The "House Beautiful" or "White House," was a three-storied house with many windows of various sizes, a green slate roof, bluish-grey door, Portland stone facings and fantastic wood ornamentation. A queer looking house, was the verdict of the neighbours, and yet it was rather unassuming, so that it escaped the attention of the ordinary passer-by. While various schemes for each room were in his mind, a friend, Mr. Sutherland, director of the P. O. Company, called one evening in the spring of 1873 to ask Whistler if he would help him in the decoration of his home. Whistler entered upon the idea with enthusiasm and prepared the plans. The novelty of the schemes was first approved of, but, as they developed, Mr. Sutherland began to doubt their plausibility. Whistler relieved him from all obligations, and determined that he would use the ideas in his own home. He went at once to work and three weeks later gave a dinner to celebrate the event. It was a revelation of simple delicate colour schemes—everything was artistic from the mahogany woodwork in the "gold and yellow" room down to the single flower in some bit of Kaga porcelain. In the room everything was yellow, gold or brown. The walls were tinted yellow, the cabinet and chimney-piece in one structure were of a bright yellow mahogany, with gilt panels. The tiles before it were of a pale sulphur colour. In some niches there was a display of orange coloured vases. The peacock designs were seen in some panels, but they were carried out in yellow and gold. The chairs were covered with yellow velvet, the table had brass legs and rested on a brown rug.
One may say that Whistler established three simple rules for decoration, which interpreted in words, might read like this:
First: That a house should be a dainty and complete thing—from the door-knocker to the ridge tile.
Second: That each room should be restful, with ceiling, walls and floors so treated as to give a sense of shelter, freedom and completeness, terminating in the floor at the base.
Third: that pure, tender colours scientifically used give ease and infinite suggestion, and should be allowed to play about a room without coming into boisterous contact with another.
Harper Pennington, a friend of Whistler's, has given a humourous but sympathetic description of the "White House:" "His furniture was limited to the barest necessities, and, frequently, too few of those." Indeed, some wit made what he called his "standing joke" about poor Jimmy's dearth of seats. Once Dick (Corney) Grain said, when shaking hands before a Sunday luncheon, "Ah! Jimmy, glad to see you playing before such a full house!" glaring around the studio with his large protruding eyes in search of something to sit on. "What do you mean?" said Whistler. "Standing room only," replied the actor. The studio could boast of only four or five small cane-seated chairs (always requisitioned for the dining room on Sundays), and the most uncomfortable bamboo sofa ever made. Nobody, except some luckless model, sat upon it twice. Never a book or any instrument of music in his room, nothing that would not constantly be in use, nothing superfluous; all his cares were centred on the wall and woodwork, painted in graduated monochromes, of which he held the secret.
The strangest thing about these rooms of his was, that they always looked complete. There was no space, apparently, for more than he put in them. So great was the art in his arrangements of colour and a few pieces of ordinary furniture—a spindle-legged table and three or four small painted chairs—that it seemed impossible to add so much as a book without disturbing the harmonious whole. Curtains, a little mirror, one, two, three at the most, perfectly placed pictures, a vase, perhaps a pair of them, upon the mantel, and matting on the floor, were literally all that any room I ever knew him to occupy appeared able to contain. There was a sense of finish and finality about it which a piano and stuffed furniture would have disturbed. In the vases, as in two square hanging pots upon the wall of the dining-room, there were always a few yellow flowers, and in a huge old china bowl, that formed the centrepiece of the dining-room table, swam some tiny gold fish—the whole thing was carefully composed so as to make the "symphony" complete at those historic Sunday breakfasts.
His various abodes became a topic of conversation, and a place of pilgrimage, and made Whistler, for a while at least, a recognized leader in decoration. He developed a style, the influence of which has been felt all over Europe. The beauty of one colour in the decoration of a room, the division of space into simple lines and masses, the scarcity of furniture, leaving large empty spaces, the use of flowers or a few choice pieces of bric-a-brac, we owe largely to Whistler. The backgrounds of his "Miss Alexander," "Carlyle" and "The Artist's Mother" offer vague glimpses into the realm of individualized decoration, and, in a way, better information about its character than a hundred pages of explanation.