Of these attempts there remain few examples. One is the portrait of his aunt Alicia McNeill, who visited them in Russia in 1844, sent to Mrs. Palmer at Stonington, with the inscription: "James to Aunt Kate." In a letter to Mrs. Livermore, written in French, when he was ten or eleven, "he enclosed some pretty pen-and-ink drawings, each on a separate bit of paper, and each surrounded by a frame of his own designing." He told us he could remember wonderful things he had done during the years in Russia. Once, he said, when on a holiday in London with his father, he was not well, and was given a hot foot-bath, and he could never forget how he sat looking at his foot, and then got paper and colours and set to work to make a study of it, "and in Russia," he added, "I was always doing that sort of thing."
July 4 (1844). "I have given my boys holiday to celebrate the Independence of their country. … This morning Jemmie began relating anecdotes from the life of Charles XII. of Sweden, and rather upbraided me that I could not let him do as that monarch had done at seven years old—manage a horse! I should have been at a loss how to afford my boys a holiday, with a military parade to-day, but there was an encampment of cadets, about two estates off, and they went with Colonel T.'s sons to see them."
July 10 (1844). "A poem selected by my darling Jamie and put under my plate at the breakfast-table, as a surprise on his tenth birthday. I shall copy it, that he may be reminded of his happy childhood when perhaps his grateful mother is not with him."
August 20 (1844). " … Jemmie is writing a note to his Swedish tutor on his birthday. Jemmie loves him sincerely and gratefully. I suppose his partiality to this Swede makes him espouse his country's cause and admire the qualities of Charles XII. so greatly to the prejudice of Peter the Great. He has been quite enthusiastic while reading the life of this King of Sweden, this summer, and too willing to excuse his errors."
August 23 (1844). "I wish I could describe the gardens at Peterhoff where we were invited to drive to-day. The fountains are, perhaps, the finest in the world. The water descends in sheets over steps, all the heathen deities presiding. Jemmie was delighted with the figure of Samson tearing open the jaws of the lion, from which ascends a jet d'eau one hundred feet. … There are some fine pictures, but Peter's own paintings of the feathered race ought to be most highly prized, though our Jemmie was so saucy as to laugh at them."
August 28 (1844). "I avail myself of Col. Todd's invitation to visit Tsarskoé Seló to-day with Aunt Alicia, Deborah, and the two dear boys, who are always so delighted at these little excursions. … My little Jemmie's heart was made sad by discovering swords which had been taken in the battle between Peter and Charles XII., for he knew, from their rich hilts set in pearls and precious stones, that they must have belonged to noble Swedes. 'Oh!' he exclaimed, 'I'd rather have one of these than all the other things in the armoury! How beautiful they are!' … I was somewhat annoyed that Col. Todd had deemed it necessary to have a dinner party for us.
" … The colonel proposed the Emperor's health in champagne, which not even the Russian general, who declined wine, could refuse, and even I put my glass to my lips, which so encouraged my little boys that they presented their glasses to be filled, and, forgetting at their little side-table the guests at ours, called out aloud, 'Santé à l'Empereur!' The captain clapped his hands with delight, and afterwards addressed them in French. All at the table laughed and called the boys 'Bons sujets.'"
They were at St. Petersburg again in September, preparing their Christmas gifts for America. Whistler, sending one to his cousin Amos Palmer, wrote in an outburst of patriotism that "the English were going to America to be licked by the Yankees": it was at the time of the disagreement over Oregon Territory. In another letter he gives the Fourth of July as his birthday.
Ash Wednesday (1845). "I avail myself of this Lenten season to have my boys every morning before breakfast recite a verse from the Psalms, and I, who wish to encourage them, am ready with my response. How very thankful I shall be when the weather moderates so that Jemmie's long imprisonment may end, and Willie have his dear brother with him in the skating grounds and ice-hills. Here comes my good boy Jemmie now, with his history in hand to read to me, as he does every afternoon, as we fear they may lose their own language in other tongues, and thus I gain a half-hour's enjoyment by hearing them read daily."
April 5 (1845). "Our boys have left the breakfast table before eight o'clock to trundle their new hoops on the Quai with their governess, and have brought home such bright red cheeks and buoyant spirits to enter the schoolroom with and to gladden my eyes. Jemmie began his course of drawing lessons at the Academy of Fine Arts just on the opposite side of the Neva, exactly fronting my bedroom window. He is entered at the second room. There are two higher, and he fears he shall not reach them, because the officer who is still to continue his private lesson at home is a pupil himself in the highest, and Jemmie looks up to him with all the reverence an artist merits. He seems greatly to enjoy going to his class, and yesterday had to go by the bridge on account of the ice, and felt very important when he told me he had to give the Isvóshtclók fifteen copecks silver instead of ten."
In the archives of the Imperial Academy of Science there is a "List of Scholars of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts," and in this and the "Class Journal of the Inspector" for 1845 James Whistler is entered as "belonging to the drawing class, heads from Nature." In 1846 he was on March 2 examined and passed as first in his class, the number being twenty-eight. From 1845 to 1849 Professors Vistelious and Voivov were the masters of the life class.
On May 14 (1845) there was a review of troops in St. Petersburg, and the Whistlers saw it from a window in the Prince of Oldenburg's palace.
"Jemmie's eagerness to attain all his desires for information and his fearlessness often makes him offend, and it makes him appear less amiable than he really is. The officers, however, seemed to find amusement in his remarks in French or English as they accosted him. They were soon informed of his military ardour, and that he hoped to serve his country. England? No, indeed! Russia, then? No, no; America, of course!"
May 2 (1846). "The boys are in the schoolroom now, reading the Roman history in French to M. Lamartine, promising themselves the pleasure of reviewing the pictures at the Academy of Fine Arts at noon, which they have enjoyed almost every day this week. It is the Triennial Exhibition, and we like them to become familiar with the subjects of the modern artists, and to James especially it is the greatest treat we could offer. I went last Wednesday with Whistler and was highly gratified. I should like to take some of the Russian scenes so faithfully portrayed to show in my native land. My James had described a boy's portrait said to be his likeness, and although the eyes were black and the curls darker, we found it so like him that his father said he would be glad to buy it, but its frame would only correspond with the furniture of a palace. The boy is taken in a white shirt with crimped frill, open at the throat; it is half-length, and no other garment could show off the glow of the brunette complexion so finely."
May 30 (1846). "Yesterday the Empress was welcomed back to St. Petersburg. Last night the illumination which my boys had been eagerly expecting took place. When at 10.30 they came in, Jamie expressed such an eager desire that I would allow him to be my escort just to take a peep at the Nevski that