There was a mountain of unopened letters on his desk.

* * * * *

Frederick Wedmore, the patient cataloguer of Whistler's etchings, once
appeared in print as saying that he had "no wish to understand
Whistler's works." He wrote "understate," but the wretched compositor
undid him. Whistler's response to the explanation was: "Yes, the
mistake is indeed inexcusable, since not only I, but even the
compositor, might have known that with Mr. Wedmore and his like it is
always a question of understating and never of understanding
anything."

In his _Memories and Impressions_ Ford Madox Hueffer relates that
Madox Brown, going to a tea-party at the White House at Chelsea, was
met in the hall by Mrs. Whistler, who begged him to go to the
poulterer's and purchase a pound of butter. The bread was cut, but
there was nothing in the house to put upon it. There was no money in
the house, the poulterer had cut off his credit, and Mrs. Whistler
said she dared not send her husband, for he would certainly punch the
tradesman's head!

"To think of 'Arry [meaning Harry Quilter, the critic, with whom he
fiercely quarreled] living in the temple I erected!" he said. "He has
no use for it--doesn't know what to do with it. If he had any feeling
for the sympathy of things he would come to me and say: 'Here's your
house, Whistler; take it; you know its meaning, I don't. Take it and
live in it.' But no, he hasn't sense enough to see that. He
obstinately stays there in the way, while I am living in this absurd