One day a man rushed into a hat store and, as Whistler was hatless, being fitted, bellowed, "I say, this hat don't fit." "Your coat don't, either," Whistler answered.
One or two evenings he risked the night air to come to us and his talk was as gay and brilliant—reminiscent, critical, "wicked," as the mood took him, and at times serious. We remember his earnestness when he recalled the séances and spiritual manifestations at Rossetti's, in which he believed. He could not understand the people who pretended to doubt the existence of another world and the hereafter. His faith was strong, though vague when there was question of analysing it. Probably he never tried to reduce it to dogma and doctrine, and, in that sense, he was "the amateur" he described himself in jest. If his inclination turned to any special creed it was to Catholicism. "The beauty of ritual is with the Catholics," he said. But his work left him no time to study these problems, and his belief perhaps was stimulated by the mystery in which it was lost. He would have been more amused and interested than anybody could he have foreseen the messages to be received from him by an artist, and the book to be written by him for an author, and the portrait to be made by him for a medium, after his death.
On other days London apparently was tiring him and he dozed off and on through his visits. He expended much energy in sending some old pieces of silver to the doctor at Marseilles and the Curator at Ajaccio, who had been kind to him. He was full of these little courtesies and never forgot kindness, just as he never failed to show it to those who appealed to him, whether it was to find a publisher for an unsuccessful illustrator, or a gallery for an unsuccessful painter, or even, as we know happened once, to support a morphomaniac for months.
A shorter visit to town was made solely to attend a meeting of the International Society because his presence was particularly desired. This was one of the occasions that proved the sincerity and activity of his devotion to the Society and its affairs. It is a satisfaction that this devotion was appreciated and that the loyalty of the Council was not shaken during his lifetime.
In March Whistler came back to Tite Street, but, as we have said, he asked no one while he stayed with "the Ladies," his name for his mother- and sisters-in-law. There was one almost clandestine meeting with Professor Sauter, Whistler's desire to hear about the Boers, to whom he "never referred, of course, in the presence of the Ladies," becoming too strong to be endured, and he could rely upon Sauter for sympathy and the latest news. It was an interval of mystery in the studio. No one was invited, few were admitted, nothing was heard of the work being done. Whistler liked to keep up an effect of mystery in his movements, but we have never known him to carry it so far as during the first month or so after his return from Bath. At last J. was summoned. Whistler would not let him come further than the ante-room, talking to him through the open door or the thin partition, but presently, probably forgetting, called him into the studio and went on painting, and he forgot the mystery. Whistler felt he had little strength and devoted that little to his work. But, even in ill-health, he could not live without people about him, and he soon fell back into his old ways. Miss Birnie Philip was now almost always in the studio with him. In April he showed us the portrait of Mr. Richard A. Canfield, whose acquaintance he made at this time, unfortunately, for he introduced Mr. Canfield to "the Ladies," and the introduction resulted in the loss of one of his friends. Miss Birnie Philip was sitting to him, he was working on the portrait of Miss Kinsella, the Venus, and the little heads, and he was adding to the series of pastels. He was bothered about the show of his prints and pastels which M. Bénédite wished to make at the Luxembourg, and he was anxious to hand over the details to J., who could not see to them as he was away constantly this year. Whistler looked forward to the show because of the official character it would have, though after recent purchases of pictures for the Luxembourg he said, "You know, really, I told Bénédite, if this goes on I am afraid I must take my 'Mummy' from his Hotel." He was worried also about a show at the Caxton Club in Chicago, where it was proposed to reproduce his etchings without his permission. But when the Club found he objected the matter dropped.
To avoid further wandering, for which he was no longer equal, he took a house in Chelsea, where he had lived almost thirty years: he had been absent hardly more than ten. Mrs. and Miss Birnie Philip went to live with him. The house, not many doors west of old Chelsea Church, was No. 74 Cheyne Walk, built by Mr. C. R. Ashbee, and it stood on the site of a fish-shop of which Whistler had made a lithograph. There was a spacious studio at the back in which, in his words, he returned to his "old scheme of grey." Its drawbacks were that it was on a lower level than the street, reached by a descent of two or three steps from the entrance hall, and that the rest of the house was sacrificed to it. Two flights of stairs led up to the drawing-room where, in glass cases running round the room, he placed his blue-and-white. The dining-room was on this floor, but another flight of stairs had to be climbed to get to the bedrooms in the garrets. Almost all the windows opening upon the river were placed so high, and filled with such small panes, that little could be seen from them of the beauty of the Thames and its banks so dear to Whistler. The street door was of beaten copper and the house was full of decorative touches, which, he said, "make me wonder what I am doing here anyhow—the whole, you know, a successful example of the disastrous effect of art upon the British middle classes." Into this house he moved in April.
He reserved his energy for his work and went out scarcely at all. He did not dare risk the dinner given in May by London artists to Rodin, who, however, breakfasted with him a day or two after. We mention a detail that shows how sensitive Whistler was on certain subjects. M. Lantéri and Mr. Tweed came with Rodin, and this is Whistler's account to us later on the same day:
"It was all very charming. Rodin distinguished in every way—the breakfast very elegant—but—well, you know, you will understand. Before they came, naturally, I put my work out of sight, canvases up against the wall with their backs turned. And you know, never once, not even after breakfast, did Rodin ask to see anything, not that I wanted to show anything to Rodin, I needn't tell you—but in a man so distinguished it seemed a want of—well, of what West Point would have demanded under the circumstances."
No doubt Rodin thought, from the careful manner in which work was put out of sight, that he was not expected to refer to it. His opinion of Whistler we know, for he wrote it to us:
"Whistler était un peintre dont le dessin avait beaucoup de profondeurs, et celles-ci furent préparées par de bonnes études, car il a dû étudier assidument.