Chapter 9

"The state of affairs?" said Mr. Whistler, in his light and airy way, raising his eyebrows and twinkling his eyes, as if it were all the best possible fun in the world; "why, my dear sir, there's positively _no_ state of affairs at all. Contrary to public declaration, there's actually nothing chaotic in the whole business; on the contrary, everything is in order, and just as it should be. The survival of the fittest as regards the presidency, don't you see, and, well--Suffolk Street is itself again! A new government has come in, and, as I told the members the other night, I congratulate the Society on the result of their vote, for no longer can it be said that the right man is in the wrong place. No doubt their pristine sense of undisturbed somnolence will again settle upon them after the exasperated mental condition arising from the unnatural strain recently put upon the old ship. Eh? what? Ha! ha!"

"You do not then consider the Society as out of date? You do not think, as is sometimes said, that the establishment of the Grosvenor took away the _raison d'être_ and original intention of the Society--that of being a foil to the Royal Academy?"

"I can hardly say what was originally intended, but I do know that it was originally full of hope, and even determination; shown in a manner by their getting a Royal Charter--the only art society in London, I believe, that has one.

"But by degrees it lapsed into a condition of incapacity--a sort of secondary state,--do you see, till it acknowledged itself a species of _crêche_ for the Royal Academy. Certain it is that when I came into it the prevalent feeling among all the men was that their best work should go to 'another place.'

"I felt that this sense of inferiority was fatal to the well-being of the place.

"For that reason I attempted to bring about a sense of _esprit de corps_ and ambition, which culminated in what might be called 'my first offence'--by my proposition that members belonging to other societies should hold no official position in ours. I wanted to make it an art centre," continued Mr. Whistler, with a sudden vigour and an earnestness for which the public would hardly give credit to this Master of Badinage and Apostle of Persiflage; "they wanted it to remain a shop, although I said to them, 'Gentlemen, don't you perceive that as shopmen you have already failed, don't you see, eh?' But they were under the impression that the sales decreased under my methods and my _régime_, and ignored the fact that sales had declined all over the country from all sorts of causes, commercial, and so on.

Their only chance lay in the art tone of the place, for the old-fashioned pictures had ceased to become saleable wares--buyers simply wouldn't buy them. But members' work I _couldn't_, by the rules, eliminate--only the bad outsiders were choked off."

"Then how do you explain the bitterness of all the opposition?"

"A question of 'pull devil, pull baker,' and the devil has gone and the bakers remain in Suffolk Street! Ha! ha! Here is a list of the fiendish party who protested against the thrusting forth of their president in such an unceremonious way:--

"Alfred Stevens, Theodore Roussel, Nelson Maclean, Macnab, Waldo Story, A. Ludovici, jun., Sidney Starr, Francis James, W. A. Rixon, Aubrey Hunt, Moffatt P. Lindner, E. G. Girardot, Ludby, Arthur Hill, Llewellyn, W. Christian Symons, C. Wyllie, A. F. Grace, J. E. Grace, J. D. Watson, Jacomb Hood, Thornley, J. J. Shannon, and Charles Keen. Why, the very flower of the Society! and whom have they left--_bon Dieu!_ whom have they left?"

"It was a hard fight then?"

"My dear sir, they brought up the maimed, the halt, the lame, and the blind--literally--like in Hogarth's 'Election;' they brought up everything but corpses, don't you know!--very well!"

"But all this hardly explains the bitterness of the feud and personal enmity to you."

"What? Don't you see? My presidential career had in a manner been a busy one. When I took charge of the ship I found her more or less water-logged. Well, I put the men to the pumps, and thoroughly shook up the old vessel; had her re-rigged re-cleaned, and painted--and finally I was graciously permitted to run up the Royal Standard to the masthead, and brought her fully to the fore, ready for action--as became a Royal flagship! And as a natural result mutiny at once set in!

"Don't you see," he continued, with one of his strident laughs, "what might be considered, by the thoughtless, as benefits, were resented, by the older and wiser of the crew, as innovations and intrusions of an impertinent and offensive nature. But the immediate result was that interest in the Society was undeniably developed, not only at home, but certainly abroad. Notably in Paris all the art circle was keenly alive to what was taking place in Suffolk Street; and, although their interest in other institutions in this country had previously flagged, there was the strong willingness to take part in its exhibitions.

For example, there was Alfred Stevens, who showed his own sympathy with the progressive efforts by becoming a member. And look at the throngs of people that crowded our private views--eh? ha! ha! what! But what will you!--the question is, after all, purely a parochial one--and here I would stop to wonder, if I do not seem pathetic and out of character, why the Artist is naturally an object of vituperation to the Vestryman?--Why am _I_--who, of course, as you know, am charming--why am I the pariah of my parish?

"Why should these people do other than delight in me?--Why should they perish rather than forgive the one who had thrust upon them honour and success?"

"And the moral of it all?"

Mr. Whistler became impressive--almost imposing--as he stroked his moustache, and tried to hide a smile behind his hand.

"The organisation of this 'Royal Society of British Artists' as shown by its very name, tended perforce to this final convulsion, resulting in the separation of the elements of which it was composed. They could not remain together, and so you see the 'Artists' have come out, and the 'British' remain--and peace and sweet obscurity are restored to Suffolk Street!--Eh? What? Ha! ha!"

_Statistics_

[Sidenote: _Pall Mall Gazette_, July 6, 1888.]

Since our interview with Mr. Whistler curious statements have been set afloat concerning the question of finance ... giving circumstantial evidence of the disaster brought upon the Society by the enforcement of the Whistlerian policy:--

This evidence, which is very interesting, is as follows:--The sales of the Society during the year 1881 were under £5000; 1882, under £6000; 1883, under £7000; 1884, under £8000; 1885 (the first year of Mr. Whistler's rule), they fell to under £4000; 1886, under £3000; 1887, under £2000; and the present year, under £1000.

On the other hand, the fact of the Society having made itself responsible to Mr. Whistler for a loan raised by him to meet a sudden expenditure for repairs, is also true; but the unwisdom of the president and members of any society having money transactions between them need hardly be commented upon here....

Mr. Wyke Bayliss, the new president, strikes one as being "a strong man"--shrewd, logical, and self-restrained. The author of several books and pamphlets on the more imaginative realm of art, he is, one would say, as much permeated by religion as he is by art; to both of these qualities, curiously enough, his canvases, which usually deal with cathedral interiors of cheery hue, bear witness.

The hero of three Bond Street "one-man exhibitions," a Board-school chairman, a lecturer, champion chess-player of Surrey, a member of the Rochester Diocesan Council, a Shaksperian student, a Fellow of the Society of Cyclists, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians, and public orator of Noviomagus ... he is surely one of the most versatile men who ever occupied a presidential chair....

_A Retrospect_

_TO THE EDITOR OF THE "PALL MALL GAZETTE:"_

Sir,--The Royal Society of British Artists is, perhaps, by this time again unknown to your agitated readers--but I would recall a brilliant number of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ (July 1888), in which mischievous amusement was sought, with statistics from a newly elected President--Mr. Bayliss (Wyke).

Believing it to be, in an official and dull way, more becoming that the appointed Council of this same Society should deal with the resulting chaos, I have, until now, waited for a slight washing of hands, as who should say, on their part as representing the gentle deprecation of, I assure you, the respectable body in Suffolk Street.

Well, no!--It was doubtless adjudged wiser, or milder, to "live it down," and now it, I really believe, behoves me, in a weary way, to remind you of the document in question, and, for the sake of commonplace, uninteresting, and foolish fact, to lift up my parable and declare fallacious that which was supposed to be true, and generally to bore myself, and perhaps even you, the all-patient one, with what, I fear, we others care but little for--parish matters.

In the article, then, entitled "The Royal Society of British Artists and its Future--An Interview with the New President"--a most appalling volley of figures was fired off at _brûle-pour-point_ distance. Under this deafening detonation I, having no habit, sat for days incapable--dreaming vaguely that when a President should see fit to wash his people's linen in the open, there must be indeed crime at least on the part of the offender at whose instigation such official sacrifice of dignity could come about. _I_ was the offender, and for a while I sincerely believed that disaster had been brought upon this Royal Society by my own casual self. But behold, upon closer inspection, these threatening figures are meretricious and misleading, as was the building account of the early Philanthropist who, in the days of St. Paul, meant well, and was abruptly discouraged by that clear-headed apostle.

Mr. Bayliss tells us that: "The sales of the Society during the year 1881 were under," whatever that may mean, "£5000; 1882, under £6000; 1883, under £7000; 1884, under £8000; in 1885 ('the first year of Mr. Whistler's rule') they fell to under £4000; 1886, under £3000; 1887, under £2000; and the present year, under £1000."

But also Mr. Bayliss takes this rare occasion of attention, to assert his various qualifications for his post as head of painters in the street of Suffolk, and so we learn that he is:--

"Chairman of the Board-school in his own district," "Champion chess-player of Surrey," "A member of the Diocesan Council of Rochester," "Fellow of the Society of Cyclists," and "Public Orator of Noviomagus."

As chess-player he may have intuitively bethought himself of a move--possibly the happy one,--who knows?--which in the provinces obtained him a cup; as Diocesan Councilman he may have supposed Rochester indifferent to the means used for an end; but as Public Cyclist of the Royal Society of Noviomagus his experience must be opposed to any such bluff as going his entire pile on a left bower only!

When I recovered my courage--what did I find?--first my unimpaired intelligence, and then my memory.

Now, to my intelligence, it becomes patent that the chairman of a Clapham School-board, proposes by his figures to prove, that the income of the sacrificed Society had of late years steadily increased:--"In 1881, under £5000; 1882, under £6000; 1883, under £7000; 1884, under £8000," until, under the baneful reign of terror and Whistler in 1885--"the first year" of the sacrilegious era--the receipts fell to £4000--and have continued to decrease until, in this present year, they fall to the miserable sum of under a thousand pounds--a revelation! discreet, statesmanlike, and worthy the orator at his best!

Unfortunately for the triumph of such audacious demonstration, my revived memory points out that Mr. Whistler was only elected President in June 1886, and, in conformity with the ancient rules and amusing customs of the venerable body, only came into office six months afterwards--that is, practically, in January 1887. Again, with this last exhibition, he, as everybody knows, had nothing whatever to do.

Immediately, therefore, the conclusion is "quite other" than that put forth by the Cyclist of his suburb, and we arrive at the, for once, not unamusing "fact" that the disastrous and simple Painter Whistler only took in hand the reins of government at least a year after the former driver had been pitched from his box, and half the money-bags had been already lost!--from £8000 to £4000 at one fatal swoop! and the beginning of the end had set in! Indeed, this may have been one of the strong reasons for his own election by an overwhelming minority of hysterical and panic-stricken passengers.

Now, though he did his best, and cried aloud that the coach was safe, and called it Royal, and proposed to carry the mail, confidence, difficult to restore, waited for proof, and although fresh paint was spread upon the panels, and the President coachman wore his hat with knowing air, on one side and handled the ribbons lightly, and dandled the drag, inviting jauntily the passer-by, the public recognized the ramshackle old "conveyance," and scoffingly refused to trust themselves in the hearse.

"Four thousand pounds!" down it went--£3000--£2000--the figures are Wyke's--and this season, the ignominious "£1000 or under," is none of my booking! and when last I saw the mad machine it was still cycling down the hill.

_The New Dynasty_

[Sidenote: _The Morning Post._]

Sir--Pray accept my compliments, and be good enough to inform me at once by whose authority, and upon what pretence, the painting, designed and executed by myself, upon the panel at the entrance of the galleries of Suffolk Street, has been defaced. Tampering with the work of an artist, however obscure, is held to be, in what might be called the international laws of the whole Art world, so villainous an offence, that I must at present decline to entertain the responsibility of the very distinguished and Royal Society of British Artists, for what must be due to the rash, and ill-considered, zeal of some enthusiastic and untutored underling.

Awaiting your reply, I have the honour to be, Sir, your obedient, humble servant,

[Sidenote: _Telegram to Council of Royal Society of British Artists:_

"Congratulations upon dignity maintained as Artists left in charge of a brother Artist's work, and upon graceful bearing as officers toward their late President."--WHISTLER.]

TO THE HON. SECRETARY OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF BRITISH ARTISTS. March 30, 1889.

_An Embroidered Interview_

[Sidenote: _Pall Mall Gazette_, April 3, 1889.]

"Well, Mr. Whistler, they say they only painted out your butterfly from the signboard, and changed the date. What do you say?"

"What do I say? That they have been guilty of an act of villainous Vandalism."

"Will you tell me the history of the Board?"

"When I was elected to the presidency of the Society I offered to paint a signboard which should proclaim to the passer-by the name and nature of the Society. My offer was accepted, and the Board was sent down to my studio, where I treated it as I should a most distinguished sitter--as a picture or an etching--throwing my artistic soul into the Board, which gradually became a Board no longer, as it grew into a picture. You say they say it was only a butterfly. Mendacity could go no further. I painted a _lion_ and a butterfly. The lion lay with the butterfly--a harmony in gold and red, with which I had taken as much trouble as I did with the best picture I ever painted. And now they have clothed my golden lion clumsily, awkwardly, and timorously with a dirty coat of black. My butterfly has gone, the checks and lines, which I had treated decoratively, have disappeared. Am I not justified in calling it a piece of gross Vandalism?"

"What course would you have recommended? You had gone; the Board remained: perhaps it was weather-beaten--what could they do?"

"They should have taken the Board down, sir, taken the Board down, not dared to destroy my work--taken the Board down, returned it to me, and got another Board of their own to practise on. Good heavens! You say to my face it was only a Board. You say they _only_ painted out my butterfly. It is as if you were condoling with a man who had been robbed and stripped, and said to him, 'Never mind. It is well it is no worse. You have escaped easily. Why, you might have had your throat cut.'"

And Mr. Whistler's Mephistophelian form disappeared into the black of the night.

_The "Pall Mall" Puzzled_

[Sidenote: _Pall Mall Gazette_, April 4, 1889.]

Mr. Whistler begs me to insert the following note exactly as it stands. I haven't the slightest idea what it means, but here it is with "_mes compliments_":--

"TO THE INTERVIEWER OF THE _Pall Mall Gazette_:

"Good! very good! Prettily put, as becomes the _Pall Mall_, and yet you cannot be reproached with being 'too fine for your audience!'

"I wish I _could_ say these things as you do for me, even at the risk of, at last, being understood. _Mes Compliments!_"

_Official Bumbledom_

[Sidenote: To the Editor of _The Morning Post_]

Sir--As you have considered Mr. Whistler's letter worthy of publication, I ask you to complete the publication by inserting this simple statement of the facts as they occurred. The notice board of the Royal Society of British Artists bears on a red ground, in letters of gold, the title of the Society. To this Mr. Whistler, during his presidency, added with his own hand a decorative device of a lion and a butterfly. On the eve of our private view it was found that, while the title of the Society, being in pure gold, remained untarnished, Mr. Whistler's designs, being executed in spurious metals, had nearly disappeared, and what little remained of them was of a dirty brown. The board could not be put up in that state. The lion, however, was not so badly drawn as to make it necessary to do anything more than restore it in permanent colour, and that has accordingly been done. But as the notice board was no longer the actual work of Mr. Whistler, it would manifestly have been improper to have left the butterfly (his well-known signature) attached to it, even if it had not appeared in so crushed a state. The soiled butterfly was therefore effaced.

Yours, &c., WYKE BAYLISS, CLAPHAM. April 1, 1889.

"_Aussi que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?_"

[Sidenote: _The Morning Post._]

Sir--I have read Mr. Bayliss's letter, and am disarmed. I feel the folly of kicking against the parish pricks. These things are right in Clapham, by the common.

"_V'là ce que c'est, c'est bien fait-- Fallait pas qu'il y aille! fallait pas qu'il y aille!_"

And when, one of these days, all traces of history shall, by dint of much turpentine, and more Bayliss, have been effaced from the board that "belongs to us," I shall be justified, and it will be boldly denied by some dainty student that the delicate butterfly was _ever_ "soiled" in Suffolk Street.

Yours, &c.,

_The Royal Society of British Artists and their Signboard_

[Sidenote: _The Athenæum_, April 27, 1889.]

Sir--The moment has now arrived when, it seems to me proper that, in your journal, one of the recognized Art organs of the country, should be recorded the details of an incident in which the element of grave offence is, not unnaturally, quite missed by the people in their indignation at the insignificance of the object to which public attention has so unwarrantably been drawn--a "notice board"!--the common sign of commerce!

Now, however slight might be the value of the work in question destroyed, it is surely of startling interest to know that _work may be destroyed_, or worse still, defaced and tampered with, at the present moment in full London, with the joyous approval of the major part of the popular press.

I leave to your comment the fact that in this instance the act is committed with the tacit consent of a body of gentlemen officially styled "artists," at the instigation of their president, as he unblushingly acknowledges, and will here distinctly state that the "notice board of the Royal Society of British Artists" _did not_ "bear on a red ground, in letters of gold, the title of the Society," and that "to this Mr. Whistler, during his presidency," _did not_ "add with his own hand a decorative device of a lion and a butterfly." This damning evidence, though in principle irrelevant--for what becomes of the soul of a "Diocesan member of the Council of Clapham" is, artistically, a matter of small moment--I nevertheless bring forward as the only one that will at present be at all considered or even understood.

The "notice board" was of the familiar blue enamel, well known in metropolitan use, with white lettering, announcing that the exhibition of the Incorporated Society of British Artists was held above, and that for the sum of one shilling the public might enter.

I myself mixed the "red ground," and myself placed, "in letters of gold, the" _new_ "title" upon it--in proper relation to the decorative scheme of the whole design, of which it formed naturally an all-important feature. The date was that of the Society's Royal grant, and in commemoration of its new birth. With the offending Butterfly, it has now been effaced in one clean sweep of independence, while the lion, "not so badly drawn," was differently dealt with--it was found not "necessary to do anything more than restore it in permanent colour, and that," with a bottle of Brunswick black, "has accordingly been done;" and, as Mr. Bayliss adds, with unpremeditated truth, in the thoughtless pride of achievement, "the notice board was no longer the actual work of Mr. Whistler!"

This exposure of Mr. Bayliss's direct method I have wickedly withheld, in order that the Philistine impulse of the country should declare itself in all its freshness of execration before it could be checked by awkward discovery of mere mendacity, and a timid sense of danger, called justice.

Everything has taken place as I pleasantly foresaw, and there is by this time, with the silent exception of one or two cautious dailies, scarcely a lay paper in the land that has been able to refrain from joining in the hearty yell of delight at the rare chance of coarsely, publicly, and safely insulting an artist! In this eagerness to affront the man they have irretrievably and ridiculously committed themselves to open sympathy with the destruction of his work.

I wish coldly to chronicle this fact in the archives of the _Athenæum_ for the future consideration of the cultured New Zealander.

_An Official Letter_

Sir,--I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, officially informing me that the Committee award me a second-class gold medal.

Pray convey my sentiments of tempered and respectable joy to the gentlemen of the Committee, and my complete appreciation of the second-hand compliment paid me.

And I have, Sir, The honour to be Your most humble, obedient servant,

J. MCNEILL WHISTLER.

TO THE 1ST SECRETARY, CENTRAL COMMITTEE, INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, MUNICH.

_The Home of Taste_

_The Ideas of Mr. Blankety Blank on House Decoration_

[Sidenote: _Pall Mall Gazette_, Dec. 1, 1888.]