"Now, Mr. Whistler. Can you tell me how long it took you to knock off that nocturne?"
... "I beg your pardon?" (Laughter.)
"Oh! I am afraid that I am using a term that applies rather perhaps to my own work. I should have said, How long did you take to paint that picture?"
"Oh, no! permit me, I am too greatly flattered to think that you apply, to work of mine, any term that you are in the habit of using with reference to your own. Let us say then how long did I take to—'knock off,' I think that is it—to knock off that nocturne; well, as well as I remember, about a day."
"Only a day?"
"Well, I won't be quite positive; I may have still put a few more touches to it the next day if the painting were not dry. I had better say then, that I was two days at work on it."
"Oh, two days! The labour of two days, then, is that for which you ask two hundred guineas!"
"No;—I ask it for the knowledge of a lifetime." (Applause.)
"You have been told that your pictures exhibit some eccentricities?"
"Yes; often." (Laughter.)