will answer so-and-so' (describing the answer Leighton actually sent), 'and then I've got him!' He chuckled, wrote another note—the retort to Leighton's unwritten answer to Whistler's not yet posted first note—which he read to me. That retort was sent almost verbatim, only one slight change made necessary by a turn of phrase in Leighton's weak apology! That was 'Amazing.' His anger soon burnt out—the jest would come—and the whole thing boiled itself down in the World, or a line to 'Labby.'"
