"Carmen, his model, was there, and while he showed us some of his work she got breakfast, and we stayed a good part of the day. Mrs. Whistler came up later. I think she breakfasted with us. I have no recollection of what he talked about. But I am sure it was of what they had been saying in London, of what they were saying in Paris, of what he was doing. That is what it always was. We were all asked to lunch the following Sunday at the house.
"The apartment, No. 110 Rue du Bac, was on the right-hand side, just before you reached the Bon Marché, going up the street, from the river. You went through a big porte cochère by the concierge's box, down a long, covered tunnel, then between high walls, until you came to a courtyard with several doors, a bit of an old frieze in one place and a drinking-fountain. Whistler's door was painted blue, with a brass knocker. I do not suppose that then there was another like it in Paris. Inside was a little landing with three or four steps down to the floor a few feet lower than the courtyard. This room contained nothing, or almost nothing, but some trunks (which, as in his other houses, gave the appearance of his having just moved in, or being just about to start on a journey) and a settee, always covered with a profusion of hats and coats. Opposite the entrance a big door opened into a spacious room, decorated in simple, flat tones of blue, with white doors and windows, furnished with a few Empire chairs and a couch, a grand piano, and a table which, like the blue matting-covered floor, was littered with newspapers. Once in a while there was a picture of his on the wall. For some time, the Venus hung or stood about. There were doors to the right and left, and on the far side, a glass door opened on a large garden, a real bit of country in Paris. It stretched away in dense undergrowth to several huge trees. Later, over the door, there was a trellis designed by Mrs. Whistler, and there were flowers everywhere. 'In his roses he buried his troubles,' Mr. Wuerpel writes of the garden, and there were many birds, among them, at one time, an awful mocking-bird, at another a white parrot which finally escaped, and, in a temper, climbed up a tree where no one could get it, and starved itself to death to Whistler's grief. At the bottom of the garden were seats. The dining-room was to the right of the drawing-room. It was equally simple in blue, only there was blue and white china in a cupboard and a big dining-table, round which were more Empire chairs and in the centre a large, low blue and white porcelain stand, on it big bowls of flowers, over it, hanging from the ceiling, a huge Japanese something like a birdcage.
"From Paris, in May, I went down to Caen and Coutances, coming back a few weeks later. Beardsley was still in Paris, or had returned, and we were both stopping at the Hôtel de Portugal et de l'Univers, then known to every art student. Wagner was being played at the Opera, almost for the first time. Paris was disturbed, there were demonstrations against Wagner, really against Germany. We went, Beardsley wild about Wagner and doing, I think, the drawing of The Wagnerites. He had come over to get backgrounds in the rose arbours and the dense alleys of the Luxembourg gardens, where Whistler had made his lithographs. Coming away from the Opera, we went across to the Café de la Paix at midnight. The first person we saw was Whistler. He was with some people, but they left soon, and we joined him. Beardsley also left almost at once, but not before Whistler had asked us to come the next Sunday afternoon to the Rue du Bac. Then, for the first time, I learned what he thought of 'æstheticism' and decadence.'
"'Why do you get mixed up with such things? Look at him! He's just like his drawings, he's all hairs and peacock's plumes—hairs on his head, hairs on his fingers' ends, hairs in his ears, hairs on his toes. And what shoes he wears—hairs growing out of them!'
"I said, 'Why did you ask him to the Rue du Bac?' 'Oh—well—well—well!' And then it was late, or early, and the last thing was, 'Well, you'll come and bring him too.'
"Years later, in Buckingham Street, Whistler met Beardsley, and got to like not only him, as everybody did, but his work. One night when Whistler was with us, Beardsley turned up, as always when he went to see anyone, with his portfolio of his latest work under his arm. This time it held the illustrations for The Rape of the Lock, which he had just made. Whistler, who always saw everything that was being done, had seen the Yellow Book, started in 1894, and he disliked it as much as he then disliked Beardsley, who was the art editor; he had also seen the illustrations to Salomé, disliking them too, probably because of Oscar Wilde; he knew many of the other drawings, one of which, whether intentionally or unintentionally, was more or less a reminiscence of Mrs. Whistler, and he no doubt knew that Beardsley had made a caricature of him which a Follower carefully left in a cab. When Beardsley opened the portfolio and began to show us The Rape of the Lock, Whistler looked at them first indifferently, then with interest, then with delight. And then he said slowly, 'Aubrey, I have made a very great mistake—you are a very great artist.' And the boy burst out crying. All Whistler could say, when he could say anything, was 'I mean it—I mean it—I mean it!'
"On the following Sunday Beardsley and I went to the Rue du Bac, Beardsley in a little straw hat like Whistler's. Whistler was in the garden and there were many Americans, and Arsène Alexandre and Mallarmé, some people from the British Embassy, and presently Mr. Jacomb Hood came, bringing an Honourable Amateur, who asked the Whistlers, Beardsley, and myself to dinner at one of the cafés in the Champs-Elysees. As we left the Rue du Bac, Whistler whispered to me, 'Those hairs—hairs everywhere!' I said to him, 'But you were very nice and, of course, you'll come to dinner.' And, of course, he did not.
"I was working in Paris, making drawings and etchings of Notre-Dame. I was in one of the high old houses of lodgings and studios, with cabmen's cafés and restaurants under them, on the Quai des Grands Augustins. I had gone there because of the view of the Cathedral. Most of the time I was at work up among the Devils of Notre-Dame, using one of the towers as a studio by permission of the Government and the Cardinal-Archbishop. One morning—it was in June—I heard the puffing and groaning of someone climbing slowly the endless winding staircase, and the next thing I saw was Whistler's head on the stairs. When he got his breath and I had got over my astonishment, I began to ask why he had come, or he began to explain the reason. He had learned where I was staying, and he said he had been to the hotel, which, was, well! I think it reminded him of his days au sixième, for that was the floor I was on. He left a note written on the buvette paper, in which he said, 'Jolly the place seems to be!' After he had climbed up to my rooms, the patron told him where he possibly would find me, and then the people at the foot of the tower said I was up above.
"He told me why he had come up. He was working on a series of etchings of Paris. Some were just begun, others ready to bite, but a number ought to be printed, and would I help him? I was pleased, and I said I would. I took him about among the strange creatures that haunt the place, introduced him to the old keeper with his grisly tales of suicides and of sticking to the tower through the Commune, even when the church was on fire, and showed him the awful bell that, at noon, suddenly crashed in our ears, the uncanny cat that perched on crockets and gargoyles, tried to catch sparrows with nothing below her, and made from one parapet to another flying cuts over space when visitors came up. But he did not like it, and was not happy until we were seated in the back room of a restaurant across the street. He talked about the printing, saying that I could help him, and he could teach me.