with Velasquez, do you? I simply wanted to take her down."

* * * * *

Sir John E. Millais, walking through the Grosvenor Gallery with
Archibald Stuart Wortley, stopped longer than usual before the
shadowy, graceful portrait of a lady, "an arrangement in gray, rose,
and silver," and then broke out: "It's damned clever! It's a damned
sight too clever!"

This was his verdict on Whistler's portrait of Lady Meux. Millais
contended that Whistler "never learned the grammar of his art," that
"his drawing is as faulty as it can be," and that "he thought nothing"
of depicting "a woman all out of proportion, with impossible legs and
arms!"

* * * * *

In 1874 there was a suggestion that Whistler's portrait of Carlyle
should be bought for the National Gallery. Sir George Scharf, then
curator of that institution, came to Mr. Graves's show-rooms in Pall
Mall to take a look at it.

When Mr. Graves produced the painting he observed, icily:

"Well, and has painting come to this?"

"I told Mr. Graves," said Whistler, "that he should have said,' No, it
hasn't."'