PORTRAIT OF STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ (LITHOGRAPH).
CHAPTER XI
AS HIS FRIENDS KNEW HIM
One afternoon in 1892, walking along the boulevards with Stéphane Mallarmé, during absinthe hours, I met Whistler. The poet and the painter raised their hats and shook hands and exchanged a few words in French, which I did not understand. I was introduced, Whistler bowed, shook hands and then we passed on. It was one of those fugitive meetings that occur so frequently and to which no importance can be attached. It gives one the sole and rather futile privilege of having seen Whistler, just as I have seen Liszt, the king of Bavaria, Ibsen and many others, without having become acquainted with them.
I do not remember how Whistler was dressed, I only recall the top hat, monocle and cane. He looked rather undersized to me, a trifle affected, but exceedingly picturesque, and possessing that peculiar magnetism which we feel in the presence of great men.
As for a more intimate analysis of Whistler's personality, I must refer to some of his friends, who have expressed themselves in print. I shall cite a number of paragraphs that have the merit of descriptive verity, and that will give a clear insight into his curious, highstrung character, as it appeared in every-day life.
"What strikes one in Whistler's biography," says Laurence Binyon, the London critic and poet, "is the extraordinary amount of time, trouble and energy he expended on things and people that did not matter, the record of his squabbles, the fanatical loyalty of his enmities, the rage of his 'egotism.'" This is the Whistler that the world knew. But there was another Whistler, Mr. Binyon suggests,—"A man of singular sensitiveness, who shunned the vulgar daytime and stole abroad at twilight ... bent always on revealing to his fellow men the loveliness that lurks in familiar sights and among the dingy aspects of a modern city."
One of his earliest intimates who writes of him in Vanity Fair, as one of the "Men of the Day," signed John Junior, says: "Mr. Whistler—'Jimmy' as his friends call him—is personally one of the most charming, simple and witty of men. He touches nothing but he embellishes and enlivens it with startling novelty of conceit. His hereditary lock of white hair is a rallying point of humour wherever he goes, and his studio is the resort of all who delight in hearing the new thing."