THE CHELSEA GIRL 416 PORTRAIT OF E. S. KENNEDY 416 In the Metropolitan Museum, New York GALLERY AT THE LONDON MEMORIAL EXHIBITION 428 GALLERY AT THE BOSTON MEMORIAL EXHIBITION 428 WHISTLER'S GRAVE IN CHISWICK CEMETERY ADJOINING CHISWICK CHURCHYARD 428 MONUMENT IN WHISTLER'S MEMORY AT THE UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY AT WEST POINT 428 CHAPTER I: THE WHISTLER FAMILY. THE YEARS EIGHTEEN THIRTY-FOUR TO EIGHTEEN FORTY-THREE. James Abbott McNeill Whistler was born on July 10, 1834, at Lowell, Massachusetts, in the United States of America. Whistler, in the witness-box during the suit he brought against Ruskin in 1878, gave St. Petersburg as his birthplace--or the reporters did--and he never denied it. Baltimore was given by M. Théodore Duret in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ (April 1881), and M. Duret's mistake, since corrected by him, has been many times repeated. The late Mrs. Livermore, who knew Whistler as a child at Lowell, asked him why he did not contradict this. His answer was: "If any one likes to think I was born in Baltimore, why should I deny it? It is of no consequence to me!" On entering West Point he stated that Massachusetts was his place of birth. But, as a rule, he met any one indiscreet enough to question him on the subject as he did the American who came up to him one evening in the Carlton Hotel, London, and by way of introduction said, "You know, Mr. Whistler, we were both born at Lowell, and at very much the same time. There is only the difference of a year--you are sixty-seven and I am sixty-eight." "And I told him," said Whistler, from whom we had the story the next day, "'Very charming! And so you are sixty-eight and were born at Lowell! Most interesting, no doubt, and as you please! But I shall be born when and where I want, and I do not choose to be born at Lowell, and I refuse to be sixty-seven!'" Whistler was christened at St. Anne's Church, Lowell, November 9, 1834. "Baptized, James Abbott, infant son of George Washington and Anna Mathilda Whistler: Sponsors, the parents. Signed, T. Edson"; so it is recorded in the church register. He was named after James Abbott, of Detroit, who had married his father's elder sister, Sarah Whistler. McNeill (his mother's name) was added shortly after he entered West Point. Abbott he always kept for legal and official documents. But, eventually, he dropped it for other purposes, "J. A. M." pleasing him no better than "J. A. W.," and he signed himself "James McNeill Whistler" or "J. M. N. Whistler."