those whose
judgment of him rests solely on _The Gentle Art_. They think he fought
for no other end than to make enemies when, really, he enjoyed far more
the good give-and-take argument that preserved to him his friends,
provided those friends fought fair and did not play the coward, or the
toady, to escape the combat.

J. and I have written his Life in vain if everybody who cares to know
anything about him does not know that from 1895 and 1896, the greater
part of his time was spent in London and that many of his nights were
then given to us, more particularly towards the end of the amazing
decade. We paid for the privilege by the loss of some of our friends
who, for one reason or another, cultivated a wholesome fear of Whistler.
Men who had been most constant in dropping in, dropped in no
longer--nor, in many cases, have they ever begun to drop in again. More
than one would have run miles to escape the chance encounter, trembling
with apprehension when in a desperate visit they seemed to court it, and
often the several doors opening into our little hall served as important
a part in preventing a meeting between Whistler and the enemy as the
doors in the old-fashioned farce played in the husband and wife game of
hide-and-seek.

It was not too big a price to pay. Whistler's talk was worth a great
deal, and the twelve years that have passed since we lost it forever
have not lessened its value for us. Ours is a sadder world since we have
ceased to hear the memorable and unmistakable knock and ring at our
front door, the prelude to the talk, rousing the whole house until every
tenant in the other chambers and the housekeeper in her rooms below knew
when Whistler came to see us. Our nights, since those he animated and
made as "joyous" as he liked to be in his hours of play and battle, have
lost their savour. We are perpetually referring to them, quoting,
regretting them. Even Augustine looks back to them as making a pleasant
epoch in her life. Often she will remind me of this night or that,
declaring we have grown dull without him--but do I remember the night
when M. Whistlaire argued so hard and with such violence that the print
of the rabbit fell from the wall in its frame, the glass shivering in a
thousand pieces, just when M. Kennedy was so angry we thought he was
going to walk away forever, and how after that there could be no more
arguing, and M. Whistlaire laughed as she swept up the pieces, and M.
Kennedy did no