“What an eye for a line a sculptor has!” he said to Ford later.

* * * * *

He quarreled regularly with his brother-in-law, Sir F. Seymour Haden, the famous etcher.

“A brother-in-law is not a connection calling for sentiment,” he once remarked.

Haden came into a gallery on one occasion and, seeing Whistler, who was there in company with Justice Day, left abruptly.

“I see!  Dropped in for his morning bitters,” observed Whistler, cheerfully.

* * * * *

Once in conversation Whistler said:  “Yes, I have many friends, and am grateful to them; but those whom I most love are my enemies—­not in a Biblical sense, oh, no, but because they keep one always busy, always up to the mark, either fighting them or proving them idiots.”

* * * * *

Whistler was very particular about the spelling of his rather long and complicated group of names.  Careless people made the “Mc” “Mac,” and others left the extra “l” off “McNeill.”  To one of the latter offenders he wrote: 

“McNeill, by the way, should have two l’s.’  I use them both, and in the midst of things cannot well do without them!”

* * * * *

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.  To the remonstrating landlord he replied: 

“Now, now, never mind!  I’ll not charge you anything for the decorations.”

* * * * *

Among those with whom Whistler quarreled most joyously were the two Moores, the illustrious George and his less famous brother, Augustus.  Both took Sir William Eden’s side in the celebrated “Baronet vs.  Butterfly” case, where Whistler was nonsuited in a French court of law.  Augustus edited a sprightly but none too reputable weekly in London, called the Hawk, a series of unpalatable references in which so aroused Whistler that, meeting Moore in the Drury Lane Theater on the first night of “A Million of Money,” he struck the editor across the face with his cane.  A scrimmage followed, which contemporary history closed with the artist on the floor.  Whistler’s own account of the unseemly fracas was thuswise: 

“I started out to cane the fellow with as little emotion as I would prepare to kill a rat.  I did cane him to the satisfaction of my many friends and his many enemies, and that was the end of it.”