There were sounds occasionally from beyond the closed door. Although noncommittal, they were encouraging; they at least indicated human presence and the probability, in an uncertain future, of food. At nine forty-five I had reached the end of the proofs, the press clippings, and almost of patience, when Jimmie came tripping in with pantomimic action which meant abasement and a plea for mercy. Then said he:
"I fear the Lord hath made me forgetful of time. But there 's atonement toward. Have you read 'em? Oh, Sheridan, Sheridan Ford, thou naughty one, prepare for doom! Madame, I pray you do the honours."
And Mrs. Whistler, who had appeared behind him, enchanted me by saying, "Dinner is served."
It was ten o'clock! The Whistlerian hour.
I do not know what they had been doing. Had they been unpacking china and linen and chairs, while the maid foraged the neighbouring shops? Had an unpremeditated feast produced itself by Jimmie's conjuring? Had Jimmie cooked the dinner while Mrs. Whistler arranged the table with its dainty ware, and silver, and soft linen, and shaded lights? Or had they reversed the parts? I shall never know. But there was the daintiest, most delicious dinner, most charmingly served, and there were two or three kindly wines, a coffee that the master himself had prepared, and a soothing liqueur from his beloved Paris. It was a dinner that more than reconciled one to perishing on a packing case. And through it all Whistler summed up his philosophy of life and art, as previously and subsequently he had set it forth elsewhere. We sat till long after midnight in high session, debating selections from press clippings which had been showered upon him by his "excellent Romeike." "Shall I put in this, or omit that? Here 's something too good to lose!" And so, with what he called "infinite jerriment", another portion of "The Gentle Art" began to take shape. In its further progress I had no hand, as I was off to America in a day or two, and Jimmie needed no aid in goading his solicitors to the pursuit of Sheridan Ford who had, Whistler said, infringed his literary rights. The pursuit of Sheridan was an epic which aroused more than nine days' wonder; it led from London to Antwerp, from Antwerp to Paris, from Paris to New York and back to London again. The "Extraordinary Piratical Plot" was defeated, the "piratical edition" was suppressed, and, in the early summer of 1890, there appeared, published by the graceful, sympathetic, and cordial aid of Mr. William Heinemann The Gentle Art of Making Enemies as Pleasingly Exemplified in Many Instances, Wherein the Serious Ones of this Earth, Carefully Exasperated, Have Been Prettily Spurred On to Unseemliness and Indiscretion, While Overcome by an Undue Sense of Right. The dedication was no less characteristic:
"To the rare Few, who, early in Life, have rid Themselves of the Friendship of the Many, these pathetic Papers are inscribed."
Upon my return from America I found the Whistlers established at Number 21 Cheyne Walk a few steps from my own door. It was not Whistler's good fortune to live long in any house, at any rate in those years. He had two years, or something less, at Tower House, and something less, I think, at Cheyne Walk, and, in April or May, 1892, he removed to Paris. After that I saw him but seldom, for my wanderings upon the face of the planet were to increase and multiply. But during the '88-'92 period he was often in my home. It was his peculiarity and privilege not to come when he was asked, or expected, but invariably to arrive as a sudden gift from the gods, and for the most part he chose the Sunday-evening "Smoke Talks" rather than the suppers, because at the latter he would be more likely to encounter some of "the Serious Ones of this Earth", already "carefully exasperated", in which case he would be bored, while at the former he would be sure to meet the choicest talkers at a late hour. He would drop in at eleven, or at midnight, and stay till two in the morning with half a dozen congenial beings who would not only relish his wit, but sparkle with their own, and who were capable of appreciating him as an artist without requiring explanatory charts and diagrams.
One such evening we had been talking of Carlyle, who had lived around the corner in Cheyne Row. Whistler told some pleasant anecdote of him.
"There!" exclaimed Theodore Wores, a disciple of Whistler's, "I always thought Carlyle was not so black as he 's painted."
Whistler sprang to his feet, and falling back in mock horror, cried, as he stared at Wores, "Et tu, Brute?"