Once again Whistler scored and Leyland paid. His thanks to his patron afterwards took the form of painting a life-size portrait of him as a devil with horns and hoofs.
The sale of the famous portrait of Carlyle gave Whistler one of those opportunities in which he delighted. It was first exhibited in Edinburgh, and the Edinburgh Corporation, wishing to possess this masterful work, telegraphed to know what would be his lowest figure, to which Jimmy replied by wire: “Terms a thousand guineas, to the tune of the bagpipes.”
This was pure cheek, for the picture stood at five hundred guineas in the catalogue, and instead of replying how much less he would take for it, as the canny city fathers desired, he had doubled the sum. Three or four years later he sold that selfsame picture to Glasgow for the sum of a thousand guineas.
When painting his delightful picture of Miss Alexander, Whistler took about seventy sittings—a fearful ordeal. She told Phené Spiers that she thought he often rubbed out a whole day’s work after she had gone.
Near the close of his life Whistler withdrew from London for a period, living permanently in his rooms in the Rue du Bac, in Paris. I had not seen him for seven or eight years when I met him again in May, 1900, at a dinner-party at Mr. Heinemann’s in Norfolk Street, Park Lane. How altered Whistler was—he had changed from a somewhat sprightly middle-aged man to one nearer seventy.
His shaggy hair was grizzly grey, his round, beady, black eyes were as clear and brilliant as ever, overhung by thick black brows. A bright colour was upon his cheek, almost a hectic flush, if one may apply the term to a man of his age, and there was the same vivacity about him as of old. He was just as thin, and, needless to say, had not grown! He was the same witty little person, with the same sharp, sarcastic tongue. The artistic world had come to appreciate his work very differently from of old, and already he was encountering what a rival wit has pithily described as “the last insult—popularity.”
He had practically given up living in England, he said, with that strong American accent which he never lost: Paris he “found so much more inspiring.”
“There is not much wit in France now,” he remarked, “but there is positively none in Britain. There is not much good literature in France either, but there is less in England. People are all too busy trying to fill their pockets with gold to have time to store their brains with knowledge.”
The conversation turned upon his studio. Speaking of students, he said: