Nothing interested Whistler more this year than the Universal Exhibition in Paris, and he and Mr. John M. Cauldwell, the American Commissioner, understood each other after a first encounter. Mr. Cauldwell, coming to Paris to arrange the exhibition, with little time at his disposal and a great deal to do, wrote to ask Whistler to call on a certain day "at 4.30 sharp." Whistler's answer was that, though appreciating the honour of the invitation, he regretted his inability to meet Mr. Cauldwell, as he never had been able and never should be able to be anywhere "at 4.30 sharp," and it looked as if the unfortunate experience of 1889 might be repeated. But when Whistler met Mr. Cauldwell, when he found how much deference was shown him, when he saw the decoration and arrangement of the American galleries, he was more than willing to be represented in the American section. He sent L'Andalouse, the portrait of Mrs. Whibley, Brown and Gold, the full-length of himself, and, at the Committee's request, The Little White Girl, never before seen in Paris. He brought together also a fine group of etchings, and when he learned that he was awarded a Grand Prix for painting and another for engraving, he was gratified and did not hesitate to show it. The years of waiting for the official compliment did not lessen his pleasure when it came. Rossetti retired from the battle at an early stage, but Whistler fought to the end and gloried in his victory. He was dining at Mr. Heinemann's when he received the news, and they drank his health and crowned him with flowers, and he enjoyed it as fully as the fêtes of his early Paris days. J. was awarded a gold medal for engraving, and we suggested that the occasion was one for general celebration, which was complete when Timothy Cole, another gold medallist, appeared unexpectedly as we were sitting down to dinner. Mr. Kennedy was one of the party, and Miss Birnie Philip came with Whistler, and the little dinner was the ceremony he knew how to make of reunions of the kind. He was pleased when he heard that his medals were voted unanimously and read out the first with applause. A story in connection with the awards, told over our table some months later by John Lambert returning from Paris, amused him vastly. Though it was agreed that the first medals should not be announced until all the others were awarded, the news leaked out and got into the papers. At the next meeting of the jury, Carolus-Duran, always gorgeous, was more resplendent than ever in a flowered waistcoat. He took the chair, and at once, with his eye on the American jurors, said that there had been indiscretion. Alexander Harrison was up like a shot: "A propos des indiscrétions, messieurs, regardez le gilet de Carolus!"
During this time Whistler was paying not only for his rooms at the Hôtel Chatham in Paris, but for one at Garlant's Hotel, in addition to the apartment in the Rue du Bac where Miss Birnie Philip and her mother lived the greater part of the year, for the studios in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs and Fitzroy Street, and lastly, for the "Company of the Butterfly" in Hinde Street. It was no light burden, though he had a light way of referring to his "collection of châteaux and pieds-à-terre." His pockets were as full as he had wanted them, but he could not get used to their not being empty. Once, afraid he could not meet one of his many bills for rent, he asked a friend to verify his bank account, with the result that six thousand pounds were found to be lying idle.
Whistler, as a "West Point man," followed the Boer War with the same interest he had shown in the Spanish War. It was a "beautiful war" on the part of the Boers, for whom he had unbounded admiration. From Paris, through the winter, he sent us, week by week, Caran d'Ache's cartoons in the Figaro. In London he cut from the papers despatches and leaders that reported the bravery of the Boers and the blunders of the British, and carried them with him wherever he went. His comments did not amuse the "Islanders," whom, however, he knew how to soothe after exasperating them almost beyond endurance. One evening J. walked back with him to Garlant's, and they were having their whisky-and-soda in the landlady's room while Whistler gave his version of the news of the day, which he thought particularly psychological. Then suddenly, when it seemed as if the landlady could not stand it an instant longer, he turned and said in his most charming manner, "Well, you know, you would have made a very good Boer yourself, madam." As he said it, it became the most amiable of compliments, and the evening was finished over a dish of choice peaches which she hoped would please him. Another evening, the Boers were on the point of kindling a fatal war between himself and a good friend, when a bang of his fist on the table brought down a picture from the wall of our dining-room, and in the crash of glass the Boers were forgotten. No one who met him during the years of the war can dissociate him from this talk, and not to refer to it would be to give a poor idea of him. If he had a sympathetic audience, he went over and over the incidents of the struggle; the wonder of the despatches; Lord Roberts' explanation that all would have gone well with the Suffolks on a certain occasion if they had not had a panic. Mrs. Kruger receiving the British Army while the Boers retired, supplied with all they wanted, though they went on capturing the British soldiers wholesale; General Buller's announcement that he had made the enemy respect his rear. When he was told of despatches stating that Buller, on one occasion, had retired without losing a man, or a flag, or a cannon, he added, "Yes, or a minute." He repeated the answer of a man at a lecture, who, when the lecturer declared that the cream of the British Army had gone to South Africa, called out, "Whipped cream." The blunderings and the surrenderings gave Whistler malicious joy, and he declared that as soon as the British soldier found he was no longer in a majority of ten to one, he threw up the sponge or dropped the gun. He recalled Bismarck's saying that South Africa would prove the grave of the British Empire, and also that the day would come when the blundering of the British Army would surprise the world, and he quoted "a sort of professional prophet" who predicted a July that would bring destruction to the British: "What has July 1900 in store for the Island?" he would ask.
There was no question of his interest in the Boers, but neither could there be that this interest was coloured by prejudice. He never forgot his "years of battle" in England, when, alone, he met the blunderings, mistakes, and misunderstandings of the army of artists, critics, and the public. In his old age, as in his youth, he loved London for its beauty. His friends were there, nowhere else was life so congenial, and not even Paris could keep him long from London. But it was his boast that he was an American citizen, that on his father's side he was Irish, a Highlander on his mother's, and that there was not a drop of Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins. He had no affection for the people who persisted in their abuse and ridicule until, confronted by the Goupil Exhibition of 1892, they were compelled—however grudgingly— to give him his due. This was one reason why he expressed the wish that none of his pictures should form part of an English national collection, or remain in England, and emphasised the fact that his sitters at the end were American or Scotch. He conquered, but the conquest did not make him accept the old enemies as new friends. In the position of the Boers he no doubt fancied a parallel with his own when, alone, they defied the English, who, on the battlefield as in the appreciation of art, blundered and misunderstood. Whistler's ingenuity in seeing only what he wanted to see and in making that conform to his theories was extraordinary. He could not be beaten because, for him, right on the other side did not exist. He came nearest to it one evening when discussing the war, not with an Englishman, but with an American and an officer into the bargain, whom he met in our rooms, and who said that there was always blundering at the opening of a campaign, as at Santiago, where two divisions of the United States Army were drawn up so that, if they had fired, they must have shot each other down. It was a shock, but Whistler rallied, offered no comment, and was careful afterwards to avoid such dangerous ground.
Prejudice coloured all his talk of the English, whose characteristics to him were as humorous as his were incomprehensible to them. It was astonishing to hear him seize upon a weak point, play with it, elaborate it fantastically, and then make it tell. The "enemies" suffered from his wit as he from their density. His artistic sense served him in satire as in everything else. One favourite subject was the much-vaunted English cleanliness. He evolved an elaborate theory:
"Paris is full of baths and always has been; you can see them, beautiful Louis XV. and Louis XVI. baths on the Seine; in London, until a few years ago, there were none except in Argyll Street, to which Britons came with a furtive air, afraid of being caught. And the French, having the habit of the bath, think and say nothing of it, while the British—well, they're so astonished now they have learned to bathe, they can't talk of anything but their tub."
The Bath Club he described as "the latest incarnation of the British discovery of water." His ingenious answer was ready when British virtue was extolled. He repeated to us a conversation at this time with Madame Sarah Grand. She said it was delightful to be back in England after five or six weeks in France, where she had not seen any men, except two, and they were Germans, whom she could have embraced in welcome. A Frenchman never would forget that women are women. She liked to meet men as comrades, without thought of sex. Whistler told her: "You are to be congratulated, madam—certainly, the Englishwoman succeeds, as no other could, in obliging men to forget her sex."
A few days after, he reported another "happy" answer. He was with three Englishmen and a German. One of the Englishmen said, "The trouble is, we English are too honest; we have always been stupidly honest." Whistler turned to the German: "You see, it is now historically acknowledged that whenever there has been honesty in this country, there has been stupidity."
His ingenuity increased with the consternation it caused, and the "Islander" figured more and more in his talk.
The excitement in China this summer interested him little less than affairs in South Africa. He was indignant, not with the Chinese for the alleged massacres at Pekin, but with Americans and Europeans for considering the massacres an outrage that called for redress. After all, the Chinese had their way of doing things, and it was better to lose whole armies of Europeans than to harm the smallest of beautiful things in that great wonderful country. He said to us one day: