"The man was above all things gregarious--he did not like to be alone--and most intensely human. He had his foibles, faults and virtues like the rest. The Whistler I knew was clean of person and speech. I never heard him utter one word that might not be repeated without offending the most easily shocked of prudes. He has been described as untidy. He was, on the contrary, the only man who ever washed his hair three times every day, and was fastidious to the point of being prinky about his person. His clothes, generally black, were always simple in the extreme and spotless, even when, in those old Venice days of dreadful poverty, they were worn threadbare--actually in holes. His courage was indisputable. He would fight any man, no matter what size or weight, and the jaunty cheerfulness with which he bore privations, when he lacked everything, even the materials necessary for his work, deceived those who were his daily companions and sufficiently proved his moral pluck.
"He wore a black silk ribbon tie at his neck, a bow with six inch loops and fluttering ends, but that was all that was unusual in his attire, unless the long bamboo wands of canes--a dark one for the night and a light for day--should be included. Nothing that glittered, not even a watch-chain or a ring, formed any part of his costume. A tiny white or yellow flower at his buttonhole was his unique adornment.
"Is it true, as Thackeray declared, that ordinary mortals do, indeed, delight to pry into the weakness of the strong, the smallness of the great? I have thought it best to show _my_ Whistler as he really was, a simple, kind and tender-hearted fellow, who turned his best side towards the unappreciative world he lived in, not from vanity of person, but to hide his poverty, and the makeshifts he was driven to employ, as a man will say 'I like to walk,' when he can't afford to ride. His cackling laugh hid many a bitter thrust that had gone home and hurt him to the quick. He laughed, and then would come the swift _riposte_ of witty repartee. He never attacked a living creature, never struck the first blow, and would have been glad to live in peace with all the world. But so coarse were the criticisms of his person and his work that he was driven to defend Art, which was the only thing he could not joke about. Upon the rare occasions when he talked with me, as a master might, about his work, his face itself seemed transfigured.