“This story was started on Whistler ten or twelve years ago, and has been on its travels ever since: Some one asked him which of his etchings he thought the best. His answer was, ‘All of them.’ And he told the truth. Of plates that he thought much of, when I saw him thirteen years ago, the little ‘Marie Loches,’ which is another name for the Mayor’s residence, was hung over his desk, and I distinctly remember that the fine ‘Pierrot,’ in the Amsterdam set, was also a prime favorite of his. Later I have heard it said that the portrait of ‘Annie’ he regarded as his finest figure piece.” In February, 1883, he exhibited in London, in the rooms of the Fine Arts Society, fifty-one etchings and dry-points. It was, according to the placards,--and in reality,--an “Arrangement in Yellow and White,” for the room was white, with yellow mouldings; the frames of the prints white, the chairs white, the ottomans yellow; the draperies were yellow, with white butterflies; there were yellow flowers in yellow Japanese vases on the mantels; and even the attendants were clothed in white and yellow. As a French artist remarked, “It was a dream of yellow.” This, however, is how it struck some of the angry critics, who were impaled in the catalogue: “While Mr. Whistler’s staring study in yellow and white was open to the public we did not notice it,--for notice would have been advertisement, and we did not choose to advertise him. “Of the arrangement in yellow and white, we note that it was simply an insult to the visitors,--almost intolerable to any one possessing an eye for color, which Mr. Whistler, fortunately for him, does not,--and absolutely sickening (in the strictest sense of the word) to those at all sensitive in such matters. ‘I feel sick and giddy in this hateful room,’ remarked a lady to us after she had been there but a few minutes. Even the common cottage chairs, painted a coarse yellow, did not solace the visitors; and the ornaments on the mantel-piece, something like old bottle-necks, only excited a faint smile in the sickened company.”[14] The sea-sick lady was probably an invention of the writer. * * * * * Another, apparently somewhat less susceptible to the “sickening” effects of yellow, simply says: “Mr. Whistler has on view at the Fine Art Society’s some half-a-hundred etchings; but it was not to see these only that he invited his friends, and many fine people besides, last Saturday. In the laudable effort for a new sensation, he had been engaging in literature; and a grave servant, dressed in yellow and white (to suit the temporary decoration of the walls during the show) pressed into the hands of those who had come in all innocence to see the etchings a pamphlet in which Mr. Whistler’s arrangements had extended to an arrangement of critics.”[15]