[Note 40: The official memory:

"DEAR SIR--I wish by return mail you would send
description for oils; and if you desire to have titles
to etchings printed, you will have to furnish the
necessary material for copy.--Yours faithfully,
RUSH C. HAWKINS,

Commissariat General, Paris, March 29, 1889.
(_Autograph._)

To Mr. Whistler."]

"Our way of doing business was not, it seems, up to Mr. Whistler's
standard of politeness, so he got angry and took away, not only the
ten rejected etchings, but seventeen others which had been accepted.
It is a little singular that among about one hundred and fifty artists
who received this circular, Mr. Whistler should have been the only one
to discover its latent discourtesy. How great must be Mr. Whistler's
capacity for detecting a snub where none exists!"

"In any case, there is not the slightest reason for Mr. Whistler's
venting his ire upon me. I had no more to do with either accepting or
rejecting his pictures than I had with painting them. What he sent
us was judged on its merits by a competent and impartial jury of his
peers. If there were ten etchings rejected it only shows that there
were ten etchings not worthy of acceptance. A few days after the
affair a trio of journalists--not all men either--came to me,
demanding that I reverse this 'iniquitous decision,' as they styled
it. I told these three prying scribblers in a polite way that if they
would kindly attend to their own affairs I would try to attend to
mine. In this connection, I may remark that there are in Paris a
number of correspondents who ought not to be allowed within gun-shot
of a newspaper office."

"The next mis-statement in Mr. Whistler's interview is in regard to
the ultimate disposal of his important etchings. His words are:--'Mr.
Hawkins was quite embarrassed, and urged me to reconsider my
determination, but I withdrew every one of the etchings, and they are
now well hung in the English department.'"

"Now, I leave it to any fair-minded person if the plain inference from
this statement is not that the whole twenty-seven etchings were
accepted by the English department. If not, what in heaven's name is
he crowing about? But the truth is that while we rejected only
_ten_ of his etchings, the English department rejected _e