CHAPTER XLVII: THE END.
THE YEARS NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWO AND NINETEEN HUNDRED AND THREE.
Whistler came back to No. 74 Cheyne Walk, to the noise of building, to the bedroom at the top of the house—to the conditions against which the doctor's warning was emphatic. When E. saw him about the middle of September on her return—J. was still away—he had been again ill and was confined to his room. On her next visit, within a few days, he was in bed, but he had moved downstairs to a small room adjoining the studio, intended, no doubt, for a model's dressing-room. In one way it was an improvement, for there were no stairs and his studio was close at hand whenever he had strength for work, but the only window looked upon the street, and the clatter of children and traffic was added to the builders' knocking.
Except in this house, we never saw him after his return from The Hague. At times, in the winter and spring, he was able to go out in a carriage, but the three flights of stairs to our flat rose between him and us, an insurmountable barrier. Therefore there were seldom the old long intimate talks, for he was not often alone in the studio. Miss Birnie Philip was usually with him, sometimes sitting apart with her knitting, and only rarely drawn into the conversation. Mrs. Whibley was frequently there, and before "the Ladies" there were reservations, for with many things they were not to be "troubled." This involved a restraint in himself and a sensation of oppression in his visitors. Then there was a coming and going of models, visits from his doctors, his solicitor, his barber, and many other people who helped to distract him. His friends were devoted, encouraged by him and knowing he welcomed anyone from the world without; Mr. Luke Ionides, oldest of all, Mrs. Whistler, Mr. Walton, who lived next door, Professor Sauter, Sir John Lavery, Mr. and Mrs. Addams, his apprentices, Arthur Studd, his near neighbour, drifted in and out almost daily. He was bored when alone and unable to work, though he had of recent years developed an extraordinary passion for reading. But, as a matter of fact, he was hardly ever lonely, for he was surrounded as he liked in his studio, and yet he felt his condition and grew restless, so that his wish to rejoin Mr. Heinemann in "housekeeping" seemed natural.
Whistler had intervals when his energy returned, and he worked and hoped. We knew on seeing him when he was not so well, for his costume of invalid remained original. He clung to a fur-lined overcoat worn into shabbiness. In his younger years he had objected to a dressing-gown as an unmanly concession; apparently he had not outgrown the objection, and on his bad days this shabby worn-out overcoat was its substitute. Nor did the studio seem the most comfortable place for a man so ill as he was. It was bare, with little furniture, as his studios always were, and he had not used it enough to give it the air of a workshop. The whole house showed that illness was reigning there. The hall had a more unfinished, more unsettled look than the entrance at the Rue du Bac, and it was sometimes strewn with the trays and odds and ends of the sickroom. Papers and books lay on the floor of the drawing-room, in contrast to the blue-and-white in the cases. A litter of things at times covered the sideboard in the dining-room. Everywhere you felt the cheerlessness of a house which is not lived in. When we saw Whistler in his big, shabby overcoat shuffling about the huge studio, he struck us as so old, so feeble and fragile that we could imagine no sadder or more tragic figure. It was the more tragic because he had always been such a dandy, a word he would have been the first to use in reference to himself. We recall his horror once when he heard a story that represented him as untidy and slovenly. "I!" he said, "I, when if I had only an old rag to cover me I would wear it with such neatness and propriety and the utmost distinction!" But no one would have suspected the dandy in this forlorn little old man, wrapped in a worn overcoat, hardly able to walk. On his bad days there was not much walking about, and he lay stretched on an easy chair, talking little, barely listening, and dozing. His nights were often sleepless—he had lost the habit of sleep, he told us, and as the day went on he became so drowsy that it seemed as if nothing could rouse him from what was more like death than sleep. Sometimes, sitting by the table where tea was served, he would drop his forehead on the edge of the table, fall asleep, and remain motionless for an hour and more. A pretty little cat, brown and gold and white, that lived in the studio, was often curled up on his lap, sleeping too. His devotion to her was something to remember, and we have seen him get up, when probably he would not have stirred for any human being, just to empty the stale milk from her saucer and fill it up with fresh. A message was sent to E., one day, to announce the birth of her first kittens, that also made the studio their home and became a source of mild distraction to the invalid.
On his good days he liked to play dominoes after tea and he cheated with his accustomed tricks. He often kept J. for a game and sometimes for dinner with himself and Miss Birnie Philip in the studio, the climb to the dining-room out of the question. There were times when he would say he never could get back to work again, but others when he managed to work with not only the old vigour, but the old mastery. He had an Irish model, Miss Dorothy Seton, whose red hair was remarkably beautiful and whose face Whistler thought as remarkable, for it reminded him of Hogarth's Shrimp Girl. One afternoon J. found him painting her, her red hair hanging over her shoulders and an apple in her hand, the picture to which the title Daughter of Eve was eventually given. He was walking up and down the studio in delight, looking almost strong, and he seized J. by the arm in the old fashion and walked him up and down too. "Well, Joseph, how long do you think it took me to paint that, now?" and not for weeks had he shown such animation as when he added, "It was done in a couple of hours this very morning." So far as we know, it was the last important picture he painted, and it was, as J. then saw it, the finest thing of his latest period. He must have painted on it again, for at the Paris Memorial Exhibition the bloom of its beauty had faded. Now and then he worked on a portrait of Miss Birnie Philip, and he was anxious to continue the portrait, started a year or so before, of Mrs. Heinemann, which needed only a few more sittings, but, to the world's loss, these could not be arranged. He saw to cleaning the Rosa Corder, which Mr. Canfield, who was back in London and buying pictures, drawings, and prints in the studio, bought this winter for two thousand pounds from Mr. Graham Robertson. The story of this purchase was the only amusing thing we ever heard Mr. Canfield say: "Offered the young fellow a thousand pounds—wouldn't hear of it. Offered him two—jumped at it. Why, the darned fool, if he had held on he could have had five!" Whistler telegraphed for us to come and look at Rosa Corder for the last time in England, "to make your adieux to her before her departure for America." When E.—J. again away—arrived at the studio, he was better than since his return from The Hague. He had slept eight hours and a half the night before, and he rejoiced in not being sleepy. He wiped the canvas here and there tenderly with a silk handkerchief and kept turning round to ask triumphantly, "Isn't she beautiful?"
Mr. Canfield was sitting again for his portrait, and was always welcome, not merely as a sitter, but as a friend. He seemed to have hypnotised Whistler, whom we heard say that Canfield was the only man who had never made a mistake in the studio. We could not help regretting this because of Canfield's notorious reputation in New York, and the unpleasant things said of Whistler's tolerance of the man. Whistler had been warned, but had sacrificed a friendship of years in his indignation at "a breath of scandal" against anyone whom he had introduced to "the Ladies." In the early part of 1903 we received numerous letters and telegrams from correspondents of American papers in London re-echoing the question in the New York dailies, "Is Whistler painting gambler Canfield?" The fact that Canfield was much desired at home made the New York papers of the yellowest sort, like the British respectable ones, eager for details, and all sorts and conditions of male and female reporters haunted our stairs. They were a terrible nuisance, and we remember in particular the youth who came with the usual question, "Is Whistler painting the gambler?" and who, on J.'s reply that he had better go and ask the painter, said "But they tell me Whistler would either horsewhip me or kick me out of the house. What do you think?" J.'s answer was that he had better go and see. Whistler's condition rendered any remark which might excite him dangerous, and everybody hesitated to suggest that Canfield was a very public character to include in one's private circle. Canfield's visits did not cease, and the fact that reconciled us to his presence was that it resulted in one of Whistler's masterpieces. The portrait, His Reverence, ranked then with The Master Smith of Lyme Regis. But this was our estimate when we saw the picture in Whistler's studio. Later it was simply ruined, for he worked on it too.
Whistler often saw dealers who came for his prints. On two memorable afternoons Mr. David Kennedy brought the large MacGeorge Collection of Whistler's etchings, which he had purchased in Glasgow, for Whistler to look over, and, in some cases, we believe, to sign them. He went through as many as he could, commenting on their state and their preservation. There were some he had not seen for years, and Mr. Ionides, who was present on one of the afternoons, seemed to know more about them than Whistler. He soon tired, and was not to be revived by the bottle of American cocktails which Mr. Kennedy, to his complete approval, also brought. Several times we found him going through the accumulation of "charming things" from the studio in the Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs. Many he did not think so charming were, we understand, destroyed by him. So Miss Birnie Philip maintains, and Mr. Lavery told us that he was calling at Cheyne Walk one afternoon when Whistler said he had been burning things. We are unable to state if a reliable list was made of what was destroyed and what was kept. Some days Whistler read us parts of his earlier correspondence—the "wonderful letters" to the Fine Art Society during the Venetian period. And once, tired though he was, he insisted on reading to E. just once more his letter to a dealer, who had threatened him with a writ and whom he warned of the appearance he would make, "with one hand presenting a Sir Joshua to the nation, with the other serving a writ on Whistler. Well indeed is it that the right hand knows not always what the left hand doeth."
In November he sent the Little Cardinal, which had been at the Salon the previous summer, to the Portrait Painters' Exhibition. Several critics spoke of it as a work already seen, giving the impression, he thought, that it dated back many years. He wrote to the Standard to contradict this impression, Wedmore again having blundered. We called to see him on the afternoon the letter was written, and he was in great glee. He said:
"The letter is one of my best. I described Wedmore as Podsnap—an inspiration, isn't it? With the discovery of Podsnap in art criticism I almost feel the thump of Newton's apple on my head, and this I have said. Heinemann promises to take it himself to the editor of the Standard, and really the whole thing has such a flavour of intrigue that I do believe it has made me well again!"