The funeral took place on Wednesday, July 22. The service was held in old Chelsea Church, to which he had so often walked with his mother from Lindsey Row. There was a comparatively small attendance. The members of his own family who came were his sister-in-law, Mrs. William Whistler, and his nieces, Mrs. Thynne and Mrs. Réveillon. The Society with which, in his last years, he had identified his interests was represented by the Council: Professor Sauter, Mr. Harry Wilson, Mr. Francis Howard, Mr. Ludovici, Mr. Stirling Lee, Mr. Neven du Mont, Mr. E. A. Walton, and J. Here and there were friends, Mr. Alan S. Cole, Mr. Heinemann, Mrs. Edwin A. Abbey, Dr. Chalmers Mitchell, Mr. W. C. Alexander, Mr. Clifford Addams, Mr. Jonathan Sturgis; and here and there Academicians, Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Sir Alfred East. But Whistler, who valued official recognition, was given none. No one from the American Embassy paid the last tribute of respect to the most distinguished American citizen who ever lived in London. No one from the French Embassy attended the funeral of the Officer of the Legion of Honour. No one from the German Embassy joined in the last rites of the member of two German Royal Academies and the Knight of the Order of St. Michael of Bavarit. Nor was anyone present from the Italian Embassy, though Whistler was Commander of the Crown of Italy and member of the Academy of St. Luke. The only body officially represented besides the International was the Royal Scottish Academy. The police came to restrain the crowd, but there was no crowd.
The coffin was carried the short distance from the house to the church along the shores of the river he made his own. It was covered with a purple pall, upon which lay a wreath of gold laurel leaves sent by his Society. The pall-bearers were M. Théodore Duret, Sir James Guthrie, Sir John Lavery, Edwin A. Abbey, George Vanderbilt, and Mr. Charles L. Freer. The little funeral procession that walked with the coffin from the house to the church included Miss Birnie Philip, Mrs. Charles Whibley, their sisters, brother, and nephews, Mr. William Webb, and Arthur Studd, but none of his own family, none of the group with whom he had been most intimate in his last years. After the burial service was read, the procession re-formed, and the family, the Council of the International, and a few friends went to the graveyard at Chiswick. It was a grey, stormy summer day, and as the clergyman said the last prayers, and the coffin was lowered, the thick London atmosphere wrapped the green enclosure in the magic and mystery that Whistler was the first to see and to reveal. The grave was made by the side of his wife under a wall covered with clematis. A tomb designed by his stepson, E. Godwin, now covers the little plot of ground where Whistler, the greatest artist and most striking personality of the nineteenth century, lies at rest in a remote corner of the London he loved, not far from the house, and nearer the grave, of Hogarth, who had been to him the greatest English master from the days of his boyhood in St. Petersburg.
THE END OF THE LIFE OF JAMES ABBOTT McNEILL WHISTLER.
HIS NAME AND HIS FAME WILL LIVE FOR EVER.
JOSEPH PENNELL. ELIZABETH ROBINS PENNELL
Printed at The Complete Press
APPENDIX
Page 291, line 29.—"When you ask me to say something about the illustrious and lamented Whistler, you do not, of course, want me to add my contribution to the rich pyramid of admiration and praise that has already been raised to his glory.
"What you must, of course, be thinking of, is anything special and picturesque that I may be able to add to your biography of the great artist.