Frederick Sandys' work never interested Whistler, but Sandys the man was a delight to him, though the two lost sight of each other for many years. Sandys was usually without a penny in his pocket, but he faced the situation with calm and swagger. Accidents never separated him from his white waistcoat, though he might have to carry it himself to the laundry, or get his model, "the little girl" he called her, to carry it for him. You were always meeting them with the brown-paper parcel, Whistler said, and at the nearest friend's house he would stop for five minutes and emerge from it splendid in a clean waistcoat. In money matters he reckoned like a Rothschild. It was always, "Huh! five hundred," that he wanted. Late one afternoon, as Whistler was going into Rossetti's, he met Sandys coming out unusually depressed. He stopped Whistler:
"Do, do try and reason with Gabriel, huh! He is most thoughtless. He says I must go to America, and I must have five hundred, huh, and go! But, if I could go, huh, I could stay!"
Once Whistler, Sandys, and Rossetti are said to have gone to Winchelsea with W. G. Wills, Irving, and Alfred Calmour, from whom the story comes. Whistler and Rossetti wanted to see a beautiful old house. A grumpy old man lived in it, but Irving warned them that he would probably ask them all to dinner. Rossetti said they must refuse, he hated dining with strangers; Whistler was sure the wine would be bad, Sandys as certain they would be bored by infernal chatter. But they went to the house. Whistler knocked. The servant opened. Whistler asked him to tell his master that "Mr. Whistler and Mr. Rossetti and Mr. Irving wish to see the place." A rough voice was heard: "Shut the door, Roger, I don't want these damned show people stealing my silver." Whistler and Rossetti were furious, and thought they should demand an apology. "He thinks we are confounded actors," Whistler said. "My dear James, he's never heard of you!" was Irving's comment. The only drawback to the story is that we doubt if Whistler knew Irving until after he had ceased to see anything of Rossetti and Sandys.
Whistler got to know other friends of Rossetti's, and he drifted to Ford Madox Brown's, in Fitzroy Square: "Once in a long while I would take my gaiety, my sunniness, to Madox Brown's receptions. And there were always the most wonderful people—the Blinds, Swinburne, anarchists, poets and musicians, all kinds and sorts, and, in an inner room, Rossetti and Mrs. Morris sitting side by side in state, being worshipped, and, fluttering round them, Howell with a broad red ribbon across his shirt-front, a Portuguese decoration hereditary in the family."
According to his grandson, Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer, Ford Madox Brown thought so much of Whistler's work that once, knowing Whistler wanted money, he sent round among his friends a circular praising Whistler's etchings and urging their purchase.
Whistler shared Rossetti's interest in the spiritual manifestations that, for several years, agitated the circle at Tudor House. He told us once of the strange things that happened when he went to séances at Rossetti's with Jo, and also when he and Jo tried the same things in his studio, and a cousin from the South, long dead, talked to him and told him much that no one else could have known. He believed, but he gave up the séances when they threatened to become engrossing, for he felt that he would be obliged to sacrifice to them the work he had to do in the world.
[Pg 84a]
THE BLUE WAVE
OIL
In the possession of A. A. Pope, Esq.
[Pg 84b]
THE FORGE
DRY-POINT. G. 68
The chief bond between Whistler and Rossetti was their love for blue and white and Japanese prints. Whistler was in Paris in 1856, when Bracquemond "discovered" Japan in a little volume of Hokusai used for packing china, and rescued by Delâtre, the printer. It passed into the hands of Laveille, the engraver, and from him Bracquemond obtained it. After that, Bracquemond had the book always by him; and when in 1862 Madame Desoye, who, with her husband, had lived in Japan, opened a shop under the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, the enthusiasm spread to Manet, Fantin, Tissot, Jacquemart and Solon, Baudelaire and the De Goncourts. Rossetti was supposed to have made it the fashion. But the fashion in Paris began before Rossetti owned his first blue pot or his first colour-print. Whistler brought the knowledge and the love of the art to London. "It was he who invented blue and white in London," Mr. Murray Marks assured us, and Mr. W. M. Rossetti was as certain that his brother was inspired by Whistler, who bought not only blue and white, but sketch-books, colour-prints, lacquers, kakemonos, embroideries, screens. "In his house in Chelsea, facing Battersea Bridge," Mr. Severn writes, "he had lovely blue and white, Chinese and Japanese." The only decorations, except the harmony of colour, were the prints on the walls, a flight of Japanese fans in one place, in another shelves of blue and white. People, copying him, stuck up fans anywhere, and hung plates from wires. Whistler's fans were arranged for colour and line. His decorations bewildered people even more than the work of the new firm of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Co. The Victorian artist covered his walls with tapestry, filled his studio with costly things, and made the public measure beauty by price, a fact overlooked by Whistler, but never by Morris.
Rossetti joined in the hunt for blue and white. Henry Treffy Dunn, in his Recollections of Rossetti, whose assistant he was, writes that Rossetti and Whistler "each tried to outwit the other in picking up the choicest pieces of blue to be met with"; that both were for ever hunting for "Long Elizas," a name in which Mr. W. M. Rossetti thought "possibly a witticism of Whistler's may be detected." Howell rushed in and met with the most astounding experiences and adventures. A little shop in the Strand was one of their favourite haunts, another was near London Bridge where a Japanese print was given away with a pound of tea. Farmer and Rogers had an Oriental warehouse in Regent Street. The manager, Mr. Lazenby Liberty, afterwards opened one on the other side of the street, and here, too, Whistler went, introduced to Mr. Liberty by Rossetti. Mr. Liberty rendered him many a service, and visited him to the last. Mr. Murray Marks imported blue and white, and he has told us how the fever spread from Whistler and Rossetti to the ever-anxious collector. Rossetti asked Mr. Marks if he knew anything about blue and white. Mr. Marks said yes; he could get Rossetti a shipload if he chose. Mr. Marks often ran over to Holland, where blue and white was common and cheap, and he picked up a lot, offering it to Rossetti for fifty pounds. Rossetti happened to be hard up and could not afford it. But he came with Mr. Huth, who bought as much as Rossetti could not take, and the rage for it began in England, Sir Henry Thompson, among others, commencing to collect. The rivalry between Whistler and Rossetti lasted for several years, until Rossetti, ill and broken, hardly saw his friends, and until Mr. Marks, in the early seventies, bought back from Whistler and Rossetti all he had sold them.