Mrs Whistler

by Matthew Plampin

  The two principal topics did not change. Foremost was the approaching confrontation with John Ruskin and all Jim had learned about the critic since the firing of that first savage shot.

  ‘Too quickly!’ he would cry. ‘Our dear Mr Ruskin says that I paint too dashed quickly! And yet one only has to open any of his dozens of volumes to find exultation upon exultation being piled upon the Venetians. Upon Tintoretto, for pity’s sake, the fastest painter of them all. Why, the fellow would cover a half-acre of canvas in an afternoon. And Turner – my goodness, he will not be quiet about Turner. A more potent example of undeserved attention is difficult to call to mind.’

  ‘Do you not value Turner, Mr Whistler?’ someone would ask. ‘Forgive me, but your Nocturnes seem to hold a definite resemblance.’

  Jim would dismiss such comparisons at once. ‘My works resemble old Turner’s,’ he’d declare, ‘as the finest chocolate resembles the droppings of a dog.’

  There was always a rather pleasing reaction to that one.

  The other great subject, of course, was the Leylands. It was the controversy that would not die; the gift that simply would not stop giving. A sting did still linger there. This Jim had to admit. The children’s severance of all connection with him had inflicted a wound far graver than anything doled out by their father. He’d also heard that another painter, a distinctly inferior talent named Morris, had been commissioned to paint Mrs Leyland in his stead. This rascal was reportedly going great guns with the thing, and planned to have it in the Academy show the very next year. At first, it felt as if Jim’s own personal territory was being infringed upon – until Godwin helpfully reminded him that it was, in truth, his no longer.

  None of this prevented him from playing out the old tales, however, with a couple of new chapters attached. Rather to his delight, Leyland had seen fit to forward him a gas bill covering the period of his occupancy at Prince’s Gate, a bit of pettiness that played into Jim’s hands so perfectly he was almost thankful to add it to his ever-growing pile. He began to wonder if the fellow was losing his grip on the situation.

  To Jim’s own entertainments – which were kept up with formidable frequency in that dingy, unsatisfactory dining room, stuck at the rear of that unsatisfactory house, on that unsatisfactory fag-end of a street – something else was now appended: the communal outing, on foot or by carriage, eastwards along the river to Tite Street. Sometimes this would grow into a procession, two or three four-wheelers, with an appropriately carnival atmosphere. Jim would have his cabman park before the plot and would climb up onto the vehicle’s roof to describe the bold plan he and Godwin had settled upon. Aided by the cane, he would attempt to convey the stunning starkness of the design, the clarity and simplicity of its lines, the Japanese slope of its roof – to be made with tiles of a deep dragonfly green that would glisten and glow in the London sunlight, precious rare though it was. And the walls beneath would be white. Yes, white! None of this muddy red brick for Whistler! No dun timbers or dull stone!

  ‘By Jove,’ murmured Owl, his hooded eyes narrowing a little further. ‘Our favourite American lodged in his very own White House.’

  And thus it was named.

  ‘This has all been approved, I assume,’ asked one of his guests, a lawyer he thought the fellow was, on one excursion after a Sunday breakfast.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he answered at once, then puffed reflectively on his cigarette. ‘By whom do you mean, exactly?’

  ‘By the Board of Works, Whistler, of course,’ the lawyer replied. ‘Since the completion of the embankment, they have become known for being rather exacting with regards to new structures – the character of the neighbourhood, and so forth …’

  ‘Godwin arranged the lease,’ Jim informed him airily. ‘The terms of the contract. I’m sure everything was agreed then.’

  The pace of the construction surprised him, despite the assurances that had been made when he’d started signing things. The exterior walls rose at speed, accreting like some kind of unstoppable natural phenomenon, barely contained by the scaffolding; the rooms within, their dimensions and the placing of their windows, became ever more discernible. The builder, Mr Nightingale, was an efficient, straightforward sort of man, lean and leathery, with a blacksmith’s beard and a top hat wrapped in sealskin to proof it against the weather. He could usually be found on site, checking and measuring, correcting the work of his subordinates. Jim liked him immediately. He would make a point of waving a hand or cane in Nightingale’s direction and stopping to exchange a few words if the fellow was available. These were conversations trimmed of fat, masculine and gruff, concerning matters of mortar, elevation and joinery, or the hazards of the frost – extremely refreshing after the effete ramblings of artistic society. Jim could really talk to these men, he’d always felt, these menial types; he’d none of the awkwardness he saw in Godwin, say, or Bertie Mitford, or Leyland even, who’d started out among them. He could adopt their manners, their essential simplicity, as if he was slipping on a coat. It was a talent of his.

  A week or so into the new year, Jim was returning from one of these powwows when Owl – who’d waited with Eldon in the relative warmth of the cab – remarked that at the rate everything was going he’d be hanging pictures on those walls by the spring.

  ‘Conception to residence in less than a year. My stars, Jimmy, it’s an endeavour worthy of Caesar.’

  Two large chaps were Eldon and the Owl – one this fleshy, auburn Portuguese, the other a strapping flaxen-­haired Saxon, albeit running a little to seed – and between them they more or less filled a hackney carriage. While Jim picked his way through their legs, slotting himself beside Eldon, Owl talked on about furnishings, not at the White House but at Lindsey Row. His interest was in the pieces that had no place in the new residence, or could not be moved; the many fittings installed over Jim’s eleven years there that the landlord had no claim on and that could be sold, either to the next leaseholder or another party.

  ‘Of which,’ he added, ‘there is always a plentiful supply.’

  Jim had to laugh as the cab started off again, bearing them on to some assignation or other. This was the Owl’s great gift, his mind’s basic orientation – the wringing of profit from any and all circumstances – and it was proving valuable indeed. He’d come to serve as a lens between Jim and the more practical side of things, supplying an essential focus, making a dense and confounding script fully comprehensible. Each time they met there was a new scheme to be outlined or a new spin applied to the existing ones – a different way to shift art, rake in tin and confound their adversaries.

  ‘Matters various, old man,’ the Portuguese would announce, pulling up a chair, ‘for the betterment of the show.’

  The Thames etchings sold well, for a while at least. As that waned, Owl reminded Jim about his lithograph man, over in the West End, and then mentioned that Graves the printseller did in fact happen to know a fine engraver, a real master of mezzotint, who was prepared to take on the portrait of Thomas Carlyle. Owl was well aware that Jim had his doubts here, a dim yet troubling sense that the replication of paintings might have an inimical effect upon the originals – upon their reputation, certainly, but also somehow upon their essence. The pitch, accordingly, came rather harder than usual.

  ‘You do nothing,’ Owl said. ‘Nothing at all. And the coin comes gushing in like seawater into a holed ship. It positively sinks you in riches. If this one goes to plan, if we like this engraver and what he can do, then all sorts of interesting avenues become open to us. Here’s one for starters. The great men of our time. Portraits by James McNeill Whistler. A series of subscription prints.’

  ‘A series? Really, Owl? What pictures would we use?’

  ‘Along my travels,’ Owl enlarged, ‘and my assorted endeavours for Ruskin – his charitable works in particular – I made the acquaintance of several rather famous fellows. Any one of them could serve as our second instalment.’

  ‘Who are we talking of here, precisel
y?’

  ‘None other than the Prime Minister. You are looking a trifle dubious now, Jimmy, but I’m pretty sure I could secure a sitting – several sittings. We rubbed along rather well, did Disraeli and I, when I negotiated with him to secure a pension for poor old Cruikshank. He may even wish to buy the portrait – him or some admirer of his. I’ll make enquiries.’

  In addition to identifying potential sources of custom, Owl provided it himself. Having noticed a small Nocturne, the Grey and Gold – Chelsea under snow, lit by a mullioned tavern window – that had been painted a couple of years before and left ignored in a corner, he asked if Jim could possibly accept £30 for it.

  ‘A late Christmas gift, it would be,’ he explained. ‘From Owl to Owl.’

  Jim happened to be rather stuck just then, financially speaking, due to certain Yuletide expenses. So he agreed – as it was Owl and as he had the cash with him, or the larger part of it at least. The fellow was immensely pleased, promising to allow the painting’s exhibition whenever and wherever it was required; and then, almost casually, he commissioned a full-length portrait of Miss Rosa Corder.

  ‘I can pay you a hundred quid,’ he said. ‘Please say you will, Jimmy. I mentioned the idea to Rosie a few days back and it’s all she’s talked of since. She’d give you every last minute of the time you need, obviously.’

  Jim was moved by this. So grateful that it left him somewhat embarrassed. ‘Words, mon cher,’ he managed to mutter, ‘are so dreadfully insufficient to describe what you have become to me. To my endeavours. To my household, and—’

  ‘Jimmy,’ Owl interrupted, gently reproachful. ‘I am your friend.’

  *

  Despite his mounting celebrity, Jim remained quite grindingly poor. Tradesmen had become more willing to thaw out his accounts, however, or to open up new ones. The bills and writs had also grown less insistent. His creditors seemed to be holding fire, rolling back their cannon. A promise had settled upon him, he realised, and a powerful one at that. A promise of wealth to come.

  The statement of claim was published, identifying John Ruskin’s calculated and deliberate attempt not simply to object to Jim’s painting, but to demolish his name. A riposte came swiftly, Ruskin’s lawyers issuing a statement of defence – a formal counter-attack in which they claimed fair comment on a matter of public interest. Anderson Reeve had been disturbed by this, mumbling on about how it was a most unusual step; how it was customary for the other side to wait until they were in court before making such declarations. Jim began to suspect that the solicitor’s giant-killing instinct was not quite as strong as his or Owl’s. He told the fellow to find his courage – and to bolt it to the goddamned mast.

  Reeve shook his head. ‘I fear,’ he said slowly, ‘they may be attempting to stall us.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘It must be looked at, this statement of theirs. I believe they are seeking to suggest that a trial should not take place. They won’t succeed, of course. But I’m afraid it will mean a delay.’

  A nefarious turn indeed. These legal men truly were the vermin of the earth. They seemed to know about his situation, about the White House – the payments for which he’d soon be liable, along with everything else – and that delays, and the accumulation of further costs, might force him to call the whole thing off, simply because he couldn’t afford to proceed any further. But how might they have learned all this? Jim’s immediate thought was Leyland. He could be the only real suspect here. The shipbroker certainly had his connections, on the Board of Works and who knew where else. He had surely extended the hand of – well, if not exactly friendship, then fellow suffering, as one who had also tangled publicly with this troublesome painter. Strategic advice had been dispensed. Sensitive information disclosed.

  Hopes for a spring trial and a settlement before the summer – before the completion of the White House and the delivery of Mr Nightingale’s monumental bill – started to strain, to creak and stretch like an overloaded rope, the plaited cords snapping one by one. Then, on a bright morning in late winter, Reeve rode out to Lindsey Row and made the decisive cut. Jim was down in the studio, attempting to select works for the second Grosvenor show – reflecting as he did so on the dizzyingly rapid pace of life, how he was still ensnared by issues thrown up by the first blasted exhibition, how it so often felt that he was hurtling, yes hurtling towards his dotage, and the tomb soon thereafter. He turned to the solicitor with a pained, preoccupied smile.

  ‘Ruskin’s health has collapsed, Whistler.’ Always prone to talking rather too quietly, Reeve was now practically whispering, as if he imagined they might be overheard; Jim was obliged to come a few steps closer. ‘Details are scarce, but word is that the man has gone mad. Completely out of his mind.’

  Jim stared; he nearly laughed. ‘Absolutely not.’ For a few seconds he was overwhelmed. ‘I – I mean, he’s faking. Mad? Just now, at this precise moment? How very deuced convenient, Reeve! Well – we must have it tested. Dispatch our own doctor for an independent diagnosis. Where is it he’s cowering? The Lakes, up in the north? My brother, Dr William Whistler of Mayfair, he’ll do it. He would and he damn well should. I’ll send a telegram, shall I?’

  Jim was serious, in deadly earnest, but Reeve chuckled as if at a dark joke – and then went on to make it extremely plain that there was nothing to be done. That honour forbade it.

  Owl came by not long after. Rather to Jim’s amazement, this news did not surprise him. ‘On the cards, old boy, to be perfectly frank. Very much on the cards. A diseased brain, old Ruskin has – with regards to the fairer sex, obviously, but in other regions too. I recall that he had an acute sensitivity to light, if you can believe it. Reflections, in particular, would unnerve him. Flames on silver, or varnished wood. He told me once that he felt them sometimes to be alive. To be spectres, echoes of the dead. I have wondered, you know – as he detested actual fireworks on account of this, and would go to great lengths to avoid them – if this particular foible played a part in his, shall we say, emphatic reaction to your painting …’

  This hardly mattered. The fact of it was that word of the blasted critic’s descent into delirium was well and truly out, released over London like a flock of pigeons; and Jim’s brief period of triumph, of being so very much on the town, underwent the first of what was to prove a long series of diminishments. There were rumours that the suit had been dropped – how could it hope to proceed when the would-be defendant was said to be gibbering around his Cumbrian flower garden dressed only in a nightshirt?

  Jim went about debunking these rumours as best he could, asserting that it was all a trick by Ruskin’s people, a deception born of fear. In truth, though, he was experiencing a degree of fearfulness himself. The critic’s collapse would hold everything up, which in turn would mean an almighty lag in his income. For perhaps the first time, real penury loomed over Lindsey Row. The prospect was akin to dangling out above a yawning chasm, sudden and bottomless, your stomach wrung like a rag, the blood thumping thickly in your neck, your mind blank and raging. It was panic. There really was no other word. And just one solution existed. Jim knew it – the only path out of this unholy fix.

  He had to work.

  *

  March 1878

  Miss Corder arrived very much set on black. She was dressed in black, head to toe, and asked for the black velvet backdrop; and as she helped Jim hook it up, she spoke of her deep admiration for his portrait of Frederick Leyland – the subject notwithstanding – which employed a similar black-against-black arrangement. He wasn’t aware that she’d seen this painting, which had been banished to the cellar for some months now. She talked away enthusiastically, however, declaring that his skill with black, with its minute shifts and shades, was perfectly unrivalled. What choice did he have after that?

  Before long Maud heard them, wandering in from whatever she’d been doing. Miss Corder was most pleased to see her, and eagerly requested any advice she could offer on modelling. They practised as Jim
prepared his materials, striking attitudes, trying out various anglings of the head and hips. It pleased him, the amity that had developed there. The unaffected regard that Miss Corder showed his Madame, and the way Maud smiled a little bashfully to hear it. The natural intimacy of their conversation. It made everything easier.

  Miss Corder stepped up onto the model table, a low podium perhaps a foot high. A pose was agreed and adopted, and the basics swiftly laid in – the face and shoulders, the line of the back. Eldon appeared in the early afternoon, somewhat tipsy, saying that he’d been passing by. He installed himself upon the studio chaise longue and was soon applauding Jim’s every stroke, clapping his hands above his head and calling out ‘Bravo!’ Maud giggled; Miss Corder’s composure slipped. Jim couldn’t resist playing up to it. He darted back and forth before the canvas, as if filled with a furious creative energy. He harrumphed and muttered and exclaimed. He swapped about brushes and colours for the sake of a single dab.

  The result, predictably perhaps, was pretty hopeless. Jim crossed his arms and cocked his head, memorising its errors, then went to a cupboard for his broad-ended knife – and to cries of protest from Eldon and Miss Corder, he set about scraping the canvas clean, stripping off the half-dry pigment in soft, rubbery ribbons.

  ‘He does that,’ Maud told them, ‘all the time.’

  They made for a merry little band, though, the four of them, and could see no reason to break apart as the day waned. Jim shared his plans for the evening: a trip to the West End to attend to an easy bit of business, supper somewhere, and then on to the Gaiety in time for the final act of The Grasshopper. Eldon was wholly at liberty, as was Miss Corder, the Owl’s present whereabouts being unknown. So, once Jim had changed, a four-wheeler was flagged down and off they went.