“You know what the French call une bête de somme—un cheval de fiacre—quoi!” Again he shrugged and sighed.
We had brought with us two copies of Nicholson’s caricature of Whistler, in which he is standing at full-length, monocled, against a nocturnal sky. We asked him to sign them, and he was exceedingly gracious about it.
“These caricatures were my idea,” he explained; “I told Nicholson how to do them. They are a great success.”
On each he sketched a butterfly in pencil, adding on one, “Tant pis” and on the other, “With all proper regrets.”
He told us that he often became very much attached to his work. Once he had an order from a man for a portrait; it was duly finished, and amply paid for. He still held it, although the man wrote periodically to have it sent to him. “I really feel that it is much too good for him,” he explained. “The worst of it is that the longer I keep it the more I like it, and”—after a pause he whispered—“the less likely he is to get it.”
As the afternoon had waned, we suggested driving him home. He assented, putting on his famous high hat and a pair of black gloves, and we clattered down the five flights together, the air seeming fairly saturated with his presence.
Entering the one-horse victoria which had brought us from the hotel, I had to sit on the strapontin, about which I festooned myself as best I could. To my astonishment, our appearance did not seem to create much commotion in the Quartier, though I knew how exotic we must look.
We drove through a round porte-cochère, which was the entrance to a sort of tunnel; at the end of it we emerged into a courtyard flanked by the little house Whistler occupied.
On reaching his home, the master insisted on our coming in to see it. We found it rather gloomy, with a garden in the rear, which was shown with great pride. There were a few pictures on the walls. The cloth was spread on the dining-table, and many dishes and plates were stacked in the middle.
The good-bys were said, with an invitation extended to visit his studio again on our next trip. We had had a memorable visit with him, and were taking away with us impressions of the real Whistler—the Whistler whom the world at large knew not, the kind, genial, courteous, humanly sorrowful, and sorrowing man of genius.