CHAPTER XXXI: MARRIAGE. THE YEAR EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-EIGHT.

"I don't marry," Whistler said, "though I tolerate those who do." But before he left the British Artists' he did marry. His wife was Beatrix Godwin, widow of E. W. Godwin, the architect of the White House and for years Whistler's champion in the Press. Godwin died on October 6, 1886, and Whistler married on August 11, 1888.

Mrs. Whistler was the daughter of John Birnie Philip, remembered as one of the sculptors who worked on the awful Albert Memorial. She was large, so that Whistler was dwarfed beside her, dark and handsome, more foreign in appearance, but not in person, than English. Whistler delighted in a tradition that there was gipsy blood in her family. She had studied art in Paris and with him, and he was proud of her as a pupil. Her work included several decorative designs, and a series of etchings made to illustrate the English edition of Van Eeden's _Little Johannes_. Only a few of the plates were finished, and of these some proofs were shown in the first exhibition of the International Society and in the Paris Memorial Exhibition, while Mr. Heinemann had the intention of publishing a series of illustrations which she and Whistler drew on the wood.

Mr. Labouchere held himself responsible for the marriage, and told the story in _Truth_ (July 23, 1903):

"I believe that I am responsible for his marriage to the widow of Mr. Godwin, the architect. She was a remarkably pretty woman and very agreeable, and both she and he were thorough Bohemians. I was dining with them and some others one evening at Earl's Court. They were obviously greatly attracted to each other, and in a vague sort of way they thought of marrying. So I took the matter in hand to bring things to a practical point. 'Jemmy,' I said, 'will you marry Mrs. Godwin?' 'Certainly,' he replied. 'Mrs. Godwin,' I said, 'will you marry Jemmy?' 'Certainly,' she replied. 'When?' I asked. 'Oh, some day,' said Whistler. 'That won't do,' I said, 'we must have a date.' So they both agreed that I should choose the day, what church to come to for the ceremony, provide the clergyman, and give the bride away. I fixed an early date, and got the then Chaplain of the House of Commons [the Rev. Mr. Byng] to perform the ceremony. It took place a few days later.

"After the ceremony was over, we adjourned to Whistler's studio, where he had prepared a banquet. The banquet was on the table, but there were no chairs. So we sat on packing-cases. The happy pair, when I left, had not quite decided whether they would go that evening to Paris or remain in the studio. How unpractical they were was shown when I happened to meet the bride the day before the marriage in the street:

"'Don't forget to-morrow,' I said. 'No,' she replied, 'I am just going to buy my trousseau.' 'A little late for that, is it not?' I asked. 'No,' she answered, 'for I am only going to buy a new toothbrush and a new sponge, as one ought to have new ones when one marries.'"

The wedding took place at St. Mary Abbott's, Kensington, in the presence of Dr. and Mrs. Whistler, one of Mrs. Godwin's sisters, Mrs. Whibley, and three or four others. Mr. Labouchere gave the bride away and Mr. Jopling-Rowe was best man. Whistler had recently left 454 Fulham Road and the Vale, with its memories of Maud, for the Tower House, Tite Street, and the suddenness of his marriage gave no time to put things in order. There were not only packing-cases in the dining-room--usually one of the first rooms furnished in every house he moved into--but the household was in most respects unprepared for the reception of a bride. The wedding breakfast was ordered from the Café Royal, and the bride's sister hurriedly got a wedding cake from Buszard's.

The rest of the summer and autumn was spent in France, part of the time in Boulogne. Mr. and Mrs. Cole, on

"_August 27_ (1888). Met Jimmy and his wife on the sands: they came up with us to Rue de la Paix, down to bathe. Jimmy sketching on sands; the W.'s turned up after lunch. With Jimmy to the iron and rag _marché_ near Boulevard Prince Albert [no doubt in search of old paper as well as of subjects]. He sketched (water-colours) a dingy shop. Later we dined with them at the Casino. Pleasant _parti à quatre_. Jimmy in excellent form. Leaving to-morrow."

From Boulogne they went to Touraine, stopping at Chartres, most of the time lost to their friends, as they intended to be lost. It was Whistler's first holiday. He was taking it lazily, he wrote to Mrs. William Whistler, in straw hat and white shoes, rejoicing in the grapes and melons, getting the pleasure out of it that France always gave him. But he got more than pleasure. He brought back to London about thirty plates of Tours and Loches and Bourges, and settled down in London to wind up his connection with the British Artists'.

Whistler was devoted to his wife, who henceforth occupied a far more prominent position in his life than could have been imagined. Indeed his life was entirely changed by his marriage. He went less into society and had less time for his art. During months he was a wanderer, and while he wandered his painting stopped. Not that Mrs. Whistler was indifferent to art. She was sympathetic. He liked to have her in the studio; when she could not come he brought the pictures he was painting home for her to see. He consulted her in his difficulties, she shared his troubles, she rejoiced in his triumphs. But it cannot be denied that the period of great schemes came to an end with his marriage. Although later he painted exquisite pictures, there are no canvases like the _Mother_ and _Carlyle_, the _Sarasate_ and _The Yellow Buskin_. This was no doubt the result partly of his pleasure in his new domestic conditions, partly of circumstances that prevented him from remaining long enough in one place for continuous work to be possible. An artist must give himself entirely to his work, or else have a very different temperament from Whistler's. After a year or so in London and two or three happy years in Paris which Mrs. Whistler said she did not deserve, her health necessitated wandering again.

Commissions at last came, but Mrs. Whistler's illness left him no chance to carry them out. He said to us one day: "Now, they want these things; why didn't they want them twenty years ago, when I wanted to do them, and could have done them? And they were just as good twenty years ago as they are now."

Few large portraits begun during these years were completed. And after his wife's death he struggled in vain to return to the old conditions of continuous effort to which the world owes his greatest masterpieces. It is true that his work never deteriorated till the last, that, as he said, he brought it ever nearer to the perfection which alone could satisfy him. He never produced anything finer in their way than _The Master Smith_ and _The Little Rose of Lyme Regis_, painted towards the end of his married life, or the series of children's heads of his latest years. But these were planned on a smaller scale and required less physical effort than the large full-lengths and the decorative designs he longed to execute, but was never able to finish, sometimes not even to begin. Whistler, with advancing years, became more sure of himself, more the master, but circumstances forced him to find his pleasure and exercise his knowledge in smaller work.