CHAPTER XXXIII: HONOURS. EXHIBITIONS. NEW INTERESTS. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN

EIGHTY-NINE TO EIGHTEEN NINETY-ONE.

Official recognition of Whistler in England was followed by official honours abroad. While President of the British Artists he was asked for the first time to show in the International Exhibition at Munich (1888). He sent _The Yellow Buskin_ and was awarded a second-class medal. The best comment was Whistler's letter of acknowledgment to the Secretary, whom he prayed to convey to the Committee his "sentiments of tempered and respectable joy" and "complete appreciation of the second-hand compliment." But soon after he was elected an Honorary Member of the Bavarian Royal Academy, and, a year later, was given a first-class medal and the Cross of St. Michael. In 1889 he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honour and received a first-class medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition. Another gold medal was awarded to him at Amsterdam, where he was showing the _Mother_, _The Fur Jacket_, and _Effie Deans--Arrangement in Yellow and Grey_. We have heard that Israels and Mesdag, who were little in sympathy with Whistler, objected to giving him a medal, but James Maris insisted. The year before Mr. E. J. Van Wisselingh had bought from Messrs. Dowdeswell _Effie Deans_, which he had seen in the Edinburgh International Exhibition of 1886, though it was skied. He sold it within a short time to Baron Van Lynden, of The Hague, then making his collection, bequeathed by the Baroness Van Lynden in 1900 to the Rijks Museum at Amsterdam. The picture is almost the only one to which Whistler gave a literary title, except the pastel _Annabel Lee_. _Effie Deans_ is apparently a portrait of Maud, and it belongs to the period of _The Fur Jacket_ and _Rosa Corder_. The Butterfly was added later. The painting was not signed when bought by Baron Van Lynden, who, hearing from Van Wisselingh that Whistler was in Holland, asked him to sign it. Whistler not only did so, but we believe then added the quotation from the _Heart of Midlothian_ written at the bottom of the canvas: "She sunk her head upon her hand and remained seemingly unconscious as a statue," the only inscription on any of his paintings that we have seen. Walter Sickert says that it was added by some one else, but as Whistler saw the picture in 1902 and made no objection to it, Mr. Sickert's statement scarcely seems correct.

Few things pleased Whistler more than the honours from Amsterdam, Munich, and Paris. To celebrate the Bavarian medal and decoration his friends gave him a dinner at the Criterion, May 1, 1889. Mr. E. M. Underdown, Q.C., was in the chair, and Mr. W. C. Symons hon. secretary. Two Royal Academicians, Sir W. Q. Orchardson and Mr. Alfred Gilbert, were present, and also Sir Coutts Lindsay, Stuart Wortley, Edmund Yates--Atlas, who never failed him--and many others. Whistler was moved, and not ashamed to show it. Stuart Wortley, in a speech, said that Whistler had influenced every artist in England; Orchardson described him as "a true artist"; and this time Atlas spoke, not only with the weight of the _World_ on his shoulders, but with praise and affection. Whistler began his speech with a laugh at this "age of rapid results when remedies insist upon their diseases." But his voice is said to have been full of emotion before the end:

"You must feel that, for me, it is no easy task to reply under conditions of which I have so little habit. We are all even too conscious that mine has hitherto, I fear, been the gentle answer that sometimes turneth not away wrath.... It has before now been borne in upon me that in surroundings of antagonism I may have wrapped myself for protection in a species of misunderstanding, as that other traveller drew closer about him the folds of his cloak the more bitterly the winds and the storm assailed him on his way. But, as with him, when the sun shone upon him in his path, his cloak fell from his shoulders, so I, in the warm glow of your friendship, throw from me all former disguise, and, making no further attempt to hide my true feeling, disclose to you my deep emotion at such unwonted testimony of affection and faith."

This was the only public testimonial he ever received in England, and one of the few public functions at which he assisted. He seldom attended public dinners, those solemn feasts of funeral baked meats by which "the Islander soothes his conscience and purchases public approval." We remember that he did not appear at the first dinner of the Society of Authors, where his place was beside ours--a dinner given to American authors, at which Lowell presided. J. recalls an artists' dinner at which Whistler was seated on one side of the chairman and Charles Keene on the other. Some brilliant person had placed Sir Frederick Wedmore next to Whistler, who had more fun at the dinner than the critic. He rarely was seen in the City, and rarely was asked in Paris. As an outsider, he was never invited to the Academy. Even little private functions, like the Johnson Club, to which J. has taken him, he did not care for. It is so easy to be bored, so difficult to be amused, on such occasions. He preferred not to run the risk.

Of gentle answers that turn not away wrath there were plenty in 1889. At the Universal Exhibition in Paris, Whistler, an American, naturally proposed to show with Americans. _The Yellow Buskin_ and _The Balcony_ were the pictures he selected; he sent twenty-seven etchings, knowing that, in a big exhibition, a few prints make no effect. The official acknowledgment was a printed notice from General Rush C. Hawkins, "Cavalry Officer," Commissioner for the American Art Department: "Sir,--Ten of your exhibits have not received the approval of the jury. Will you kindly remove them?"

Whistler's answer was an immediate journey to Paris, a call on General Hawkins, the withdrawal of all his prints and pictures, to the General's embarrassment. Whistler wrote afterwards to the _New York Herald_, Paris edition: "Had I been properly advised that the room was less than the demand for place, I would, of course, have instantly begged the gentlemen of the jury to choose, from among the number, what etchings they pleased."

Twenty-seven etchings, unless specially invited, were rather a large number to send to any exhibition. He had been already asked to contribute to the British Section, and to it he now took the two pictures and ten prints. Though General Hawkins' action is as incomprehensible as his appointment to such a post, Whistler made a mistake. There is no doubt that, had his seventeen accepted prints remained in the American Section, he would have had a much better show than in the English, where only ten were hung and where, for etching, Seymour Haden, and not Whistler, was awarded a _Grand Prix_. "Whistler's Grievance" got into the papers, and the letters and interviews remain in _The Gentle Art_. If in 1889 he identified himself with the British, it was due solely to the discourtesy, as he considered it, of his countrymen. There was no denial of his nationality, and, though later always invited to show in the British Section of International Exhibitions, he always refused when there was an American Section.

In 1888 the New Gallery took over the played-out traditions of the Grosvenor, but Whistler did not follow to Regent Street. His _Carlyle_, several drawings, and many etchings went to the Glasgow International Exhibition that year, and he was well represented at the first show of the Pastel Society at the Grosvenor. He was more in sympathy with the New English Art Club than any other group of artists. It was then youthful and enthusiastic, most of the younger men of promise or talent belonged, and it might have accomplished great things had its founders been faithful to their original ambition. Whistler was never a member, but he sent a _White Note_ and the etching of the _Grande Place, Brussels_, to the exhibition in 1888, and _Rose and Red_, a pastel, in 1889, when he was elected by the votes of the exhibitors to the jury. To the infinite loss of the club he never showed again. In the same year (1889), at the Institute of the Fine Arts at Glasgow, the _Mother_ strengthened the impression made by the _Carlyle_ the year before; there was a show of his work in May at the College of Working Women in Queen Square, London; and _The Grey Lady_ was included in an exhibition at the Art Institution, Chicago, in the fall.

The show at Queen Square was remarkable. It is said to have been "organised by Mr. Walter Sickert, by permission of Miss Goold (head of the College), and opened by Lord Halsbury." There had not been such a representative collection of his work since his exhibition of 1874. The _Mother_, _Carlyle_, _Rosa Corder_, _Irving_ were there, many pastels and water-colours, and many etchings of all periods from the Thames Series to the last in Touraine and Belgium. We have never seen a catalogue. We remember how it impressed us when we came to the fine Queen Anne house in the quiet, out-of-the-way square, how indignant we were to find nobody but a solitary man and a young lady at the desk, and how urgently we wrote in the _Star_ that, "if there were as many as half a dozen people who cared for good work, they should go at once to see this exhibition of the man who has done more to influence artists than any modern." There is a legend of Whistler's coming one day, taking a picture from the wall and walking away with it, despite the protest of the attendant and the Principal of the College, wishing, so the legend goes, to carry out the theory he was soon to assert that pictures were only "kindly lent their owners." But the story of his making off with it across the square, followed by the college staff screaming "Stop thief!" and being nearly run in by a policeman, is a poor invention. His desire, however, to keep his pictures in his possession, his hope that those who bought them would not dispose of them, was growing, and his disgust when they were sold, especially at increased prices, was expressed in his answer to some one who said, "Staats Forbes tells me that that picture of yours he has will be the last picture he will ever part with." "H'm," said Whistler, who had had later news, "it is the last picture he has."

In March 1890 Whistler moved to No. 21 Cheyne Walk, an old house with a garden at the back, farther down the Embankment, close to Rossetti's Tudor House. It was panelled from the street door to the top. A cool scheme of blue and white decorated the dining-room, where there was one perfect painting over the mantel, and, Mr. Francis James has told us, the _Six Projects_ hung for a while on the walls. The drawing-room on the first floor was turned into a studio, there was a bedroom above, but the rest of the house was empty and bare. From M. Gérard Harry we have an explanation of this bareness:

"I remember a striking remark of Whistler's at a garden-party in his Chelsea house. As he caught me observing some incompletely furnished rooms and questioning within myself whether he had occupied the house more than a fortnight or so: 'You see,' he said, with his short laugh, 'I do not care for definitely settling down anywhere. Where there is no more space for improvement, or dreaming about improvement, where mystery is in perfect shape, it is _finis_--the end--death. There is no hope, nor outlook left.' I do not vouch for the words, but that was certainly the sense of a remark which struck me as offering a key to much of Whistler's philosophy, and to one aspect of his original art."

On September 24, 1890, Mr. Cole, calling at Cheyne Walk, "found him painting some excellent portraits--very strong and fine." What all these were it is difficult to say, though one was the well-known _Harmony in Black and Gold--Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac_, Whistler's fourth portrait of a man in evening dress. Another may have been the second portrait never finished, which Montesquiou described to Edmond de Goncourt, who made a note of it in his _Journal_ (July 7, 1891):

"Montesquiou tells me that Whistler is now doing two portraits of him: one is in evening dress, with a fur cloak over his arm, the other in a great grey cloak with a high collar, and, just suggested, a necktie of a mauve not to be put into words, though his eyes express the colour of it. And Montesquiou is most interesting to listen to as he explains the method of painting of Whistler, to whom he gave seventeen sittings during the month spent in London. The first sketch-in of his subject is with Whistler a fury, a passion: one or two hours of this wild fever and the subject emerges complete in its envelope. Then sittings, long sittings, when, most of the time, the brush is brought close to the canvas but does not touch it, is thrown away, and another taken, and sometimes in three hours not more than fifty touches are given to the canvas, every touch, according to Whistler, lifting a veil from the sketch.

"Oh, sittings! when it seemed to Montesquiou that Whistler, by that intentness of observation, was draining from him his life, something of his individuality, and, in the end, he was so exhausted that he felt as if all his being was shrinking away, but happily he discovered a certain _vin de coca_ that restored him after those terrible sittings."

J. went only once to No. 21 Cheyne Walk. Then it was to consult Whistler concerning Sir Hubert von Herkomer's publication of photogravures of pen-drawings in _An Idyl_, and description of them as etchings. Whistler received J. in the white-panelled dining-room, where he was breakfasting on an egg. Sickert came in and was at once sent out--with a letter. Whistler felt the seriousness of the offence, and he lent his support to W. E. Henley's _National Observer_, in which the affair was exposed and in which also the Queen was called upon to remove Herkomer from his post as Slade Professor at the University of Oxford.

From this time J. saw Whistler oftener, meeting him in clubs, in galleries, in friends' houses, occasionally at Solferino's, the little restaurant in Rupert Street which was for several years the meeting-place, a club really, for the staff of the _National Observer_. Nobody who ever lunched there on Press day at the Academy, or the New English Art Club, or the New Gallery is likely to forget the talk round the table in the corner. Never have we heard R. A. M.--"Bob"--Stevenson more brilliant, more paradoxical, more inspiriting than at these midday gatherings. Whistler's first encounter with Henley's paper, then edited in Edinburgh, was a sharp skirmish which, though he afterwards became friendly with Henley, he never forgot nor forgave. Henley was publishing a series of articles called _Modern Men_, among whom he included Whistler, "the Yankee with the methods of Barnum." The policy of the _National Observer_ was to fight, everybody, everything, and it fought with spirit. But it had no patience with the battles of others. Of Whistler the artist it approved, but not of Whistler the writer of letters, whom it pronounced rowdy and unpleasant. "Malvolio-Macaire" was its name for him. At last, in noticing Sheridan Ford's _Gentle Art_, of which we shall presently have more to say, it continued in the same strain, and a copy of the paper containing the review, "with proud mark, in the blue pencil of office," was sent to Whistler. He answered with a laugh at "the thick thumb of your editorial refinement" pointed "in deprecation of my choice rowdyism." Two things came of the letter--one amusing, the other a better understanding. Whistler's answer finished with a "regret that the ridiculous 'Romeike' has not hitherto sent me your agreeable literature." Romeike objected; he had sent eight hundred and seven clippings to Whistler: he demanded an apology. Whistler gave it without hesitation: he had never thought of Romeike as a person, and he wrote, "if it be not actionable permit me to say that you really are delightful!!" No one could appreciate the wit, the fun of it all better than Henley, and he was the more eager to meet Whistler. His account of the meeting, when it came about, was coloured by the enthusiasm that made Henley the stimulating person he was. "And we met," he would say, throwing back his great head and laughing with joy, though he gave no details of the meeting. Henley managed to find "the earnest of romance" in everything that happened to him. "And there we were--Whistler and I--together!" he would repeat, as if it were the most dramatic situation that could be imagined.

The bond between them was their love of the Thames. Henley was the first to sing the beauty of the river that Whistler was the first to paint, and when he wrote the verses (_No. XIII._ in _Rhymes and Rhythms_) that give the feeling, the magical charm of the Nocturnes, he dedicated them to Whistler. Big and splendid as a Viking, exuberant, emphatic, Henley was not the type physically to interest Whistler. The sketch of him (made in 1896) is one of Whistler's least satisfactory lithographs, and only six impressions were pulled. But their relations were cordial, and when the _National Observer_ was transferred to London and Henley returned with it, Whistler sometimes came to the dinners of the staff at Solferino's. Henley had gathered about him the younger literary men and journalists: Rudyard Kipling, "Bob" Stevenson, J. M. Barrie, Marriott Watson, G. S. Street, Vernon Blackburn, Fitzmaurice Kelly, Arthur Morrison, Charles Whibley, Kenneth Grahame, George W. Steevens. After Mr. Astor bought the _Pall Mall Gazette_ its staff was largely recruited from the _National Observer_, and Mr. Henry Cust, the editor, and Mr. Ivan-Muller, the assistant editor, joined the group in the room upstairs. When dinner was over and Henley was thundering at his end of the table, the rest listening, Whistler sometimes dropped in, and the contrast between him and Henley added to the gaiety of the evening: Henley, the "Burly" of Stevenson's essay on _Talk and Talkers_, "who would roar you down ... bury his face in his hands ... undergo passions of revolt and agony"; Whistler, who would find the telling word, let fly the shaft of wit that his eloquent hands emphasised with delicate, graceful gesture. His "Ha ha!" rose above Henley's boisterous intolerance. When "Bob" Stevenson was there--"Spring-Heel'd Jack"--the entertainment was complete. But each of the three talked his best when he held the floor, and we have known Whistler more brilliant when dining alone with us. From Solferino's, at a late hour when Henley, as always in his lameness, had been helped to his cab, Whistler and J. would retire with "Bob" Stevenson and a little group to the Savile, where everything under heaven was discussed by them, Professor Walter Raleigh, Reginald Blomfield, and Charles Furse frequently joining them, and they rarely left until the club was closed. Whistler would, in his turn, be seen to his cab on his way home, and a smaller group would listen to "Bob" between Piccadilly and Westminster Bridge, waiting for him to catch the first morning train to Kew.

Whistler seldom left without some parting shot which his friends remembered, though he was apparently unconscious of the effects of these bewildering little sayings as he returned to his house in Cheyne Walk. There he was often followed by his new friends and often visited by the few "artists" he had not cared to lose, especially Mr. Francis James and Mr. Theodore Roussel. A few Followers continued to flutter at his heels. Portraits of some of those who came to 21 Cheyne Walk are in the lithograph of _The Garden_: Mr. Walter Sickert, Mr. Sidney Starr, Mr. and Mrs. Brandon Thomas. Mr. Walter Sickert had married Miss Ellen Cobden, and she was a constant visitor. So also were Henry Harland, later editor of the _Yellow Book_, and Mrs. Harland; Wolcot Balestier, the enterprising youth who set out to corner the literature of the world, and who, with Mr. S. S. McClure, was bent on syndicating everybody, including Whistler; Miss Carrie Balestier, now Mrs. Rudyard Kipling; an American journalist called Haxton, with a stammer that Whistler adored to the point of borrowing it on occasions, though he never could manage the last stage when words that refused to be spoken had to be spelled. Another was André Raffalovitch, a Russian youth and poet, whose receptions brought together many amusing as well as fantastic elements of London society. But the most intimate friend he made at this period was Mr. William Heinemann, and this brings us to the great event of 1890, the publication of _The Gentle Art of Making Enemies_.