“ Do you find there, as you do in London, that in houses filled with beautiful pictures and superb statuary, and other objects of artistic merit, there is invariably some damned little thing on the mantel that gives the whole thing away?" Mr. Chase replied, sadly: "It is even so, but you must remember, Whistler, that there are such things as birthdays. People are not always responsible." ”

“ One day, when the pupils had been sketching from life, he came upon the work of one which, if it contained all of the truth, did not contain all of the beautiful.
After gazing at it for some time Whistler observed to the student:
"Ah, well! You can hardly expect me to teach you morals." And he walked away.
* * * * *
A carelessly kept palette was an abhorrence to the painter. He would inspect those used by his class, and on the discovery of untidiness uttered a reproof like this: "My friends, have you noticed the way in which a musician cares for his violin? How beautiful it is? How well kept? ”

“ In Paris a big Englishman clouded the class-room with a copious discharge of smoke. "My dear sir," said Whistler, gently, "I know you do not smoke to show disrespect for my request that students refrain from smoking on the days I come to them, nor would you desire to infringe upon the rules of the atelier, but—er—it seems to me—er—that when you are painting—er—you might possibly become so absorbed in your work as to—er—let your cigar go out!"
Visiting Earl Stetson Crawford in his studio at Paris, he noted on the wall a photographic copy of the Nicholson portrait of himself. ”

“ He was not what you call an enthusiastic man, but when he reverted to the old days at the Military Academy his enthusiasm was infectious. I think he was really prouder of the years he spent there—three, I think they were—than any other years of his life. He never tired of telling of the splendid men and soldiers his classmates turned out to be, and he has often said to me that the American army officer trained at West Point was the finest specimen of manhood and of honor in the world. ”

“ In Paris, Whistler and an English painter got into a turbulent talk over Velasquez at a studio tea. In the course of the argument Whistler praised himself extravagantly.
"It's a good thing we can't see ourselves as others see us," sneered the Briton. ”

“ An American artist studying in Paris, like many others, was too poor to have a perfect wardrobe. Strolling on the Boulevard, he heard a call and, turning, saw Whistler hastening toward him, waving his long black cane. ”

“ Referring long after to his retirement from West Point, where he had been a cadet for three years, the artist explained his fall by saying: "If silicon had been a gas, I should have been a soldier!"
* * * * *
He was always proud of his West Point cadetship. "West Point is America," he would say. Julian Alden Weir, son of Whistler's instructor at the Academy, once dining with him in London, chanced to remark that football had been introduced at the school. "Good God!" cried Whistler. "A West Point cadet to be rolled in the mud by a Harvard junior!" ”

“ Speaking at a meeting held to complete the details of a movement for the erection of a memorial to Whistler, Lord Redesdale gave a remarkable account of the artist's methods of work. "One day when he was to begin a portrait of a lady," said Lord Redesdale, "the painter took up his position at one end of the room, with his sitter and canvas at the other. For a long time he stood looking at her, holding in his hand a huge brush as a man would use to whitewash a house. Suddenly he ran forward and smashed the brush full of color upon the canvas. ”

“ During the Chase sittings, the creditors were always calling. Whistler divined their several missions with much nicety by the tone of the raps on the door.
A loud, business-like bang brought, out this comment:
"Psst! That's one and ten."
Later came another, not quite so vehement.
"Two and six," said Whistler. "Psst!"
"What on earth do you mean?" asked Chase.
"One pound ten shillings; two pounds six shillings! Vulgar tradesmen with their bills, Colonel. They want payment. Oh, well!" ”

“ A people that tolerate such a law have no love for art; their protestation is mere pretense."
* * * * *
Asked by a lady if a certain picture in a gallery was not indecent, he replied:
"No, madam. But your question is!"
Mark Twain visited the studio and, assuming an air of hopeless stupidity, approached a nearly completed painting and said:
"Not at all bad, Mr. Whistler; not at all bad. Only here in this corner," he added, reflectively, with a motion as if to rub out a cloud effect, "if I were you I'd do away with that cloud!"
"Gad, sir!" cried the painter. "Do be careful there! ”

“ When the creditors at last landed a bailiff in the painter's Chelsea mansion, he tried to wear his hat in the drawing-room and smoke and spit all over the house. But Whistler, in his own airy way, soon settled that. He went out into the hall, and, selecting a stick from his collection of canes, he daintily knocked the man's hat off. The bailiff was so surprised that he forgot to be angry, and in a day or two he had been trained to wait at table. But though he was now in possession and a favored household servant, he could not obtain his money. ”

“ Invited once to dine with some eminences, the dinner-hour found him busy with his brush and engrossed in his subject. A friend who was to accompany him to the feast urged that it was frightfully late. "Don't you think you had better stop?" he asked.
"Stop?" shrieked Whistler. "Stop when everything is going so beautifully? Go and stuff myself with food when I can paint like this? Never! Never! Besides, they won't do anything until I get there. They never do."
* * * * *
Whistler was in a London shop one day when a customer came in who mistook him for a clerk. ”

“ A London visitor at the Lambs Club recounted a new version of the notable enmity which followed the friendship that had existed between Whistler and Wilde. The latter one day asked the artist's opinion upon a poem which he had written, presenting a copy to be read. Whistler read it and was handing it back without comment.
"Well," queried Wilde, "do you perceive any worth?"
"It's worth its weight in gold," replied Whistler. ”

“ Whistler answered. "I should hate, for example, to be standing opposite a man who was a better shot than I, far away out in the forest, in the bleak, cold, early morning. Fancy me, the master, standing out in the open as a target to be shot at. Pshaw! It would be foolish and inartistic. I never mind calling a man out; but I always have the sense to know he is not likely to come."
* * * * *
Mr. Howard Mansfield relates that while in London in the summer of 1900 with Mr. Whistler, reference was one day made to West Point. ”

“ Harper Pennington has revealed to us the origin of the "standing-room only" joke. It appears that there was hardly ever any furniture in Whistler's house. He was peculiarly parsimonious in the matter of chairs. This led to a remark of Corny Grain's which became famous.
"Ah, Jimmy! Glad to see you playing to such a full house!" said Dick (Corny) Grain when shaking hands before a Sunday luncheon, while glaring around the studio with his large, protruding eyes, in search of something to sit on.
"What do you mean?" asked Whistler. ”

“ Whistler is sixty-five years of age, and it is against the custom of dueling for any one to accept a challenge from so old a gentleman. Moreover, Mr. Whistler is, unhappily, very short-sighted, and would be unable to see me at twenty paces. ”

“ One tells of a female model to whom he owed some fifteen shillings for sittings. She was a Philistine of the Philistines who knew nothing of her patron's fame and was in no way impressed with his work. One day she told another artist that she had been sitting to a little Frenchman called Whistler, who jumped about his studio and was always complaining that people were swindling him, and that he was making very little money. The artist suggested that if she could get any piece of painting out of Whistler's studio he would give her ten pounds for it. ”

“ A young artist had brought Whistler to view his maiden effort. The two stood before the canvas for some moments in silence. Finally the junior asked, timidly:
"Don't you think this painting of mine is a—er—a tolerable picture, sir?"
Whistler's eyes twinkled.
"What is your opinion of a tolerable egg?" he asked.
* * * * *
"Irish girls have the most beautiful hands," he once wrote, "with long, slender fingers and delightful articulations. American girls' hands come next; they are a little narrow and thin. The hands of the English girls are red and coarse. The German hand is broad and flat ”

“ I did cane him to the satisfaction of my many friends and his many enemies, and that was the end of it."
Moore wrote: "I am sorry, but I have had to slap Mr. Whistler. My Irish blood got the better of me, and before I knew it the shriveled-up little monkey was knocked over and kicking about the floor."
Whistler vigorously controverted this version as a "barefaced falsehood." He added: "I am sure he never touched me. I don't know why, for he is a much bigger man than I. My idea is that he was thoroughly cowed by the moral force of my attack. I had to turn him round in order to get at him. ”

“ One of the affectations of Whistler was his apparent failure to recognize persons with whom he had been on the most friendly terms. An American artist once met the impressionist in Venice, where they spent several months together painting, and he was invited to call on Whistler if he should go to Paris. The painter remembered the invitation. The door of the Paris studio was opened by Whistler himself. ”

“ Starr spoke approvingly of the promising work of some of the younger artists. "They are all tarred with the same brush," said Whistler. "They are of the schools!" Of one particular rising star Whistler remarked: "He's clever, but there's something common in everything he does. ”

“ Chase for antagonizing his friends, Whistler retorted:
"It is commonplace, not to say vulgar, to quarrel with your enemies.
Quarrel with your friends! That's the thing to do. Now be good!"
* * * * *
"The good Lord made one serious mistake," he rasped to Chase, in
Holland.
"What?"
"When he made Dutchmen."
* * * * *
When he had finished his portrait of Mr. Chase he stood off and admired the work. "Beautiful! Beautiful!" was his comment. Chase, who had irked under the queer companionship, retorted, "At least there's nothing mean or modest about you!" ”

“ A young woman student protested under criticism, "Mr. Whistler, is there any reason why I shouldn't paint things as I see them?"
"Well, really, there is no statute against it; but the dreadful moment will be when you see things as you painted them!"
"Britain's Realm," by John Brett, R.A., now in the National Gallery at Millbank, made a stir when first exhibited at the Academy. It shows the sea. Whistler walked into a wave of adulation one day during the exhibition, and, affecting to "knock" with his knuckles, said sardonically: "Ha! Ha! Tin! ”

“ But the bailiff stayed on, and the day of sale approached; so Whistler, having been educated at West Point, determined to practise strategy. Some one had told him that a mixture of snuff and beer had the property of sending people off to sleep. So he bought a big parcel of snuff and put the greater part of it into a gigantic tankard of beer, which he sent out to the bailiff in the garden. It was a very hot summer afternoon, and the man eagerly welcomed his refreshment. Whistler was in his studio painting and soon forgot all about him. In the evening he said to his servant, "Where's the man?" ”

“ I always like to do things cleanly."
* * * * *
The clash with George Moore came to a head with the challenge to fight a duel. In his own version of the event given in the London Chronicle of March 29th, 1895, Mr. Moore laid his troubles to his efforts to aid the artist. Learning that Sir William Eden wished his wife's portrait painted, he "undertook a journey to Paris in the depth of winter, had two shocking passages across the Channel, and spent twenty-five pounds on Mr. Whistler's business." It was arranged, he thought, that Whistler was to receive one hundred pounds for a "small sketch." ”

“ To one editor who tendered ten pounds he wrote:
"Guineas, M. le Rédacteur; guineas, not pounds!"
* * * * *
At a reception one evening in Prince's Hall he was introduced to Henrietta Rae, whose painting "Psyche Before the Throne of Venus" had made her notable. She had been described to him in advance as rather weighty in figure.
"I don't think you're a bit too fat," was his encouraging greeting.
* * * * *
"Why have you withered people and stung them all your life?" asked a lady.
"My dear," he said, "I will tell you a secret. Early in life I made the discovery that I was charming ”

“ When Tom Taylor, the critic, died, a friend asked Whistler why he looked so glum.
"Me?" said Whistler. "Who else has such cause to mourn? Tommy's dead. I'm lonesome. They are all dying. I have hardly a warm personal enemy left!"
* * * * *
While a draughtsman in the Coast Survey from November, 1854, to February, 1855, he boarded at the northeast corner of E and 12th Streets, Washington. He is remembered as being usually late for breakfast and always making sketches on the walls. ”

“ I cannot, as I look at my improving self with daily satisfaction, really believe it all—still it has helped to do me good!—and it is with almost sorrow that I must beg you, perhaps, to put back into its pigeonhole for later on this present summary and replace it with something preparatory, which, doubtless, you have also ready. ”

“ Moore said:
"There are three most excellent reasons why I should not fight a duel with Mr. Whistler, as Mr. Whistler well knows. First, only under the very gravest circumstances, if under any at all, would an Englishman accept a challenge to a duel. The duel has been relegated to the realms of comic opera. As for inviting me to proceed to Belgium for the purpose of fighting him, he might as well ask me to strip myself naked and paint my face and stick feathers in my hair—dress myself as a Redskin, in fact, and walk down St. ”