Chelsea—The Royal Academy—“Portrait of His Mother”—“Carlyle”—Grosvenor Gallery—The “Peacock Room”—Concerning Exhibitions.
After—possibly because—his “White Girl” was rejected at the Salon, he went to London and made his home at Chelsea, where he had as neighbors Carlyle, Rossetti, George Eliot, and others of note in art and literature.
Carlyle’s description of Chelsea as it was in 1834, when he and his wife moved there, is interesting,—for the place changed little before Whistler came. Writing to his wife concerning the house he had found, Carlyle said:
“The street runs down upon the river, which I suppose you might see by stretching out your head from the front window, at a distance of fifty yards on the left. We are called ‘Cheyne Row’ proper (pronounced Chainie Row), and are a ‘genteel neighborhood;’ two old ladies on one side, unknown character on the other, but with ‘pianos.’ The street is flag pathed, sunk storied, iron railed, all old-fashioned and tightly done up; looks out on a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is, beheaded) lime-trees, standing there like giants in tawtie wigs (for the new boughs are still young); beyond this a high brick wall; backwards a garden, the size of our back one at Comely Bank, with trees, etc., in bad culture; beyond this green hayfields and tree avenues, once a bishop’s pleasure-grounds, an unpicturesque yet rather cheerful outlook. The house itself is eminent, antique, wainscoted to the very ceiling, and has been all new painted and repaired; broadish stair with massive balustrade (in the old style), corniced and as thick as one’s thigh; floors thick as a rock, wood of them here and there worm-eaten, yet capable of cleanness, and still with thrice the strength of a modern floor. And then as to rooms, Goody! Three stories beside the sunk story, in every one of them three apartments, in depth something like forty feet in all—a front dining-room (marble chimney-piece, etc.), then a back dining-room or breakfast-room, a little narrower by reason of the kitchen stairs; then out of this, and narrower still (to allow a back window, you consider), a china-room or pantry, or I know not what, all shelved and fit to hold crockery for the whole street. Such is the ground area, which, of course, continues to the top, and furnishes every bedroom with a dressing-room or second bedroom; on the whole a most massive, roomy, sufficient old house, with places, for example, to hang, say, three dozen hats or cloaks on, and as many crevices and queer old presses and shelved closets (all tight and new painted in their way) as would gratify the most covetous Goody,—rent, thirty-five pounds! I confess I am strongly tempted. Chelsea is a singular heterogeneous kind of spot, very dirty and confused in some places, quite beautiful in others, abounding with antiquities and the traces of great men,—Sir Thomas More, Steele, Smollett, etc. Our row, which for the last three doors or so is a street, and none of the noblest, runs out upon a ‘Parade’ (perhaps they call it), running along the shore of the river, a broad highway with huge shady trees, boats lying moored, and a smell of shipping and tar. Battersea Bridge (of wood) a few yards off; the broad river, with white-trowsered, white-shirted Cockneys dashing by like arrows in thin, long canoes of boats; beyond, the green, beautiful knolls of Surrey, with their villages,—on the whole a most artificial, green-painted, yet lively, fresh, almost opera-looking business, such as you can fancy. Finally, Chelsea abounds more than any place in omnibi, and they take you to Coventry Street for sixpence. Revolve all this in thy fancy and judgment, my child, and see what thou canst make of it.”[19]
Between Whistler and Rossetti there sprang up a friendship that was singular, considering how diametrically opposite they were to one another in nearly everything. They had, however, this in common,—each was in search of a degree of the beautiful quite beyond the grasp of the ordinary mortal; but of the two, Whistler’s is incomparably the finer art, for it is the purer and more abstract, while Rossetti’s painting exhibited the literary bent very conspicuously,—it was inextricably involved with his poetry.
One day he showed Whistler a sketch which Whistler liked, and he urged Rossetti to go on with it; but Rossetti became so infatuated with his conception that instead of finishing the picture he wrote a sonnet on the subject and read it to Whistler, who said:
“Rossetti take out the picture and frame the sonnet.”
Life in Chelsea in those days had its drawbacks.
Whistler’s utter lack of commercial instinct, his dislike for the dealers, the habit he had of falling out with any one who discussed money matters with him, and that reluctance to part with pictures which was a conspicuous trait through life, often involved him in trouble financially.
In 1879 E. W. Godwin designed and built for him a house in Tite Street. It was of white brick, and known as the “White House,” and is described as having been very artistic in so far as it was settled and furnished, but for some time only two rooms were in order. “Everywhere you encountered great packing-cases full of pretty things, and saw preparations for papering and carpeting, but somehow or other nothing ever got any forwarder. What was done was perfect in its way. The white wainscoting, the rich draperies, the rare Oriental china, the pictures and their frames, the old silver, all had a charm and a history of their own.”[20]