"Everything was most wonderful. We were the two artists together—recognising each other at a glance! 'If I sit to any one, it will be to you, Mr. Whistler,' were Disraeli's last words as he left me at the gate. And then he sat to Millais!"

This scheme falling through, Graves commissioned Josey to engrave the Mother, and afterwards the Rosa Corder, painted as a commission from Howell. Whistler told us he offered the portrait as a present to Howell, who declined and insisted on paying a hundred guineas for it, the amount entered in Howell's diary as paid to Whistler on September 9, 1878. It was sold to R. A. Canfield in 1903 for two thousand pounds, and now belongs to Mr. Henry C. Frick. Though these mezzotints were successful when published, collectors thought as little of them as they did at the time of those of a century earlier, and for years proofs signed by both artist and engraver could be picked up for less than the published price.

After the two pictures had been engraved by Josey, Howell deposited in the same way three of the Nocturnes with Graves: The Falling Rocket, The Fire Wheel, Old Battersea Bridge—Blue and Gold, and also The Fur Jacket. These pictures were not engraved. Whistler had not a minute to spare from legal troubles and impatient creditors. "Poor J. turned up depressed—very hard up, and fearful of getting old," Mr. Cole wrote in his diary for October 16, 1878. Whistler had reason for depression. It was now that Howell's diary records his purchase of the Irving for ten pounds and a sealskin coat. There is nothing more tragic in the story of Rembrandt's bankruptcy.

Footnotes

[ [7] Mrs. Leyland told us of this engagement. We know nothing more about it.

CHAPTER XIX: THE TRIAL.
THE YEAR EIGHTEEN SEVENTY-EIGHT.

The action Whistler v. Ruskin, was heard on November 25-26, 1878.

John Ruskin, leader of taste, critic of art, prophet, and propounder of the gospel of "the Beautiful," led not only a devout following, but that enormous public which believes blindly in Britons. Whistler knew that either he or Ruskin must settle the question whether an artist may paint what he wants in his own way, though this may not be understood by the patron, the critic, the Academy, or the real British judge, the man in the street; whether the artist should rule or be ruled. The case was, Whistler said, "between the Brush and the Pen." His motives were ignored, the proceedings made a jest, and the verdict treated as a farce. Few could, or do, realise that he was in earnest, that the trial was a defence of his principles, and the verdict a justification of his belief.

At the time Whistler was to the British public a charlatan, a mountebank. Ruskin was to the People a preacher, the professor of art. Whistler denied the right of Ruskin, master of English literature, populariser of pictures, to declare himself infallible, as he did, his head turned by his success in defence of the Pre-Raphaelites and booming of Turner. As to his discoveries, Turner was a full R.A. and Carpaccio had been accepted for centuries before he "discovered" them. Ruskin did but popularise Carpaccio, and buy and sell Turner. So good a friend of Ruskin's as W. M. Rossetti said that he was "substantially wrong in the Whistler matter," that his mind broke down at times, and that his mental troubles began in 1860. His conceit and his vanity can be explained in no other way. Unfortunately he lived in the only country where his arrogant pretensions would then have been countenanced, though, owing to the present acceptance of England and everything English, he has become something of a fetish abroad, now that he is exposed and discredited at home. He was rich, he was a University man, he contributed long letters to the Times. He was a typical new British patron of the arts, for to him the financial side of connoisseurship was of the greatest importance—"two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint." Moreover, he was a master of English; therefore he could commit any absurdity. As Whistler said, political economists considered him a great art critic, and artists looked upon him as a great political economist. Sometimes we have wondered if there was not another reason for Ruskin's venom. He never appreciated the great artists of the world, save certain Italians recognised long before. His estimate of Velasquez and Rembrandt, and his comparison between Turner and Constable, prove how little his now unheeded sermons were ever worth. While he failed to comprehend Charles Keene, he went into ecstasies over Kate Greenaway. He loved Stacy Marks and hated Snyders. Whistler, knowing this, may have laughed. Mr. Collingwood wrote that, long before the trial, Whistler "had made overtures to the great critic through Mr. Swinburne, the poet; but he had not been taken seriously." It is certain Ruskin was not taken seriously by the great artist. Swinburne suggested a meeting in a letter of August 11, 1865, to which we have referred (published in the Library Edition of the Works of John Ruskin), but in such words that we gather there must have been some sort of misunderstanding already between Whistler and Ruskin. Swinburne wanted to take Ruskin to the studio and represented Whistler as desirous of meeting him. It is likely that Whistler, knowing Ruskin's power in the Press, was willing to be written about by him, and also that Ruskin cherished whatever reason for dislike he had for Whistler.