"What, Chase, you can think of dinner and time when we are doing such beautiful things? Stay where you are, and they will be glad to see me whenever I come."
Everybody who has been with him in the studio knows how difficult it was for him to stop when he was absorbed in his work. Mr. Pennington says: "Whistler's habit of painting long after the hour when anybody could distinguish gradations of light and colour was the cause of much unnecessary repainting and many disappointments, for after leaving a canvas that seemed exquisite in the dusk of the falling night, he would return to it in the glare of the next morning and find unexpected effects that had been concealed by the twilight. Whistler never learned to hold his hand when daylight waned. The fascination of seeming to have caught the values led him far into the deceiving shades of night with often disastrous results."
Whistler's portrait of Chase has vanished with many another. Chase painted Whistler also in frock-coat, without a hat, holding the long cane, against a yellow wall, and his portrait remains. Chase intended stopping a short time in London as he passed on to Madrid. But he found Whistler so delightful that his visit to Spain was put off. He has told many incidents of these months spent with Whistler in a lecture delivered in the United States, and in an article in the Century. A lecturer, no doubt, must adapt himself to his audience, and Chase has dwelt principally on Whistler, the man—Whistler, the dandy; Whistler, the fantastic, designing, for the tour in America, a white hansom with yellow reins and a white and yellow livery for the nigger driver; Whistler, the traveller. They went together to Belgium and Holland. They stopped at Antwerp and saw the International Exhibition. Whistler said to us once that he could never be ill-natured, only wicked, and this was one of the occasions when he was wicked. In the gallery he refused to look at any pictures except those that told stories, asking Chase if the mouse would really scare the cat or the baby swallow the mustard-pot. The first interest he showed was in the work of Alfred Stevens. Before it he stood long; at last, with his little finger pointing to a passage in the small canvas, "H'm, Colonel! you know one would not mind having painted that!" Chase grew nervous as they approached the wall devoted to Bastien-Lepage, whom he admired, and he decided to leave Whistler. But Whistler would not hear of it. "I'll say only one word, Chase," he promised. Then they came to the Bastiens, "H'm, h'm, Colonel, the one word—School!" On the journey from Antwerp to Amsterdam two Germans were in the train: "Well, you know, Colonel, if the Almighty ever made a mistake it was when he created the German!" Whistler said at the end of a few minutes. Chase told him that if he could speak German he might understand their interesting talk. Whistler answered in fluent German and talked nothing else, until, at Haarlem, Chase could endure it no longer and left. Whistler leaned out of the window as the train started, "Think it over, Chase, and to-morrow morning you will come on to Amsterdam, and you'll tell me that I'm right about the Germans!"
One incident not told in print by Chase is that while in London he was the owner of the Mother. An American had given him money to buy pictures, and when he found that the Mother was to be had from Mr. Graves for one hundred pounds he bought it, but first was referred to Whistler by Mr. Graves. Whistler, delighted to learn that he could control the pictures deposited with the Pall Mall firm, agreed to everything, but the agreement, was settled the day before starting for Antwerp, and when Chase got the money from his bankers and hurried to the Graves Gallery it was closed, and he gave the cheque to Whistler. The picture was his, but only during the time of Whistler's absence from London, for on his return Whistler could not bear to part with it and promptly sent the cheque back to Chase—or it may be that the trip with Chase helped him to change his mind.
All this is characteristic, but it would be interesting to hear less of his play and more of his work from Chase, who gives only a glimpse of Whistler the artist, and then in lighter moods. He tells of one occasion when an American wanted to buy some etchings, and they were to lunch with him in the City to arrange the matter. Taking a hansom, late of course, they passed a grocer's where Whistler stopped the driver: "Well, Chase, what do you think? If I get him to move the box of oranges? What?" And then, still later, they drove on. Another time, Chase expressed surprise at Whistler's refusing to deliver a picture to the lady who had bought it. But Whistler explained:
"You know, Chase, the people don't really want anything beautiful. They fill a room by chance with beautiful things, and some little trumpery something over the mantelpiece gives the whole damned show away. And if they pay a hundred pounds or so for a picture, they think it belongs to them. Well—why—it should only be theirs for a while; hung on their walls that they may rejoice in it and then returned." Once, it is said, a lady drove up to the studio and told him: "I have bought one of your pictures, it is beautiful, but as it is always at exhibitions I never see it. But I'm told you have it." "Dear lady," said Whistler, "you have been misinformed, it is not here." And she drove away. Later he found it: "H'm, she was right about one thing, it is beautiful. But because she's paid hundreds of pounds for it, she thinks she ought to have it all the time. She's lucky if she gets it now and then."
It must be admitted that it is not easy from any standpoint to write of Whistler during the years that followed his return from Venice. The decade between 1880 and 1890 is the fullest of his full life. It was during these ten years that he opened his "one man" shows amidst jeers, and closed them with success. It was during these ten years that he conquered society, though society never realised it. It was during these ten years that, to make himself known, he became in the streets of London the observed of all observers, developing extraordinary costumes, attracting to himself the attention he wanted to attract. It was during these ten years that he began to wrap himself in mystery, as Degas said of him, and then go off and get photographed, when, as Degas also said, he acted as if he had no genius: but mystery and pose were part of the armour he put on to protect himself from, and draw to himself, a foolish public. It was during these ten years that he invented the Followers—and got rid of them; that he flitted from house to house, from studio to studio, and through England, France, Belgium, and Holland, until it is impossible to keep pace with him; that he captured the Press, though it is still unconscious of its capture; that he concentrated the interest of England, of the whole world upon him, with one object in view—that is, to make England, the whole world, look at his work. For, as he said, if he had not made people look at it they never would have done so. They never understood it, they hated it. They do not understand it to-day, and they hate it the more because he has succeeded and they have failed in their endeavours to ignore or ruin him. Even now that it is too late, they are crawling from their graves and spitting at him, flinging mud at his memory.
In these crowded years two events stand out with special prominence, his Ten O'Clock and his invasion of the British Artists. One states definitely his views on art; the other shows as definitely the position he had attained among artists.