gest fifty-five, and the master, leaning back with his pencil poised in readiness above the sheet, would say, "Well, gentlemen, shall we put it down at sixty?" And so we would continue throughout the evening until the pictures were priced at what were then fabulous prices. Under the influence of gooseberry wine we had really become prophetic; we were placing Whistler where he should be placedon a lofty plane. These prices seemed extraordinary to outsiders, and even we ourselves had our misgivings the next day when the catalogue was printed, and the east wind was blowing and gooseberry wine was no more. And the sales unfortunately confirmed our fears. I remember that evening well. It was Press day, and we all met together at the gallery and discussed the prices by the cold unsympathetic daylight, and the result was that when Whistler appeared we were all a little sheepish and depressed. But the master entered, looking brilliant and sparkling, with spirits like champagne, and with a few words he soon picked us up again. For of course he knew the value of his work, and he soon impressed us with his own views, dealers and all. He hypnotized the dealers, as he did every one else, and they worked for him loyally. They showed the right spirit; it mattered not to them whether they sold the master's pictures or not; they felt that it was sufficient privilege merely to exhibit them.

Whistler came in literally bubbling over with joy. "Now," he said, "I can't have this. You must smile. Be merry, laugh all of you." And it was pathetic to see the dealers and the pupils mechanically working up smiles to please the master, many of them producing no more than a sad sort of "grin." The master swept one rapid glance round the gallery. "There is only one thing missing, gentlemen," he said, "to com

plete the picture which this gallery should create and that is the butterfly, a large painted butterfly on the wall." And there and then a ladder was brought, for Whistler wanted the butterfly to be almost upon the ceiling. It was a most anxious moment for all concerned-the master trusting himself on a ladder, we below were breathless. The ladder jolted, and Whistler bobbed as he aimed at the wall with his long brush, but each bob caused a stroke in the right position, and the butterfly, in shorter time than it takes for me to tell it, was completed, caught as it were on the wing; it was obvious to us that the Whistler butterfly had pulled the exhibition together. The first press man to enter was a very small, insignificant little personage, and he had the effrontery to address Whistler, not knowing that he was the master. "Where are the pictures?" he asked, evidently imagining himself to be in the entrance to the gallery. Whistler was furious and screamed him. The little press representative, to say the least of it, looked scared and almost as though he wished the earth might swallow him; but Whistler, looking over his head, mercilessly shouted to the attendant, "Who is this man?" with a strong emphasis on the last word. "Mr. representative of

aloud at

'Funny Folks,' sir," replied the commissionaire. Whistler gave one of his eldritch screams of laughter, and I fled from the battlefield in dismay.

I have given you an example of Whistler as a purist managing a oneman show, but Whistler the president of an art society was infinitely more witty. He carried out his character of purist to a remarkable extent-in a word, he figuratively took off his coat and set to work to cleanse the society vigorously with the hot water and soft soap of his own good taste. And it was an exceedingly interesting experiment! Personally I would not have

missed one of those remarkable meetings with Whistler as president. It was incomparably witty, and I laughed at times until I cried, while my mirth was drowned by the angry shouts and complaints of the members about me. Never in this world has there been, nor probably will there ever be again, such a president as Whistler was then. He was among presidents quite unique. As to the duties of his position he was not quite clear, but he had in his mind certain fixed improvements and certain facts of which he wished to speakand he spoke. The result was, as will be seen, disastrous for all concerned. A president at a meeting is supposed to encourage the members to talk and give their opinions, but that was not Whistler's idea at all; he sat up there on his president's chair and talked to them himself-talked to them for hour upon hour, brilliant, flowing, caustic talk, talk which made them stagger and well-nigh swept them off their feet. Was this the same man whom they had elected as president? the members whispered one to anotherthis brilliant epigrammatic individual who talked not to them but at them?

One of the first things Whistler did was to make a member of myself. He took me under his wing, as it were, and engineered me into the society in an incredibly short space of time. My self and a few of us, all friends of his, Whistler gathered together and formed into a species of inner circle whose sacred duty it was to fight for the master. On the night before one of the exhibitions during Whistler's term of presidency we all met together at his studio, where he explained his plan of campaign to cleanse the society. I, as a member of the hanging committee, was especially instructed to be ruthless in rejecting pictures. He impressed upon me the necessity of saying “Out, out, out"; he said, "Never weary, Menpes, of saying 'out. We

Whistler started by redecorating the gallery, "cleansing" it, as he himself put it, procuring a neutral tone, and rejecting all other hangings and decorations. I remember well we used muslin to festoon with, and unfortunately towards the ceiling the material ran short, and certain of the battens were left exposed. But Whistler allowed this paucity to pass, and when I suggested that perhaps the critics might complain, calling the gallery unfinished and a skeleton, Whistler said. "If they complain we can simply tell them that the battens form decorative lines and well placed," and in a very short space of time he had quite convinced himself and all of us that these exposed battens were indispensable to the scheme of decoration. But somehow or other the neutral tone of the walls and the decorative hanging did not seem to appeal to the average British Artist; the society felt that, although artistically they might be improving by leaps and bounds, financially they were becoming just as rapidly ruined. Yet all these men had in their innermost hearts a great though reluctant regard for the master both as critic and painter, perhaps more especially as critic. And on the morning of the first exhibition. when all the pictures had been hung and the arrangements completed, all the members assembled in the gallery to await the arrival of the master. He was late, and many were the nervous conjectures as to what he would be likely to say concerning such and such

a picture, whether he might praise or condemn each man's special work. At last it was said that the master had arrived. There was intense excitement; we felt conscious and strained, yet tried to appear at our ease. The master at length entered, faultlessly dressed, walking with a swinging jaunty step, evidently quite delighted with himself and the world in general. He passed down the gallery humming a French chanson and, never noticing the assembled members, walked

straight up to his own picture. And there he stayed for quite fifteen minutes, regarding it with a satisfied expression, stepping now backwards now forwards, canting his head and dusting the surface of the glass with a silk pocket-handkerchief. We watched him open-mouthed. Suddenly he turned round, beamed upon us, and uttered but two words "Bravo, Jimmy" -then took my arm and hurried me out of the gallery, talking volubly the while. Whistler was very amusing in his attempts to "cleanse" the society; in the teeth of opposition from the British Artists themselves he left not a stone unturned to complete their artistic triumph. The smallest detail was treated by him with importance. For instance, there was the signboard that was a cruel thorn in the master's side for quite fifteen minutes, during which time he sorrowfully regarded it before the board was ultimately displaced and sent off to his studio, where with a few sweeps of his brush he transformed the Reckitt's blue enamel and white lettering of the original into a large well-placed butterfly and a lion on a red ground, while the "Royal Society of British Artists," printed in small black letters, did not at all interfere with the harmony of the whole. Then, again, of the society's note-paper and the stamp upon it Whistler did not approve. Immediately he designed another, a small red

lion, decorative and dainty in the extreme. On the first proof sent from the stationer's he wrote me a little letter. And to show what a joyous, light-hearted, almost boyish man the master could be on occasions, I feel I must repeat to you this letter: "I write on the official sheet, oh dear and most respectful one, because I am in love with the look of it. Isn't it really brilliant and fascinating as a picture? And my little red lion, isn't he splendid and well-placed?

"What's the use

This letter I kept, as indeed I have kept and cherished all Whistler's letters.

At last the climax came; Whistler's ideas were too pure for the society; he was cleansing them too thoroughly, and the society rebelled. There was a strong agitation to depose Whistler and place another president in his stead, and the discussion took place at a meeting. There were two or three members who were very fluent speakers, and they attacked Whistler on the lines of his having taken away from the dignity of the society. They accused him of having brought too many eccentricities among them; it was impossible, they said, to keep pace with such ideas, and also their pictures were not selling. Whistler's reply to this attack was stupendous! He withered them as they sat there, withered them and turned yet again to grind his heel on the faded fragments of the fight. He put on his eyeglass and looked round on this circle of British artists-a slow, comprehensive, meditative stare. And then at length he said sweetly and with some concern, "You know you people are not well. You remind me of a shipload of passengers living on an old tub (the society) which has been anchored to a rock for many years. Suddenly this old tub, which has seemed disused and incapable of putting out to sea to face

the storm and stress of the waves, is boarded by a pirate. I am the pirate. He patches up the ship and makes her not only weather-tight but a perfect vessel, and boldly puts out to sea, running down less ably captained ships, leaving a stream of wreckage in her wake. But, lo and behold, her triumphant passage is stopped, and by the passengers themselves; for, unused to the strange and unaccustomed movement, they are each and every one of them sick and ill. But, good people, it is merely a matter of habit; soon you will not feel it, and you will live to thank your captain. Then you complain of my eccentricities. But mark you, dear people, you invited me into your midst as president because of these same so-called eccentricities. You elected me because I was much talked about and because you imagined that I would bring notoriety into your gallery. Did you imagine that when I entered your building I should leave my individuality on the door-mat? If so you are much mistaken, I am still Whistler, the so-called eccentric, still the master."

In this article I have spoken of Whistler as president, Whistler in connection with his own personal appearance, and many other sides of that great man's character; but it was Whistler the etcher that appealed to me more closely, for it was as an etcher that I had the privilege of serving him, and more especially in the printing room. Everything connected with Whistler's etching was absolutely pure and right; from the first stroke on the copper plate to the printed proof, every detail was carried through to perfection. For instance, take the paper that the plate was printed on. Now Whistler would think nothing of going on a trip to Holland in search of old Dutch paper, and many a time have I joined him in this interesting hunt. These golden sheets of Dutch paper gave him just

the ground he needed in order to receive the lace-work of etched lines. And Whistler economized each line so as not to destroy the breadth of the picture. His idea was that the sheet of golden Dutch paper should come as nearly as possible to represent the sheet of burnished copper. The sheet of paper was to Whistler as the broad tone of nature, and only a few lines were needed to caress it into form. To have attempted to get what the French call "values" Whistler felt would be an absurdity; it would be straining the medium. And then the handling of the plate: the way he would paint it with acid, putting it on daintily with a feather, instead of, as most etchers do, stopping out and protecting the back with varnish before plunging the whole into a bath of acid. Whistler in his method of painting was just as much a purist; there too he never strained his medium. He always started with the tone of the panel or canvas as near as possible to the general tone of the picture as he could get it, instead of, if he were painting a dark-toned picture, beginning with a white ground and then struggling to kill it.

The "followers" as we called ourselves that is to say, the few men who surrounded Whistler-were not quite successful as purists. We tried to be so pure that we produced faces without any features-simply a fleshy mass. London from the top of hansom cabs, too, was a failure, the technique was somewhat shaky, and sad low-toned ballet girls who became all the rage with us two months later, ballet girls painted in the low tones of Whistler, were not in great demand. At a later period we took to living in cafés by day and night discussing art. Soon after this we dispersed, and the reason for our disbandment was that some one suggested that we should treat art from the athletic standpoint and hit out from the shoulder. At

that period the features of our portraits were a little out of place; it was the death-blow of the pure period; the purists were thenceforward known no The Cornhill Magazine.

more, the sporting instinct was rife among us, and art for the time abandoned.

Mortimer Menpes.

In Mr. Herbert Spencer almost the last of the great figures of the Victorian era has departed. Few men have ever more completely dominated national thought in their own lifetime. By a happy accident, he began his career at a time when the great thesis of Darwin was being propounded, and a new world seemed to open for scientific discovery. With the enthusiasm of youth, Mr. Spencer set himself to map out this new world, and with a rare fidelity he continued his labors unremittingly to the end of a long life. To marry science and abstract thought, to deduce from the isolated discoveries of departmental science a guiding principle, and to work out this principle in every domain of human activity, was the task he set himself. He was well fitted for it by the possession of a considerable scientific training and a mind extraordinarily apt at acquiring and systematizing knowledge. He was probably one of the most learned men of our time, a great polymath, whose encyclopædic learning may justly entitle him to rank with those other synthetic philosophers, Aristotle and Bacon. If in his desire for a complete system of thought there was a suggestion of the German metaphysician, in most respects he was a typical English philosopher. He was, above all things, practical, desiring to bring Philosophy into the market-place and keep her there. He was keenly interested in current politics, and resisted Socialism with all the intense dislike of State interference which

characterized the mid-Victorian school of political philosophy. Taken as a whole, his life was a noble and influential one. He made popular the greatest of modern scientific truths, and he was an intellectual leader to thousands who desired some complete scheme of thought. The gravity and moderation of his argumentative methods, his high character, his fidelity to his enormous self-imposed task, were all influences of the highest value in a world which is becoming daily more disposed to judge men and things from a low material standpoint, and look askance at the self-sacrificing life of the thinker and scholar.

His work remains to this generation a very stately creation, spreading its roots far under the soil of most departments of knowledge, and sheltering the fowls of the air in its branches in the shape of a dozen minor schools of political and scientific thought. His terminology is still too much in use. and his ideas are still too familiar, for us to be able to judge him with any true perspective. How far, we wonder, will future ages value him? In a sense his work is already done. Ow. ing more to him than to any other save its propounder, the idea of evolution has come to stay; it has been stated in comprehensible terms, and it has become an integral part of every form of thought. The task of the interpreter is over when his interpretation is accepted. We are even now revising our thoughts on evolution, and we shall probably continue to limit the