After the trial Whistler went back to work. He sent The Little White Girl to the International Exhibition at Venice; he exhibited the second portrait of Mrs. Sickert at the Glasgow Institute; he chose six lithographs for the Centenary Exhibition in Paris. A head of Carmen, his model, was ready for the Portrait Painters in London. When in the late summer he returned to England, and, with Mrs. Whistler, settled at the Red Lion Hotel, Lyme Regis, he arranged a show of his lithographs in London. The Society of Illustrators, of which he was Vice-President, was preparing an anthology, The London Garland, edited by W. E. Henley, illustrated by members, and published by Messrs. Macmillan. J. asked him to contribute an illustration to a sonnet of Henley's. But he had to abandon this plan and allow a Nocturne to be reproduced. He made several lithographs at Lyme Regis: glowing forges, dark stables with horses an animal painter would envy, the smith, and the landlord. "Absolute failures, some," he told us sadly; "others, well, you know, not bad!" Two of the pictures painted at Lyme Regis are masterpieces: The Little Rose of Lyme Regis and The Master Smith. In these he solved the problem of carrying on his work as he wished until it was finished. There also he painted the only large landscape we know of: the white houses of the town, the hill-side with trees beyond.
While he was still in Dorset a prize was awarded him at Venice. Several prizes in money were given in different sections to artists of different nationalities. Whistler was awarded two thousand five hundred francs by the City of Murano, the seventh on the list. He knew the "enemies," foresaw the prattle there would be of the seventh-hand compliment, and forestalled it by explaining in the Press how the prizes had been awarded, his being equal to the first.
The exhibition of his lithographs was held at the Fine Art Society's in December 1895. Seventy were shown, mostly of the work of the last few years, and J. wrote an introduction to the catalogue, the only time he asked anybody to "introduce" him. There were no decorations in the gallery, nor was the catalogue in brown paper, save twenty-five copies, but the prints were in his frames. English artists became interested in lithography because they were asked to contribute to the Centenary Exhibition in Paris, and, at the call of Leighton, they tried their hands at it, more or less unsuccessfully. The contrast was great between their work shown at Mr. Dunthorne's gallery and Whistler's, whose prints alone are destined to live.
Whistler derived little pleasure from his triumph. The winter was spent moving from place to place. His plans were made to go to New York to consult an American specialist, forgetting as well as he could "the vast far-offness" of America. But he stayed in London, first at Garlant's Hotel, then in apartments in Half-Moon Street, later at the De Vere Gardens Hotel, and then at the Savoy. Work of one sort or another marked these moves: the lithograph of Kensington Gardens from the De Vere Hotel; at the Savoy most pathetic drawings of his wife, The Siesta and By the Balcony, and the Thames from the hotel windows. He had during the first months no studio in London. He worked for a while in Mr. Walter Sickert's; Mr. Sargent lent his early in 1896, when there was talk of a lithograph of Cecil Rhodes and a portrait of Mr. A. J. Pollitt, of whom he made a lithograph, though the painting, begun later in Fitzroy Street, was destroyed.
He interested himself in the experiments of others. In the winter of 1895 J. was asked by the Daily Chronicle to edit the illustration of a series of articles on London in support of the Progressive County Council. It was an event of importance to illustrators, process-men, and printers: the first effort in England for the artistic illustration of a daily paper. The Daily Graphic was illustrated, but its draughtsmen were trained to adapt their drawings to the printer. The scheme now was to oblige the printer to adapt himself to the illustrator. Every illustrator of note in London contributed. Burne-Jones' frontispiece to William Morris' News from Nowhere was enlarged and printed successfully. J. asked Whistler to let him try the experiment of enlarging one of the Thames etchings. Whistler was interested. Black Lion Wharf was selected and printed in the Daily Chronicle, February 22, 1895, the very day of the month, Washington's Birthday, when, ten years later, the London Memorial Exhibition opened. With its publication the success of the series was complete, not politically, for the twenty-four drawings were said to have lost the Progressives twenty-five seats. The etching stood the enlarging superbly. J. made the proprietors pay for the print, the first time Whistler was paid for the use of one of his works not made as an illustration.
Whistler came to us almost daily. Late one afternoon he brought his transfer-paper, and made a lithograph of J. as he sprawled comfortably, and uncomfortably had to keep the pose, in an easy-chair before the fire. Whistler made four portraits in succession of J. and one of E., each in an afternoon. He drew on as the light faded, and the portrait of E. was done while the firelight flickered on her face and on his paper. Then he told us he had taken a studio in Fitzroy Street to paint a large full-length of J. in a Russian cloak—The Russian Schube—which he thought the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts might like to have. But J. was called away, Mrs. Whistler grew rapidly worse, the scheme was dropped never to be taken up again.
On other afternoons he and J. would go to Way's, where the Savoy drawings were put on the stone. The lithotint of The Thames was done on a stone sent to the hotel. Drawings made in Paris, Lyme Regis, London were transferred and gone all over with chalk, stump, scraper. He worked in a little room adjoining Mr. Way's office, the walls of which were covered with pastels and water-colours by him and C. E. Holloway. There he drew the portraits of Mr. Thomas Way in the firelight, never stopping until dark, when Mr. Way would bring out some rare old liqueur, and there was a rest before he hurried back to the Savoy. His nights were spent sitting up by his wife. He slept a little in the morning and usually came to us in the afternoon, at times so exhausted that we feared more for him than for her.
The studio at No. 8 Fitzroy Street was a huge place at the back of the house, one flight up, reached by a ramshackle glass-roofed passage. The portrait of Mr. Pollitt was started and one of Mr. Robert Barr's daughter, which has disappeared. Mr. Cowan sat again, and another was begun of Mr. S. R. Crockett, who describes the sittings:
"I don't think he liked me at first. Someone had told him I was a Philistine of Askelon.... He told me lots about his early times in London and Paris, but all in fragments, just as the thing occurred to him. Like an idiot, I took no notes. Lots, too, about Carlyle and his sittings, as likely to interest a Scot. He had got on unexpectedly well with True Thomas, chiefly by letting him do the talking, and never opening his mouth, except when Carlyle wanted him to talk. Carlyle asked him about Paris, and was unexpectedly interested in the cafés, and so forth. Whistler told him the names of some—Riche, Anglais, Véfour, and Foyot and Lavenue on the south side. Carlyle seemed to be mentally taking notes. Then he suddenly raised his head and demanded, 'Can a man get a chop there?'
"Concerning my own sittings, he was very particular that I should always be in good form—'trampling' as he said—otherwise he would tell me to go away and play.... Mr. Fisher Unwin had arranged for a lithograph, but Whistler said he would make a picture like a postage stamp, and next year all the exhibitions would be busy as anthills with similar 'postage stamp' portraits. 'Some folk think life-size means six foot by three; I'll show them!' he said more than once. I wanted to shell out as he went on, and once, being flush (new book or something), I said I had fifty pounds which was annoying me, and I wished he would take it. He was very sweet about it, and said he understood. Money burnt a hole in his pocket, too, but he could not take any money, as he might never finish the work. Any day his brush might drop, and he could not do another stroke.