* * * * *
Sitting for a portrait was an ordeal. Many were quite upset after a siege in the studio. One man annoyed the artist by saying at each dismissal:
"How-about that ear, Mr. Whistler? Don't forget to finish that." At the last session, all being finished but this ear, Whistler said, "Well, I think I'm through; now I'll sign it." This he did in a very solemn and important way.
"But my ear!" exclaimed the victim. "You're not going to leave it that way?"
"Oh," said Whistler, grimly, "you can put it in after you get home."
* * * * *
He occasionally contemplated visiting America in his late years, but the dread of the journey was too much for him to overcome. "If I escape the Atlantic," he said, "I shall be wrecked by some reporter at the pier." Finally, he definitely canceled his last proposed trip, observing airily: "One cannot continuously disappoint a continent."
"America," he once said, lightly, "is a country where I never can be a prophet."
* * * * *
Sir Rennell Rodd recalled that at a breakfast Waldo Story gave at Dieu-donné's in Paris there was a great company, including Whistler. Every one there was by the way of having written a book or painted a picture, or having in some way outraged the Philistine, with the exception of one young gentleman whose raison d'être was not so apparent as his high collar and the glory of his attire. He nevertheless intruded boldly into the talk and laid down his opinions very flatly. He even went so far as to combat some dictum of the master's, whereat that gentleman adjusted his glasses and, looking pleasantly at the youth, queried: