Whistler accepted their devotion, and, finding them willing to squander their time, monopolised it. There was plenty for everybody to do in the studio. If they complained that he took advantage of them, he proved to them that the fault was theirs. Mr. Menpes writes:
"We seldom asked Whistler questions about his work.... If we had, he would have been sure to say, 'Pshaw! You must be occupied with the Master, not with yourselves. There is plenty to be done.' If there was not, Whistler would always make a task for you—a picture to be taken into Dowdeswells', or a copper plate to have a ground put on."
No one respected the work of others more than Whistler. But if others did not respect it themselves and made him a present of their time he did not refuse. If he allowed the Followers to accompany him in his little journeys, it was because they were so eager. When he went with Walter Sickert and Mortimer Menpes to St. Ives, in the winter of 1883-84, they were up at six o'clock because it pleased him; they dared not eat till he rang the bell. They prepared his panels, mixed his colours, cleaned his brushes, taking a day off for fishing if Whistler chose, abjuring sentiment if he objected. Whistler saw the humour in their attitude and was the more exacting. The Followers were not allowed their own opinions. Once, when Walter Sickert ventured to praise Leighton's Harvest Moon at the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition, Whistler, hearing of it, telegraphed: "The Harvest Moon rises over Hampstead [where Sickert lived], and the cocks of Chelsea crow." The Followers, however, knew that if they were of use to Whistler, he was of infinitely more use to them, and that submission to his rule and exposure to his wit were a small price to pay. Mr. Sickert tells another story. He and Whistler were once printing etchings together, when the former dropped a copper plate. "How like you!" said Whistler. Five minutes afterwards the improbable happened. Whistler, who was never clumsy, dropped one himself. There was a pause. "How unlike me!" was his remark.
Mr. Menpes, who, in Whistler as I Knew Him, makes more of the follies than the privileges of the Followers, cannot ignore their debt. They worked for him not only in the studio, but in the street, hunting with him for little shops, corners and models, painting at his side, walking home with him after dinner or supper at the club, learning from him to observe and memorise the night. To them he was full of kindliness, when to the world he often seemed insolent and audacious, and after his death—even before—some denied him. Later Whistler said that the Followers were there in the studio; yes, but they never painted there; they were kept well in the background.
American artists, in London or passing through, began to make their way to the studio. Otto Bacher records in 1883 Whistler's friendliness, the pictures in the studio, their dinners together. In 1885 Mr. John W. Alexander came, commissioned by the Century to make a drawing of him for a series of portraits. Whistler posed for a little while, though unwillingly, and criticised the drawing so severely that Mr. Alexander tore it up. After that, he says, Whistler posed like a lamb. Mr. Harper Pennington has written for us his reminiscences of those years:
"... Whistler was more than kind to me. Through him came everything. He introduced me right and left, and called me 'pupil'; took me about to picture shows and pointed out the good and bad. I remember my astonishment the first occasion of his giving unstinted praise to modern work, on which he seldom lavished positives. It was at the Royal Academy before one of those interiors of Orchardson's. Well, he stood in front of the canvas, his hat almost on his nose, his 'tuft' sticking straight out as it did when he would catch his nether lip between his teeth, and, presently, a long forefinger went out and circled round a bit of yellow drapery, 'It would have been nice to have painted that,' he said, as if he thought aloud.
"Another day we rushed to the National Gallery—'just to get the taste out of our mouths,' he said—after a couple of hours' wandering in the Royal Academy wilderness of Hardy Annual Horrors. Whistler went at once to almost smell the Canalettos, while I went across the Gallery, attracted by the Marriage à la Mode. It was my first sight of them. Up to that day I had supposed that what I was told and had read of Hogarth was the truth—the silly rubbish about his being only a caricaturist, so that when confronted with those marvels of technical quality, I fairly gasped for breath, and then hurried over to where Whistler had his nose against the largest Canaletto, seized his arm, and said hurriedly, 'Come over here.' 'What's the matter?' said he, turning round. 'Why! Hogarth! He was a great painter!' 'Sh—sh!' said he (pretending he was afraid that someone would overhear us). 'Sh—sh! Yes, I know it, ... but don't you tell 'em!' Later, Hogarth was thoroughly discussed and his qualities pointed out with that incisive manner which one had to be familiar with to understand.
"Whistler was reasonable enough and preferred a joke to a battle any day. Often he came to me in the King's Road, breathing vengeance against this or that person, but when he went away it was invariably with a fin sourire and one of his little notes. His clairvoyance in the matter of two notes to Leighton was made manifest at my writing-table. The P.R.A. wrote a lame explanation to Whistler's first query as to why he had not been invited to the Academy soirée, as President of the R.S.B.A., ex-officio, or as Whistler. He came into my room one morning early—before I, sluggard, was awake!—and read to me an outline of a note he meant to write, and then wrote it with grace of diction and dainty composition, and the pretty balanced Butterfly for signature. When that was done, he turned to me (I was dressing then) and said: 'Now, Har-r-rpur-r-r.' (He liked to burr those r's in 'down-east' fashion.) 'Now, Har-r-rpur-r-r, I know Leighton, he will fumble this. He will answer so-and-so' (describing the answer Leighton actually sent), 'and then I've got him!' He chuckled, wrote another note—the retort to Leighton's unwritten answer to Whistler's not yet posted first note—which he read to me. That retort was sent almost verbatim, only one slight change made necessary by a turn of phrase in Leighton's weak apology! That was 'Amazing.' His anger soon burnt out—the jest would come—and the whole thing boiled itself down in the World, or a line to 'Labby.'"