Copyright & Information
THE MAN WHISTLER
First published in 1952
© Estate of Hesketh Pearson; House of Stratus 1952-2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of Hesketh Pearson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2014 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
![House of Stratus Logo](images/smalllogo.jpg)
www.houseofstratus.com
About the Author
Born in 1887 at Hawford, Worcesterhire, Hesketh Pearson was educated at Bedford Grammar School, then worked in a shipping Office and spent two years in America before beginning a career as an actor in 1911.
Until 1931 he worked successfully in the theatre, which provided many insights for his subsequent writing career. Pearson’s early works included ‘Modern Men and Mummers’ which consisted of sketches of well-known figures in the theatre, and also short stories in ‘Iron Rations’.
‘Doctor Darwin’, a biography of Charles Darwin which was published in 1930, was widely acclaimed and established him as one of the leading popular biographers of his day. Subsequently he concentrated on his writing full-time.
However, for a period of some seven years he was in the doldrums, following an unsuccessful attempt to get the title ‘Whispering Gallery’ published. He nonetheless persisted, and subsequently had published several important biographies of major figures, such as Conan Doyle, Gilbert and Sullivan and George Bernard Shaw. His skill and expertise was widely recognised, such that for example he was able to gain the co-operation of Shaw, who both contributed and later wrote a critique of his biography, and the executors of Conan Doyle’s estate who gave Pearson unprecedented access to private papers.
Pearson was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He died in 1964. His biographies have stood the test of time and are still regarded as definitive works on their subjects.
CHAPTER I
ADOLESCENT
An American accosted Whistler in the Carlton Restaurant, London: “You know, we were both born in Lowell, Massachusetts, and at very much the same time. There is only the difference of a year: you are 67 and I am 68.” Whistler raised his eyeglass, secured the attention of the other diners with his sharp “Ha-ha!” and replied: “Very charming! And so you are 68 and were born at Lowell! Most interesting, no doubt, and as you please. But I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born at Lowell, and I refuse to be 67!” Baltimore had been given as his birthplace by a French writer, and he did not object. “If anyone likes to think I was born in Baltimore, why should I deny it? It is of no consequence to me.” He had also stated in a court of law that he was born at St Petersburg. But his real view was that a great artist occurs so seldom on earth that the precise spot of the occurrence is unimportant. “Burns was not Scotch”, he once said: “in the turning around of the world, he, the genius, just happened to be born there.”
The biographer must be more exact, recognising that place can be as significant as parentage in the life of a man. In the 17th century the Whistlers were an English family resident in the Thames valley or thereabouts, and one of them was as careless about his dates as his descendant became, for he was buried in the parish church of Goring at the age of 216. Another was a doctor, the friend of Pepys, who thought him “good company”, and of Evelyn, who called him “the most facetious man in nature”, both of which descriptions would have fitted our James, the similarity being emphasised by the fact that the doctor had a grave misunderstanding with the authorities at the Royal College of Physicians, while the painter never reached an understanding with the authorities at the Royal Academy of Arts. Though he refused to admit it, the subject of this book inherited more of his nature from English eccentrics than from Irish and Scottish Celts. A branch of the family settled in Ireland. James was proud of his Irish connection, and late in life wrote to the priest of the parish where his family had lived asking for information concerning them. The priest replied that subscriptions were needed for the restoration of the church, and the correspondence closed. A member of the Irish branch, after serving for a while in the ranks of the British army, married, went to America, joined the United States army, became a Major, took part in the 1812 war against England, and begat fifteen children, one of whom was George Washington Whistler, father of the artist. This son George entered the Military Academy, West Point, at the age of 14. He seems to have been a lively lad, much given to joking and not wholly attentive to discipline, good at drawing and with a natural gift for exposition. Passing into the army at the age of 19, he served in the artillery for some fourteen years, mostly engaged on the building of railroads for private companies, such employment being permitted by the Government in the absence of any need for soldiering. Having reached the rank of Major, he resigned his commission in 1833 and became a civil engineer. Meanwhile he had twice married. His first wife, the daughter of an army doctor, died after bearing three children, one of whom, Deborah, we shall meet again. His second wife was the sister of a friend at West Point named McNeill, whose ancestors had emigrated from the Island of Skye in the middle of the 18th century and had settled in North Carolina. Shortly after leaving the army, Major Whistler was appointed engineer of locks and canals at Lowell, Massachusetts, and there, in a house that is now a Whistler Memorial Museum, the first child of his second wife was born on July 10th, 1834, being christened James Abbott. Many years later James dropped the Abbott and substituted his mother’s name McNeill, for he liked to consider himself a southerner and a Celt as much as he disliked “the taint of Lowell”.
Between 1834 and 1842 Major Whistler had various engineering jobs, and in 1837 they moved to Stonington, Connecticut, in 1840 to Springfield, Massachusetts. His wife was a rigid puritan, and the boys were brought up strictly. Saturdays and Sundays were anticipated by the two elder sons with alarm and despondency. Every Saturday afternoon their heads were thoroughly washed by their mother, who overhauled their clothes, locked away their books and toys, and got them into a becoming frame of mind for the sabbath, when they attended church three times and read the Bible in their leisure moments. She wanted one of them to be a parson, and since James was her favourite she would have liked him to be the one; but even at the age of 2 he was displaying a contrary inclination, being found under his mother’s dressing table with a paper and pencil. “I’se drawrin”, he explained. He was called Jimmy or Jemmy by his family, and was known throughout life to his friends and enemies by one or the other, as a rule the former, which will therefore be adopted by his biographer until, with the coming of manhood, Jimmy reaches the years of indiscretion.
At the age of 9 he accompanied his mother, two of his brothers, his half-brother George and his half-sister Deborah, to St Petersburg, where his father was busy constructing a railroad from the capital to Moscow, having been chosen for the job by a commission that had picked him out from the many engineers whose work they had inspected in Europe and America. On the way they stayed with Mrs Whistler’s relatives at Preston in Lancashire, and sailed for Hamburg from London, where Jimmy had his first view of the river he was later to praise in paint. By carriage, coach and steamer they reached St Petersburg. The third boy of Major Whistler’s second marriage had died before the family left America, and seasickness proved fatal to the fourth on the journey to Cronstadt. Mrs Whistler’s diary during their stay in Russia is therefore more concerned with the health and physical appearance of the two survivors, Jimmy and Willie, than with anything else. Her eldest and favourite caused her much anxiety during the six years of their Russian exile. He was not as strong as Willie, had several rheumatic attacks, and was weakened by the diet and confinement which followed them. Moreover he could not be persuaded “to put up his drawing and go to bed while it is light”. He was very excitable, but did not seem to care about anything except his drawing, and was perfectly happy and tranquil when looking at pictures or making them. Once, during an illness, a volume of Hogarth’s engravings was brought to him. Pain and discomfort were forgotten, and days were passed in serene content as he studied these fascinating works. He was even grateful for the cause of the revelation: “If I had not been ill, mother, perhaps no one would have thought of showing them to me.” He never forgot the experience, and to the end of his life asserted that Hogarth was the greatest of English artists. But though his mother was delighted that he could derive so much pleasure from his pencil, she did not encourage such secular enjoyments. “I told him his gift had only been cultivated as an amusement, and that I was obliged to interfere, or his application would confine him more than we approved.”
Major Whistler had a large salary, twelve thousand dollars a year, and they were able to take a country house for the summer months. The boys went to a good school, and Jimmy was allowed to enter the Academy of Fine Arts for a course of drawing lessons. But, like all instinctive artists, he learnt more from his own feeling and observation than the masters were able to teach him. During one holiday that he spent in London with his father he was having a hot footbath when suddenly he became conscious of the shape and colour of one of his feet. For some time he sat looking at it then got paper and colours and began to make a study of it. Similar incidents often occurred in Russia. Before entering his teens he was criticising and even laughing at the work of recognised painters. He was also displaying a patriotic fervour on behalf of the United States of America, which, though it remained constant with the years, he was able to control when the opportunity of exchanging emotion for action presented itself.
By March ’47 the railroad was completed; Major Whistler was embraced and decorated by Emperor Nicholas I; and the family spent the summer of that year in England, where Deborah married a young surgeon named Seymour Haden, who from the outset had made a bad impression on Jimmy by patting him on the shoulder and saying it was high time he went to school. “He’s just like a schoolmaster, isn’t he?” remarked the lad to his father. The following summer cholera broke out in St Petersburg, and Mrs Whistler again brought her two boys to England. Jimmy had only just recovered from another attack of rheumatic fever, and his mother was terrified lest he should succumb to the more serious epidemic. They went to Shanklin in the Isle of Wight, where great care was taken of Jimmy, who was careless of himself. One bright morning they drove to “Black Gang Chine”, and stopped at the inn, whence Jimmy “flew off like a sea fowl, his sketch book in hand, and when I finally found him, he was seated on the red sandy beach, down, down, down, where it was with difficulty Willie and I followed him. He was attempting the sketch of the waterfall and cavern up the side of the precipice…”
They did not let him risk another winter in Russia; so when they went back he was left at the home of the Hadens, 62 Sloane Street, London, where he received instruction from a clergyman. In November ’48 Major Whistler caught cholera, recovered, but died of heart failure the following spring. In recognition of his services the Czar offered to have the boys educated at St Petersburg, but Mrs Whistler wanted to go home. In London she took Jimmy to the Royal Academy in Trafalgar Square, where a portrait of himself, recently done by Sir William Boxall, was exhibited. Since this was the only work of art except his own that Whistler ever displayed on the walls of the various houses and studios he later occupied, he may have thought well of it; though perhaps it was piety or loyalty that made him prize it, for it was commissioned by his father and painted by a man who afterwards, by threatening to resign, compelled the Council of the Royal Academy to exhibit Whistler’s portrait of his mother. Having paid brief visits to Preston, Edinburgh and Glasgow, the family left Liverpool for New York at the end of July ’49, and, after a short stay at Stonington, settled down at Pomfret, Connecticut, where the boys went to school.
From twelve thousand dollars a year to fifteen hundred was a big drop, and Mrs Whistler had to practise economy. They lived in part of an old farmhouse, and the boys had to do a certain amount of manual labour, such as carrying wood, shovelling snow, mending doors. Their mother noted that Jimmy was still excitable, but indolent if not interested, and she never ceased to impress upon him the virtue of perseverance and the value of the Bible. A girl pupil at the same school thought him “one of the sweetest, loveliest boys I ever met”, and he seems to have been a great favourite with everyone except the schoolmaster, who was a stiff pedantic clergyman with a long neck which he tried to hide by wearing long collars. Jimmy arrived one morning at school with a paper collar so long that it covered his ears. Convulsions among the boys and girls; a glare of rage from the master; and Jimmy walked calmly to his desk. But it was not long before he said or did something to justify the inevitable explosion, and the master went for him with a stick. Jimmy dodged and took refuge amongst the girls who sat on the opposite side of the hall. For a while there was a confused swirl of bodies, everyone getting into the way by the simple process of getting out of it; which was followed by a more definite sound, as the irate clergyman asserted his monopoly of long collars. Apart from this early criticism of authority, Jimmy’s school career was undistinguished, though he drew maps better than anyone else, made caricatures, and seized any excuse, from reading a book to looking at a landscape, to draw a portrait or paint a scene.
As he showed no inclination to heavenly exercises, Mrs Whistler decided that Jimmy must be a soldier like his father, grandfather, several uncles and great-uncles, the profession of body-killer being the most respectable alternative to that of soul-curer; and at the age of 17 he entered the United States Military Academy, West Point, the head of which, during the greater part of his cadetship, was Colonel Robert E Lee, later to be famous as commander of the Confederate army in the Civil War. Though pugnacious by nature and fully in sympathy with the profession of arms, Jimmy made as bad a cadet as he would have been a curate. He did not like the discipline, the clothes, the food, the riding, the drilling, the acquisition of uncongenial knowledge, nor the lack of humour incident to institutions. Consequently he was always getting into trouble for inefficiency and the assertion of individuality. When reported for being absent on parade without the knowledge or permission of the instructor, his defence was irregular: “If I was absent without your knowledge or permission, how did you know I was absent?” When he was observed to slide over his horse’s head at cavalry drill, the commander remarked: “I am pleased to see you for once at the head of your class,” but he consoled himself with the belief that he had done it “gracefully”. On being told that a horse he had ridden was called “Quaker”, he remarked: “Well, he’s no friend.” When reprimanded for wearing incorrect boots, his explanation closed with the words: “What boots it?”
He was popular with the other cadets, who called him “Curly” on account of his thick black wavy hair. He was full of fun and good at cooking. He risked punishment by obtaining buckwheat cakes, oysters, ice cream, and other delicacies, at places out of bounds; and he made numberless caricatures of the authorities. In after years he took great pride in his West Point training. “We were United States officers, not schoolboys, nor college students,” he would say. “We were ruled, not by little school or college rules, but by our honour, by our deference to the unwritten law of tradition.” The code of West Point became the code of Whistler; individual behaviour was tested by it; campaigns had to be conducted on West Point principles, which meant in effect that wars waged by the United States were chivalrous, beautiful and glorious, while wars waged by other countries were dastardly, repulsive and scandalous. His memories, like those of so many people, were idealised by time, enhaloed by distance. He always talked with enthusiasm of the three years he had spent at the Military Academy; and when at the end of his life he heard that the cadets had begun to play football, he was distressed: “They should hold themselves apart and not allow the other colleges and universities to dispute with them for a dirty ball kicked round a muddy field – it is beneath the dignity of officers of the United States.”
But his experiences as a cadet were less romantic and more amusing than his later vision of the place suggested. At a history examination he was admonished: “What! you do not know the date of the battle of Buena Vista? Suppose you were to go out to dinner, and the company began to talk of the Mexican War, and you, a West Point man, were asked the date of the battle, what would you do?” Jimmy was indignant: “Do? Why, I should refuse to associate with people who could talk of such things at dinner!” A more serious gap in his knowledge was apparent in the chemistry examination, when he was asked to discuss silicon. It was a brief discussion. “Silicon is a gas,” he announced. “That will do, Mr Whistler,” said the professor of chemistry. It did. He was discharged from the West Point Academy in June ’54, and faced the world at the age of 20, shaky on the subject of solids. “If silicon had been a gas, I would have been a general,” he said at a later period. But it is easier to think of silicon as a gas than of Whistler as a soldier.
Although head of his drawing class at West Point, it still did not occur to his mother that art was a feasible vocation; and as his father had been an engineer, it seemed to her that Jimmy should learn about engines, especially as his half-brother George was partner of a Baltimore locomotive works in which his younger brother Willie was an apprentice. Jimmy liked Baltimore so much that in the years to come he chose it as a birthplace; but he did not at all like engineering; and beyond using up a lot of pencils and paper belonging to the other apprentices in the drawing office, he took no part in the firm’s business. After several months of this, he suddenly left for Washington, where he called on the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, with the suggestion that he should be returned to West Point. He explained that his little difference with the professor of chemistry was not of vital importance, that he had done well enough in the other subjects, and that, if reinstated, he would be quite willing to accept silicon as a metal. Davis, a West Point man, was extremely courteous and promised to consider the application. Jimmy then called on the Secretary of the Navy, with the suggestion that he should enter the Naval Academy, and that his time spent at West Point should count as three years of preparation for the sister service. The Secretary could not agree, but the young man’s self-assurance must have impressed him because a little later he offered Jimmy an appointment in the Marines. By that time, however, Jimmy had got a job in the drawing division of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, Davis having recommended him to Captain Benham after explaining that the reinstatement of one cadet at West Point would establish a precedent and many others would expect similar treatment.
Jimmy commenced his third attempt at a profession that would satisfy his mother in November ’54; but it was no more successful than the first two, and lasted three months. Washington was a very sociable city. Several people had known his father and found the son so attractive that he was soon receiving more invitations than he could accept. He loved dancing and took part in many gay assemblies. He went to the functions at the Legations, and got to know everyone of importance in diplomatic circles. Henry Labouchere, an attaché at the British Legation, liked him very much, and was amused to notice that at evening parties he wore a frock coat, which he made to look like a dress coat by pinning back the skirts. As his salary was a dollar and a half a day, and he had to pay ten dollars a month for a small room at the north-east corner of E and Twelfth Streets, he had nothing left over for clothes. But somehow he managed to do a little entertaining, because he once invited the Russian Minister to dinner. The Minister provided the carriage, Jimmy did the shopping on the way, and then cooked the food while his guest looked on. His rent was occasionally in arrears, but he treated the landlord with consideration. “Now, now, never mind!” he said when the landlord complained of the sketches he had made on the walls of the boarding house: “I’ll not charge you anything for the decorations.”
He did not allow business to interfere with social life, and always arrived late at the office, meeting one remonstrance with: “I was not too late; the office opened too early.” Frequently he did not turn up at all, and his superior, Captain Benham, who admired him, asked a member of the staff to call for him in the morning and bring him to the office. As a result, the other fellow was an hour and a half late for work; so the experiment was not repeated. The records show that Jimmy put in about twelve days at the office during the months of January and February ’55. Even when there, he spent hours at the window, making studies of people in the street, paying special attention to their clothes, and the rest of the time doing sketches on the walls. Nevertheless the short period he passed in the Coast Survey was of incalculable service to him, for he learnt how to etch. In those days the plans and maps were reproduced by this process, and he soon became an expert; though he could not help decorating the margins of his work with caricatures of his superior officers, which amused him but were considered unnecessary by Captain Benham.
His superiors were greatly relieved when he relinquished his post in February ’55; but no more relieved than he, because at last he had decided that he must henceforth do the only thing in the world he wanted to do. He went home, resisted his half-brother’s attempts to make him an engineer once more, and stated flatly that he intended to study art in Paris. It had already begun to dawn on his family that he was an artist or nothing, and they capitulated. They paid his fare to London, agreed to send him three hundred and fifty dollars a year in quarterly instalments, and dismissed him with cash and kisses.
CHAPTER II
BOHEMIAN
Intending to make a good start, Whistler, now aged 21, took a first-class ticket from London to Paris. During the journey from Boulogne he alighted at a station and got into conversation with a black-bearded Irishman on the platform, continuing the journey in a third-class carriage because he wished to continue his conversation with the Irishman, who was a medical student anxious to complete his studies in French hospitals. Arrived at Paris, and disinclined to cease talking, they agreed to share rooms, and having explained their needs to a cab driver were driven to the Hotel Corneille near the OdÈon theatre. They separated after Whistler had made the acquaintance of several artists and had discovered lodgings more suitable to his small income and new companions. His curious American attire immediately gained the attention of the Latin Quarter. It was the summer of ’55, the year of the first International Exhibition, and he dressed in white duck, his head, with its black ringleted hair, surmounted by a low-crowned broad-brimmed straw hat bound with black ribbons, the long ends of which hung down behind.
He studied under Charles Gabriel Gleyre, who “never drew a line without having first assured himself how Raphael would have proceeded”, but from whom he learnt that the colours should be arranged on the palette before starting to paint a picture, and that black is the universal harmoniser, neither of which lessons he ever forgot. But the chief impression he made upon the other English students was that he did as little work as possible and seemed to be in Paris for the express purpose of enjoying himself. He was soon on familiar terms with a number of young men, some of whom were to recognise themselves forty years later in a popular novel called Trilby, the author of which, George Du Maurier, was also working in Gleyre’s studio. Three of these, T R Lamont, Joseph Rowley and Aleco Ionides, are remembered today solely on account of their appearance in that story as ‘the Laird’, ‘Taffy’ and ‘the Greek’. Two others achieved distinction in later life: Edward Poynter became President of the Royal Academy, and Thomas Armstrong was made Director of the South Kensington (now the Victoria and Albert) Museum. Whistler himself was to appear in the serialised version of Trilby under the name of “Joe Sibley”, described as an idler, always in debt, vain, witty, eccentric in dress, charming, sympathetic, “the most irresistible friend in the world as long as his friendship lasted – but that was not for ever.” Unluckily, Du Maurier went on to portray a much later Whistler than the one he had known in the fifties; and as the later Whistler had no difficulty in seeing himself as “Joe Sibley”, there was trouble, the result being an apology by the editor of Harper’s Magazine in which the book was appearing and the omission of “Joe” from the published volume.
But there was no friction between him and his English friends in the fifties. All of them found him delightful, if eccentric; and though they did not much care for his disreputable French companions, they agreed in thinking him the best company in the world. Everything that he said or did, and everything that was said and done to him, seemed funny; at least he created an aura of comedy in his fanciful renderings of the incidents in which he took part. There were, for instance, the series of chances which enabled him to appear properly garbed at a reception given by the American Minister. Lacking a dress suit, he borrowed Poynter’s, whose boots and gloves, however, were not the right size; so he persuaded the girl in a glove shop to let him have a pair on credit, and then toured the corridors of the hotel after the inmates were in bed, tried on a number of boots left outside the doors, discovered a pair that fitted him (though he complained of their shape), removed them for the occasion, and duly replaced them. The British students were a little jealous of the invitations he received to such functions, since none of them could ever hope to be asked to receptions at the British Embassy; and his immunity as an American from the sterner measures of the police was provoking. When temporarily under duress he would claim the protection of the American Minister, and would even explain to angry commissaires that his banker was Rothschild, omitting to add that his sole connection with that financier was the cashing of dollar drafts across the counter of his house. He refused to take part in the vigorous exercises of Du Maurier, Poynter and the rest, who, when not painting, boxed, fenced, swung dumb-bells, and generally exercised themselves in a way that Englishmen think essential to a sound mind in a sound body. “Why the devil can’t you fellows get your concierge to do that sort of thing for you?” he asked when they were busy lifting weights. But he took a prominent part in their lighter amusements, and kept them entertained with stories and songs. Using a stick or umbrella in place of a banjo, he warbled nigger ditties like this:
De World was made in six days
And finished on de seventh,
According to de contract
It should have been de eleventh;
But de masons, dey fell sick,
And de joiners wouldn’t work,
And so dey thought de cheapest way
Was to fill it up with dirt.
The impression of laziness and heedlessness which he made on the British students was due to the fact that he seldom turned up at Gleyre’s studio and spent most of his time with French artists of shady appearance and questionable habits. He had steeped himself in Henri Murger’s La Vie de Bohême, and had made up his mind that while in Paris he would live among Parisians of the type described in that book. He prided himself on his “no shirt” French friends, and felt that his English ones were losing half the fun of life by not mixing with the native inhabitants of the Latin Quarter. While they were learning their job in a classroom, he was observing life in a cafÈ; the street was his studio; and he found it more exciting to call on an artist who painted pieces of furniture on his bedroom walls in lieu of the real articles than to witness the conscientious efforts of the British to harden their muscles.
While enjoying the spectacle of life he did not neglect his art, though his early efforts were tedious enough. Not long after his arrival in Paris an American commissioned him to copy pictures in the Louvre at twenty-five dollars each. He was so hard up that he did not always put enough paint on the canvas; and when criticised by fellow-students for the shortcoming, he replied that the price he was paid did not justify a proper coat. Once he helped himself to a box of colours, and when it was claimed by the owner he expressed surprise, saying that he thought the boxes were for general use. His family kept up their promised payments, but he had usually sold his belongings to keep himself going before each instalment arrived. For several days one summer he walked about in his shirtsleeves, having pawned his coat to obtain an iced drink. He paid a bootmaker with an engraving of Garibaldi, and obtained paper for his drawings by wandering round the bookstalls on the quays and extracting flyleaves from the larger volumes. “I have just eaten my washstand,” he informed an American friend who had climbed ten flights of stairs with his quarterly allowance. By that time the furniture had been reduced to a bed and a chair on which stood a jug and basin, and he explained that he had been living on his wardrobe while progressing storey by storey towards the attic, though he had seldom got as high as that before the draft came.
Whenever he received money it quickly vanished. French artists, much poorer than himself, were entertained; dances and other festivities were enjoyed; and female models were treated. He lived for two years with one of his models at a small hotel in the Rue St Sulpice. She shared his poverty, for he had nothing else to share. Her real name was Eloise; he etched her portrait and called her Fumette; others knew her as La Tigresse because of her furious tempers. She was a little sallow-faced girl, who pleased him with her songs and her recitations from de Musset. But her rages carried her beyond all bounds, and one day, in a jealous fit, she destroyed his drawings of people and places in the Quarter. On seeing what she had done, he wept, and rushed out to deaden his misery with alcohol in the company of friends. Having spent all the money they had between them except twelve sous, he insisted that they should go to an open-all-night restaurant in the Halles and try to get supper on credit. The few sous were sufficient for beer, over which he complimented the patron on his cuisine and its fame, taking advantage of the pleasure visible on the man’s face by saying that it was not the habit of himself and his friends to pay for food immediately after consuming it. The patron ceased to smile and said that it was not the habit of his restaurant to be paid at any other time. So they went to another place, where Whistler suggested that they should eat first and discuss the question of payment afterwards. Supper over, they fell asleep. At daybreak, seeing that the others were still slumbering, Whistler went off and borrowed money from an American friend, returning before his companions were conscious. When they awoke, he was asleep. Their plight called for speedy action; they did not leave him to enjoy his rest; and were amazed to find that he had enough money to pay the bill. He explained that an American painter had come to his rescue, but added: “He had the bad manners to abuse the situation; he insisted on my looking at his pictures.”
Whistler soon got rid of Fumette, and in due course became intimate with a more civilised girl named Finette, well known in the Quarter as a dancer. He etched her portrait, too, and lived periodically in harmony with her. But before the commencement of their liaison he had a curious experience with one of his “no shirt” friends, a painter named Ernest Delannoy, whose odd behaviour appealed to his sense of humour. For example, Ernest once completed a copy of Veronese’s The Marriage Feast at Cana, a picture which was then so popular among rich people that there must have been a constant queue of poor artists awaiting their turn to reproduce it. Delannoy’s copy, however, had not been commissioned. It was a large canvas, and a friend helped him to carry it across the Seine, where it was offered to all the big dealers for 500 francs. There being no demand, they recrossed the river and asked 250 francs of the small dealers on the left bank. Meeting with no success, they returned to the big dealers on the other side and suggested 125 francs as a sound price. No one agreeing, they tried the lesser fry on the opposite shore with 75 francs. Unlucky, they once more visited the right bank with a bargain offer of 25 francs. But the fashionable dealers were in no mood for bargains, and they traversed the bridge wearily with a rock-bottom valuation of 10 francs for the left-bank merchants, who, however, showed no disposition to receive the picture even as a gift. By this time they were exhausted, and as they passed the cafÈs they leant up against the chairs and tables. But food and drink were necessities, and once more they turned their faces towards the wealthier side of the river, intending to try the effect of a 5 francs irreducible offer. In the centre of the Pont-des-Arts they were simultaneously inspired. Lifting the picture and swinging it, they chanted “Un…deux…trois… Vlan!…” and over it went into the Seine. There was a cry from the onlookers, a rush to the side of the bridge, the arrival of sergents-de-ville, the stoppage of vehicles, the putting out of boats; and the two artists returned to their studio, still hungry and thirsty, but delighted with the immense success of their inspiration. Such was Ernest Delannoy, with whom Whistler decided to visit an Alsatian of their acquaintance, who had been studying in Paris but had gone to his home at Zabern and invited them to spend a holiday there.
They set out, a curious pair, the one a ragamuffin, the other as smart as his wardrobe could make him. Then and always, wherever he went, Whistler wore the thin shoes that most men associate with dancing, but in which he would have climbed the Alps, had it been possible for him to face anything steeper than Montmartre. Dressed as carefully as if he were about to attend a reception at the Tuileries, the only unfashionable thing about him was a knapsack, in which were a number of copper plates for etching. Having just earned some money, or received an instalment from home, he was able to pay for transport to Zabern, where they made several excursions with their host and Whistler did one of his famous etchings. The fun started on their way back. At a Cologne inn they discovered that their money had run out. Ernest had no suggestion to make. Whistler was more practical: “Order breakfast,” he said. After the meal he wrote letters to everyone who might be expected to answer in cash, and then told the landlord that as they were favourably impressed by the comfort and cooking at his inn they would remain for several days. When the necessary time had elapsed, they called at the local post office for letters. “Nichts! Nichts!” said the official. Every day they called, and every day received the same answer: “Nichts! Nichts!” At last their daily visit attracted the attention of the juvenile population, and whenever they were seen in the post office there was a chorus of “Nichts! Nichts!” from the mob of boys outside. As they quickly became objects of derision in the streets, they spent their days on the ramparts. At the end of a fortnight they realised that no one was interested in their fate except the younger generation of Cologne; so Whistler explained their plight to the landlord, and said that he would leave his copper plates as a pledge for the later payment of their bill. The landlord was sceptical as to the value of the plates; but Whistler assured him that they were the work of a very distinguished artist and would be redeemed at an early date, until which the greatest care must be taken of them. While the landlord was solely concerned over his account, Whistler was worried about his etchings, and his anxiety must have convinced the innkeeper of their value, for he not only agreed to accept the plates as security but gave them a parting breakfast.
They left for Paris on foot, paying their way with portraits. The price of an egg was a sketch of the hen-keeper; a glass of milk meant a drawing of the farmer; a slice of bread cost a picture of the baker; and so on. They slept where they could, on straw. One day they joined a male harpist and female violinist, who were giving entertainments at fairs. Emboldened by this collaboration they beat a big drum and proclaimed themselves as famous Parisian artists, who would draw full-length and half-length portraits at five and three francs respectively, an offer that had to be reduced to five and three sous respectively. Whistler’s patent leather shoes were dropping to bits which had to be patched together each evening, when he also washed his shirt and collar, a piece of fastidiousness that Ernest thought absurd. The weather was bad; and seeing Ernest trudging along in the mud, his hat cascading water, his coat a soused rag, Whistler, though limping painfully, screamed with laughter. The condition of his footwear probably made them take five days to cover the fifty miles from Cologne to Aixla-Chapelle, where Whistler borrowed money from the American Consul. This was supplemented by a small loan to Ernest by the French Consul at Liège; and the rest of their journey was relatively comfortable. The moment they reached Paris, Whistler settled their debt to the innkeeper at Cologne and recovered his plates.
It took longer to pay his debts at Lalouette’s, a restaurant where he and his friends often dined on credit, for he left Paris owing the proprietor three thousand francs, which were not repaid for some years. One day Lalouette asked his favourite customers to a country picnic. Whistler said he would join the party if he could bring La Mère Gérard, an old and nearly blind woman who sold matches and flowers at the gate of the Luxembourg and whose portrait he had been etching. His condition was approved, and her presence enlivened the trip. During the afternoon he painted her and promised her the picture; but when it was completed he thought it so good that, to her disgust, he gave her a copy instead. Some time later, after he had been staying with the Hadens in London, he happened to be passing the Luxembourg with a friend. The old woman was too blind to recognise him, so his friend asked whether she had any news of her little American. She replied that according to report he was dead, adding “Encore une espèce de canaille de moins!” Whistler’s laugh gave the game away, and he was known thereafter as Espèce de canaille.
The etching and the painting which he did of her show that he had not been so idle as his habits suggested. Since he danced nearly every night and seldom rose before midday, no one knew how he found time for work. But somehow he managed to finish the etchings he had done on the trip to Alsace, to have them printed by Delâtre, and to get them published. Two paintings of this period are also notable, in addition to the one of La Mère Gérardvoiturepots-de-chambreAt the Piano
But before that happened two incidents had changed the course of his life in Paris. While spending a holiday with the Hadens he had given several of his “no shirt” acquaintances the freedom of his room, and on his return found that they had taken full advantage of it. The bath, the dishes, the furniture, the room itself, were filthy. He decided that there were limits to bohemianism, and thenceforward revealed a preference for shirts. Perhaps his visits to London confirmed this decision. There was a comfort about the Haden home and way of living that gave him a slight distaste for the dirty slapdash habits of the Latin Quarter, and there was clearly a better chance of getting rich in England. It was irritating to be compelled to borrow money for a journey to Manchester, where he saw an exhibition of pictures by Velasquez, especially as he was already in debt to the man from whom he borrowed it. “Do you think I ought to ask you to lend me this money for the Manchester journey?” was his diplomatic way of putting it.
But something of far greater moment than his visits to England, his debts, or the unhygienic behaviour of his tenants, occurred in the year ’58, after he had spent three years in Paris. He was strolling through the galleries of the Louvre one day when he noticed a young fellow copying The Marriage Feast at Cana, the subject of which must have made a strong appeal to hungry students. He paused and praised the reproductions. The artist turned round, noticed “un personnage en chapeau bizarre”, and asked his name. Whistler gave it, and was given the others: Fantin-Latour. They liked one another at once, and that same evening Fantin introduced Whistler to Alphonse Legros and other fellow-artists at a café they all frequented. Here the talk centred on “the master”, Gustave Courbet, who was leading one of those “modern” movements which are as ancient as the hills. For some years the art of painting had become stereotyped. The acknowledged masters had been David, Ingres and Delacroix, whose subjects were classical or romantic, academic or anecdotal, and any artist who desired the recognition of the Salon had to follow the fashion and paint in one of the accepted styles. Courbet reacted against these “schools”, proclaimed himself a “realist”, and interpreted the life he saw around him instead of looking for inspiration in the past and repeating what had already been done to death by repetition. Like so many innovators in art, he was also a revolutionist in politics, and so became unpopular with the officials of the Second Empire as well as the professors of the Salon.
Courbet would have been dismissed as a madman at the studio where Whistler was working, or supposed to be working; and when he confessed to his new acquaintances that he was at Gleyre’s they told him that he was wasting his time. He had not wasted very much of it, having been otherwise engaged; but from the moment he met Fantin and Legros, Gleyre’s studio saw him no more. He formed what he called a “Society of Three”, consisting of Fantin, Legros and himself; he met Courbet, whom he thought a great man; and henceforth he worked diligently in the studio of F S Bonvin, to which Courbet frequently came and imparted criticism and advice.
The first three years of Whistler’s life in Paris had been spent in finding his way. In the fourth year he found it. And it took him to London. But he did not forget his French fellow-students, who had delighted in the company of Le petit Vistlaire.