“‘Of course, I refuse. You know me too well to doubt that. Do they think they can use me after so long trampling on me? Do they think I don’t see what they want? Do they think I need them? At last they perceive that they need me, but in the day of their extremity they shall ask in vain.’
“I am quoting from memory, but I give the substance accurately. He inclosed his answer to the Academy, long since a public document, with permission to cable it if I liked to America. I telegraphed Whistler begging him to send no answer till my letter should reach him. He wired: ‘I do not understand, but I will wait till to-morrow.’ I wrote to him in the best ink, as Merimee said, at my command. I tried to point out that the Academy had offered him the amende honorable; that their invitation was an acknowledgment of their error, and was meant as an atonement; that if he sought to humiliate his enemies, no humiliation could be so complete as their public surrender, of which the proof would be the hanging of his works on their walls, and much else which I thought obvious and conclusive. And I begged him to remember that I had always thought him right, and always said the world would come round to him, and that now, as ever before, whether right or wrong, mine was the counsel of a friend. The answer came by wire early next morning: ‘Alas, my dear S., that you too should have gone over to the enemy!’ I believe if I had but besought him to consider that his acceptance would have been a service to art, and if he could himself have thought that it would be, he would have accepted. I never saw Whistler again, never heard from him; a friendship of twenty years came there and then to an end—on his side.”
In 1897 a circular was mailed to him, addressed, “The Academy, England.” At the post-office they added “Burlington House,” where it was declined. Finally the circular reached him, bearing the endorsement, “Not known at the R. A.” He gave it to the press, saying, “In these days of doubtful frequentation, it is my rare good fortune to be able to send you an unsolicited, official, and final certificate of character.”
The fact was, mail addressed simply “Whistler, England,” would reach him.
The Grosvenor Gallery, opened in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay, offered an opportunity to many a man who either would not or could not exhibit at the Academy.
It was here that some of Whistler’s best things were shown,—the portraits of Irving as Philip II.; Miss Rosa Corder; Miss Gilchrist, the actress; the Carlyle; Miss Alexander; and Lady Archibald Campbell, commonly known as “The Lady with the Yellow Buskin,” and many of his famous nocturnes.
Whistler had a very peculiar laugh,—demoniacal his enemies called it,—and it is said that while his portrait was being painted, Irving caught this laugh and used it with effect in the part of Mephistopheles,—but then, who knows?
The story of the painting and the naming of “The Yellow Buskin” is worth repeating.
Lady Archibald Campbell was an exceedingly handsome woman, and Whistler expressed the desire to paint her portrait. She graciously consented, and the sittings began.
In those days Whistler was looked upon in London as little less than a mountebank in art, and one day, putting it as nicely as she could, she said: