The article continues to say that it is evidently not difficult for the newspaper correspondent to approach him, as much had been written about his charming house and spacious studio in Chelsea. He was so thoroughly an artist that material seemed indifferent to him. His famous "Peacock Room," which he did for Mr. Leyland, shows his genius as a decorator, and conservative opinion is, that he was even greater as an etcher than as a painter. He had engraved, and painted in water-colours, of course, and his attire, from his top-coat to his shoe strings, was made from his own designs. Apparently he chafed under the academic tyranny of even the tailor. Of his powers in mimicry and in character acting his friend never tired of talking and telling anecdotes which illustrate it, and indicate that even in drollery his art is as subtle as in work of seriousness and dignity. "Dickens was not a patch on him," said someone, recently, who had seen the pantomiming of both.
Harper Pennington, one of his officially acknowledged pupils, gives a fine description of the man in the "Metropolitan Magazine" of 1910.
"Whistler was not a tall man, but of trim and muscular appearance, broad-shouldered, strong-armed, and well set up—the result of West Point training. He was intensely active and alert, although not in the least fidgety or nervous. His eyes were as bright as a bird's, flashing from face to face in a group of persons. It is noteworthy that he moved his eyes and not his head from side to side, fixing each speaker in his turn. This may have been another effect of West Point drills—'Eyes right,' 'Eyes left.' His long hands and bony wrists suggested force and delicacy of touch. If he was a trifle robin-legged, the effect served to enhance a certain dandified attitude he frequently assumed, especially when chaffing someone who deserved it, to the delight of the gallery, without which he seldom thought it worth while to perform.
"The man was above all things gregarious—he did not like to be alone—and most intensely human. He had his foibles, faults and virtues like the rest. The Whistler I knew was clean of person and speech. I never heard him utter one word that might not be repeated without offending the most easily shocked of prudes. He has been described as untidy. He was, on the contrary, the only man who ever washed his hair three times every day, and was fastidious to the point of being prinky about his person. His clothes, generally black, were always simple in the extreme and spotless, even when, in those old Venice days of dreadful poverty, they were worn threadbare—actually in holes. His courage was indisputable. He would fight any man, no matter what size or weight, and the jaunty cheerfulness with which he bore privations, when he lacked everything, even the materials necessary for his work, deceived those who were his daily companions and sufficiently proved his moral pluck.
"He wore a black silk ribbon tie at his neck, a bow with six inch loops and fluttering ends, but that was all that was unusual in his attire, unless the long bamboo wands of canes—a dark one for the night and a light for day—should be included. Nothing that glittered, not even a watch-chain or a ring, formed any part of his costume. A tiny white or yellow flower at his buttonhole was his unique adornment.
"Is it true, as Thackeray declared, that ordinary mortals do, indeed, delight to pry into the weakness of the strong, the smallness of the great? I have thought it best to show my Whistler as he really was, a simple, kind and tender-hearted fellow, who turned his best side towards the unappreciative world he lived in, not from vanity of person, but to hide his poverty, and the makeshifts he was driven to employ, as a man will say 'I like to walk,' when he can't afford to ride. His cackling laugh hid many a bitter thrust that had gone home and hurt him to the quick. He laughed, and then would come the swift riposte of witty repartee. He never attacked a living creature, never struck the first blow, and would have been glad to live in peace with all the world. But so coarse were the criticisms of his person and his work that he was driven to defend Art, which was the only thing he could not joke about. Upon the rare occasions when he talked with me, as a master might, about his work, his face itself seemed transfigured.
"Brave when he was well, his cowardice when ill or in pain was comical. If he caught cold he would disappear, and those who knew him well were sure he had fled to his doctor—his brother's house in Wimpole Street. Dr. Whistler told me that Jimmy would appear all muffled up and say: 'Willie, I am ill! I am going up to bed—here—and won't go home until you've cured me!' Any little malady was enough to demoralize him. In his hours of weakness he would hide away like a wounded animal and not show up again until he had been nursed back to his normal state.
ARRANGEMENT IN FLESH-COLOUR AND BLACK: THEODORE DURET.