“D—–­n it, man!” he piped.  “Isn’t it BEAUTIFUL?”

Adopting the emphasis and the exclamation, Mr. Keppel shouted: 

“D——­n it, it is!”

This was satisfactory.

* * * * *

The proof-sheets of The Gentle Art, Whistler version, had just arrived as Mr. Keppel called.  “Read them aloud,” he commanded, “so I can hear how it sounds.”

Mr. Keppel started in, but his elocution was not satisfactory.

“Stop!” Whistler cried.  “You are murdering it!  Let me read it to you!”

He read about two hours to his own keen delight, but was finally interrupted by a servant announcing, “Lady ——.”

“Where is she?” asked the artist.

“In her carriage at the door.”

He went on reading until Mr. Keppel suggested that he had forgotten the lady.

“Oh,” he said, carelessly, “let her wait!  I’m mobbed with these people.”

After another quarter-hour he condescended to go down and greet her shivering ladyship.

* * * * *

A little later during this visit a foreign artist called and was pleasantly received.  Admiring a small painting, the visitor said: 

“Now, that is one of your good ones.”

“Don’t look at it, dear boy,” replied Whistler, airily; “it’s not finished.”

“Finished!” said the visitor.  “Why, it’s the most carefully finished picture of yours I’ve seen.”

“Don’t look at it,” insisted Whistler.  “You are doing an injustice to yourself, you are doing an injustice to the picture, and you’re doing an injustice to me!”

Then, theatrically: 

“Stop!  I’ll finish it now.”  With that he picked a very small brush, anointed, its delicate point with paint, and touched the picture in one spot with a speck of pigment.

“Now it’s finished!” he exclaimed.  “Now you may look at it.”

Forgetting his umbrella, the foreign gentleman called at the studio the next day to get it.  Whistler was out, but the visitor was much moved to find the “finishing touch” had been carefully wiped off!

* * * * *

Mr. Keppel’s personal relations with Whistler ended when, by an idle chance, he sent a copy of The University of the State of New York Bulletin, Bibliography, No.  I, a Guide to the Study of James Abbott McNeill Whistler, compiled by Walter Greenwood Forsyth and Joseph Le Roy Harrison, to Joseph Pennell, and another to Ernest Brown, in London.  Mr. Keppel, arriving in London the day of Mrs. Whistler’s funeral, sent a note of condolence, and, receiving a mourning envelope sealed with a black butterfly, opened it expecting a grateful acknowledgment.  Instead, it was a fierce, rasping denunciation for the distribution of the pamphlet—­a mere catalogue so far as it went.