CHAPTER XXVI: AMONG FRIENDS.
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-ONE TO EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SEVEN CONTINUED.
Whistler said he could not afford to keep a friend, but he was never without many. A photograph taken in his studio in 1881 shows him the centre of a group, of whom the others are Julian and Waldo Story, sons of W. W. Story; Frank Miles, a painter from whom great things were expected; and the Hon. Frederick Lawless, a sculptor. In the background is a little statuette everybody wanted to know the merit of, explained one day by Whistler, "Well, you know—why, you can take it up and—well, you can set it down!" Mr. Lawless writes us that Whistler modelled the little figure, though we never heard that he modelled anything, and Professor Lantéri says he never worked in the round. Mr. Pennington suggests that the statuette was by Mr. Waldo Story, but Mr. Lawless says:
"When Whistler lived in his London studio he often modelled graceful statuettes, and one day he put up one on a vase, asking me to photograph it. I said he must stand beside it. He said, 'But we must make a group and all be photographed,' and that I was to call out to his servant when to take the lid off the camera, and when to put it back. I then developed the negative in his studio."
Mr. Francis James, often at 13 Tite Street, has many memories, specially of one summer evening when Coquelin aîné and a large party came to supper and Whistler kept them until dawn and then took them to see the sun rise over the Thames, a play few had ever performed in.
For two or three years no one was more with Whistler than Sir Rennell Rodd. He writes us:
"It was in '82, '83 that I saw most of him. Frank Miles, Waldo and Julian Story, Walter Sickert, Harper Pennington, and, at one time, Oscar Wilde, were constantly there. Jimmy, unlike many artists, liked a camarade about the place while he was working, and talked and laughed and raced about all the time, putting in the touches delicately, after matured thought, with long brushes. There was a poor fellow who had been a designer for Minton—but his head had given way and he was already quite mad—used to be there day after day for months and draw innumerable sketches on scraps of brown paper, cartridge boards, anything—often full of talent, but always mad. Well, Jimmy humoured him and made his last weeks of liberty happy. Eventually he had to be removed to an asylum, and died raving mad. I used to help Whistler often in printing his etchings. It was very laborious work. He would manipulate a plate for hours with the ball of the thumb and the flat of the palm to get just the right superficial ink left on it, while I damped the paper, which came out of old folio volumes, the first and last sheets, with a fairly stiff brush. And often, for a whole morning's work, only one or two prints were achieved which satisfied his critical eye, and the rest would be destroyed. There was a Venetian one which gave him infinite trouble in the printing.
"He was the kindest of men, though he was handy with his cane. In any financial transaction he was scrupulously honourable, though he never had much money at his disposal.
"We had great fun over the many correspondences and the catalogues elaborated in those days in Tite Street.... He was demoniacal in controversy, and the spirit of elfin mischief was developed in him to the point of genius.... Pellegrini was much at Whistler's in those days, and in a way the influence of Whistler was fatal to him. His admiration was unbounded and he abandoned his art, in which, as Jimmy used to say, 'he had taught all the others what none of them had been able to learn,' and took to trying to paint portraits in Whistler's manner without any success.
"One of the few modern painters I have ever heard him praise was Albert Moore, and I am not sure that was not to some extent due to a personal liking for the man. It always struck me his literary judgments, if he ever happened to express any, were extraordinarily sound and brilliant in summing up the merits or demerits of a writer.
"He had an extraordinary power of putting a man in his place. I remember a breakfast which Waldo Story gave at Dieudonné's. Everyone there had painted a picture, or written a book, or in some way outraged the Philistine, with the exception of one young gentleman, whose raison d'être there was not so apparent as were the height of his collars and the glory of his attire. He nevertheless ventured to lay down the law on certain matters which seemed beyond his province, and even went so far as to combat some dictum of the master's, who, readjusting his eye-glass, looked pleasantly at him, and said, 'And whose son are you?'"