WATER-COLOUR LANDSCAPE
Loaned by Mrs. Mortimer Menpes
"It was agreed that Whistler and myself should go to France. Neither of us had any idea where we were going except to Havre. We arrived in the early morning, and after he got shaved and had coffee, we took the boat to Honfleur, which, as you know, has a tidal service. 'Do you know where we are going?' I said to him. 'No, I don't,' said he. 'Well,' said I, 'there is a white-whiskered, respectable-looking old gentleman; perhaps he knows the lay of the ground. Tip him a stave.'
"So Whistler asked him about the hotels in Honfleur. There were two—the Cheval Blanc on the quay, and the Ferme de St. Siméon on the outskirts. The Cheval was so dirty that I got the only cab, and, piling the luggage on it ourselves, drove off to the farm. Fortunately, there were two vacant rooms, and we stayed there a week. The cooking was excellent, and, of course, Madame knew who Monsieur Vistlaire was. Whistler used to kick up a row every night with me about the 'ridiculous British' to divert his mind, I imagine, and sometimes my retorts were so sharp that I said to myself, 'All is over between us now.' But he used to bob up serenely in the morning, as if nothing had happened, and after déjeuner he would take his small box of colours and paint in the large church. I used to stroll about the town and look in occasionally to see that he came to no harm. It was here that he said he was going over to Rome some day, and when I said, 'Don't forget to let me know, so that I may be on hand to see you wandering up the aisle in sackcloth and ashes, with a candle in each hand, or scrubbing the floor!' he said, in a tone of horrified astonishment, 'Good God! O'K., [11] is it possible? Why, I thought they would make me a hell of a swell of an abbot, or something like that.'
"It was amusing to see him manœuvre to get near the big kitchen fire, overcoat on. He was a true American in his liking for heat, and the way he would sidle into the kitchen, which opened on out-of-doors, all the time mildly flattering Madame, was very characteristic. We went to Trouville one day on the diligence, and had a capital déjeuner at the Café de Paris, before which Whistler said, 'We must do this en Prince, O'K.!' 'All right, your Highness, I'm with you!' Afterwards, on the beach, he went to sleep on a chair, leaning back against a bath-house, his straw hat tipped on his nose. It was funny, but sleep after luncheon was a necessity to him. Coming back to London, in the harbour of Southampton, after listening to the usual unwearying talk against the British, I said, 'Oh, be reasonable!' 'Why should I?' said he."
The Ferme de St. Siméon has been called the Cradle of Impressionism. It was here that Boudin lived and most of the Impressionists came, and round about they found their subjects.
Later on Whistler spent a few days at Calais in the Meurice, Sterne's Hotel, where he was miserable. Then he tried to find J. at Whitby, where they missed each other, and where he said the glitter of the windows made the town look like the Crystal Palace.
Whistler recovered slowly, and journeys helped him less than work in the studio, where, by degrees, he returned to the schemes so sadly interrupted. We remember his coming to us with Mr. Kennedy one Sunday afternoon, bringing up our three flights of stairs The Master Smith to show it to us once again before it went to America. Mr. Kennedy had captured it, fearful of a touch being added. It was placed on one chair, Whistler, on another facing it, wretched at the thought of parting with it. It was always a wrench to let a picture go.
After a while he did not mind meeting a few people. A man he liked to see was Timothy Cole. There was a great scheme that he should make a series of drawings on wood and Cole engrave them. Cole brought the blocks prepared for him to draw on. But that is the last we or Cole heard about it, though we saw the blocks frequently at Fitzroy Street. Mr. Cole says: