Whistler could always find plenty of adorers to sit at his feet and let him use them as a doormat. The Claimant in Lemon Yellow told me that he was hurrying home with him one evening in the rain, when the master spied something that pleased his æsthetic taste. It was a little lighted grocer’s window. He stopped like a pointer dog, ordered the Claimant to go home, a mile or more, and get his box. Then he started painting like mad in the dark, and for more than an hour the Claimant held his umbrella over him and handed him his materials. Truly, the man had an hypnotic power.
Whistler was all heart and all pocketbook to any poor unknown and, for all his arrogance, the servants loved him; but he could never resist a chance to rap Authority. He sent his “second-class thanks” for a second-class medal awarded him at the Salon. Considering the fact that this is the highest honor a foreigner gets, it seems, for once, that the little man lost his sense of humor. He couldn’t resist getting in his knock at the English, either. I remember a phrase in a letter written by him to a friend of mine.
“Yes, Sid, here I am again in Paris and gentle Peace seems at last to be inclined to take up her permanent abode in my little pavilion; but I shall drop back across the Channel, now and again, just to see that too great a sense of security may not come upon the people.” They reveled in it; he was master then, and the British love to be patronized by some one who has arrived.
I once rented a studio that Whistler had used, and the decorator, who had a shop below, told me that he had changed the color of the wall to agree with every new picture he painted. On one side of the room was a large space filled with palette scrapings. When I think of Abbott Thayer, I know I must have missed a good business deal by not cutting them off to sell to his admirers in the U. S. A. Mr. Thayer was giving an outdoor lesson to a number of girls and, wishing to sit down, and also having on a new pair of trousers, he went over to a near-by barn and got a shingle. When he left he heard a sound like a football rush. The girls were fighting for the shingle!
There is a letter of Whistler’s, written in the ’sixties, to Fantin Latour, which I am going to quote, trusting there may be some young artist, in however remote a land, who, reading it for the first time, will say:
“I will profit; I will learn my trade.”
Dear Fantin—I have far too many things to tell you for me to write them all this morning, for I am in an impossible press of work. It is the pain of giving birth. You know what that is. I have several pictures in my head and they issue with difficulty. For I must tell you that I am grown exacting and “difficile”—very different from what I was when I threw everything pell-mell on canvas, knowing that instinct and fine color would carry me through. Ah, my dear Fantin, what an education I have given myself! Or, rather, what a fearful want of education I am conscious of! With the fine gifts I naturally possess, what a painter I should now be, if, vain and satisfied with these powers, I hadn’t disregarded everything else! You see I came at an unfortunate moment. Courbet and his influence were odious. The regret, the rage, even the hatred I feel for all that now, would perhaps astonish you, but here is the explanation. It isn’t poor Courbet that I loathe, nor even his works; I recognize, as I always did, their qualities. Nor do I lament the influence of his painting on mine. There isn’t any one will be found in my canvases. That can’t be otherwise, for I am too individual and have always been rich in qualities which he hadn’t and which were enough for me. But this is why all that was so bad for me.
That damned realism made such a direct appeal to my vanity as a painter, and, flouting all traditions, I shouted, with the assurance of ignorance, “Vive la Nature!” “Nature,” my boy—that cry was a piece of bad luck for me. My friend, our little society was as refractory as you like. Oh, why wasn’t I a pupil of Ingres?—How safely he would have led us!
Drawing! by Jove! Color—color is vice. Certainly it can be and has the right to be one of the finest virtues. Grasped with a strong hand, controlled by her master drawing, color is a splendid bride, with a husband worthy of her—her lover, but her master, too, the most magnificent mistress in the world, and the result is to be seen in all the lovely things produced from their union. But coupled with indecision, with a weak, timid, vicious drawing, easily satisfied, color becomes a jade making game of her mate, and abusing him just as she pleases, taking the thing lightly so long as she has a good time, treating her unfortunate companion like a duffer who bores her—which is just what he does. And look at the result! a chaos of intoxication, of trickery, regret, unfinished things. Well, enough of this. It explains the immense amount of work that I am now doing. I have been teaching myself thus for a year or more and I am sure that I shall make up the wasted time. But—what labor and pain!
One advantage in not having money in Europe is that it forces one to live with the natives and not mingle with transplanted America, vulgar with luxury, that exists in every large capital. We had a good chance to learn the French nature, bear with its eccentricities, and appreciate its wonderful charm. They never miss a chance to make a witty remark. I remember a girl about twenty-five, but looking sixteen, with bobbed hair (unusual in those days), conspicuously short skirts, and woolen stockings, looking distinctly the poor gentlewoman, walking down the boulevard one day entirely alone. Under her arm was a violin case, looking exactly like a coffin. Each café has its character, and as she passed the Café de Madrid, with its gathering of literary people, a perfectly dressed Frenchman, lavender tie and all, at one of the outer tables rose, raised his hat and said: