all the interloper, even after his death,
prevail?

Shall 'Arry, whom I have hewn down, still live among us by outrage of
this kind, and impose his memory upon our pavement by the public
perpetration of his posthumous philistinism?

Shall the birthplace of art become the tomb of its parasite in
Tite Street?

See to it, Atlas! lest, when Time, the healer of all the wounds I have
inflicted, shall for me have exacted those honours the prophet may not
expect while alive, and the inevitable blue disc, imbedded in the
walls, shall proclaim that "Here once dwelt" the gentle Master of all
that is flippant and fine in Art, some anxious student, reading, fall
out with Providence in his vain effort to reconcile such joyous
reputation with the dank and hopeless appearance of this "model
lodging," bequeathed to the people by the arrogance of 'Arry.

[Illustration]

_The Red Rag_

[Sidenote: "_Mr. Whistler, Cheyne Walk._"]

[Sidenote: _The World_, May 22, 1878.]

Why should not I call my works "symphonies," "arrangements,"
"harmonies," and "nocturnes"? I know that many good people think my
nomenclature funny and myself "eccentric." Yes, "eccentric" is the
adjective they find for me.

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a
picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to
tell.

My picture of a "Harmony in Grey and Gold" is an illustration of my
meaning--a snow scene with a single black figure and a lighted tavern.
I care nothing for the past, present, or future of the black figure,
placed there because the black was wanted at that spot. All that I
know is that my combination of grey and gold is the basis of the
picture. Now this is precisely what my friends cannot grasp.

They say, "Why not call it 'Trotty Veck,' and sell it for a round
harmony of golden guineas?"--naively acknowledging that, without
baptism, there is no ... market!

But even commercially this stocking of your shop with the goods of
another would be indecent--custom alone has made it dignified. Not
even the popularity of Dickens should be invoked to lend an
adventitious aid to art of another kind from his. I should hold it a
vulgar and meretricious trick to excite people about Trotty Veck when,
if they really could care for pictorial art at all, they would know
that the picture should have its own merit, and not depend upon
dramatic, or legendary, or local interest.