There was a mountain of unopened letters on his desk.

* * * * *

Frederick Wedmore, the patient cataloguer of Whistler’s etchings, once appeared in print as saying that he had “no wish to understand Whistler’s works.”  He wrote “understate,” but the wretched compositor undid him.  Whistler’s response to the explanation was:  “Yes, the mistake is indeed inexcusable, since not only I, but even the compositor, might have known that with Mr. Wedmore and his like it is always a question of understating and never of understanding anything.”

In his Memories and Impressions Ford Madox Hueffer relates that Madox Brown, going to a tea-party at the White House at Chelsea, was met in the hall by Mrs. Whistler, who begged him to go to the poulterer’s and purchase a pound of butter.  The bread was cut, but there was nothing in the house to put upon it.  There was no money in the house, the poulterer had cut off his credit, and Mrs. Whistler said she dared not send her husband, for he would certainly punch the tradesman’s head!

“To think of ’Arry [meaning Harry Quilter, the critic, with whom he fiercely quarreled] living in the temple I erected!” he said.  “He has no use for it—­doesn’t know what to do with it.  If he had any feeling for the sympathy of things he would come to me and say:  ’Here’s your house, Whistler; take it; you know its meaning, I don’t.  Take it and live in it.’  But no, he hasn’t sense enough to see that.  He obstinately stays there in the way, while I am living in this absurd fashion, next door to myself.”

* * * * *

After the “secession” from the Royal Society, Whistler strolled into the gallery one evening with some friends.  A group of admirers were gushing before a Leighton canvas.

“Quite exquisite!”

“A gem—­really a gem!”

“Yes,” said Whistler.  “Like a diamond in the sty.”

When elected president of the Society of British Artists, Whistler naturally felt exultant.  “Carr,” he said, jokingly, to Conryns Carr, the dramatist, “you haven’t congratulated me yet.”

“No,” was the retort.  “I’m waiting till the correspondence begins!”

* * * * *

The Society did not possess a Royal Charter until Mr. Whistler became president.  With some help from the Prince of Wales this was procured.  When the Prince paid his first visit to the gallery, Whistler was there to welcome him.

“I’m sure,” said the Prince at the door, “I never heard of this place, Mr. Whistler, until you brought it to my notice.  What is its history?”

“It has none, your Highness,” was the neat rejoinder.  “Its history dates from to-day!”

When Whistler left the White House, at Chelsea, he put this legend over the door: 

“’Unless the Lord build the house, their labor is but vain that build it.’  E.W.  Godwin, P.S.A., built this one.”