London Days: A Book of Reminiscences

I remember what a former ally of his had said to me just before the Manchester Conference: "No, I am not going to Manchester. I don't agree with Gladstone's Irish policy, but I know that if I were to go to Manchester I would shout with the rest." Those were days when the world had sunk far into the morasses of parliamentary talk. All things were to be settled by talking and voting and pious intentions. A complacent faith in Democracy was to save the world, if, indeed, the world were not already saved by it. In English-speaking countries it had become little short of dishonourable to praise naval and military valour; and reliance upon force as the defence of a nation was thought to be unchristian. Democracy was to be shielded by its own virtue. We have heard that since the Great War, too. It is the old story of an old dream. Envy, hatred, and malice had departed from the world. There would be no more cause for great wars. The era of perpetual peace was about to dawn. Nations were to put their trust in a parliamentary God, a Deity of Congresses. When every one voted, there would be a new heaven on a new earth. The credulous invented a new kind of treason of which any one was accused when he expressed, publicly, doubts of the sanity of a democracy which could not see that the voter unprepared to defend his "sacred vote" by arms was risking his privilege, his goods, his kith and kin, was imperilling his right to live as a freeman. He had put his faith in words. Mr. Gladstone was the nineteenth century's greatest conjuror with words. But he was incapable of demanding, as Woodrow Wilson did, that a nation should be "neutral in thought", while freedom, the very right to think, was being beaten down. Gladstone would not have blundered like that, you say. But it was not a blunder, it was a crime.

CHAPTER XI

WHISTLER

A familiar voice said, "Come!"

It was Whistler's voice. I turned and answered, "All right. Where?"

The slender, dapper figure halted; over the quizzical face a look of astonishment flashed; the flat-brimmed silk hat lifted perceptibly by the contortion of an eyebrow; and the immortal monocle dropped into the right hand as was its habit when punctuating a sentence of its controller. The monocle was Whistler's question mark, his exclamation point, his full stop; it served even as parenthesis when occasion demanded.

"Where," replied Whistler, "where should an honest Londoner go at this hour but home to dine? Come, then! Escape the awful gaze of the rude world. We 're blocking Bond Street. Let's call a worthy hansom."

A hansom worthy of its fare was found by searching,—varnished, resplendent; it bore a striped awning, and its driver was smart and wore a boutonnière; and its horse shone and arched a proud neck. We were at Chelsea in ten minutes. We were neighbours there. Stopping the cab at the Tower House, in Tite Street, Whistler alighted, exclaiming:

"And the painter and his bride said 'come.' We are not out of the packing cases yet; but come in. I 've something to show you. You must stay and dine, or I won't show you what it is."

And we mounted to his flat.

Mrs. Whistler knew that I was accustomed to "Jimmie's" ways, and so she affected no surprise when she met us at the door and learned that I had come to dinner. She merely said, as if it were all in the day's work:

"We 've just moved in. Pardon the chairs. Let's make a housewarming of it."

It was easy to "pardon the chairs", for there were none to pardon,—in the drawing-room to which I was shown. There were only unpacked packing cases. And I sat on one. Whistler turned on the lights and then darted into another room from which he returned speedily, showing his roguish smile and carrying in his hands a bundle of printer's proofs which he laid beside me on my packing case. Standing over them, screwing his monocle into his eye, he said:

"There 's the thing I wanted to show you; my magnum opus: 'The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.' Do you mind looking 'em over, with an eye to correction, while you wait? My idea 's a brown paper cover like the 'Ten O'Clock.'"

And with that he darted out again, returning immediately with a box of cigars and a case filled with cigarettes.

"Burnt offering to the High Gods," he said. "I go to prepare the libations."

And he went.

Mrs. Whistler, after a few gracious words, went also, presumably to give directions for the table. I was left to myself, the packing cases, the proofs, and the cigars. My watch said seven thirty, and presently seven forty-five, and, on the heels of that, eight o'clock. I was interested, but I was also hungry. But neither of the Whistlers had yet reappeared. Meantime I read on and on, admiring immensely and chuckling every minute or two over the stupidities, the jealousies, the ridiculous follies of mankind as revealed in "The Gentle Art." And it was nine o'clock! Jimmie came in with a fat bundle of newspaper clippings.

"Read!" he cried. "Some of these should be included, don't you think so? Hope you are not hungry!" Then he disappeared again.

I was too hungry to smoke.

There were sounds occasionally from beyond the closed door. Although noncommittal, they were encouraging; they at least indicated human presence and the probability, in an uncertain future, of food. At nine forty-five I had reached the end of the proofs, the press clippings, and almost of patience, when Jimmie came tripping in with pantomimic action which meant abasement and a plea for mercy. Then said he:

"I fear the Lord hath made me forgetful of time. But there 's atonement toward. Have you read 'em? Oh, Sheridan, Sheridan Ford, thou naughty one, prepare for doom! Madame, I pray you do the honours."

And Mrs. Whistler, who had appeared behind him, enchanted me by saying, "Dinner is served."

It was ten o'clock! The Whistlerian hour.

I do not know what they had been doing. Had they been unpacking china and linen and chairs, while the maid foraged the neighbouring shops? Had an unpremeditated feast produced itself by Jimmie's conjuring? Had Jimmie cooked the dinner while Mrs. Whistler arranged the table with its dainty ware, and silver, and soft linen, and shaded lights? Or had they reversed the parts? I shall never know. But there was the daintiest, most delicious dinner, most charmingly served, and there were two or three kindly wines, a coffee that the master himself had prepared, and a soothing liqueur from his beloved Paris. It was a dinner that more than reconciled one to perishing on a packing case. And through it all Whistler summed up his philosophy of life and art, as previously and subsequently he had set it forth elsewhere. We sat till long after midnight in high session, debating selections from press clippings which had been showered upon him by his "excellent Romeike." "Shall I put in this, or omit that? Here 's something too good to lose!" And so, with what he called "infinite jerriment", another portion of "The Gentle Art" began to take shape. In its further progress I had no hand, as I was off to America in a day or two, and Jimmie needed no aid in goading his solicitors to the pursuit of Sheridan Ford who had, Whistler said, infringed his literary rights. The pursuit of Sheridan was an epic which aroused more than nine days' wonder; it led from London to Antwerp, from Antwerp to Paris, from Paris to New York and back to London again. The "Extraordinary Piratical Plot" was defeated, the "piratical edition" was suppressed, and, in the early summer of 1890, there appeared, published by the graceful, sympathetic, and cordial aid of Mr. William Heinemann The Gentle Art of Making Enemies as Pleasingly Exemplified in Many Instances, Wherein the Serious Ones of this Earth, Carefully Exasperated, Have Been Prettily Spurred On to Unseemliness and Indiscretion, While Overcome by an Undue Sense of Right. The dedication was no less characteristic:

"To the rare Few, who, early in Life, have rid Themselves of the Friendship of the Many, these pathetic Papers are inscribed."

Upon my return from America I found the Whistlers established at Number 21 Cheyne Walk a few steps from my own door. It was not Whistler's good fortune to live long in any house, at any rate in those years. He had two years, or something less, at Tower House, and something less, I think, at Cheyne Walk, and, in April or May, 1892, he removed to Paris. After that I saw him but seldom, for my wanderings upon the face of the planet were to increase and multiply. But during the '88-'92 period he was often in my home. It was his peculiarity and privilege not to come when he was asked, or expected, but invariably to arrive as a sudden gift from the gods, and for the most part he chose the Sunday-evening "Smoke Talks" rather than the suppers, because at the latter he would be more likely to encounter some of "the Serious Ones of this Earth", already "carefully exasperated", in which case he would be bored, while at the former he would be sure to meet the choicest talkers at a late hour. He would drop in at eleven, or at midnight, and stay till two in the morning with half a dozen congenial beings who would not only relish his wit, but sparkle with their own, and who were capable of appreciating him as an artist without requiring explanatory charts and diagrams.

One such evening we had been talking of Carlyle, who had lived around the corner in Cheyne Row. Whistler told some pleasant anecdote of him.

"There!" exclaimed Theodore Wores, a disciple of Whistler's, "I always thought Carlyle was not so black as he 's painted."

Whistler sprang to his feet, and falling back in mock horror, cried, as he stared at Wores, "Et tu, Brute?"

The room shook with laughter.

On another occasion a well-known critic was laying down the law about somebody's "technique." He appealed to Whistler for confirmation.

"My dear fellow," said Whistler, "that's an opinion one would wish to express diffidently." Among his hearers was an artist accustomed to illustrate in Punch some of the "Things one would wish to express differently."

You know what Whistler said to the Prince of Wales (afterwards Edward VII) at an Exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists. Whistler, recently elected president, was showing the Prince around the galleries.

"What is the history of your Society?" asked the Prince.

"It has none, Sir; its history begins to-day," was the quick reply. It fitted like a glove. There were sleepy years behind; and anything you like later. Whistler stirred up the pools of somnolence. He did not stir them long, for the British artists of those days, whether or not they were interested in art, preferred Britons for presidents. I daresay they were right.

One afternoon he came to my flat with the tall bamboo wand which he often used, in Chelsea at any rate, instead of a walking stick. He was of a phenomenal slenderness, which was emphasised by the long wand, and the long, flat-brimmed hat, and the long, black, tight coat. He had yellow gloves, and his little soft shoes—his feet were the smallest I ever saw on a man—were the last word in daintiness. No London maker could have produced them. Jimmie was always, at all points, fastidious. He gesticulated more than any Briton, but his gesticulations were not Parisian, they were Whistlerian. He pointed dramatically to the ceiling and murmured, "White, all white."

"White." Then to the walls—"All white. And a white you can wash! Londoners forget that they must live in their houses in winter. All their colours are dismal, and there 's no sun."

"Apropos?" I was about to enquire.

"Didn't you tell me, the other day, that you intended redecorating this place?"

"Sometime, when my ship comes in."

"It doesn't need a ship. A navy wouldn't do for Cheyne Walk. May I offer a suggestion?"

"The knowledge of a lifetime," said I, quoting his famous hit at the Ruskin trial.

"Very well then; I 'll come in."

And he went all around the flat, pointing here and there with his bamboo wand, and saying, "Such-and-such a colour here, and such a line there. My dear boy, this is the whole secret,—tone and line. The good colour—the right one—and the good line—the right one—cost no more than the wrong. People overlook these things; they forget them, they ignore them altogether, and then have the misfortune to live. They don't go mad, because they 're British. And you 'll not, because you 'll have the right colour and the right line. Come. Let's walk. I 'm free for the evening. We 'll dine at the Club."

That was Whistler, Whistler the neighbour, the phase of him that I knew quite as well as any other phase. Later on, when I "did up" my flat, I remembered the details of his suggestions, and carried them out. The result was that I had one of the most delightful flats in London.

The appreciation of those who understood warmed his heart. He had had to fight his way from the beginning against the least imaginative, the stodgiest, the narrowest, the most unsympathetic criticism, and the most prejudiced, because the least enlightened public (as to art) in the world. But his fighting was not for his own hand merely; he was the champion of art as against ignorance, complacent or aggressive.

It is difficult to believe now that for many years in the last century Whistler's work was opposed with rancour, or bitterly derided. Now the world salutes his memory as that of a master; then he was called a coxcomb, a charlatan, an impostor, excepting by "the rare Few" who had rid themselves of the blighting ignorances of the many. There were many pigmies who, because they walked on stilts, were thought to be giants in those days. Their stilts warped, or broke long ago, their lights have dimmed with the passing years, or their names are remembered merely as having been targets for Whistler's wit. Had he not "killed" these men, their existence would have been forgotten.

As I have said already, it was not Whistler the fighter, nor Whistler the "airy-incomprehensible" whom I saw most frequently in Carlyle Mansions, but Whistler the neighbour. I do not remember that any one has ever written of him in that character. He used to drop in on dreary, rainy evenings when, he said, "the world depressed" him, or when some happy stroke of fortune had gratified him. Or he would come on moonlit nights and gaze from my high windows where the views of Thames were quite remarkable, and drop his fighting mood, his satire, his butterfly attributes. I had called him "the butterfly with the sting." The phrase pleased him. "Yes, there you have me," he said. But he would drop the sting, and the monocle, and the air of the sprite, and would be quite human, almost "One of the serious of this Earth." One night he came jubilantly, and no sooner had he lost himself in a grandfather's chair by the fireplace, than he said, with a kind of moan:

"He's gone!"

"Who's gone?" I asked.

"My old friend Thomas Carlyle. He lived with me many a year, and I sold him to-day for a base thousand pounds." This with a touch of sadness, permitting the monocle to drop into his right hand, and gazing reflectively at the fire. Then, with a sudden turn towards me: "The Mun-eeee-ci-pal Corrrrporration o' Glasgie has purchased it for its Arrt Museum." The monocle was thrust to the eye again where it seemed to flash the question, "What do you think of that?"

I thought very well of it, and said something to the effect that it was a wise city which knew enough to buy such a masterpiece.

"Surprising, is n't it?" said Whistler, and then he told me that a committee of braw Scots had called at his studio to conduct the negotiations for Glasgow. His mimicry of the baillies I will not try to reproduce here. Type cannot present it. Action, expression, accent, all are lost. It was a delightful imitation, and I shouted with laughter when Whistler mounted the climax of his story:

"'But Mr. Wheestler,' said one of the baillies, by way of expostulation over the price I had modestly suggested, 'but Mr. Wheestler, this is a moderrn paainting, an' I ken that moderrn paintings mostly faade.'

"Behold me there," continued Whistler, "the Butterfly Rampant, hotly retorting, 'Gentlemen; you are mistaken. It is the damnation of modern paintings that they do not fade!'"

It was about the same time that France bought that other masterpiece, the portrait of "The Artist's Mother." Whistler came to tell me a few hours after the transfer to Paris had been arranged. He said quietly, as if he were touched deeply,

"France gives me honour, and I accept the invitation for Mother. Mother goes to the Luxembourg, and, after my death, to the Louvre. They pay her expenses, for what more does the honorarium amount to? It's only one hundred and twenty pounds. But one cannot sell one's Mother. She will be glad that I am represented in the Luxembourg, and later in the Louvre. I am glad it is Mother who will represent me."

And then, probably because he feared that he was dropping into sentiment, he broke off gaily with a jest about "another ghost who haunted the pavements of Chelsea", a critic stung to death by the Butterfly, "the late Harry Q—" still haunting Tite Street. "The late Harry", it may be said to children of the present hour, was quite as much alive as Whistler, and occupied—Whistler said "haunted"—the house which Jimmie had built and which he had lost in bankruptcy.

I had received from a friend in Boston a letter asking if I would "sound Whistler" about the probability of his accepting a commission for the decoration of some part of the Public Library. The authorities hesitated about approaching him. They had an idea that his attitude toward America was antagonistic, they knew he was "touchy"; they did not wish to submit a proposal, or to invite a suggestion, that might, ninety-nine chances to one, evoke a scornful reply. He might tell them he was not a housepainter. "You are a friend of his. Won't you find out how he would receive a proposal, and advise us how best to make an approach?"

One day when, like Rosalind, he was in "a coming-on disposition", I asked, "What is your real attitude towards America?"

"I haven't any," said he. "How can a man have an attitude toward a continent? Oh, there are the discerning; more of them, perhaps, over there than here. But there 's no 'public taste' there nor here. There never was 'public taste' anywhere. There's only the relation of beauty to the discerning. That's all. But the American mind is not closed. The English mind is closed and bound. England wants art that tells stories. I want art that tells of beauty."

"If the discerning in America were to say, 'There's Whistler now, an American; we wish him to do a great public work'—for instance, a room in the Boston Library, or something like that,—well, would you accept?"

"Of course! It would be the evidence of discernment that I 've been waiting for. But there's no chance of it."

"Yes, there is; I assure you there is."

"If that's true, I'd really like it. I'd like it immensely."

"Hand on heart?"

"Hand on heart!"

The offer came to him, but, as far as I know, he never carried out the work.

He left Chelsea soon after that, going to Paris to live. But before going to Paris he met, at my home, my dearest friend, of whom I shall write later. My friend is dead now, but he had produced then two excellent novels and a successful play. Whistler expressed an interest in him, and he looked in one evening to ask me if he might borrow the books. I lent them to him. Here is another aspect of his entertaining character. After he had been some months in Paris, I wrote to him reminding him of the volumes, which, for certain personal reasons, the author never permitted to be reprinted.

Fatal error!

Whistler never replied. I never saw him again. But that was Travel's fault, not mine. I never heard again from Whistler. And he never returned the books!

CHAPTER XII

HENRY DRUMMOND

We were smoking churchwarden pipes and telling how Jock This and Sandy That had made their money. I hope the Free Kirk folk will not be scandalised by the revelation, especially by that of the churchwardens. While Drummond lived I concealed this grievous sin, but now that he has been dead nigh upon a quarter of a century, I think he will fare no worse for it in heaven, whatever might have been the case in Glasgow in the early nineties. He wore a velvet smoking jacket, too, and we toasted our toes before his study fire on one of the worst nights it has ever been my fortune to see in Scotland or elsewhere. The wind was lifting roofs and toppling chimneys to the ground, and the rain was like streams from a thousand fire engines. There was never a better night for a fireside.

Jock This and Sandy That got into the conversation (not bodily but in essence) because their experiences illustrated what Professor Drummond was saying about "getting on in the world." And he was saying these things because he liked talking other men's shop, not his own. The point he made was this: it is n't necessary to emigrate in order to prosper. He had been talking to a group of young men about this that very day. He had a way with him when talking to young men.

"How do men get bored?" he asked. "I never get bored. I can be interested in something always. Time never drags on my hands. But Jock and Sandy can't get interested unless they are making more money, so they keep at it all the time. They are lost without their occupation. Money is a fine thing—to use. If you have n't it, the man who has it uses you as well as his money. Can we find the way to make money without becoming its slaves, as almost all men are who make it?"

In the early nineties Henry Drummond was what they call "one of the best sellers." Who reads him now? I ask for information. If his books had been fiction, we could understand that the fashion had changed in twenty years. But has the fashion changed in God?

Youth used to follow Drummond in troops. When he died more than the youth of Scotland mourned. But youth does not mourn long. It has in that respect the advantage of age, which usually makes new friends only with difficulty; youth has but to summon them, and they come. Drummond had an immense capacity for friendship. I have said he had a way with youth; yes, of both sexes and all ages. But his greatest friends were young men; and his greatest friend of all was D. L. Moody, the revivalist.

Drummond was saying, as we sat before the fire, drawing clouds from churchwardens:

"I don't believe in old saws, do you? Now there 's:

"'Early to bed, and early to rise,Make a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.'

"What nonsense! Healthy, if you like, but how wealthy and how wise is the manual labourer?

"'Bed at dark,Up with the lark.'

"Suppose you work with a night shift? Try bringing up a generation on these old wives' tales. But they 're merely an example of our British habit of trying to rule by phrases instead of by ideas."

In the hall around the corner, I thought, they might suspect this sort of thing as inclining toward heresy. But you never can tell. "One man," as a proverb-muddled acquaintance of mine used to say, "one man may lead a horse to water, but another may not look over the fence."

They were still buying Drummond's books in large quantities,—"Natural Law in the Spiritual World" and "The Greatest Thing in the World." I liked to think that the slender gentleman with longish hair, who was sartorially British to the nth power, could write things like that in the morning and in the evening keep me company with a churchwarden, and these were very long churchwardens, old style, and we smoked "Glasgow Mild." Drummond, being a sensible man, wanted, as I say, to talk some other man's shop. He wanted to talk mine but could not pin me down. It was his shop I wanted. One of his young men with a literary turn wished to go to America and become a journalist. Would I advise?

"Why America?" I enquired mildly. "You have admirable newspapers in Scotland. Besides, you were saying that 'it is n't necessary to emigrate in order to prosper.'"

"It's unkind to remind a man of his inconsistencies," said he.

"I would like to save a good Scot, especially if young, from the mutilations of American journalism. More especially if literary. Tell him to learn the trade at home first. He 'll be trained more thoroughly here. There they 'll put him 'on space' to the uttermost ruin of any literary gift he may have. Space-writing means word-spinning—the more words the more money, if you have the knack of escaping the blue pencil. Space-work will knock seven-ways-for-Sunday any literary turn he may have. American journalism will do that, anyhow."