"It was a bad omen! His wife grew worse. He sent me word not to come. She died, and I never saw him after. I wish you could tell me what became of that picture. He called it The Grey Man."

This is another example of Whistler's repetition of titles. Mr. Cowan's portrait, painted the same year, was The Grey Man too. Of Mr. Crockett's, Whistler said to us that Crockett was delighted with it as far as it had gone, and he was rather pleased with it himself. He painted several of these small full-lengths, which were to show the fallacy of the life-size theory and of the belief that the importance of a portrait depends on the size of the canvas. Kennedy, after the portrait destroyed in Paris, stood for a second, now in the Metropolitan Museum; Mr. Arnold Hannay for another; C. E. Holloway for The Philosopher, which Whistler considered particularly successful.

In the spring Whistler moved his wife from the Savoy to St. Jude's Cottage, Hampstead Heath, rented from Canon and Mrs. Barnett. After this he began to give up hope. It was a sad day when for the first time he admitted, "We are very, very bad." And we understood that the end was near the afternoon when he, the most fastidious, appeared wearing one black and one brown shoe, and explaining that he had a corn. But, indeed, many times it seemed as if in his despair he did not know what he was doing. The last day Mr. Sydney Pawling met him walking, running across the Heath, looking at nothing, seeing no one. Mr. Pawling, alarmed, stopped him. "Don't speak! Don't speak! It is terrible!" he said, and was gone. That was the end.

Mrs Whistler died on May 10 and was buried at Chiswick on the 14th. We have heard that the funeral was arranged for the 13th, but Whistler, objecting to the date, postponed it a day, and Mrs. Whistler was buried on her birthday. He never would do anything on the 13th if he could help it.

We were abroad, but the first Sunday after E.'s return he came and asked her to go with him to the National Gallery. There he showed her the pictures "Trixie" loved, standing long before Tintoretto's Milky Way, her favourite. There was no talk about pictures—Canaletto was barely looked at—there was no talk about anything, and the tragedy that could not be forgotten was never referred to. But M. Paul Renouard was in the Gallery and came to Whistler with the word of comfort, from which he shrank. During the first few months after Mrs. Whistler's death, in the shock of his sorrow and loss, Whistler made her sister, Miss Rosalind Birnie Philip, his ward, and drew up a new will appointing her his heiress and executrix; eventually cancelling his former bequests, and leaving everything to her absolutely.

CHAPTER XXXIX: ALONE.
THE YEAR EIGHTEEN NINETY-SIX.

Whistler stayed a short time at Hampstead with his sisters-in-law, and then went to Mr. Heinemann at Whitehall Court, where he remained, on and off, for two or three years, spending only the periods of Mr. Heinemann's absence at Garlant's Hotel or in Paris. He was with us day after day. Little notes came from the studio to ask if we would be in and alone in the evening, and, if so, he would dine with us. At first he would not join us if we expected anyone. He liked to sit and talk, he said, but he could not meet other people. He saw few outside the studio, except Mr. Heinemann, Mr. Kennedy, and ourselves. We went to the studio, and often he and J. sketched together in the streets.

For these sketching expeditions Whistler prepared beforehand the colours he wanted to use, and if the day turned out too grey or too radiant for his scheme nothing was done. The chosen colours were mixed, and little tubes, filled with them, were carried in his small paint-box, which held also the tiny palette with the pure colours arranged on it, his brushes, and two or three small panels. Many studies were made. The most important was of St. John's, Westminster. He loved the quiet corner, now destroyed, and he went there many times. He worked away, his top hat jammed down on his nose, sitting on a three-legged stool, his paint-box on his knee, the panel in it, beginning at once in colour on the panel, usually finishing the sketch in one afternoon, though he took two over the church. The painting was simply done, commencing with the point of interest, the masses put in bigly, the details worked into them. Just as in the studio, five minutes after he had begun he became so absorbed in his work that he forgot everything else until it grew too dark to see. When ladies would come and recognise him, he stopped, got up, and spoke to them, always charmingly.