One afternoon he came to my flat with the tall bamboo wand which he often used, in Chelsea at any rate, instead of a walking stick. He was of a phenomenal slenderness, which was emphasised by the long wand, and the long, flat-brimmed hat, and the long, black, tight coat. He had yellow gloves, and his little soft shoes--his feet were the smallest I ever saw on a man--were the last word in daintiness. No London maker could have produced them. Jimmie was always, at all points, fastidious. He gesticulated more than any Briton, but his gesticulations were not Parisian, they were Whistlerian. He pointed dramatically to the ceiling and murmured, "White, all white." "White." Then to the walls--"All white. And a white you can wash! Londoners forget that they must live in their houses in winter. All their colours are dismal, and there 's no sun." "Apropos?" I was about to enquire. {164} "Didn't you tell me, the other day, that you intended redecorating this place?" "Sometime, when my ship comes in." "It doesn't need a ship. A navy wouldn't do for Cheyne Walk. May I offer a suggestion?" "The knowledge of a lifetime," said I, quoting his famous hit at the Ruskin trial. "Very well then; I 'll come in." And he went all around the flat, pointing here and there with his bamboo wand, and saying, "Such-and-such a colour here, and such a line there. My dear boy, this is the whole secret,--tone and line. The good colour--the right one--and the good line--the right one--cost no more than the wrong. People overlook these things; they forget them, they ignore them altogether, and then have the misfortune to live. They don't go mad, because they 're British. And you 'll not, because you 'll have the right colour and the right line. Come. Let's walk. I 'm free for the evening. We 'll dine at the Club." That was Whistler, Whistler the neighbour, the phase of him that I knew quite as well as any other phase. Later on, when I "did up" my flat, I remembered the details of his suggestions, and carried them out. The result was that I had one of the most delightful flats in London. The appreciation of those who understood warmed his heart. He had had to fight his way from the beginning against the least imaginative, the stodgiest, the narrowest, the most unsympathetic criticism, and the most prejudiced, because the least {165} enlightened public (as to art) in the world. But his fighting was not for his own hand merely; he was the champion of art as against ignorance, complacent or aggressive.