"Whistler and Wilde were to be the lions at a literary reception. Unfortunately, the lions came too early, when the few previous arrivals were altogether too insignificant to be introduced to them. So they had to talk to each other. It was on a very warm Sunday afternoon in the season, and Whistler, by the by, was wearing a white 'duck' waistcoat and trousers, and a fabulously long frock-coat, made, I think, of black alpaca, and carrying a brass-tipped stick about four feet long in his right hand, and a wonderful new paint-box, of which he was proud, under his left arm. Neither of the lions took any notice of what the other said. Finally, Wilde, who had spent the previous summer in America, began: 'Jimmy, this time last year, when I was in New York, all we men were carrying fans. It should be done here.' Instead of replying, Whistler observed that he had just returned from Paris, and that he always came by the Dieppe route, because it gave you so much longer for painting sea effects. Whether Oscar thought he was going to have an opportunity of scoring or what, he was tempted to break through the contempt with which-he had treated Whistler's other remarks. 'And how many did you paint in four hours, Jimmy?' he asked, with his most magnificent air of patronage. 'I'm not sure,' said the irrepressible Jimmy, quite gravely, 'but I think four or five hundred."'
* * * * *
A London visitor at the Lambs Club recounted a new version of the notable enmity which followed the friendship that had existed between Whistler and Wilde. The latter one day asked the artist's opinion upon a poem which he had written, presenting a copy to be read. Whistler read it and was handing it back without comment.
"Well," queried Wilde, "do you perceive any worth?"
"It's worth its weight in gold," replied Whistler.
The poem was written on the very thinnest tissue-paper, weighing practically nothing. The coolness between the two men is said to have dated from that moment.
* * * * *
Walking up to Du Maurier and Wilde at the time the former was portraying the Postlethwaites in Punch, Whistler asked, whimsically, "I say, which of you invented the other, eh?"
* * * * *
When Oscar Wilde was married, this Whistler telegram met him at the door of St. James's Church, Sussex Gardens: