WHISTLER AT HIS PRINTING PRESS IN THE STUDIO, RUE NOTRE-DAME-DES-CHAMPS
From a photograph by M. Dornac
These worries occupied his time and tried his temper. But he was overwhelmed late in 1894 by a trouble infinitely more tragic. His wife was taken ill with the terrible disease, cancer. They came to London to consult the doctors in December. First they stayed at Long's Hotel in Bond Street, Mrs. Whistler surrounded by her numerous sisters, the two Paris servants, Louise and Constant, in attendance; then Mrs. Whistler was under a doctor's care in Holles Street, and Whistler stopped with his brother in Wimpole Street. Those who loved him would like to forget his misery during the weeks and months that followed. Work was going on somehow; not painting, that waited in Paris, but lithography—several portraits of Lady Haden, a drawing in Wellington Street, and others. But he told Mr. Way afterwards that he wanted them all destroyed; he should not have worked when his heart was not in it: "It was madness on my part." He brought proofs to show us. Almost every afternoon he would take J. to Way's, where the lithographs were being transferred to the stone and printed. He would lunch or dine with us, keeping up his brave front, though we knew what was in his heart. He had not been in his "Palatial Residence" two years before it was closed, and the canvases were left untouched in the "Stupendous Studio." New honours and new successes came: in 1894 the Temple Gold Medal from the Pennsylvania Academy, in 1895 a Gold Medal from Antwerp, and innumerable commissions. It was just as fortune smiled that the blow fell.
The Eden trial, which struck many as an unnecessary and almost farcical episode in his life, distracted him during these tragic months. His work ceased for weeks at a time, and he devoted himself to the case. His journeys to Paris were frequent and his correspondence enormous. The case was fought out in the courts of France. It arose out of the uncertainty as to the price which Sir William Eden should pay for his wife's portrait. He was introduced to Whistler by Mr. George Moore, to whom Whistler had mentioned one hundred to one hundred and fifty pounds for a sketch in water-colour or pastel. Whistler became interested in his sitter and made a small full-length oil, for which he would have asked a far larger sum. His irritation can be understood when Sir William Eden attempted to make him accept as "a valentine"—for it was paid on February 14—one hundred pounds in a sealed envelope. Whistler felt that the amount should have been left to him to decide. He refused to give up the picture, he cashed the cheque, and he did not return the money until legal proceedings were taken by the Baronet. Before the case came into court he wiped out the head. Even his friends thought that Whistler made a grave mistake and prejudiced his case when he cashed the cheque, instead of throwing it after the Baronet, who, on his hasty retreat from the studio, Whistler said, protested and threatened all the way down the six flights, while he from the top urged the Baronet not to expose his nationality by so unseemly a noise in a public place.
Whistler went to Paris for the trial before the Civil Tribunal on March 6, 1895. His advocates were Maître Ratier, by whose side he sat in court, and Maître Beurdeley, a collector of his etchings. Sir William Eden failed to appear. Whistler was ordered to deliver the portrait as painted, a penalty to be imposed in case of delay; to refund twenty-five hundred francs, his lowest price; to pay in addition one thousand francs damages. The judge stated that he was in honour bound not to deface the portrait after he had completed it, and that an artist must carry out his contract.
To Whistler the judgment was unjust; he appealed in the Cour de Cassation, and the matter dragged on until after Mrs. Whistler's death. In England "An Artist" (J.) tried to raise a fund to pay the expenses of the trial, in order "to show in some practical form artists' appreciation for the genius of James McNeill Whistler." His appeal was responded to by only one other artist, Mr. Frederick MacMonnies, and was as unsuccessful as the subscription started after the Ruskin trial in 1878.
Mr. George Moore had been the go-between when the portrait was commissioned, Sir William Eden's ally in the legal business, and a conspicuous figure in the newspaper muddle. After the trial Whistler wrote Moore a scathing letter. Moore's answer was to taunt Whistler with old age. This was published in the Pall Mall Gazette and reprinted in French papers. Whistler was in France and he sent Moore a challenge. Whistler's seconds were M. Octave Mirbeau and M. Viélé-Griffin. Their challenge remained unanswered, but after several days Moore relieved his feelings to a reporter. London looked upon the challenge as Whistler's crowning joke. It was no joke to Moore, who was sufficiently conversant with French manners to know how his conduct would be received in Paris. Whistler's seconds sent a procès verbal to the Press, stating that they had waited eight days for an answer, and not having received one, they considered their mission terminated.
Thus before the world Whistler kept up the game, though in the Rue du Bac life was a tragedy. Mrs. Whistler had returned more ill than ever. Miss Ethel Philip was married from the house early in the summer to Mr. Charles Whibley, and her sister, Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, took her place.
After the trial Whistler went back to work. He sent The Little White Girl to the International Exhibition at Venice; he exhibited the second portrait of Mrs. Sickert at the Glasgow Institute; he chose six lithographs for the Centenary Exhibition in Paris. A head of Carmen, his model, was ready for the Portrait Painters in London. When in the late summer he returned to England, and, with Mrs. Whistler, settled at the Red Lion Hotel, Lyme Regis, he arranged a show of his lithographs in London. The Society of Illustrators, of which he was Vice-President, was preparing an anthology, The London Garland, edited by W. E. Henley, illustrated by members, and published by Messrs. Macmillan. J. asked him to contribute an illustration to a sonnet of Henley's. But he had to abandon this plan and allow a Nocturne to be reproduced. He made several lithographs at Lyme Regis: glowing forges, dark stables with horses an animal painter would envy, the smith, and the landlord. "Absolute failures, some," he told us sadly; "others, well, you know, not bad!" Two of the pictures painted at Lyme Regis are masterpieces: The Little Rose of Lyme Regis and The Master Smith. In these he solved the problem of carrying on his work as he wished until it was finished. There also he painted the only large landscape we know of: the white houses of the town, the hill-side with trees beyond.
While he was still in Dorset a prize was awarded him at Venice. Several prizes in money were given in different sections to artists of different nationalities. Whistler was awarded two thousand five hundred francs by the City of Murano, the seventh on the list. He knew the "enemies," foresaw the prattle there would be of the seventh-hand compliment, and forestalled it by explaining in the Press how the prizes had been awarded, his being equal to the first.
The exhibition of his lithographs was held at the Fine Art Society's in December 1895. Seventy were shown, mostly of the work of the last few years, and J. wrote an introduction to the catalogue, the only time he asked anybody to "introduce" him. There were no decorations in the gallery, nor was the catalogue in brown paper, save twenty-five copies, but the prints were in his frames. English artists became interested in lithography because they were asked to contribute to the Centenary Exhibition in Paris, and, at the call of Leighton, they tried their hands at it, more or less unsuccessfully. The contrast was great between their work shown at Mr. Dunthorne's gallery and Whistler's, whose prints alone are destined to live.
Whistler derived little pleasure from his triumph. The winter was spent moving from place to place. His plans were made to go to New York to consult an American specialist, forgetting as well as he could "the vast far-offness" of America. But he stayed in London, first at Garlant's Hotel, then in apartments in Half-Moon Street, later at the De Vere Gardens Hotel, and then at the Savoy. Work of one sort or another marked these moves: the lithograph of Kensington Gardens from the De Vere Hotel; at the Savoy most pathetic drawings of his wife, The Siesta and By the Balcony, and the Thames from the hotel windows. He had during the first months no studio in London. He worked for a while in Mr. Walter Sickert's; Mr. Sargent lent his early in 1896, when there was talk of a lithograph of Cecil Rhodes and a portrait of Mr. A. J. Pollitt, of whom he made a lithograph, though the painting, begun later in Fitzroy Street, was destroyed.
He interested himself in the experiments of others. In the winter of 1895 J. was asked by the Daily Chronicle to edit the illustration of a series of articles on London in support of the Progressive County Council. It was an event of importance to illustrators, process-men, and printers: the first effort in England for the artistic illustration of a daily paper. The Daily Graphic was illustrated, but its draughtsmen were trained to adapt their drawings to the printer. The scheme now was to oblige the printer to adapt himself to the illustrator. Every illustrator of note in London contributed. Burne-Jones' frontispiece to William Morris' News from Nowhere was enlarged and printed successfully. J. asked Whistler to let him try the experiment of enlarging one of the Thames etchings. Whistler was interested. Black Lion Wharf was selected and printed in the Daily Chronicle, February 22, 1895, the very day of the month, Washington's Birthday, when, ten years later, the London Memorial Exhibition opened. With its publication the success of the series was complete, not politically, for the twenty-four drawings were said to have lost the Progressives twenty-five seats. The etching stood the enlarging superbly. J. made the proprietors pay for the print, the first time Whistler was paid for the use of one of his works not made as an illustration.
Whistler came to us almost daily. Late one afternoon he brought his transfer-paper, and made a lithograph of J. as he sprawled comfortably, and uncomfortably had to keep the pose, in an easy-chair before the fire. Whistler made four portraits in succession of J. and one of E., each in an afternoon. He drew on as the light faded, and the portrait of E. was done while the firelight flickered on her face and on his paper. Then he told us he had taken a studio in Fitzroy Street to paint a large full-length of J. in a Russian cloak—The Russian Schube—which he thought the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts might like to have. But J. was called away, Mrs. Whistler grew rapidly worse, the scheme was dropped never to be taken up again.
On other afternoons he and J. would go to Way's, where the Savoy drawings were put on the stone. The lithotint of The Thames was done on a stone sent to the hotel. Drawings made in Paris, Lyme Regis, London were transferred and gone all over with chalk, stump, scraper. He worked in a little room adjoining Mr. Way's office, the walls of which were covered with pastels and water-colours by him and C. E. Holloway. There he drew the portraits of Mr. Thomas Way in the firelight, never stopping until dark, when Mr. Way would bring out some rare old liqueur, and there was a rest before he hurried back to the Savoy. His nights were spent sitting up by his wife. He slept a little in the morning and usually came to us in the afternoon, at times so exhausted that we feared more for him than for her.
The studio at No. 8 Fitzroy Street was a huge place at the back of the house, one flight up, reached by a ramshackle glass-roofed passage. The portrait of Mr. Pollitt was started and one of Mr. Robert Barr's daughter, which has disappeared. Mr. Cowan sat again, and another was begun of Mr. S. R. Crockett, who describes the sittings:
"I don't think he liked me at first. Someone had told him I was a Philistine of Askelon.... He told me lots about his early times in London and Paris, but all in fragments, just as the thing occurred to him. Like an idiot, I took no notes. Lots, too, about Carlyle and his sittings, as likely to interest a Scot. He had got on unexpectedly well with True Thomas, chiefly by letting him do the talking, and never opening his mouth, except when Carlyle wanted him to talk. Carlyle asked him about Paris, and was unexpectedly interested in the cafés, and so forth. Whistler told him the names of some—Riche, Anglais, Véfour, and Foyot and Lavenue on the south side. Carlyle seemed to be mentally taking notes. Then he suddenly raised his head and demanded, 'Can a man get a chop there?'
"Concerning my own sittings, he was very particular that I should always be in good form—'trampling' as he said—otherwise he would tell me to go away and play.... Mr. Fisher Unwin had arranged for a lithograph, but Whistler said he would make a picture like a postage stamp, and next year all the exhibitions would be busy as anthills with similar 'postage stamp' portraits. 'Some folk think life-size means six foot by three; I'll show them!' he said more than once. I wanted to shell out as he went on, and once, being flush (new book or something), I said I had fifty pounds which was annoying me, and I wished he would take it. He was very sweet about it, and said he understood. Money burnt a hole in his pocket, too, but he could not take any money, as he might never finish the work. Any day his brush might drop, and he could not do another stroke.
"It was a bad omen! His wife grew worse. He sent me word not to come. She died, and I never saw him after. I wish you could tell me what became of that picture. He called it The Grey Man."
This is another example of Whistler's repetition of titles. Mr. Cowan's portrait, painted the same year, was The Grey Man too. Of Mr. Crockett's, Whistler said to us that Crockett was delighted with it as far as it had gone, and he was rather pleased with it himself. He painted several of these small full-lengths, which were to show the fallacy of the life-size theory and of the belief that the importance of a portrait depends on the size of the canvas. Kennedy, after the portrait destroyed in Paris, stood for a second, now in the Metropolitan Museum; Mr. Arnold Hannay for another; C. E. Holloway for The Philosopher, which Whistler considered particularly successful.
In the spring Whistler moved his wife from the Savoy to St. Jude's Cottage, Hampstead Heath, rented from Canon and Mrs. Barnett. After this he began to give up hope. It was a sad day when for the first time he admitted, "We are very, very bad." And we understood that the end was near the afternoon when he, the most fastidious, appeared wearing one black and one brown shoe, and explaining that he had a corn. But, indeed, many times it seemed as if in his despair he did not know what he was doing. The last day Mr. Sydney Pawling met him walking, running across the Heath, looking at nothing, seeing no one. Mr. Pawling, alarmed, stopped him. "Don't speak! Don't speak! It is terrible!" he said, and was gone. That was the end.
Mrs Whistler died on May 10 and was buried at Chiswick on the 14th. We have heard that the funeral was arranged for the 13th, but Whistler, objecting to the date, postponed it a day, and Mrs. Whistler was buried on her birthday. He never would do anything on the 13th if he could help it.
We were abroad, but the first Sunday after E.'s return he came and asked her to go with him to the National Gallery. There he showed her the pictures "Trixie" loved, standing long before Tintoretto's Milky Way, her favourite. There was no talk about pictures—Canaletto was barely looked at—there was no talk about anything, and the tragedy that could not be forgotten was never referred to. But M. Paul Renouard was in the Gallery and came to Whistler with the word of comfort, from which he shrank. During the first few months after Mrs. Whistler's death, in the shock of his sorrow and loss, Whistler made her sister, Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, his ward, and drew up a new will appointing her his heiress and executrix; eventually cancelling his former bequests, and leaving everything to her absolutely.
CHAPTER XXXIX: ALONE.
THE YEAR EIGHTEEN NINETY-SIX.
Whistler stayed a short time at Hampstead with his sisters-in-law, and then went to Mr. Heinemann at Whitehall Court, where he remained, on and off, for two or three years, spending only the periods of Mr. Heinemann's absence at Garlant's Hotel or in Paris. He was with us day after day. Little notes came from the studio to ask if we would be in and alone in the evening, and, if so, he would dine with us. At first he would not join us if we expected anyone. He liked to sit and talk, he said, but he could not meet other people. He saw few outside the studio, except Mr. Heinemann, Mr. Kennedy, and ourselves. We went to the studio, and often he and J. sketched together in the streets.
For these sketching expeditions Whistler prepared beforehand the colours he wanted to use, and if the day turned out too grey or too radiant for his scheme nothing was done. The chosen colours were mixed, and little tubes, filled with them, were carried in his small paint-box, which held also the tiny palette with the pure colours arranged on it, his brushes, and two or three small panels. Many studies were made. The most important was of St. John's, Westminster. He loved the quiet corner, now destroyed, and he went there many times. He worked away, his top hat jammed down on his nose, sitting on a three-legged stool, his paint-box on his knee, the panel in it, beginning at once in colour on the panel, usually finishing the sketch in one afternoon, though he took two over the church. The painting was simply done, commencing with the point of interest, the masses put in bigly, the details worked into them. Just as in the studio, five minutes after he had begun he became so absorbed in his work that he forgot everything else until it grew too dark to see. When ladies would come and recognise him, he stopped, got up, and spoke to them, always charmingly.
He made little journeys during the summer, one to Rochester and Canterbury, with Mrs. Whibley and Miss Birnie Philip. But, disgusted with the inns and the food, he came back after a day or so. Another was with Mr. Kennedy, who writes us:
