The Life of James McNeill Whistler

en to the son of Major Whistler. It was the year of the first International Exhibition, and Sir Henry Cole

as I liked talking to him, I preferred dancing, we used to stand out while the rest of the party polkaed and waltzed by There was a certain definite authority in the things he said, even as a boy. I can't remem

found himself more in sympathy with the followers of Courbet than with Gleyre's pupils, and he became so intimate with the group, among whom were Fantin and Degas, who studied under Lecocq de Boisbaudran, that it is sometimes thought he must have worked in that school. But on his arrival in Paris the young American had heard neither of Lecocq de Boisbaudran nor Courbet, and Gleyre was the popular teacher. Fantin-Latour and M. Duret both have said that they seldom heard Whistler speak of Gleyre's. When we asked him about it, he only recalled the dignified principles upon which it was conducted. There was not even the case of

ion could be given solely to the drawing and modelling on canvas in colour. He taught also that ivory-black is the base of tone. Upon this preparation of the palette and this base of black-upon black, "the universal harmoniser"-Whistler founded his practice as painter, and as teacher when he visited the pupils o

led Leighton among his fellow students, though he spoke often with affection of Thomas Armstrong, who worked at Ary Scheffer's, and Aleco Ionides, not an art student but studying, no one seemed to know what or where. This is the group in Du Maurier's novel of Paris student life, Trilby. It is regrettable that Du Maurier cherished his petty spite against

nds with Jimmie. He was just twenty-one years old, full of life and go, always ready for fun, good-natured and go

ch startled even artists and students, a

eing a head painted by him in deep Rembrandtish tones which was thought very good indeed. He was always smoking cigarettes, which he made himself, and his droll sayings caused us no end of fun. I don't think he stayed long in any rooms. One day he told us he had taken a new one, and he was fitting it up peu à peu and he had already got a tabouret and a chair. He told me tales of being invited to a reception at the American Minister's, but, as he had no dress suit to go in, he had to borrow Poyn

mately in Whistler's company in early days, I knew him well when he was a student in Paris-that is, if he could be called a student, who, to my knowledge, during the two or three years when I was associated with him, devoted hardly as many weeks to study. His genius, howe

urger, and Whistler introduced him. Whistler delighted in the humour and picturesqueness of it, and was always quoting Murger. The Englishmen at Gleyre's were puzzled by him and his "no shirt friends" as he called one group of students. Every now and then they palled, even on him, and he would then tell the Englishmen that he "must give up the 'no shirt' set and begin to live cleanly." The end came when, during an absence from Paris, he lent them his room, luxurious from the student s

ust before his death. Legros prefers to remember nothing, the friendship in his case ending many years ago. Drouet and Oulevey have told us almost as much as Whistler did of those days. When Oulevey first knew him, Whistler lived in a little hotel in the Rue St. Sulpice; then

t on the cot and talked as cheerfully as if in a palace-and he got the draft. 'Now,' said he, 'I shall move downstairs, and begin all over again-furnish my room comfortably. You see, I have just eaten my washstand and borrowed a little, hoping the draft would arrive. Have been living for some time on my wardrobe. You are just in time; don't know what I should have done, but it often happens this way! I first eat a wardrobe, and then move upstairs a flight or two, but seldom get so high as this before the draft comes!' How true this is I can't say, but it sounds probable and very l

ke Siron at Barbizon, understood artists, and gave credit. Whistler, when he left Paris, owed Lalouette three thousand francs, every sou of which was paid, though it took a long time. To-day, unfortunately, such debts are not always discharged, and the charming system of other days exi

vre, but he was always drawing the people and the scenes of the Quarter. In the memory of both his work is overshadowed by his gaiety and his wit, his blague, his charm: "tout à fait un homme à part," is Oulevey's phrase, with "un c?ur de femme et une volonté d'homme."

lly-they called her the Tigresse. She seemed madly in love with Jimmie and would not allow any other woman to talk to him when she was present. S

, and who one day in a rage tore up, not his etchings as Mr. Wedmore says, as often, wrongly, but his drawings. Whis

, "Du lait: il aimé ?a!" They used to chaff him about her in the Quarter. Once, Lalouette invited all his clients to spend a day in the country, and Whistler accepted on condition that he could bring La Mère Gérard. She arrived, got up in style, sat at his side in the carriage in which they all drove off, and grew livelier as the day went on. He painted her in the afternoon: the portrait a suc

érard, comment ?a

, Monsieur,

petit Am

p, "Lui? On dit qu'il a craqué! Enc

ew him, as so many were to know

e canaille." And this is where Du Maurier got the story

he delightful, inimitable, impossible, incredible Montezuma, not a student, not a painter, but one after

ened to be with him. The Montezuma paid no attention. With arms crossed, he walked up and down, looking at no one. They waited, but he walked on, up and down, up and down, looking at no one. The sergent de ville repeated, 'Tout le monde à terre!' The Montezuma gave no sign. 'Et vous?' the sergent de ville asked at

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who told us of the night when, after the café where they had squandered their last sous on kirsch had closed, he and Lambert and Whistler adjourned to the Halles for supper, ordered the best, and ate it. Then he and Lambert stayed in the restaurant as hostages, while Whistler, a

we have heard how Whistler and Ernest Delannoy carried their straw mattresses to the nearest Mont-de-Piété, stumbling up three flights of stairs under them, and were refused an advance by the man at the window. "C'est bien," said Ernest with his grandest air. "C'est bien. J'enverrai un commissionnaire!" And they dropped the mattresses and walked out with difficulty, to go bedless home. Then there was a

rbed? What was it all about, anyhow? When he heard what had happened no one was louder. It had come to a pretty pass in the Louvre when you couldn't leave your belongings overnight without having them stolen! Things at last quieted down. Ernest finished his charcoal sketch, but his palette was bare. He stretched, jumped down from his high stool, strolled about, stopped to criticise here, to praise there, until he saw the colours he needed. The copy of the man who owned them ravished him. Astonishing! He stepped back to see it better. He advanced to look at the original, he grew excited, he gesticulated. The man, who had never been noticed before, grew excited too. Ernest talked the faster, gesticulated the more, until down came his thumb on the white or the blue or the red he wanted, and, with

and fifty to the little dealers on the left. Then they went back and offered it for one hundred and twenty-five. Then they came across and offered it for seventy-five. And back again for twenty-five, and over once more for ten. And they were crossing still again, to try to get rid of it for five, when, on the Pont des Arts, an

ly have appeared so soon. However, more important than the date is the fact that on his journey the Liverdun, the Street at Saverne, and The Kitchen were etched. He had made somehow two hundred and fifty francs, and he and Ernest started out for Nancy and Strasburg. Mr. Leon Dabo tells us that his father was a fellow student of Whistler's at Gleyre's and lived at Saverne, in Alsace, and that it was to see him Whistler went there. And from Mr. Dabo we have the story of excur

ters from Paris, to Seymour Haden in London, to Amsterdam, where he thought letters might have been sent by mistake. Then they settled down to wait. Every day they would go to the post-office for letters, every day the official would say, "Nichts! Nichts!" until they got known to the town-Whistler with his long hair, Ernest with hi

seal. What was to be done with copper-plates? the landlord asked. They were to be kept with the greatest care as the work of a distinguished artist, Whistler answered, and when he was back in Paris, he would send the money to pay his bill, and then the landlord would send him the knapsack. Herr Schmitz hesitated, whi

ollands grew seedier and seedier. But they were young enough to laugh, and one day Whistler, seeing Ernest tramping ahead solemnly through the mud, the rain dripping from his straw hat, his linen coat a rag, shrieked with laughter as he limped. "Que voulez-vous?" Ernest said mournfully, "les saisons m'ont toujours devancé!" But it was the time of the autumn fairs, and, joining a lady who played the violin and a gentle

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ot twenty from the French Consul, and the rest of the journey was made in comfort. On his return, Whistler's first appearance at the Café Molière was a triumph. They

pas mort, lari

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iller, trinq

r Whistler went back to Cologne with his mother. In the evening he slipped away to the old, litt

routed with mushrooms that paid for a feast in the Quarter and enough clay to finish the statue: stories of a painter, in his empty studio, hiring a piano by the month that the landlord might see it carried upstairs and get a new idea of his tenant's assets; stories of the monkey tied to a string, let loose in other people's larders, then pulled back, clasping loaves of bread and bottles of wine to its bosom; stories of students, wit

d stimulus, and it is not to be wondered if his gaiety struck everyone

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