Some eminent Victorians: Personal recollections in the world of art and letters

by J. Comyns Carr

A common prejudice of that time, long dissipated now, but which found utterance then in the intemperate condemnation by Mr. Ruskin that afterwards formed the subject of the celebrated libel action, was to the effect that the results of Whistler’s painting, often so fragile and so slight in their final appearance upon the canvas, were due to a wilful neglect of the resources at his command. It was widely held among the public who loved him not, and even among brother artists who should have known better, that his painting revealed the lack of pains and labour. Nothing really could have been more unjust or more untrue. I have often sat in his studio while he was at work, and found ample reason to be convinced that not a touch was ever set upon the canvas that was not finely considered and fastidiously chosen.

I think in himself he was hardly aware of the degree to which his painting lent itself to an opposite impression. He was so keenly concentrated upon the kind of truth he sought to render that he was half unconscious that the form in which he chose to present it was strange and repugnant to the taste of the time; but although genuinely modest in the presence of his task, he was often almost arrogant in his assertion of the excellence of the result when the task was ended. The picture once completed and set in its frame, Whistler became from that moment an ardent champion of his own genius.

Combat was the delight of his life, and there was no violence of assertion he did not love to employ if he thought that by no other means could he encourage an opponent into the dangerous arena of controversy.

As a matter of fact, I do not think he was ever quite happy unless one of these pretty little quarrels was on hand, and whenever he suspected that any particular dispute in which he was engaged showed signs of waning, he would, I think out of pure devilment, cast about to lay the foundations of a new quarrel.

Something of the kind occurred in my own case. At his own earnest suggestion, while I was the English editor of L’Art, I invited him, with the concurrence of the proprietors in Paris, to furnish an etching for publication. Knowing well the amiable idiosyncrasies of my dear friend, I was very insistent that he should set down precisely and in writing all the terms and conditions which he thought it right to impose, and yet, when this had been done and the etching had been given to the world, with almost impish ingenuity he thought he had detected some breach in our contract, and wrote me thereupon a little letter of reproach which I saw plainly, when I received it, was destined for ultimate publication as the preface to a controversy into which he thought he could lure me.

But for once he made an unfortunate choice of a foe. “Not with me, my dear Jimmy,” I replied to him. “No one enjoys more keenly your essays as a controversialist, or more deeply appreciates the wit and ingenuity which they display, but not with me.” I think that he must have perceived that I had detected his amiable design, for when he came to see me after the receipt of my letter it was in a spirit of the most boisterous good-humour that he reproached me with having despoiled him of a promised affray.

The fact that he was in many quarters unpopular he realised with a sense of conscious enjoyment. On one occasion I had been put up as a candidate for a club of which he was already a member, and on meeting him at an evening party he said, “My dear Joe, why didn’t you tell me? I would have put my name down on your page,” to which I replied in something of his own spirit—knowing that I had already been elected, a fact of which he was unaware—“Well, my dear Jimmy, put it down now, it can do no harm now”—a delicate tribute to that unpopularity to which I have referred, which he received with riotous laughter.

One of the latest of the contests in which Whistler loved to involve himself found him pitted against an opponent who was almost his match in ingenuity, and far outstripped him in the unscrupulous use of any weapon that came ready to his hand.

This was Charles Howell, a strange creature whom I had first met at one of Rossetti’s delightful little dinners, and who was at the time welcomed as a companion by all the artists of that special group. Endowed with real taste in all matters of Art, he for a while served as secretary to Mr. Ruskin, and in that capacity was able to ingratiate himself with many of the artists of whose work Ruskin was then the champion.

I met him often at Whistler’s house in Cheyne Walk, where I think he was as much appreciated for the more questionable qualities of his character as for his quick admiration of Whistler’s genius.