“Do you contemplate deleting the character of Sibley when you publish in volume form?” “If I had a word or sign of regret from Mr. Whistler for the savage things he says in his letter I might consider that. I did what I did in a playful spirit of retaliation for this little gibe about me in his book. A man so sensitive as Mr. Whistler now seems to be should beware how he goes about joking of others. I had no idea of taking any notice of Mr. Whistler’s letter, but since you have come and asked me I say that if I had known it would have given pain and brought such a torrent of abuse upon me, I should have denied myself the little luxury of the playful retaliation in which I indulged.”[30] [30] After reading Mr. Menpes’s _Whistler as I knew Him_, one discovers that extraordinary phenomenon, a man who would rather destroy a friendship by what he considered a brilliant phrase than sacrifice the brilliant phrase and preserve the friendship. It is not wonderful that all Whistler’s friends did not prove so complaisant and generous as Mr. Menpes. Let me then here put it on record that _Trilby_ in book form is not only innocent of “Joe Sibley” and the “cut” of the “Two Apprentices” but is in other respects far inferior to its serial issue. The illustrations have been greatly reduced, and in the process have lost much of their charm. There was, however, a large-paper edition of the novel published in 1895, containing the same number of {170} illustrations as the small-paper, together with “facsimiles of the pencil studies.” This is the most desirable edition outside _Harper’s_. The ideal form is, of course, the serial issue extracted from the Magazine and bound up, “Joe Sibley,” the suppressed “cut” and all. This, then, is all that must be said about the “suppressed plate,” which is so rigidly put under hatches that it must not even be paraded, on this occasion only, with its fellows. “When the sleeper wakes,” perchance, and copyright is out, a cheap edition of this present volume, with the suppressed block inserted, will be published, and our children’s children will marvel.[31] [31] The curious should refer to a delightful open Letter entitled _Trilby_ from Mr. Whistler’s pen, which appeared in the initial number of Mr. Harry Furniss’s late lamented _Lika Joko_. The whole episode is a nice commentary upon Mr. George Meredith’s distinction between Irony and Humour. “If,” says he, “instead of falling foul of the ridiculous person with a satiric rod, to make him writhe and shriek aloud, you prefer to sting him under a semi-caress, by which he shall in his anguish be rendered dubious whether indeed anything has hurt him, you are an engine of {171} Irony.” But “if you laugh all round him, tumble him, roll him about, deal him a smack, and drop a tear on him, own his likeness to you and yours to your neighbour, spare him as little as you shun him, pity him as much as you expose, it is a spirit of Humour that is moving you.”