CHAPTER XII
THE STORY OF THE BEAUTIFUL
Who knew the errant life of the highway, of the starlit desert and windy mountain slopes better than the story-teller of old, who wandered from town to village, from camp to solitary tent, all over the face of the earth, telling his simple tales to those who cared to listen? He was the wayfarer who lived in his life the Odyssey of the eternal Wanderer, and whose words reflected in quaint imaginative excursions the adventures of strange men and women he had met in lonely forests and crowded city streets.
Every nomadic tribe, every nation, every country, has had its singer of songs, its chanter of religious hymns, its troubadour, its vagrom poet, some story-teller of the beautiful. They have vanished, and the story is now repeated by the professional poet and artist. He no longer treads the highways and the listeners no longer offer him the hospitality of a night's shelter. He lives the life of the large cities; he hastens from place to place, he mingles with the crowd but passes unseen as nobody will listen to his stories. More than ever is he the vagrom man, unless he tells his story of the Beautiful in such a novel, fascinating way that Art, "the whimsical goddess," will open the book of life and inscribe his name. Then his townspeople, his nation, a whole continent, the entire world may claim him.
Whistler travelled many highways and lo, when he arrived at the age of sixty a weary, restless wanderer in the realm of art, three nations—England, France and America—claimed him as their own.
Born in America, obtaining his education partly in America and partly in St. Petersburg, Russia, living the rest of his life in Europe, dividing his time almost equally between Paris and London, he was a cosmopolitan in the true sense of the word, and that is what he wished to be considered. He loved England and loved France, but he felt quite indifferent towards America. In Paris he had spent his student years, and he was drawn to this city by many bonds of attachments and friendships that lasted for life. And it was France who gave him that final great recognition of his genius when it purchased "The Artist's Mother" portrait for the Luxembourg, and made him an officer of the Legion of Honour. In England, on the other hand, he fought the great battles of his life for social as well as artistic recognition. In England he married, and was for many years one of the most conspicuous characters of London art and social life.
America really did nothing for him, and he did nothing for America. He never came back to America—during forty-eight years—after leaving it as a young man of twenty-one. He never exhibited in America until his name as a painter was one of the best known in Europe. He even preferred to exhibit his work with English artists in international exhibitions. We all remember the General Hawkins incident in 1889. Whistler only became known to America after his death through memorial exhibitions.
Now, of course, we like to claim him, and do so with ostentation. Expatriots are always claimed by their native country when they have achieved success or performed some remarkable act that has aroused the wonder of nations. Nobody cares whether Mr. Jack Johnson lived on the Place Monceau, or died on the Riviera.
To the analytical mind it is of little consequence whether he will go down in history as an American, English or Frenchman, as he was one of the great artists of the nineteenth century with an international significance. In the case of artists like Burne-Jones, Israels, Boldini, Fortuny, Lenbach, Segantini, it may be of more importance, as they are local talents.