The Life of James McNeill Whistler

by Elizabeth Robins Pennell; Joseph Pennell

"'Determined that no mendacious scamp shall tell the foolish truths about me when centuries have gone by, and anxiety no longer pulls at the pen of the "pupil" who would sell the soul of his master, I now proceed to take the wind out of such speculator by immediately furnishing myself the fiction of my own biography, which shall remain, and is the story of my life....

"'Curiously, too, I find no grief in noting the closing of more than one middle-aged eye that I had before now caught turned warily upon me with a view to future foolscap improved from slight intimacy....

"'How tiresome, indeed, are the Griswolds of this world, and how offensive. Pinning their unimportant names on the linen of the great as they return the intercepted wash, they go down to Posterity with their impudent bill, and Posterity accepts and remembers them as the unrequited benefactors of ungrateful genius!'"

This, according to Miss Birnie Philip, was written in 1896. Whistler added to the record, Mr. Heinemann says, while living with him at Whitehall Court. But Whistler soon found the task beyond him, and so, changing his mind on the subject, asked J. to write the story of his life and his work in 1900.

Almost immediately it was arranged that E. should collaborate and that we should do the book together. Whistler promised to help us in every way and, when in the mood, to tell us what he could about himself and his life, with the understanding that we were to take notes. He was not a man from whom dates and facts could be forced. His method was not unlike that of Dr. Johnson, who, when Boswell asked for biographical details, said, "They'll come out by degrees as we talk together." Whistler had to talk in his own fashion, or not at all; we were to listen, no matter where we met or under what conditions. It was also agreed that there were to be two volumes, one devoted to his life, the other to his work, and that photographs should be taken of the pictures in his studio to illustrate the volumes. Whistler's pictures were being carried off only too quickly, and whatever we needed for illustration, or as a record, would have to be photographed at once.

The duty of making the notes fell to E., and, from that time until his death, she kept an account of our meetings with him. He was true to his promise. We were often in the studio, and he spent evening after evening with us. Sometimes we dined with him at Garlant's Hotel or at the Café Royal, sometimes we met at Mr. Heinemann's, but usually he dined with us in Buckingham Street, coming so frequently that he said to us one June evening:

"Well, you know, you will feel about me as I did in the old days about the man I could never ask to dinner because he was always there! I couldn't ask him to sit down, because there he always was, already in his chair!"

Once he told E. to write to J., who was out of town, that he was living on our staircase. During those evenings he gave us many facts and much material used in previous chapters. He began by telling us of the years at home, his student days in Paris, his coming to Chelsea, and, though dates were not his strong point, we soon had a consecutive story of that early period. Every evening made us wish more than ever that he could have written instead of talking, for we soon discovered the difficulty of rendering his talk. He used to reproach J. with "talking shorthand," but no one was a greater master of the art than himself. And so much of its meaning was in the pause, the gesture, the punctuating hands, the laugh, the adjusting of the eye-glass, the quick look from the keen blue eyes flashing under the bushy eyebrows. The impression left with us from the close intercourse of this summer was of his wonderful vitality, his inexhaustible youth. As yet illness had not sapped his energy. He was sixty-six, but only the greyness of the ever-abundant hair, the wrinkles, the loose throat suggested age. He held himself as erect, he took the world as gaily, his interests were as fresh as if he were beginning life. Some saw a sign of feebleness in the nap after dinner, but this was a habit of long standing, and after ten minutes, or less, he was awake, revived for the talk that went on until midnight and later.

Whistler wished us to have the photographing in the studio begun without delay. Our first meeting, after the preliminaries were settled, was on June 2, 1900; on the 6th the photographer and his assistant were in Fitzroy Street with J. to superintend. It took long to select the things which should be done first, Mr. Gray, the photographer, picking out those which he thought would come best, Whistler preferring others that Gray feared might not come at all, though the idea was that, in the end, everything in the studio should be photographed. Whistler found himself shoved in a corner, barricaded behind two or three big cameras, and he could scarcely stir. He grew impatient, he insisted that he must work. As the light was not good for the photographer, some canvases were moved out in the hall, some were put on the roof, but the best place was discovered to be Mr. Wimbush's studio in the same building. Whistler went with J. through the little cabinets where pastels and prints were kept, and decided that a certain number must be worked on, but that the others could be photographed. Then they lunched together with Miss Birnie Philip, Gray photographing all the while, and then Whistler's patience was exhausted and everybody was turned out until the next day, when Gray came again. And the next day, and many next days, J. would go to Fitzroy Street and Whistler would say, "Now you must wait," and he would wait in the little ante-room with Marie, and Whistler would talk away through the open door until J. was brought into the studio to see the finishing-touches added to the day's work. This explains the beginning of our difficulties and the reason why our progress was not rapid.

We have spoken of the fever of work that had taken hold of Whistler. He dreaded to lose a second. He was rarely willing to leave the studio during the day or, if he did, it was to work somewhere else, as when he went to Sir Frank Short's and, as he told us the same evening, pulled nineteen prints before lunch, and all the joy in it came back, but he did not return in the afternoon, because, "well, you know, my consideration for others quite equals my own energy." For himself he had no consideration, and his work seldom stopped. We remember one late afternoon during the summer, when he had asked us to come to the studio, finding tea on the table and Whistler at his easel. "We must have tea at once or it will get cold," he said, and went on painting. Ten minutes later he said again, "We must have tea," and again went on painting. And the tea waited for a half-hour before he could lay down his brushes, and then it was to place the canvas in a frame and look at it for another ten minutes. When an invited interruption was to him a hindrance, he could not but find Mr. Gray, with his huge apparatus, a nuisance. A good many photographs, however, were made at Fitzroy Street, and Whistler helped to get permission for pictures to be photographed wherever the photographing did not interfere with his work. In England, America, and on the Continent many pictures which had not been reproduced, and to which access could be obtained, were photographed.