"When I was elected to the presidency of the Society I offered to paint a signboard which should proclaim to the passer-by the name and nature of the Society. My offer was accepted, and the Board was sent down to my studio, where I treated it as I should a most distinguished sitter—as a picture or an etching—throwing my artistic soul into the Board, which gradually became a Board no longer, as it grew into a picture. You say they say it was only a butterfly. Mendacity could go no further. I painted a lion and a butterfly. The lion lay with the butterfly—a harmony in gold and red, with which I had taken as much trouble as I did with the best picture I ever painted. And now they have clothed my golden lion clumsily, awkwardly, and timorously with a dirty coat of black. My butterfly has gone, the checks and lines, which I had treated decoratively, have disappeared. Am I not justified in calling it a piece of gross Vandalism?"
"What course would you have recommended? You had gone; the Board remained: perhaps it was weather-beaten—what could they do?"
"They should have taken the Board down, sir, taken the Board down, not dared to destroy my work—taken the Board down, returned it to me, and got another Board of their own to practise on. Good heavens! You say to my face it was only a Board. You say they only painted out my butterfly. It is as if you were condoling with a man who had been robbed and stripped, and said to him, 'Never mind. It is well it is no worse. You have escaped easily. Why, you might have had your throat cut.'"
And Mr. Whistler's Mephistophelian form disappeared into the black of the night.
The "Pall Mall" Puzzled
Pall Mall Gazette, April 4, 1889.
Mr. Whistler begs me to insert the following note exactly as it stands. I haven't the slightest idea what it means, but here it is with "mes compliments":—
"To the Interviewer of the Pall Mall Gazette:
"Good! very good! Prettily put, as becomes the Pall Mall, and yet you cannot be reproached with being 'too fine for your audience!'
"I wish I could say these things as you do for me, even at the risk of, at last, being understood. Mes Compliments!"