Passing through the door, one went down several steps into the small hall, and through that into the reception-room.
This room was a revelation of the personality of the artist,—simple, dignified, harmonious; it was restful and charming to the last degree. The details were so unobtrusive that it is difficult to recall particular features. The floor was covered with a coarse, dark-blue matting; the panelled walls were in pure white and blue, while the ceiling was in a light shade of blue. The room stood firmly on its feet, unlike so many in even the best of houses, which have floors so light and walls so dark that everything is topsy-turvy.
Color seeks and finds its level; light floors, with darker walls and ceilings, reverse the natural order of things, and compel people to live on their heads.
The few pieces of furniture were of an old pattern, graceful almost to fragility, and covered with some light stuff which harmonized with the tone of the walls.
There were but two pictures in the room, one at each end, both sketches by Whistler, “harmonies” or “arrangements” in color rather than compositions. The “key” being blue, the pictures blended with the walls, as all pictures should, as if part of the original scheme of decoration.
When a visitor, who was fascinated by the color of these two studies, asked the painter if he would part with them, he said:
“God bless me, no! I am going to do something big some day from those. Pretty, eh?”
His studio was filled with just such “notes” and “jottings” of schemes in color and composition, and from each it was his intention to work out something more important and complete; but such was the fertility of his imagination that no man could hope to carry even a fraction to finished conclusions.
Near the fireplace, at one end of the room, was a little old-fashioned table covered with writing-materials,—paper of the smallest size, a dainty ink-stand, and several quill pens. This was the table of controversy, the battlefield of disputation, the veritable mount of irony, while the ink-well was the fountain of exquisite sarcasm, and the quill pens the scalpels which laid bare the vital recesses of unlucky opponents.
It was the habit of the painter, in his idle moments, to sit at this little table, with a small cup of coffee and a cigarette, and write those barbed and pointed notes which, like so many banderillas, irritated to frenzy the bulls they were aimed at.