Whistler’s lawyers must have been cleverer than those of the other side. The attorney-general probably proved, as his speech indicates, a clumsy defender in a case involving nice questions of art.
Be it said to the credit of Whistler’s sagacity, he always employed the best lawyers available. He once said, “Poor lawyers, like poor paintings, are dear at any price.”
While Whistler had practised the gentle art of making enemies from the beginning of his career, his suit against Ruskin was, so to speak, his first public appearance, and he threw his dart at a shining mark.
What his real feelings towards Ruskin were no man can say,—for towards the public and his critics he was one man, towards his art he was quite another.
To the world he seemed the incarnation of vanity and conceit; to the few whose privilege it was to see him at work he appeared, and was, the embodiment of sincerity and earnestness, of simplicity to the verge of diffidence.
It is impossible to conceive two personalities so different as Whistler at work and Whistler at play, and all his controversies were play to him, the amusement of his hours of relaxation.
He sued Ruskin, not because his status before art was in any wise affected, but because his status before the public was assailed; not because he cared the snap of his finger for any adverse opinion concerning his pictures, but because he felt that he had a certain position, pose one might say, to maintain, and because it amused him to sue one who was considered so infallible; and he, no doubt, felt reasonably sure he would be more than recompensed by the solemn testimony of opposing witnesses.
Whistler has been so often charged with being a poser that in the eyes of the world he really must have seemed so.
He was a poser in the sense already indicated,—namely, he was one man before the public and another at work. In this sense every man clever enough to forget himself at times is something of a poser, for only the stupid who can talk nothing but “shop,” wherever they are, are the same day in and day out.
Most men are able to leave their work behind and adopt a rôle more or less artificial in social intercourse. The brilliant few who make society possess this faculty in an eminent degree.