on]

"_Noblesse oblige_"

[Sidenote: _The World_, Dec. 31, 1884.]

Atlas, look at this! It has been culled from the _Plumber and
Decorator_, of all insidious prints, and forwarded to me by the
untiring people who daily supply me with the thinkings of my critics.

Read, Atlas, and let me execute myself:

"The 'Peacock' drawing-room of a well-to-do shipowner, of Liverpool,
at Queen's Gate, London, is hand-painted, representing the noble bird
with wings expanded, painted by an Associate of the Royal Academy, at
a cost of L7000, and fortunate in claiming his daughter as his bride,
and is one of the finest specimens of high art in decoration in the
kingdom. The mansion is of modern construction."

He is not guilty, this honest Associate! It was _I_, Atlas, who did
this thing--"alone I did it"--_I_ "hand-painted" this room in the
"mansion of modern construction."

Woe is me! _I_ secreted, in the provincial shipowner's home, the
"noble bird with wings expanded"--_I_ perpetrated, in harmless
obscurity, "the finest specimen of high-art decoration"--and the
Academy is without stain in the art of its member. Also the immaculate
character of that Royal body has been falsely impugned by this wicked
"_Plumber_"!

Mark these things, Atlas, that justice may be done, the innocent
spared, and history cleanly written.

_Bon soir!_

Chelsea.

[Illustration]

_Early Laurels_

_TO THE EDITOR:_

[Sidenote: _The Observer_, April 11, 1886.]

Sir--In your report of the Graham sale of pictures at Messrs. Christie
and Manson's rooms, I read the following:

"The next work, put upon the easel, was a 'Nocturne in blue and
silver,' by J. M. Whistler. It was received with hisses."

May I beg, through your widely spread paper, to acknowledge the
distinguished, though I fear unconscious, compliment so publicly paid.

It is rare that recognition, so complete, is made during the lifetime
of the painter, and I would wish to have recorded my full sense of
this flattering exception in my favour.

Chelsea.

[Illustration]

_A Further Proposition_

[Sidenote: _Art Journal_, 1887.]

The notion that I paint flesh lower in tone than it is in nature, is
entirely based upon the popular superstition as to what flesh really
is--when seen on canvas; for the people never look at nature with any
sense of its pictorial appearance--for w