even in his enemies. Wherever he found good work, whether art or literature, he praised it wholeheartedly. It was hardly to be expected that his dainty and exquisite Muse should admire the cruel realism of Degas, or the bronze made flesh of Rodin; but Whistler welcomed nearly every high artistic quality, however different from his own striving. He praised Manet and Puvis de Chavannes enthusiastically, and seemed utterly devoid of jealousy. Through his admiration of Chinese pottery and bronzes and Japanese prints and pictures Whistler led the way to that wider understanding of art which is a characteristic of our day. And some of the younger men like Beardsley owed him the frankest and most generous recognition.

Alexander Harrison, the painter, has given the most understanding appreciation of Whistler's real nature:

"I have never known a man of more sincere and genuine impulse even in ordinary human relations, and I am convinced that no man ever existed who could have been more easily controlled on lines of response to a 'fair and square' appreciation of his genuine qualities. When off his guard, he was often a pathetic kid, and I have spotted him in bashful moods, although it would be hard to convince the bourgeois of this. Wit, pathos, gentleness, affection, audacity, acridity, tenacity, were brought instantly to the sensitive surface like a flash, by rough contact."

I think perhaps Whistler's pettiest fault was that he had a poor memory for kindness done. But after all, ingratitude is the mark of all the tribes of man, and I daresay he was no more forgetful of benefits than the rest of us.

For a good many years I saw him from time to time casually. Now he lunched with me; now dined: once or twice I dined with him. But our relations were never intimate. We belonged to different generations, and I couldn't be a disciple and sit at the feet of any Gamaliel.

One day when he was lunching with me, he told me that the Glasgow Corporation was trying to buy his portrait of Carlyle. I was exceedingly glad to hear it, and said so: it was the right thing for them to do. He went on to confess with contemptuous bitterness that they were haggling with him over

the price. I asked him how much he wanted, and he replied a thousand guineas. I begged him not to take less; assured him I could find some one who would give him a thousand guineas for the picture, if the tradesmen refused it. He was very anxious, pathetically anxious I thought, to know whether he could rely on the money. He seemed a little dispirited. I told him he could make his mind easy on the matter: the money would be forthcoming. On this he brightened up remarkably, and declared that the fillip was all he needed; he knew they wanted the picture and were only bargaining; and a couple of days later he came and told me that the canny Scots had agreed to pay the thousand, and all was settled. He was kind enough to say that it was my assurance which had encouraged him to hold out and so obtain the price.

The next talk with Whistler that I can remember was in Paris, when I went to call on him in his house in the Rue du Bac. The house has been described by others; the exquisite yet effective simplicity of the decoration, and the charming garden, impressed everyone. At length the master was properly lodged, and might be expected to do some great picture.

I found him in a state of dancing excitement over Trilby. I couldn't understand his rage with Du Maurier, even when he told me that Du Maurier had formerly been a friend. The quarrel seemed to me altogether trivial. I felt it unworthy of a great man like Whistler to allow himself to be plagued and maddened at the buzzing of such a bluebottle. But I had to listen to the whole story from A to Z, and how it ended with the apology of the publishers, and with Du Maurier's changing his sketch of Whistler into some bald-headed gentleman called Antony, and Whistler's characteristic quip:

"I wired to them over in America, Compliments and complete approval of author's new and obscure friend, Bald Antony.'

He had evidently wasted an unconscionable amount of time and energy over this unworthy attack. Men had treated him contemptuously for so many years, life had been so unjust to him that his temper had got raw: every touch smarted, and he was up in arms and eager to fight to the death for a casual rub.

When I next called on him in the Rue du Bac, I found him in the throes of another combat; the quarrel with Sir William Eden over his wife's portrait. All the world knows the details: how George Moore introduced the Baronet to Whistler to paint the portrait of Lady Eden; and how Sir William Eden took upon himself to pay the price he thought fixed, without consulting the artist, who had done, not a pastel, as was first arranged, but a very charming portrait in oil of Lady Eden, an arrangement in brown and gold.

It would have been more dignified of Whistler to have paid no attention to the Baronet, and his attempt to slip his valentine of a hundred guineas into the artist's pocket; but once again Whistler's combativeness came into play: he persisted in seeing intentional insult in everything, and in spite of all one could do, fought on to the bitter end: he couldn't speak of the Baronet without mentioning his "brown boots." At length he went so far as to destroy his own work, and the result of the sittings which Lady Eden, who certainly was an innocent person, had granted him: painted out her face, and went into court after court over the matter, only to be condemned at the end as in the beginning.

He begged me, I remember, to write on the matter, and to please him I did write an article in The Saturday Review, taking his side, which from a high point of view was perhaps not justified, and was certainly unwise, for thereby I made myself bitter enemies without affirming Whistler's unstable friendship.

My last meeting with Whistler was destined to be unpleasant. I had again and again heard him speak of Mr. Walter Sickert with liking, and even appreciation, as a capable craftsman. Accordingly, when Mr. Sickert came to me with an article about lithographs, setting forth that Whistler's lithographs were made on paper, and should not be called lithographs, I looked upon it as the trivial correction of a friend, and didn't dream that Whistler would feel hurt, much less insulted.

Forthwith, he or Mr. Pennell brought an action against me as editor of The Saturday Review. I could scarcely believe that the matter was serious, but I soon found that Whistler was prosecuting the affair with his usual energy.

One day meeting Mr. Heinemann, with whom Whistler hap

pened to be living at the time, I told him how silly the whole matter was, and how unpleasant: said that I regretted it all, and would not for the world have hurt Whistler in any way.

Mr. Heinemann said he would try to settle the quarrel, and a little later very kindly invited me to meet Whistler at dinner. I went, and took the occasion to tell Whistler just what I had told Mr. Heinemann, that the whole dispute was trivial, that I wouldn't willingly have done anything to hurt him, and that if I had suspected any malice in the matter, I should never have published the article. He told me I must get Sickert to apologize. I replied that I couldn't ask Sickert to apologize; he would be sure to refuse; and showed him that in his desire to hit Sickert he was really hitting me, who after all had been a friend.

"It can't be helped," he said perkily; "it'll have to go on, then; it'll have to go on."

I shrugged my shoulders; wilful man must have his way. The trial was full of amusing incidents. Mr. Alfred Gilbert showed such virulence of personal enmity to me that the judge ordered him to stand down; and Whistler had as his chief witness Mr. Sidney Colvin, of the British Museum, who aforetime had been his butt, and was always coupled by him with 'Arry. The jury, after being out two hours, brought in a verdict of £50 and Whistler won his first law case, this time against one who had always been a friend and admirer. He didn't damage Sickert in any way, but if his crowing over the result was any consolation to him, I am glad he had it.

I must find room here for a gibe of Whistler's which, so far as I know, has never been published and yet is both characteristic and witty. When Mr. Theodore Watts, Swinburne's friend and housemate, took the name of Dunton, Whistler wrote him simply: "Theodore, what's Dunton?"

I have set down these acerbities and put them so far as I could in a fair light, not because I have the faintest wish to accentuate the little faults of a great spirit, but simply because Whistler's prickliness illustrates a truth too generally ignored. If ever there was a talent which should have been immediately appreciated in England, it was the talent of Jimmy Whistler. No people love beauty as the English love it. Here was a man of

genius whose sole aim and striving was the beautiful. He had no feeling for even greater things, none for sublimity, none for the tragic fates which often overwhelm the innocent, none for the great revolt which is the essence of all the higher spiritual life. But beauty he loved with a passionate and exclusive devotion; the English should, therefore, have welcomed him with open arms. Yet instead of admiring the man who was a genius after their own heart, they treated him for thirty odd years with such indifference and contempt, that at length they bred bitterness in him, and high disdain to balance their foolish neglect.

The

Toward the end of his life, when his powers were at their best, this great artist and man of genius wasted his time and talent in unworthy and absurd quarrellings. He neglected his art and allowed his gift to humanity to be diminished, in order to gratify his vanity and temper: he had come to “his own and his own received him not," and he preferred to punish rather than to forgive. I have no quarrel with him on this account. The idea that the artist should accept insult and injury in the guise of criticism with slavish submission is worse than absurd. wrong only begins to be righted when revolt shows the aggressor that his wrong-doing is apt to recoil on his own head: it is the duty of the artist or man of letters to teach the critics and professors that reverence for their betters is the proper attitude. No one finds fault with Dante for distributing his enemies over the deeper circles in hell; why should one condemn a Whistler for pillorying 'Arry or S-C? And if the artist has been so baited and insulted that at length he wastes too much energy on his unworthy assailants, who shall blame him?

Whatever heat is engendered by the passage of a star to its ordained orbit should be attributed to the resistance of the medium through which it passes. It would be wiser, of course, for the Master to climb to Spakespeare's level and learn

never to

prefer his injuries to his heart,

To bring it into danger."

But it is only the very greatest who are able to take "the buffets and rewards" of life "with equal thanks," and after all