And there are stories of Whistler's ways of meeting the hordes who tried to force themselves into the studio. Mr. Eddy tells one:
"An acquaintance had brought, without invitation, a friend, 'a distinguished and clever woman,' to the studio in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. They reached the door, both out of breath from their long climb. 'Ah, my dear Whistler,' drawled C——, 'I have taken the liberty of bringing Lady D—— to see you. I knew you would be delighted.' 'Delighted, I'm sure! Quite beyond expression, but'—mysteriously, and holding the door so as to bar their entrance—'my dear Lady D——, I would never forgive our friend for bringing you up six flights of stairs on so hot a day to visit a studio at one of these—eh—pagan moments when'—and he glanced furtively behind him, and still further closed the door—'it is absolutely impossible for a lady to be received. Upon my soul, I should never forgive him.' And Whistler bowed them down from the top of the six flights and returned to the portrait of a very sedate old gentleman who had taken advantage of the interruption to break for a moment the rigour of his pose."
The "Company of the Butterfly" never relieved him of the visitors who were more eager to see him than his work. But this he did not discover until he had devoted to the venture far more time than he had to spare during the crowded years of its existence.
CHAPTER XLII: BETWEEN LONDON AND PARIS.
THE YEARS EIGHTEEN NINETY-SEVEN TO NINETEEN HUNDRED.
After his marriage Whistler was unfortunate in his choice of apartments and studios. The Studio in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, on the sixth floor, was the worst for a man with a weak heart to climb to; the apartment in the Rue du Bac, low and damp, was as bad for a man who caught cold easily. He was constantly ill during the winter of 1897-98, which he passed mostly in Paris. Influenza kept him in bed in November, from January to March he was dull and listless as never before, save in Venice after the scirocco; he said, "I am so tired—I who am never tired!"
Whistler's heart, always weak, began to trouble him. He had been ill before, but, nervous as he was about his health, he never realised his condition. We have known him, when too ill to work, get up out of bed in order to accomplish something important. A few years before, confined with quinsy to his brother's house, forced to write what he wished to say on a slate, when someone he did not want to see was announced, he forgot that he could not talk and yelled, "Send him away!" We have known, too, an invitation to dinner from a certain rich American to rout him out of bed and to cure him temporarily. It was this endeavour never to be ill, never to give in, that was one of the causes of his final breakdown. Illness suggested death, and no man ever shrank more from the thought or mention of death than Whistler. There was in life so much for him to do, so little time in which to do it. He would tell his brother it was useless for doctors to know so much if they had not discovered the elixir of life. "Why not try to find it?" he asked the Doctor. "Isn't it in the heart of the unknown? It must be there."
In the studio he worked harder than ever. Illness made him foresee that his time was short, and he was goaded by the thought of the things to finish. When he was in London we were distressed by his fatigue at the end of the day, but he said he was like the old cart-horse that could keep going as long as it was in traces, but must drop the minute it was free. While he was in Paris, his letters were full of the "amazing things" going on in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. He said: "Really, you know, I could almost laugh at the extraordinary progress I am making, and the lovely things I am inventing—work beyond anything I have ever done before."