Whirling and facing the audience, he spoke:
“Gentlemen and ladies, for many years I have said that this man was a bad painter. I was mistaken. He was a genius!”
Whistler was a well-known figure at all Salons, but I first met him in London, where I visited him with a letter of introduction from my aunt Fanny, who had trotted him on her knee when he was a baby. He was charming, said there was something he had to do, and, if I could wait for him, the day was mine. He handed me a portfolio of drawings to look at while he was gone, saying:
“Some things I picked up in Italy.”
When he came back I told him, with the arrogance of youth, that I hadn’t cared at all for some of the etchings and wondered why he had bought them. He was very curious to know which ones I meant, but never told me, what I found out later, that they were all his own! The well-known Venetian etchings!
We lunched at the Hogarth Club and back to his studio to look at his work—me to drink in fountains of knowledge and he to be much amused at my untrained conversation. The studio was large, dignified, and very bare. I remember multitudes of little galley pots in which to mix colors. His painting table had a glass top, and I made a mental decision to have one like it. Whistler always had his own canvas made for him and was extremely careful about all his materials.
His accent was very English and he was full of mannerisms, constantly fooling with his eyeglass or the lace at his throat. He asked about Paris, and I told him of the first show of the Impressionists, held on the Boulevard des Capucines; of Monet, Sisley, etc. The pictures had looked crazy to the people of the day. Whistler said:
“Oh, I know those fellows; they are a bunch of Johnnies who have seen my earlier work.”
Considering that his earlier work looks pre-Raphaelite or stuffy German, this was a curious remark.
A large manservant in full livery brought out the pictures to show us. He wore white gloves and was careful not to touch the surface of the canvas. I remember the portrait of Sarasate; it was very large and the servant acted as an easel, holding it on his toes, with his two hands at the sides. Our conversation became quite interesting at the moment, and his master left him standing in that position for more than half an hour while we talked of other things. I thought this very inconsiderate, as we had never treated servants that way. It was this same portrait of Sarasate that I later saw finished in the Salon. Whistler had kicked up a great row, because it had occupied only the central position of the left-hand room instead of the right, which was more popular. He spoke to me about it, and I told him that he should not care, as the poor fiddler looked as if he were trying to commit suicide in the Metropolitan subway. He tried to get angry and wanted to know why. The figure was all black, with the signature (a gold butterfly) looking like the headlight of an engine, about to dash it into oblivion.