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diff --git a/old/14392.txt b/old/14392.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5f86b4b --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14392.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4637 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the +Victorians, by T. Martin Wood + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians + +Author: T. Martin Wood + +Release Date: December 20, 2004 [eBook #14392] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE DU MAURIER, THE SATIRIST OF +THE VICTORIANS*** + + +E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Susan Skinner, and the Project +Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 14392-h.htm or 14392-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/3/9/14392/14392-h/14392-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/3/9/14392/14392-h.zip) + + + + + +GEORGE DU MAURIER, THE SATIRIST OF THE VICTORIANS + +A Review of His Art and Personality + +by + +T. MARTIN WOOD + +With Forty-One Illustrations + +London Chatto & Windus + +1913 + + + + + + + +[Illustration: + +George du Maurier + +From a portrait in water-colour by himself. + +In the possession of the Artist's widow.] + + + + +PREFACE + + +Du Maurier worked for periodicals which buried in a back number each +phase of his work as it came to an end. Thus it is that he is, +unfortunately, chiefly now remembered by the last--the most accessible, +but not by any means the finest--period of his work. + +The present book is an attempt to correct this and to bring forward du +Maurier's name again in the light of his earlier achievement. + +No book on the artist, however, would be complete which omitted all +reference to his literary attainment; nor would it be in order in an +essay of this extent not to seek to demonstrate that connection which +always exists between the life and the work of an artist of distinctive +temperament. The author has endeavoured, in the chapter devoted to +outlining the main incidents of du Maurier's career, to regard the +feeling of his representatives that the autobiography of the novels is +itself so complete and sensitive as scarcely to call at present for +anything supplemental. He wishes to acknowledge the kindness of the +artist's family in lending him portraits, sketch-books, and manuscript +with the permission for reproduction; also of Mr. W. Lawrence Bradbury, +so zealous a guardian of all that redounds to the fame of his great +journal, for every kind of assistance; and of Sir Francis Burnand, du +Maurier's Editor and comrade, for letters assisting him to form an +impression of du Maurier in the flesh. Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. have +also been generous in allowing the reproduction of the four drawings +included here, which appeared originally in the _Cornhill Magazine_. The +author only wishes that he felt that what he has written more justified +this consideration from everyone who was approached in connection with +his undertaking. + + + + +CONTENTS + + I. THE WORLD OF DU MAURIER + + II. THE ART OF DU MAURIER + + III. DU MAURIER AS AUTHOR + + IV. LIFE OF THE ARTIST + + V. THE ILLUSTRATIONS + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + +GEORGE DU MAURIER, from a Portrait in Water-colour by Himself +(Frontispiece) + +ILLUSTRATION FOR "RECOLLECTIONS OF AN ENGLISH GOLD-MINE": +_Once a Week_, 1861 + +"THE CILICIAN PIRATES": _The Cornhill,_ 1863 + +ILLUSTRATION FOR "WIVES AND DAUGHTERS": _The Cornhill_, 1864 + +ILLUSTRATION FOR "WIVES AND DAUGHTERS": _The Cornhill_, 1865 + +SKETCH FOR ABOVE + +PENCIL STUDIES FROM THE ARTIST'S SKETCH-BOOK + +ILLUSTRATION FOR "A LEGEND OF CAMELOT"--PART III: _Punch_, 1866 + +INITIAL LETTER FROM _The Cornhill_ + +ILLUSTRATION FOR "THE STORY OF A FEATHER": 1867 + +ILLUSTRATION FOR "THE STORY OF A FEATHER": 1867 + +"CAUTION": _Punch_, 1867 + +BERKELEY SQUARE, 5 P.M.: _Punch_, 1867 + +ILLUSTRATION FOR "ESMOND" + +ILLUSTRATION FOR "THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND": +_The Cornhill_, 1870 + +ILLUSTRATION FOR "THE ADVENTURES OF HARRY RICHMOND": +_The Cornhill_, 1871 + +"PROXY": _Punch's Almanack_, 1874 + +QUEEN PRIMA-DONNA AT HOME: _Punch_, 1874 + +HONOUR WHERE HONOUR is DUE: _Punch_, 1880 + +CANON AINGER, from a Portrait in Water-colour by du Maurier + +THE MUTUAL ADMIRATIONISTS: _Punch_, 1880 + +MANUSCRIPT + +GEORGE DU MAURIER, from a Photograph + +SPEED THE PARTING GUEST: _Punch_, 1883 + +SKETCH FOR INITIAL LETTER IN _The Cornhill_, 1883 + +"Sic TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI!" _Punch_, 1884 + +POST-PRANDIAL PESSIMISTS: _Punch_, 1892 + +THINGS ONE WOULD RATHER HAVE EXPRESSED DIFFERENTLY: _Punch_, 1893 + +There are also several Tailpieces, chronologically arranged + + + + +GEORGE DU MAURIER + +I + +THE WORLD OF DU MAURIER + +Section 1 + + +We have in the portfolio of du Maurier the epic of the drawing-room. +Many of the Victorians, including the Queen, and Alfred Lord Tennyson, +seem to have viewed life from the drawing-room window. They gazed +straight across the room from the English hearthrug as from undoubtedly +the greatest place on earth. They were probably right. But some of this +confidence has gone. Actually in these days there are people who won't +own up to having a drawing-room at all. If they have a room that could +possibly answer to such a description, they go out of their way to call +it the library, though its only available printed matter is a Bradshaw; +or the music-room, though the only music ever heard in it is when the +piano is dusted. + +In turning over the old volumes of _Punch_ it is surprising how many of +the points made by du Maurier in his drawings and in the legends beneath +them still hold good. As a mere "joker" he was perhaps the least able of +the _Punch_ staff. His influence began when he started inventing +imaginary conversations. In many cases these do not represent the +discussion of topical subjects at all, but deal with social aberrations, +dated only in the illustration by the costume of the time. + +In these imaginary conversations he is already a novelist. They record +the strokes of finesse and the subterfuges necessary to the attainment +of the vain ambitions which are the preoccupation of human genius in +superficial levels of Society in all ages. We realise the waste of +energy and diplomacy expended to score small points in the social game. +His art is a mirror to weed-like qualities of human nature which enjoy a +spring-time with every generation. But it also provides a remarkable +record of the effect of the sudden replacement of old by new ideals in +the world which it depicted. + +The rise of the merchant capitalist upon the results of industrial +enterprises rendered possible through the invention and rapid perfecting +of machinery, created a class who suddenly appeared in the drawing-rooms +of the aristocrats as strangers. Du Maurier himself seems to join in the +amazement at their intrusion. Much of this first surprise is the theme +of his art. Before the death of the artist the newcomers had proved +their right to be there, having shamed an Aristocracy, which had lost +nearly all its natural occupations, by bringing home to it the fact that +the day was over for despising men who traded instead of fighting, who +achieved through barter what the brave would once have been too proud to +take except by conquest. The business of the original division of human +possessions by the sanguinary method was well over; it was now the +merchant's day. It was plain that trade could no longer be despised, +when, literally in an age of peace and inventive commerce, indolence was +the only alternative to engagement in it. + +Du Maurier was very tolerant to social intruders when they were pretty. +He rather entered into Mrs. de Tomkyns' aims, and showed it by making +her pretty. Her ends might not be the highest, but the tact and the +subtlety displayed in her campaign were aristocratic in character, and +he would not have her laughed at personally, though we may laugh at the +topsy-turvy of a Society in which the entrance into a certain +drawing-room becomes the fun reward for the perseverance of a lifetime. +But du Maurier shuddered when behind this lady, distinguished in the +fact of the possession of genius, he saw a multitude of the aspirateless +at the door. We never lose upon the face, which showed as his through +his art, the expression of well-bred resentment, yet certainly of +amusement also. + +During the period of du Maurier's work for _Punch_ the actor gets his +position in Society; and we see desolate gentlemen in other professions +drifting about at the back of the room like ships that drag their +anchor, while all the feminine blandishment of the place is concentrated +on the actor. By following up his drawings we can see the whole surface +of Victorian Society change in character; we can see one outrageous +innovation after another solidify into what was correct. + +There never was a period like the Victorian; in many respects the +precedents of all older periods of Society fail to apply. In it the +aristocrats believed in democracy, and resented the democrat who was +practically their own creation. While the democrat held no faith with +the same fervour as his belief that "whatsoever is lovely and of good +report" could only be obtained by mingling with the upper classes. It +was the commercial glory of the great Industrial Reign that turned the +whole character of London Society upside down in du Maurier's time. It +became the study of the Suburbs to model themselves on Mayfair, to +imitate its "rages" and "crazes" in every shade. It is all the vanities +of this emulation which du Maurier records; there is little in his art +to betray the great influences Ecclesiastically, scientifically, and +politically, which expressed the genius of the Victorians. His splendid +Bishops are as tranquil as if the controversial Newman, and Gladstone +with his Disestablishment programme, had never disturbed the air. And +one fancies that politics must have bored him, so studiously does he +through over thirty years avoid even a slanting glance at the events +which preoccupied Mr. Punch in his cartoons. There is evidence that +there was more than the policy of the Paper in this. Du Maurier was an +optimist. An optimist is a man who thinks that everything is going right +when it is going wrong. It requires an effort of the imagination to +recall and picture the fact that in the first hour of Du Maurier's mere +amusement Ruskin was adding his lachrymation to Carlyle's over a society +going swiftly to Gehenna. It is the entire absence of despair, +bitterness, or cynicism in his work that gives it its altogether unique +place in the history of social satire. Never before was there such a +lenient barb on such a well-aimed arrow. + +But if his business is not with the causes which contributed to the +character of English Society in his time, it is with their effects. No +satirist has ever put more highly representative figures on to his +stage. They are so highly representative because they conform so +strictly to type. He puts a valuation upon everyone whom he introduces +on his stage. He shows exactly the regard in which we are to hold them +and their profession. And it is interesting, in the light of the favour +with which he always treated the typical _savant_, to hear from his son +that he was always as much interested in what was being accomplished in +science as in anything else in the world. We must conclude scientists +were first in his estimation as men, from the pains he was at to give +them the appearance of distinction in his pictures. Then he had much +regard for Generals, great Admirals, and other magnificent specimens, +the Adonis, for instance, that figures almost as often, and nearly +always in company with, his charming woman. This gentleman is difficult +to describe. He seems too languid even for the profession of +man-about-town, but his clothes are such that one would think their +irreproachability could only be maintained by a life of dedication to +them. Did he ever exist? Du Maurier is very subtle here. He fully +appreciated the great aim of the public-school-trained man in his own +time--the elaborate care with which an officer studied to conceal an +enthusiasm for the profession of arms, the great air of indolence with +which over-work was concealed in the other fashionable professions. As a +matter of fact these beautiful priests in the temple of "good form" were +splendid stoics. They would lay it down that as long as correctness of +attitude was maintained nothing mattered. + +The artist seems to share many of the prejudices of the older +aristocrats. He makes his Jews too Jewish. He believes that they produce +great artists, and as if this wasn't enough, he still holds them at +arm's length. We have in his art not only the record of social +innovations, but a picture of the aristocrats before the barbarian +invasion. As a picture of them then his art has now its value. And yet +he was not quite an aristocrat in temperament, which is a little +different from being one by birth. He would have been less tolerant of +the Philistines if he had been, and more Bohemian too. He made his great +excursions into Bohemia, but he reached it always by a journey through +the suburbs. His love of glamour and enchantment was aristocratic, but +he did not keep it to the end. He loses it in later drawings. His +satire, too, grows less pointed after the eighties, with an equivalent +decline in the art by which it is conveyed. The poetic vein that once +distinguished him from the Society he depicted tended also to disappear, +as he succumbed to a process of absorption into a Society which he had +once been able to observe with the freshness of a stranger. It is +familiarity that blunts our sense of beauty. It is in its last phase in +_Punch_ that his drawing loses the poetry that characterised it in the +seventies and eighties, and which gave his satire then such a potent +stealthy influence over those for whom it was intended. + +[Illustration: Illustration for "Recollections of an English Gold-Mine" +_Once a Week_, 1861.] + + +Section 2 + + +If it were possible to imagine a world without any women or children in +it, du Maurier's contemporary, Keene, so far as we can judge from his +art, would have got along very well in such a world. He would have +missed the voluminous skirt that followed the crinoline, with its +glorious opportunity for beautiful spacing of white in a drawing, more +than he would have missed its wearer. But du Maurier's art is Romantic; +in the background of its chivalric regard for women there is the history +of the worship of the Virgin. The source of such an art would have to be +sought for in the neighbourhood of Camelot. It is impossible to overlook +the chivalry that will not allow him, except with pain, to make a woman +ugly. He was first of all a Poet, and though it may be a man's business +to put a poem on to paper, it is a woman's to create it. He was a poet +put into the business of satire with sufficient wit to sustain himself +there. Many a time he has to make the satire rest almost entirely with +the legend at the foot of his drawing; by obscuring their legends we find +that drawing after drawing has nothing to tell us but of the beauty of +those involved in "the joke," and this, as we shall show further on, +gives a peculiar salt, or rather sweetness, to satire from his pencil. +He is a romancer. His dialogues are romances. It is the novelist and +artist running side by side in the legend and the drawing, but almost +independently of each other, the wit and the poet in him trying to play +each other's game, that provides the contradictoriness--the charm in his +pictures. The point of the "joke" seems very often a mere excuse for +working off several incidents of beauty that have been perceived. + +In dealing with _fashion_ du Maurier scores with posterity. Beauty, when +it really is recorded, is the one element in any transitory fashion that +survives the challenge of time. It is natural for one generation to hate +more than anything else in the world the fashions immediately preceding +the one affected. Pointed contemporary satire has, from the very shape +it must assume, an ephemeral success. It is only when something more +than the mere object of the satire is involved by some grace of the +satirist's genius--some response on his part to charm in the thing +assailed, that the work of satire comes down from its own time with an +indestructible ingredient in it. + +As a record of feminine fashion du Maurier's drawings in _Punch_ are +remarkable. It must not be imagined that the history of fashion is +merely the tale of dressmakers' caprice. The very language of changing +ideals is the variation of the toilet. When women were restricted to an +oriental extent within convention, when to be "prim" was the aim of +life, no feature of dress was lacking that could put "abandonment" of +any but a moral kind, out of the question. A shake of the head too +quickly and the coiffure was imperilled; the movements that came within +the prescribed circle of dignity within the circle of the crinoline were +all of a rhythmical order. Women did not take to moving with freedom +because the crinoline went out, but the crinoline went out when they +took to moving with freedom. It went out simply because it was a +confounded nuisance. It was a natural costume only as long as women +imagined it was natural to them to be very still in demeanour. Once they +began to have opinions about that matter they soon sent the crinoline on +its way. The same process goes on with the fashions of wearing the +hair. The Blue-stocking, constantly running her nervous fingers up her +forehead into her hair, has given to Girton a style of its own, +equivalent to none at all. _Fashion_ is more sensible than most things. +If it changes with a rapidity that dazzles man, is not that only because +man is stupid? + +To study hair-dressing in du Maurier's pictures, is to study the growth +of the nineteenth-century woman's mind. The head-dress becomes more +natural as woman herself becomes more natural. It becomes more Greek +when she takes up the Amazon idea, and simple when she discards some of +the complications of convention, always to return to elaboration in the +winter when it is not easy to live the simple life after the bell goes +for dinner. + +When the crinoline went out the train came in; so that though woman had +allowed _herself_ more freedom, man could only walk behind her at a +respectful distance with a ceremonial measure of pace. The dressmaker +did not control all this; the resources of her transcendent art were +strained to keep up with the march of womanhood--that was all. If we may +believe du Maurier's art, the note of beauty never entirely disappeared +from _fashion_ until the aesthetic women of the eighties seemed to take +in hand their own clothes. The aesthetic ladies failed, as the movement +to which they attached themselves did, for beauty is something attendant +upon life, arriving when it likes, going away very often when everyone +is on his knees for it to remain. + +[Illustration] + + +Section 3 + +When it comes to his drawings of children du Maurier is very far away +from the sentimentalist of the Barrie school. He does not attempt to go +through the artifice of pretended possession of the realm of the child's +mind. He was of those who find the curious attractiveness of childhood +in the unreality, and not, as claimed by the later school, the superior +reality of the child's world. His view of the child is the affectionate, +but the "Olympian" one, with its amused appreciation of the _naivete_ +and the charm of childhood's particular brand of self-possession. It is +possible that his nursery scenes played some part in promoting the +respect that is given to-day to the impulses of childhood, the +enlightened and beautiful side of which respect after all so far +outweighs the ridiculous and sentimental one. His nursery drawings +contribute much of the fragrance associated with his work in _Punch_. He +takes rank under the best definition of an artist, namely, one who can +put his own values upon the things that come up for representation on +his paper. By his insistence upon certain pleasant things he helped to +establish them in the ideal, which, on the morrow, always tends to +become the real. He was a realist only to the extent of their +possibility. It gave him no pleasure whatever to enumerate, and +represent over again, the many times in which the beautiful intentions +of nature had gone astray. He liked to be upon the side of her +successes. He constantly helped us to believe in, and to will towards +the existence of such a world here on earth, as we have set our heart +upon. He is not an idealist in the vague sense, for he imports no beauty +merely from dreamland. Like the Greeks, he makes _the possible_ his +single ideal. In insisting upon the possibility of beauty and +suppressing every reference to the monstrous story of failure which the +existence of hideousness implies, once more he puts the world in debt to +art after the fashion of the old masters. For after all it seems to have +been left for modern artists to grow wealthy and live comfortably upon +the proceeds of their own relation of the world's despair; if they are +playwrights, to live most snugly upon the box-receipts of an entrapped +audience unnerved for the struggle of life by their ghastly picture of +life's gloom. + +However splendid the art in such a case we put it well down below that +art which exerts the same amount of effort in trying to sustain the will +to believe in, and so to bring about the reign of things we really want. + +Du Maurier's art was nearer to reality, and not farther away, in the +charming side of it. Realism does not necessarily imply only the +representation of the mean and the defaulting. It is perhaps because +humanity so passionately desires the reign of beauty that it is inclined +to doubt that art which witnesses to the dream of it as already partly +true. + +Although du Maurier's art in its tenderness is romantic, in its belief +in the ideal and in its insistence upon type rather than individuality +it is Classic. In the fact that it is so it fails in intimacy of +mood--just the intimacy that is the soul of Keene's art, which descends +from Rembrandt's. But this point will come up for consideration farther +on. Here it only concerns us in its connection with the psychology of +the people it interprets in satire. There is the psychology of +individuals and the psychology of a whole society--the latter was du +Maurier's theme. It is generally an obsession, a "fad," a "craze," or +"fashion" that his pencil exploits. He does not with Keene laugh with an +individual at another individual. His art is well-bred in its style +partly through the fact of its limitations. Moreover, in "Society" +individuality tends to be less evident than amongst the poorer classes, +with whom eccentricity is respected. In "Society" the force of +individuality now runs beneath the surface of observable varieties of +costume, taking a subterranean course with an impulse to avoid +everything that would give rise to comment. But the conformity of +"Society" in small things is only a mask. Du Maurier's real weakness in +satire was that he did not quite perceive this. He was inclined to +accept appearances for realities, with the consequence that the record +he transmits of late Victorian Society obscures the quite feverish +genius of that age. + + +Section 4 + +It has often been remarked that the comparative failure of du Maurier's +successors seems the result of a difficulty in drawing "a lady" +unmistakably. We can forgive much to the artist who brought the English +lady, by many accounted the finest in the world, into real existence in +modern comic art. We shall have to forgive him for turning into a lady +every woman who was not middle-aged. Du Maurier's picture of Society was +largely falsified by his inability to appreciate variety in feminine +genius. But we are quite prepared to believe that his treatment of the +dainty parlour-maid, for instance, helped to confirm that tradition of +refinement in table service which is the pleasant feature of English +home life. All the servants shown in his pictures are ladies, and this +before the fashion had made any headway of engaging ladies as servants. +And we cannot help feeling such delightful child-life as he represents +could only have retained its characteristics under the wing of the +beautiful women who nurse it in his pictures. + +[Illustration: "The Cilician Pirates" + +_The Cornhill_, April 1863.] + +Both du Maurier and Keene knew the _genus_ artist in all its varieties; +and it is very interesting to contrast, and note the difference between, +the "Artist" whom du Maurier brings into his society scenes and the one +of Keene's drawings. In Keene's case the "artist" is generally a +slouching Bohemian creature who belongs to a world of his own, and bears +the stamp of "stranger" upon him in any other. But the "artist" of du +Maurier, putting aside the aesthete coterie, with whom we shall deal +presently, wears upon him every outward symbol of peace with the +world--_The_ world, Mayfair. He is always an "R.A."--symbol of +respectability--whether du Maurier mentions it or not. With this type +Art is one of the great recognised professions like The Army or The Bar. +We have no curiosity as to what sort of pictures they paint. We know +that their art was suitable for the Academy, therefore for the Victorian +Drawing-room. We are merely amused at the solemnity of manner with which +they assumed that their large-sized Christmas cards had anything to do +with art at all--cards which lost the purchasers of them such enormous +sums when sold again at Christie's that the shaken confidence of the +public as to the worth of modern pictures has not recovered to this day. + +All through this state of things, too, the really vital work of the time +was left to the encouragement of those whom "Society" would then have +called "outsiders," and it was just this failure on the part of the +aristocracy to enlist the genius of the period on its own side that +betrayed its decrepitude. + + +Section 5 + +The enduring feature of du Maurier's art, that which survives in it +better than its sometimes scathing commentary upon a passing "craze," is +his close representation of the air with which people seek to foil each +other in conversation and conceal their own trepidations. His "Social +Agonies" are among the best of this series. If he does not lay stress +upon individual character, he still remains the master draughtsman of a +state of mind. He succeeds thus in the very field where probably all +that is most important in modern art, whether of the novel or of +illustration, will be found. + +Behind the economy of word and gesture in the conversational method of +to-day there lies the history of the long struggle of the race through +volubility to refinement of expression. Du Maurier's _Punch_ pictures +take their place in the field of psychology in which the modern novel +has secured its greatest results, and the best appreciation of his +_Punch_ work was written in the eighties by Mr. Henry James, the supreme +master in this field; the master of suspenses that are greater than the +conversations in which they happen; the explorer of twilights of +consciousness in which little passions contend. + +The Society du Maurier depicted held its position upon more comfortable +terms than any preceding it in history. It did not have, on the one +hand, to trim to a court party, or, on the other, to concede anything to +the people to keep itself in power. Yet it was as swollen with pride in +its position as any society has ever been. The industrial phenomena of +the age had suddenly filled its pockets; and it had nothing else in the +world to do but to blow itself out with pride. But a Society holding its +position without an effort of some kind of its own is bound to lose in +character, and the confession of all the best literature of this time +was of the baffled search for the soul of the prosperous class. + + +Section 6 + +For the appreciation of the artist's management of dialogue we must move +for a page or two in Mrs. de Tomkyns' circle with Miss Lyon Hunter, Sir +Gorgius Midas the Plutocrat, Sir Pompey Bedel (of Bedel, Flunke & Co.) +the successful professional man, and the rest of the whole set, who +understand each other in the freemasonry of a common ambition to get +into another set. + + _Mamma_. "Enfin, my love! We're well out of this! _What_ a gang!!! + Where shall we go next?" + + _Daughter_. "To Lady Oscar Talbot's, Mamma." + + _Mamma_. "She _snubs_ one so I really can't _bear_ it! Let us go to + Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns. It's just as select (except the Host and + Hostess) and quite as amusing." + + _Daughter_. "But Mrs. Tomkyns snubs one worse than Lady Oscar, + Mamma!" + + _Mamma_. "Pooh, my love! who cares for the snubs of a Mrs. Ponsonby + de Tomkyns I should like to know, so long as she's clever enough to + get the right people." + +This is the conversation in the hall between two ladies leaving a party +in one of du Maurier's most characteristic drawings. On every side there +are footmen and a crowd of guests cloaking and departing. Of Mrs. +Ponsonby de Tomkyns Mr. Henry James has said: "This lady is a real +creation.... She is not one of the heroines of the aesthetic movement, +though we may be sure she dabbles in that movement so far as it pays to +do so. Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns is a little of everything, in so far as +anything pays. She is always on the look-out; she never misses an +opportunity. She is not a specialist, for that cuts off too many +opportunities, and the aesthetic people have the _tort_ as the French +say, to be specialists. No, Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns is--what shall we +call her?--well, she is the modern social spirit. She is prepared for +everything; she is ready to take advantage of everything; she would +invite Mr. Bradlaugh to dinner if she thought the Duchess would come to +meet him. The Duchess is her great achievement--she never lets go of her +Duchess. She is young, very nice-looking, slim, graceful, indefatigable. +She tires poor Ponsonby completely out; she can keep going for hours +after poor Ponsonby is reduced to stupefaction. This unfortunate husband +is indeed almost stupefied. He is not, like his wife, a person of +imagination. She leaves him far behind, though he is so inconvertible +that if she were a less superior person he would have been a sad +encumbrance. He always figures in the corner of the scenes in which she +distinguishes herself, separated from her by something like the gulf +that separated Caliban from Ariel. He has his hands in his pockets, his +head poked forward; what is going on is quite beyond his comprehension. +He vaguely wonders what his wife will do next; her manoeuvres quite +transcend him. Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns always succeeds. She is never +at fault; she is as quick as the instinct of self-preservation. She is +the little London lady who is determined to be a greater one--she +pushes, gently but firmly--always pushes. At last she arrives." + +We have quoted this delightful picture almost in its entirety from the +essay upon du Maurier written by Mr. Henry James in the eighties to +which we have referred. It describes the type of woman revealed in Mrs. +de Tomkyns when we have followed her adventures up a little way in the +back numbers of _Punch_. But, if we may be permitted the slang, the type +itself is anything but "a back number." Du Maurier's work bids fair to +live in the enjoyment of many generations, from the fact that its chaff, +for the most part, is directed against vanities that recur in human +nature. Mr. James tells us that the lady of whom we write "hesitates at +nothing; she is very modern. If she doesn't take the aesthetic line more +than is necessary, she finds it necessary to take it a little; for if we +are to believe du Maurier, the passion for strange raiment and blue +china has during the last few years made ravages in the London world." +Mr. Henry James himself is one of the experts of the London world. There +is almost a hint in the last sentence that he thought du Maurier's +genius helped to nurse the crazes it made fun of. + +Since writing this I have been told by one to whom du Maurier related +the incident, that the hero of the aesthetic movement himself, Oscar +Wilde, offered to sit to du Maurier for the chief character in his skit. +Wilde was very young, but already master of that art of +self-advertisement which he received from Byron and Disraeli, perfected, +and, I think, handed on to Mr. Bernard Shaw. But such anxiety for every +kind of celebrity at any cost seems to have lost the youthful genius the +esteem of the great _Punch_ artist once and for all. The representative +of humorous journalism seems the one upon whom the delicate humour of +the proposal was lost. + +As far as du Maurier was capable of vindictiveness it was reserved for +Maudle and Postlethwaite. He went out of his way to give a contemptible +appearance to those who took the name of Art in vain. His only spiteful +drawings are those of aesthetes. They are spiteful to the extent of the +great disgust which he, the most amiable of satirists, felt for them. +But still he was careful not to treat a craze which afforded him +inexhaustible variations of subject matter with so much bitterness as +to kill it right out. It was only towards this craze that he showed any +bitterness at all, for the rest he is always amused with Society. He has +none of the bitter Jeremiahlike anger against it of a Swift. + +Mr. Henry James defending du Maurier from a charge of being malignant, +brought against him for his ugly representation of queer people, +failures, and grotesques, refused to allow that the taint of "French +ferocity" of which the artist was accused, existed. But Mr. Henry James +sees in du Maurier's ugly people a real specification of type, where we +confess that we have felt that his "ferocity" missed the point of +resemblance to type through clumsy exaggeration. One noticeable +instance, however, to our mind, where the too frequent outrageousness is +replaced by an exquisite study of character, is in the face of the fair +authoress who, when the gallant Colonel, anxious to break the ice, and +full of the fact that he has just been made a proud father, asks if she +takes any interest in very young children, replies, "I loathe _all_ +children!" (January 13, 1880). + +[Illustration: Illustration for "Wives and Daughters" + +_The Cornhill_, 1864.] + + +Section 7 + +The story of children's conversation has perhaps never been told quite +so charmingly as du Maurier tells it. We could quote endlessly from the +admirably constructed nursery dialogues in which he does not attempt to +make a joke, and in which he very carefully refrains from giving a +fantastic precocity to his little characters--dialogues in which he is +quite content to rely upon our sympathetic knowledge of children's way +of putting things, while he rests the appeal of the drawing and legend +entirely upon a _naive_ literalness to their remarks. The charming +atmosphere of the well-ordered nursery must be felt by readers, and then +we can quote from the text of some of his drawings of the kind; this we +shall do somewhat at random and as they come to mind. + + "Are you asleep, dearest? Yes, Mamma, and the Doctor particularly + said that I wasn't to be waked to take my medicine" (_July_ 10, + 1880). + + "Oh, Auntie! There's your tiresome cook's been and filled my egg + too full" (_April_ 22, 1882). + +Already we are seized with misgivings as to whether, with the reader +very much on the look-out for the jokes, we shall be successful in +making our point in claiming for du Maurier that, as much as any author +who has ever written upon children, he captures "the note" of children's +speeches. But anyhow we will try. + +For an instance there is the delightful picture of a child clasping its +mother round the knees, whilst the mother, shawled for an evening +concert, bends affectionately down-- + + "Good Night! Good Night! my dear, sweet, pretty mamma! I like you + to go out, because if you didn't you'd never come home again, you + know." + +The artist perhaps invented this pretty speech, but the "Good Night! +Good Night! my dear, sweet, pretty mamma" is of the very spirit of the +redundancy by which children hope in heaping words together to express +accumulation of emotion. Du Maurier's children never make the nasty pert +answers upon which, for their nearly impossible but always vulgar +smartness, the providers of jokes about children for the comic papers +generally depend. He is simply going on with his "novel"--_The Tale of +the House_ it might be called--when he affords us realistic glimpses of +nursery conversation. + + _Mamma_. "What is Baby crying for, Maggie?" + + _Maggie_. "I don't know." + + _Mamma_. "And what are you looking so indignant about?" + + _Maggie_. "That nasty, greedy dog's been and took and eaten my + punge-take!" + + _Mamma_. "Why, I saw you eating a sponge-cake a minute ago!" + + _Maggie_. "O--that was Baby's." + +We need hardly labour the point of the "been and took and eaten" as an +instance of felicity in reconstructing children's conversation, and +making the verisimilitude to their grammar the charm of the +reconstruction. + + _Ethel_. "Isn't it sad, Arthur? There's the drawing-room cleared + for a dance, and all the dolls ready to begin, only they've got no + partners!" + + _Arthur_. "Well, Ethel! There's the four gentlemen in my Noah's + Ark; but they don't look as if they cared very much about + _dancing_, you know!" (_February_ 24, 1872). + + _Ethel_. "And O, Mamma, do you know as we were coming along we saw + a horrid woman with a red striped shawl drink something out of a + bottle, and then hand it to some men. I'm sure she was tipsy." + + _Beatrice_ (who always looks on the best side of things). "Perhaps + it was only Castor Oil, after all!" + + _A whispered appeal_. "Mamma! Mamma! don't scold him any more, it + makes the room so dark." + +It is the _poetry_ of the nursery that is to be felt throughout du +Maurier's art in this vein. And how well he knows the emotions of +childhood. For instance, the large drawing "Farewell to Fair Normandy" +(October 2, 1880), extending across two full pages of _Punch_, in which +the children away for their seaside holiday leave the sands for the last +time in a mournful procession. The sky is dimmed with an evening cloud. +Du Maurier has compressed much poetry into the scene. It has been said +that "there is only one art," and this seems to be proved on great +occasions by those who can command more than one art for the expression +of their feelings. It is difficult to say where in this picture the +artist in du Maurier gives place to the poet, as difficult as it is to +say before a picture of Rossetti. + +[Illustration: Illustration for "Wives and Daughters" + +_The Cornhill_, 1865.] + +Sometimes du Maurier even depicted delightful children as the victims of +the fashionable crazes that he loved to attack, and thus we are brought +to another series of dialogues--as a rule though only involving the +"grown-ups"--in which the legend and the type of person depicted, +together, form a most valuable document of the times. There is for +instance the China mania--in the following in the incipient stage:-- + + "O Mamma! O! O! N--N--Nurse has given me my C--C--Cod-liver Oil out + of a p--p--plain white mug" (_December_ 26, 1874). + +Then the inimitable colloquies of the aesthetes--and especially the now +famous one about the six-mark tea-pot. + + _Aesthetic Bridegroom_. "It is quite consummate, is it not?" + + _Intense Bride_. "It is, indeed! Oh, Algernon, let us live up to + it!" + +Also the direction, to the architect about the country house: + + _Fair Client_. "I want it to be nice and baronial, Queen Anne and + Elizabethan, and all that; kind of quaint and Nuremburgy you + know--regular Old English, with French windows opening to the lawn, + and Venetian blinds, and sort of Swiss balconies, and a loggia. But + I'm sure _you_ know what I mean!" (_November_ 29, 1890). + +And farther on in the _Punch_ volumes:-- + + "O, Mr. Robinson, does not it ever strike you, in listening to + sweet music, that the Rudiment of Potential Infinite Pain is subtly + woven into the tissue of our keenest joy" (_December_ 2, 1891). + +But perhaps before closing this chapter we should give some examples of +drawing-room conversation pure and simple, without reference to any sort +of craze, as specimens of their author's skill. Familiarity with the +artist's characters will enable the reader to appreciate the note of a +shy man's agony in some, and of feminine spite in others. + +Among the "Speeches to be lived down, if possible," there are these: + + _She_. "Let me introduce you to a very charming lady, to take down + to supper." + + _He_. "A--thanks--no. I never eat supper." + + "By George! I am so hungry I can't talk." + + _Fair Hostess_ (on hospitable thoughts intent). "Oh, I'm so glad!" + +"Things one would rather have left unsaid": + + _Amiable Hostess_. "What! must you go already? Really, Professor, + it's too bad of this sweet young wife of yours to carry you off so + early! She always does!" + + _Professor_. "No, no, not _always_, Mrs. Bright. At _most_ houses I + positively have to drag her away!" + +"Truths that might have been left unspoken": + + _Hostess_. "What? haven't you brought your sisters, Mr. Jones?" + + _Mr. Jones_. "No, they couldn't come, Mrs. Smith. The fact is, + they're saving themselves for Mrs. Brown's Dance to-morrow, you + know!" (_January_ 9, 1886). + +Under the heading "Feline Amenities": + + _Fair Hostess_ (to Mrs. Masham, who is looking her very best). + "How-dy-do, dear? I hope you're not so tired as you look!" + + _Sympathetic Lady Guest_. "Don't be unhappy about the rain, dear + Mrs. Bounderson--it will soon be over, and your garden will be + lovelier than ever." + + _Little Mrs. Goldmore Bounderson_ (who is giving her first Garden + Party). "Yes; but I'm afraid it will keep my most desirable guests + from coming!" + +This last duologue is pure du Maurier. It is subtle. + +"Feline Amenities" again: + + "How kind of you to call--I'm sorry to have kept you waiting!" + + "Oh, don't mention it.--I've not been at all bored! I've been + trying to imagine what I should do to make this room look + comfortable if it were mine!" (_November_ 22, 1892). + +The "Things one would rather have expressed otherwise" is a good series +too: + + _The Professor_ (to Hostess). "Thank you so much for a most + delightful evening! I shall indeed go to bed with pleasant + recollections--and _you_ will be the very _last_ person I shall + think of!" + +And again, of the same series: + + _Fair Hostess_. "Good-night, Major Jones. We're supposed to + breakfast at nine, but we're not very punctual people. Indeed the + later you appear to-morrow morning, the better pleased we shall all + be" (_May_ 13, 1893). + +"Things one would rather have left unsaid": + + _He_. "Yes, I know Bootle slightly, and confess I don't think much + of him!" + + _She_. "I know him a little too. He took me in to dinner a little + while ago!" + + _He_. "Ah, that's just about all he's fit for!" + + _The Hostess_. "Dear Miss Linnet! would you--would you sing one of + those charming ballads, while I go and see if supper's ready?" + + _The Companion_. "O, don't ask me--I feel nervous. There are so + many people." + + _The Hostess_. "O, they won't listen, bless you! not one of them! + _Now_ DO!!!" + +And here is a conversation that betrays the presence of one of the +currents of public feeling below the smooth surface of well-bred +twaddle: + + _In the Metropolitan Railway_. "I beg your pardon, but I think I + had the pleasure of meeting you in Rome last year?" + + "No, I've never been nearer to Rome than St. Alban's." + + "St. Alban's? Where is that?" + + "Holborn." + +Some rather amusing speeches of a different character in which du +Maurier assails the more obvious forms of snobbery of a class below +those with whom his art was generally concerned may be given: + + _Among the Philistines_. _Grigsby_. "Do you _know_ the Joneses, + Mrs. Brown?" + + "No, we--er--don't care to know _Business_ people as a rule, + although my husband's in business; but then he's in the _Coffee_ + Business and they're all _gentlemen_ in the _Coffee_ Business, you + know!" + + _Grigsby_ (who always suits himself to his company). "_Really_ now! + Why, that's more than can be said of the Army, the Navy, the + Church, the Bar, or even the _House of Lords_! I don't _wonder_ at + your being rather _exclusive_!" (_Punch's Almanac_, 1882). + + "I see your servants wear cockades now, Miss Shoddson!" + + "Yes, Pa's just become a member of the Army and Navy Stores." + + +When du Maurier confined himself to observing and to recording he never +failed for subjects. But we suppose as a concession to a section of the +public he felt a leaven of mere jokes was demanded from him every year. +The scene of his struggle to invent those "jokes" is one to be veiled. +It is safe to say that it is his distinction to have contributed at once +the best satire and the worst jokes that _Punch_ has ever published. A +black and white artist has told the writer that the _Art_-Editors of +papers look first at the joke. The drawing is accepted or rejected on +the joke. We can only be glad that this was not entirely the editorial +practice on _Punch_ in du Maurier's time. Perhaps the subjoined "joke" +of du Maurier's from _Punch_ is the worst in the world: + + "I say, cousin Constance, I've found out why you always call your + Mamma 'Mater.'" + + "Why, Guy?" + + "Because she's always trying to find a mate for you girls." + +[Illustration: Sketch for illustration for "Wives and Daughters" 1865.] + +And yet if the drawing accompanying this joke be looked at _first_, it +delights with its charm and distinction. Here then is a psychological +fact; the drawing itself seems to the eye a poorer affair once the poor +joke has been read. Having suffered in this way several times in +following with admiration the pencil of du Maurier through the old +volumes of _Punch_, we at last hit upon the plan of always covering the +joke and enjoying first the picture for its own sake, only uncovering +the legend when this has been thoroughly appreciated lest it should turn +out to be merely a feeble joke instead of a happily-invented +conversation. There are some of the drawings for jokes which we should +very much like to have included with our illustrations, but the human +mind being so constituted that it goes direct to the legend of an +illustration, feeling "sold" if it isn't there, and the "jokes" in some +of these instances being so fatal to the understanding of the atmosphere +and charm of the drawing, we have had to abandon the idea of doing so. +What the reader has to understand is that circumstances harnessed du +Maurier to a certain business; he imported all manner of extraneous +graces into it, and thus gave a determination to the character of the +art of satire which it will never lose. The pages of _Punch_ were +enriched, beautified, and made more delicately human. _Punch_ gained +everything through the connection and du Maurier a stimulus in the +demand for regular work. But it is not impossible to imagine +circumstances which, but for this early connection with _Punch_, would +have awakened and developed a different and perhaps profounder side of +du Maurier, of which we seem to get a glimpse in the illustrations to +Meredith in _The Cornhill Magazine_. + + +Section 8 + +The famous reply of an early Editor to the usual complaint that _Punch_ +was not as good as it used to be--"No, sir, it never was"--cannot be +considered to hold good in any comparison between the present period and +that in which the arts of du Maurier and Keene held sway. There have +been periods, there is such a one now, when the literary side of +_Punch_ has touched a high-water mark. But on the illustrative side +_Punch_ seems to be always hoping that another Keene or du Maurier will +turn up. It does not seem prepared to accept work in quite another +style. But there is no more chance of there ever being another Keene +than of there being another Rembrandt, or of there ever being another du +Maurier than another Watteau. The next genius to whom it is given to +illuminate the pages of the classic journal in a style that will rival +the past is not likely to arise from among those who think that there is +no other view of life than that which was discovered by their immediate +predecessors. By force of his genius--or, if you prefer it, of +sympathy--which means the same thing--for some particular phase of life, +some artist may at any moment uncover in its pages an altogether fresh +kind of humour and of beauty. + + +Section 9 + +Du Maurier's art covers the period when England was flushed with +success. Artists in such times grow wealthy, and by their work refine +their time. But in spite of the number of wealthy Academicians living +upon Society in the mid-Victorian time, the influence of Art upon +Society was less than at any time in history in which circumstances have +been favourable to the artist. + +The great wave of trade that carried the shop-keeper into the West-end +drawing-room strewed also the curtains and carpets with that outrageous +weed of _trade_ design which gave to the mid-Victorian world its +complexion of singular hideousness. + +The aesthetic movement indicated the restlessness of some of the brighter +spirits with this condition, but many of its remedies were worse than +the disease. The _nouveau_ artist-craftsman stood less chance than +anybody of getting back to the secret of noble things, having forsaken +the path of pure utility which, wherever it may go for a time, always +leads back again to beauty. The disappearance of beauty for a time need +not have been a cause of despair. Beauty will always come back if it is +left alone. People had been swept off their feet with delight at what +machinery could do, and they expected beauty to come out of it as a +product at the same pace as everything else. It was not a mistake to +expect it from any source, but from this particular source it could only +come with time. There is evidence that it is on the way. And yet though +the results of crude mechanical industrialism spoilt the outward +appearance of the whole of the Victorian age, the earlier part at least +of that time was one of marked personal refinement. We have but to look +at portraits by George Richmond and others to receive a great impression +of distinction. And this fact enables us to throw into clearer light the +exact nature of du Maurier's work. If we seek for evidence in the old +volumes of _Punch_ for the distinction of the early Victorians we shall +not find it. We shall merely conceive instead a dislike for the type of +gentleman of the time. Leech and his contemporaries did nothing more for +their age than to make it look ridiculous for ever. But du Maurier gives +us a real impression of the Society in which he moved. His ability to +satirise society while still leaving it its dignity is unique. It may be +said to be his distinctive contribution to the art of graphic satire. +It gave to the Anglo-Saxon school its present-day characteristic, +putting upon one of the very lightest forms of art the stamp of a noble +time. The point is that whilst du Maurier thus deferred to the dignity +of human nature he remained a satirist, not a humorist merely, as was +Keene. + +[Illustration] + + + + +II + +THE ART OF DU MAURIER + +Section 1 + + +If we wish to estimate the art of du Maurier at its full worth we must +try and imagine _Punch_ from 1863 without this art, and try for a moment +to conceive the difference this absence would make to our own present +knowledge of the Victorians; also to the picture always entertained of +England abroad. + +If we are to believe du Maurier's art England is a petticoat-governed +country. The men in his pictures are often made to recede into the +background of Victorian ornament merely as ornaments themselves. As for +the women, the mask of manner, the pleasantness concealing every shade +of uncharitableness, all the arts of the contention for social +precedence--in the interpretation of this sort of thing du Maurier is +often quite uncanny, but he is never ruthless. + +We have noticed that when du Maurier tried to draw ugly people he often +only succeeded in turning out a figure of fun. Not to be beautiful and +charming is to fail of being human, seems the judgment of his pencil. +This was his limitation. And another was that, whilst professing to be +concerned with humanity as a whole, he nearly always broke down with +types that outraged the polite standard. He was a master in the +description of Bishops and Curates, Generals and Men-about-town, but he +broke down when he came to "the out-sider." And, as we have already +pointed out, he seldom got away from types to individuals. + +In the last respect, however, we gain more perhaps than we lose. We gain +a very vivid impression of the whole tone of the society in his time. +And the fact of his art passing over the individual, for ever prevented +it from cruelty, for to be cruel the individual must be hit. He did not +satirise humanity, but Society. And his criticism was not of its +members, but of its ways. Except in the case of children, he left +unrevealed the individual heart that Keene so sympathetically exposed. + +He made an original--and who will deny it?--a unique contribution to +the history of satire, when he went to work through literalness and care +for beauty in a field where nearly all previous success had rested with +a sort of ruffianism. But chiefly one praises Heaven for the nurseryful +of delightful children he let loose in his pages against the army of +little monsters who reign as children in the Comic Press, bearing +witness as they do to the unpleasant kind of mind even an artist can +possess. + +Though he ridiculed "Camelot," his own tradition, as we have shown, was +received from the Arthurian source. His chivalry gave his satire a very +delicate edge. It was infinitely more cutting in showing the misfit of +vulgarity with beauty than in showing vulgarity alone. + +But du Maurier's gentlemanliness narrowed his range. It forced him into +putting down something preposterous instead of a true type as soon as he +wished to create "a bounder." He found it impossible to get inside of a +"bounder"--to be for the time a "bounder" himself. It is necessary for +an artist to be able to be every character that he would create. And +perhaps a satirist never wounds others so much as when he most wounds +himself. Thackeray succeeded with snobbery because he had enough of it +to go on with himself. We have shown the success of du Maurier with the +aesthetes to go upon similar lines. The soul of satire is very often the +bitterness of confession. In his very style the satirist of the aesthetes +stood confessed almost as one of their number, whether he wished this to +be seen or not--at least as one of the romantic school from whom they +immediately descended. But he was genuine; where Postlethwaite and +Maudle posed, his irritation was with the pose, the pretended +preoccupation with beauty. He genuinely admired the Florentine revival, +and to admire is to be jealous of those who take in vain. He wished to +show up the "aesthetes" as the parasites they were, trading socially upon +an inspiration too fragrant to be traded with at all. + +Du Maurier, who assuredly knew what elegance was as well as any man of +his time, took a great delight in pointing out to all whom it might +concern, by illustration, that if there was any beauty of representation +possible to him, as an artist, in depicting modern society, it was not +in anything put forward in the shape of costume by the ladies of the +aesthetic movement, but in the unacknowledged genius of ordinary +dressmakers. + +It was in his time that Philistinism met its match in Oscar Wilde, and +for the first time in its history felt its self-complacency shaken. Up +to that time it had been very proud of itself. With the loss of that +pride it blundered, and it remained for du Maurier to show that the +height of Philistinism in a Philistine is to pretend not to be a +Philistine. + +He had always seen what it would do present-day Londoners a world of +good to see as clearly, that it is just those who affect, and who, by +their lack of artistic constitution, are incapable of doing more than +merely affecting, the understanding of art, who are the worst enemies it +has in the world. He preferred the open Philistine. And so do we. The +affectation described lends to art an artificial support which betrays +those who attempt to rest any scheme for the promotion of art upon it. + +But though du Maurier was not a Philistine he had the genius of +respectability. His pencil could get on well with Bishops. It is easy +enough to put a model into a Bishop's apron and gaiters, but that does +not secure the drawing of a Bishop. It is necessary to observe that du +Maurier found definite lines with his pencil for something so abstract +as Broad-Churchmanship. The High-Churchman, with his perilous +inclination to fervour, he was afraid of as a disturbing element, and +kept him out of his drawings. + +[Illustration] + + +Section 2 + +We have noted that it was du Maurier's peculiar genius to respond to +"attainment" in life, even as the Greeks did, rather than to life's +pathetic and romantic struggle. Du Maurier, we believe, was of opinion +that if circumstances--he probably meant Editorial ones--had determined +that he should apply his art to the lower classes he would have +succeeded as well there as he did with Society. We prefer to believe +that the Editorial instinct in the direction it gave to his work knew +better. Many opportunities were afforded him for being as democratic in +spirit as he liked, but he left such opportunities alone. His +cab-runners run about in rain-shrunken suits that were obviously made in +Savile Row; everyone of them, they are broken-down gentlemen. Coachmen, +gardeners, footmen, pages, housekeepers, cooks, ladies' maids, and all +those who move in the domestic circle of the upper classes he could +draw, but his taste in life is a marked one, and that means it is a +limited one. It is as marked as Meredith's, and it is much of the same +kind; like that writer's great lady, Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, he +preferred persons "that shone in the sun." This had nothing whatever to +do with qualities of the heart; it was all an aesthetic predilection. The +moment his pencil touched the theme of life lived upon as gentle a plane +as possible, then something was kindled at its point which betrayed the +presence of genuine inspiration. The inspiration was of the same nature +as Watteau's, the grace of a certain aspect of life making an aesthetic +appeal. Let this attraction to what is gracious in appearance, however, +be kept distinct from the effect made by the spectacle of wealth upon +the snob. Those who show us the beauty in the world, enrich the world +with that much of beauty. + +[Illustration: Pencil Studies from the Artist's Sketch Book] + +In his _Life and Letters of Charles Keene_, Mr. G.S. Layard[1] says +this:-- + +"That Keene could have drawn the lovely be-Worthed young ladies and the +splendidly proportioned and frock-coated young men with which Mr. du +Maurier delights us week by week, not to speak of the god-like hero of +his charming novel, I do not think anyone can doubt, had he set himself +to do it, but it was part of the ineradicable Bohemianism of his +character and the realistic bent of his genius that made him shun the +representation of what he considered artificial and an outrage upon +nature." + +This, it will perhaps be admitted, is not very good art-criticism. +Though in justice to its author it must be said that he did not wish to +be regarded as Keene's critic as well as biographer. + +An artist does not argue with himself that he will shun the +representation of one particular side of life. He simply leaves it alone +because he cannot help it; it does not attract him. He draws just that +which interests him most and in the way in which it interests him; and +exactly to the measure of his interest does his drawing possess +vitality. Keene might have expressed with pungency his sense of certain +things as being artificial and outrageous, but as long as his feelings +towards them remained like that he could not express himself about them +in any other way, certainly not in du Maurier's way--that is, with du +Maurier's skill. + +To the extent to which there _is_ a glamour and a beauty in fashion du +Maurier is a realist. People who only now and then become sensible of +the charm in things are provoked by its strangeness in art, and call it +romance, their definition for an untrue thing. + + +Section 3 + +During the period of thirty-six years over which du Maurier contributed +to _Punch_ the paper took upon itself a character unlike anything that +had preceded it in comic journalism; it created a tradition for itself +which placed it beside _The Times_--the "Thunderer," as one of the +institutions of this country, recognised abroad as essentially +expressive of national character. English humour, like American and +French, has its own flavour; it lacks the high and extravagant fantasy +that is so exhilarating in America; it avoids the subtlety of France; it +is essentially a laughing humour. The Englishman, who cannot stand chaff +himself, always laughs at others. It is curious that while an +Englishman's conventions rest upon dislike of what is odd and +fantastic--precisely the two most well-known sources of humour--he yet +has a sense of humour. The first aim of every Englishman is to acquire a +manner of some dignity. It is the breaking down of that dignity in other +people that to his eyes places them in a light that is funny. + +English humour seems to find its object in physical rather than mental +aspects. The very notable feature of du Maurier's work was that it +refined upon the characteristics of English humour; it dealt always with +people placed by an absurd speech, or an unlucky gesture, in a foolish +position--a position the shy distress of which was a physical +experience. Du Maurier's humour was also English in its kindness; the +points that are scored against the unfortunate object of it are the +points that may be scored against the laugher himself to-morrow. His +pictures were a running commentary upon the refinements of our manners +and upon the quick changes of moral costume that fresh situations in the +social comedy demand. + +One thing peculiarly fitted the artist to be the satirist of English +Society--his love of the comedy of people by nature honest finding +themselves only able to get through the day with decent politeness by +the aid of "the lie to follow." English people, Puritan by ancestry and +by inclination, are nevertheless driven into frequent subterfuge by +their good nature, and having pared their language and gesture of that +extravagance in expression which they despise in the foreigner, they are +thrown back upon a naturalness that betrays them in delicate +situations. The consequence is that it is in Anglo-Saxon Society at its +best that the art of delicate fence in conversation has been brought to +its highest pitch. There the _clairvoyance_ is so great that words can +be used economically in relation to the realities of life, and are +consequently often adopted merely as a screen before the feelings. + +We have to realise how much more than any one preceding him in graphic +satire du Maurier was able to dispense with exaggeration. Nevertheless, +the studied avoidance of exaggeration has not had the happiest effect as +a precedent in the art of _Punch_. Without du Maurier's sensitive +response to the whole comedy of drawing-room life the tendency has been +to lapse into the merely photographic. + +The similitude we have already described between du Maurier's art with +the pencil and the art of the modern novel is not complete until we have +extended it further in the direction of a comparison with novels of +George Meredith and Henry James in particular. Like these two writers du +Maurier loved comedy, and your appreciator of comedy cannot stand the +presence of a "funny man." In the pages of _Punch_ it was Leech and not +du Maurier who first replaced the art of the merely "funny man." He +began with the pencil the kind of art that would answer to Meredith's +description of the comic muse. Throughout _The Egoist_, by George +Meredith, a comedy in which Clara Middleton's life comes near to being +tragic, the air would clear at any moment if Sir Willoughby and Clara +had not both lost through over-civilisation the power of saying +precisely what they mean. The book is the story of how Clara tries to +find words, and of how, when she finds them, the conversational genius +of Willoughby seemingly deflects them from the meaning she intends them +to bear. It was in the mid-region between two people in conversation +where false constructions are put by either party upon what is said that +du Maurier, like Meredith himself, perceived the source of comedy was to +be found. + + +Section 4 + +We have already defined the drawing-room as a Victorian institution. It +belonged to an age that was willing to sacrifice too much to +appearances--one in which everyone seemed to live for appearances. It +was a sort of stage, occupied by people in afternoon or evening +costume, with even the chairs arranged, not where they were wanted, but +where they made a good appearance. Oscar Wilde suggested to the +Victorians that they shouldn't _arrange_ chairs; they should let them +occur. Against the false setting manners were bound to become +false--good manners becoming almost synonymous with perfect insincerity. +Perhaps the only thing that ever really came to life in a drawing-room +was the aesthetic movement! At its worst it was what we have described +it; at its best it was a sort of blind protest against the patterns of +chair-covers that the eye was bound to absorb while listening to the +inanities of drawing-room conversation. It is significant that the +aesthetic movement was a man's movement. Until the leader of the movement +appeared on the scene, the decoration of the Victorian, as distinct from +the Georgian parlour, or that of every other period, was woman's +business. Most of the Victorian patterns embodied naturalistic and +sentimental representations of flowers. It was with the disappearance of +the eighteenth-century tradition, when drawing-room decoration passed +out of the hands of men, that beauty disappeared. Women took to heaping +masses of drapery on to the mantelpieces which had once displayed +classic proportion; on to this drapery they pinned all sorts of horrible +fans. Du Maurier exposed it all, and he exposed, too, the aesthetes to +whom the salvation of the appearance of a suburban drawing-room could +come to mean more than anything else in life. Their fault was not +confined to this. He always brought their "intensity" as a charge +against them, for it is of the very genius of good manners to merely +froth about things which, if taken seriously, would tend to destroy +amenity. + +[Illustration: Illustration for "A Legend of Camelot"--Part III. + +_Punch_, March 17, 1866. + + A little castle she drew nigh, + With seven towers twelve inches high.... + O Miserie! + + A baby castle, all a-flame + With many a flower that hath no name, + O Miserie! + + It had a little moat all round: + A little drawbridge too she found; + O Miserie! + + On which there stood a stately maid, + Like her in radiant locks arrayed.... + O Miserie! + + Save that her locks grew rank and wild, + By weaver's shuttle undefiled!... + O Miserie! + + Who held her brush and comb, as if + Her faltering hands had waxed stiff, + O Miserie! + + With baulkt endeavour! whence she sung + A chant, the burden whereof rung: + O Miserie! + + "These hands have striven in vain + To part + These locks that won GAUWAINE + His heart!"] + +It is interesting, as an addition to the comparison we have drawn +between Meredith and du Maurier, to note that of the illustrators to +Meredith's own novels it was the latter who seemed to experience life in +a mood similar to the author's. In illustrating _Harry Richmond_ he +secured the Meredithian sense of romance and of pedigree in scenes as +well as people. However modern Meredith's characters were, they were all +the children of old-fashioned people; within them all was the pride of +the family tree, and, in the scenes in which they move, the memory of an +older world. Du Maurier, too, in his art was a patrician, and when he +gave up romance and took to satire pure and simple he put both beauty +and dignity into the world that he described. All the time he was +drawing his Society world others were working the same vein. But to him +alone it seemed to be given to glimpse the splendour of it, and to +suggest the link of romance that holds the present and the past +together. + +Let us praise that very wise Editor who, appreciating the artist's +character, confined him to the art most natural to him. What has become +of Editors of this kind to-day? Is not this the very genius of the art +of editing--this and not the wholly fictitious "what the public wants?" +Who knows what the public want but the public themselves? It is the +artist who is allowed by his Editor to go his own way, who takes the +public with him. If he has not the same sympathies as the public no +Editorial direction will save the situation, while it will drive perhaps +a fine artist away to another trade. + + +Section 5 + +After the appearance of his first drawing in _Punch_, for more than a +year du Maurier's connection with the paper seems to have been +maintained by the execution of initial letters for it. Mr. W.L. +Bradbury, zealous in the preservation of all records that redound to the +glory of _Punch_, has in one or two instances had pulls taken from the +wood blocks upon special paper. These special proofs show all the charm +of wood engraving. In the case of the initial large C, reproduced on +page 91, Mr. Bradbury's specimen shows the beautiful quality which in +our own time Mr. Sturge Moore and Mr. Pissarro are at such pains to +secure in engravings made for love of the art. One only wishes that the +exigencies of book-production would allow us to attempt rivalry with Mr. +Bradbury's specimen in our reproduction. But we see no reason why +specimens of the wood-printing of du Maurier's work should not be on +view in the British Museum. The "impressions" in old volumes of _Punch_, +after the wear and tear, the opening and the shutting, and the effect of +time are not an adequate record of du Maurier's skill in accommodating +his art to the methods of reproduction of the period. + +Moreover, du Maurier was better in securing an effect of painting than +of pure line work with his pen. It is just this effect which suited the +methods of engraving better than those of "process" work. And because it +demanded drawing to a smaller scale, with lines closer together, the +demands of engraving suited the nature of du Maurier's art better than +those of "process" work. + +When the modern process came in artists enlarged their drawings so as to +secure delicacy of effect from the result of the reduction in printing. +In such a case they really work for the sake of a result upon the +printed page, and there is consequently less value to be attached to the +original drawing. It generally errs on the side of coarseness. And now +that a trade is driven in original drawings, artists are tempted to give +the purchaser as much in the matter of size for his money as he may +want. And, alas, it is true that many picture buyers do buy according to +measurement, or anything else on earth rather than merit. + +Du Maurier could add a reason of his own for availing himself of the +opportunity to enlarge his drawings when he could, namely, that of his +weak sight. But it is certainly not among the large drawings that we +should look for the work that places him in the place we wish to claim +for him. + +It will well repay the student of du Maurier's art to look into the +illustration for the novel _Wives and_ _Daughters_ reproduced on page +26. In this very highly finished picture the drawing of all the detail +seems done with the greatest pleasure to the artist. It has not the +breadth of style which du Maurier himself could admire in Keene, but the +line work is intensely sympathetic throughout; there is that enjoyment +in the actual touch of pen to paper which was always characteristic of +Keene, which is always special to great art; which, alas, was not always +characteristic of du Maurier. It is like the touch of a sympathetic +musician. Du Maurier, always generous to his contemporaries, in his +lecture upon art, instances the natural skill of Walker by his success +with the difficulties of drawing a tall hat. But Walker himself has +nothing of this kind better to show than the hat in the picture we are +describing. + + +Section 6 + +In the early eighties the change was made from drawing on wood to +drawing on paper for _Punch_, the drawing being afterwards photographed +on to the wood. Later, metal was made possible as a substitute for wood, +and this enabled illustrations and letterpress to be printed together. +The modern process of reproduction has introduced its own pleasant +qualities into journalism, and because they are different in effect they +do not rival the effect of wood engraving. + +The modern methods reproduce the black lines of a drawing direct. But +the most practised engravers cut out the whites of a drawing with their +graver from between the black lines. This undoubtedly allowed the artist +a closer and less restricted use of line than modern illustration shows +us. If the reader examines du Maurier's illustration for _The Adventures +of Harry Richmond_ on page 106, he will be able to see at a glance how, +by cutting out the whites in the multiplicity of ivy leaves, detailed +drawing has been re-interpreted in the engraving with great economy. + +Some of the pleasantness of the effect of lines printed from a woodcut +is due to the fact that they print a more clearly cut line. The line +eaten in by "process" when examined under a very strong magnifying glass +proves to be a slightly jagged one. But we should rejoice that the art +of reproduction for journalistic purposes is free of the laborious +method of engraving, and from the sort of work that was put up by +over-tired engravers when they fought their last round to lose, against +the modern invention of picture reproduction. + +There is no rivalry in art. All the rivalry is in the business connected +with it. A wood-engraving possesses a charm of its own for those whose +sense of quality is delicate enough for its appreciation. The life of +this art, apart from the purpose of weekly journalism, is safe. The life +of any art is safe while it commands, as wood engraving does, the +production of any particular effect in a way that cannot be rivalled. + +According to Mr. Joseph Pennell, the first really important modern +illustrated book in which wood was substituted for metal engraving +appeared in France in 1830, and this authority asserts that in England, +just before the invention of photographing on wood, some of the most +marvellous engravings appeared that have ever been done in the country. +"It is," he writes, "with the appearance of Frederick Sandys, Rossetti, +Walker, Pinwell, A. Boyd, Houghton, Small, du Maurier, Keene, Crane, +Leighton, Millais, and Tenniel, with the publication of the _Cornhill, +Once a Week, Good Words, The Shilling Magazine_, and such books as +Moxon's _Tennyson_ that the best period of English illustration +begins." + +"The incessant output of illustration," he continues, "killed not only +the artists themselves, but the process. In its stead arose a better, +truer method, a more artistic method, which we are even now only +developing." + +But there is another side to this question. Illustration has lost +something by the uniformity of style which the modern method encourages. +Keene, whose style was supposed to suffer most at the hands of the +engraver, found it more difficult than anyone to accommodate his free +methods to the rules that govern the results of the modern process. + +It may be noted that it was about the time of the transition from +working on wood to work on paper that that slavery to the model began, +which, as we have pointed out, has not in the end been without an +unhappy effect in the loss of spontaneity to English Illustration. + +[Illustration: Initial Letter from _The Cornhill_] + +As for the art of wood engraving itself, we hope it will now have a +future like that which the arts of lithography and etching are enjoying. +Reproduction by process serves commercial and journalistic purposes far +better. The demands of commerce formed for this art, as it once formed +for lithography, a chrysalis in which it perfected itself. +Reproduction by process serves commercial purposes much better than +ever wood-engraving could, but while the commercial demand for it +lasted, as in the case of the arts of lithography and etching, it +continued to improve; like them, let us hope, destined to find beautiful +wings upon its release from the cramping demands of modern printing +machines, in its practice by artists for sheer love of the peculiar +qualities which are its own. It has been said that wood-engravers killed +their own art so far as journalism was concerned by their surrender to +commerciality with its frequent demand for the ready-to-hand rather than +the superior thing. But his surrender was not the fault of the +engravers, but was rendered inevitable by the advent of the middleman, +to whom application was made by the Press for blocks, and whose +employees all engravers were practically forced into becoming, instead +of being able to retain their independence and make their own terms with +the Press. + + +Section 7 + +In the British Museum some of the originals of du Maurier's _Punch_ +pictures may be seen. On the margins of these are the pencilled +instructions of the Editor as to the scale of the reproduction, and +very often pencil notes from Artist to Editor. This sort of thing--"If +they have used my page for this week's number, telegraph to me as soon +as you get this and I will have Social ready by 12 to-morrow (that is, +if it be not too late for me.)" Or what is evidently an invitation to +lunch--"Monday at 1 for light usual." The drawing where this particular +note appears is of three little girls with their dolls. The legend in +the artist's handwriting read as follows:--"_My papa's house has got a_ +conservatory! _My papa's house has got a_ billiard-room! _My papa's +house has got a_ mortgage!!" This was printed with the much inferior +legend: "Dolly taking her degrees (of comparison): '_My_ doll's wood!' +_My_ doll's composition!' '_My_ doll's wax!'" + +Some of these British Museum original drawings still retain in pencil +the price du Maurier put upon them for sale. Of the period when the +artist was drawing on a large scale with a view to reduction there is +one of the "Things one would rather have expressed differently" series +priced at twelve guineas. It gives an indication of the profits du +Maurier sometimes was able to make from the original drawing. For the +sake of comment on the low evening gown the half-dozen figures in this +picture are all in back view. It is rather a dull twelve-guineas-worth. +And this was evidently felt, as it remained unsold. The original of the +very exquisite "Res angusta domi," the beautiful drawing of the nurse by +the child's bed in the children's hospital, which appeared in _Punch_, +vol. cviii. p. 102 (1894), is only priced at "Ten guineas." + +Turning over the Museum drawings one often sees the liberties with the +penknife by which the artist would secure difficult effects of snow, or +of light on foliage. And sometimes in the margin there are pencil +studies from which figures in the illustration have been re-drawn. And +nearly always not altogether rubbed out is a first wording of the +legend, repeated in ink in du Maurier's pretty "hand" beneath. + +In turning over these drawings one finds him doing much more than merely +suggesting pattern work in such things as wall-papers. There is one +floral wall-paper in particular that we find him working out which will +no doubt prove an invaluable reference another day as to the sort of +decoration in which the subjects of Queen Victoria preferred to live, or +were forced to by their tradesmen. Photographs of du Maurier's studio +which appeared in a Magazine illustrating an interview with him at the +time of the "Trilby" boom, reveal the squat china jars, the leaf fans, +the upholstered "cosy corner" with its row of blue plates, with which +all who know their _Punch_ are familiar, and apparently the very +wall-paper to which we have just referred. It certainly is the mark of a +great artist to take practically whatever is before him for treatment. +The artist with the genius for "interior" subjects seems to be able to +re-interpret ugliness itself very often. Du Maurier's weak eyes +prevented him from bearing the strain of outdoor work. He was +practically driven indoors for his subjects; and in taking what was to +hand--the very environment of the kind of people his drawings +describe--he showed considerable genius. He succeeded in making whole +volumes of _Punch_ into a work of criticism on the domestic art of the +nineteenth century. + +[Illustration: Illustration for "The Story of a Feather" 1867.] + +Among the useful skits of du Maurier was that upon the conceited young +man concealing appalling ignorance with the display of a still more +appalling indifference to everything. The drawing among the Print-room +series--"_It is always well to be well informed_"--is a good instance. +It reveals a ballroom with couples dancing a quadrille. A lady asks +her partner: "Who's my sister's partner, vis-a-vis, with the star and +riband?" He: "Oh, he--aw--he's Sir Somebody Something, who went +somewhere or othaw to look after some scientific fellaw who was +murdered, or something, by someone--!" The word _othaw_ in this legend +is itself pictorial. Du Maurier was like our own Max Beerbohm in +this--his legends and drawings were inseparable. We find he has actually +penned in the side margin of the drawing the words "othaw fellaw," we +suppose as a possible variant to "scientific fellow," and in the legend +the word "other" has been written over with a thickened +termination--"_aw._" The usual first trial of the speech in pencil +remains but partly obliterated by india-rubber at the top of the +drawing. + +In his series of "Happy Thoughts" du Maurier followed the course of the +sort of rapid thought that precedes a tactful reply with real +psychological skill. Take, for instance, his drawing of an artist +sitting gloomily before his fire, caressed by his wife, who bends over +him, saying, "You seem depressed, darling. Have you had a pleasant +dinner?" Edwin: "Oh, pretty well; Bosse was in the chair, of course. He +praised everybody's work this year except mine." Angelina: "Oh! I'm so +glad. _At last_ he is beginning to look upon you as his rival and his +_only_ one." The wings of tact are sympathy. This drawing appeared in +_Punch_, vol. xcvi. p. 222 (1889); it is signed with other drawings from +89 Porchester Terrace, April '89. Drawings in the Museum collection are +signed from "Stanhope Terrace," "Hampstead," "Drumnadrochit," or +apparently from wherever the artist happened to be when executing the +work. + +[Illustration] + + +Section 8 + +Among our illustrations there is a portrait of Canon Ainger, +representing the artist as a painter. Du Maurier's colour was never such +that an injustice is done to it by reproducing it only by half-tone +process. The interest of this portrait is in the psychological grasp of +character it seems to show. The painter was in the habit of contributing +interior _genre_ scenes in water-colour to the Old Water-colour Society, +of which he was made an Associate in 1881. That may be said against his +painting, which may be said against the painting of so many eminent +black-and-white men who have changed to the art of painting too late in +the day. It shows failure to think in paint. An artist is only a great +"black-and-white" artist because he thinks in that medium. Possibly, if +there were no such thing as a "black-and-white" art, as we have it in +journalism to-day, some of the greatest men in it would instead have +been great painters. But successful transference to the one art after +unusual mastery has been acquired in the other is rarely witnessed. To +think in line, to see the world as resolving itself into the play of +alternating lines, so to habituate thought and vision to that one +aspect of everything is not the best preparation in the world for seeing +it over again in another art where the element of line is not the chief +incident of the impression to be created. Failure in the one art does +not mean failure as an artist. Those artists who have worked in a +variety of mediums with apparently equal success in each have always +attained the ability to make each medium in turn express the same +personal feeling. But nearly always there is in such cases that +sacrifice of the inherent qualities of one or other of the mediums +employed which a great virtuoso never makes. + +Black-and-white men put themselves into an attitude of receptivity +towards that aspect of things which suggests representation in line. +Their acquired sensitiveness in this respect is expressed in the learned +character of their touch in drawing. Painters cultivate a similarly +receptive attitude towards nature, but lay themselves open to receive a +different impression of it. We might say of du Maurier that by the time +he tried to apply himself to painting he had become constitutionally a +black-and-white artist. Moreover, his impaired vision compromised the +more complex range of effect represented in painting in a way that it +never could the simplicity of good black-and-white work. How seriously +threatened du Maurier's sight was at times we may know by the reliance +he put upon being read to by others. Thus only did he manage to keep his +small stock of visual energy in reserve for his artistic work. + + +Section 9 + +During the sixties and seventies the artist illustrated many works of +fiction. The most notable instance was Thackeray's _Esmond_ in 1868--a +work which he had long wished to be chosen to illustrate. + +Du Maurier had all his life an intense admiration for Thackeray. He +inherited none of Thackeray's bitterness, but upon every other ground as +an author, at least, he descends from Thackeray, notably in the studied +colloquialism of his style when writing, and in a general friendliness +to the Philistine. And in his drawings in _Punch_ his satire is aimed in +the same direction as Thackeray's always was. Like Thackeray, he was +most at home on the plane where a social art, a delicate art of life is +able to flourish. Of the concealed romanticist in du Maurier we have +more than once already spoken. A Romanticist always turns to the past. +Thackeray, in his lectures, also in the house he built for himself, and +in a proposed but never finished history, went back into the past at +least as far as Queen Anne's reign. _Esmond_, also of Queen Anne's +reign, was the expression of a feature of Thackeray's temperament which +never makes its full appearance in any other of his fictions. We believe +that it was his own favourite among his works. But Thackeray did not +succeed in expressing the whole of himself in the romantic vein; perhaps +because he did not cultivate it from the start like Scott and Dumas. He +was able to put more of himself into _Vanity Fair_. To think of +Thackeray is to think first of _Vanity Fair_. From the unerring--because +instinctive--judgment of the world this book received recognition as his +masterpiece. + +Du Maurier had not so much of the genuine _flair_ for the eighteenth +century as Thackeray. At heart he was much more in sympathy with the +pre-Raphaelites and the love of early romance, whatever his pretence to +the contrary in his satire, _A Legend of Camelot_. But there was no +illustrator of his time with a greater gift for the romantic novel of +any period; and inevitably, he became, in due course, the illustrator of +_Esmond_. + +It is impossible to return to the past except by the path of poetry. It +was possible to du Maurier in his illustrations to _Esmond_, because he +was a poet. He used the effect of fading light in the sky seen through +old leaded windows, and all the resources of poetic effect with a poet's +and not an actor-manager's inspiration, wrapping the tale in the glamour +in which Thackeray conceived it. + +In 1865 du Maurier contributed a full page illustration and two +vignettes to Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_, published in parts by Cassell. +Other signed illustrations are by G.H. Thomas, John Gilbert, J.D. +Watson, A.B. Houghton, W. Small, A. Parquier, R. Barnes, M.E. Edwards, +and T. Morten. No book can be imagined which would afford the essential +nature of his art less opportunity of showing itself than this one. He +was no good at horrors, though his resourcefulness in the manifestation +of emotional light and shadow was encouraged by the character of the +full-page illustration which he had to supply. A signed full page +appears in Part XVI., page 541. It is a scene in which the four +martyrs, Bland, Frankesh, Sheterden, and Middleton, condemned by the +Bishop of Dover, 25th June 1555, are shown being burned at the stakes. +One of the martyrs certainly looks intensely smug with his hands folded +as if he were at grace before a favourite dinner. Yes, du Maurier +certainly failed to attain quite to the heights of the horror of this +book. + +The following year we have from the artist's pencil illustrations to a +book of the heroine of which he was so fond that he named his own +daughter after her. That book was Mrs. Gaskell's _Wives and Daughters_, +"an everyday story," as it is called in its sub-title. For this story du +Maurier's art was much more fitted than for any other. In it, certainly, +and not in Foxe's book, we should expect his temperament to reveal +itself--and we are not disappointed. It is here that du Maurier is at +his best. His illustrations have a daintiness in this tale which they +have nowhere else. A sign of the presence of fine art is the +accommodation of style to theme. The illustrations had been made for +this book when it appeared serially in the _Cornhill_, and were +afterwards published in the issue in two volumes. There is a picture at +the beginning of the second volume called "The Burning Gorse," in +which du Maurier makes an imaginative appeal through landscape almost +worthy of Keene. + +[Illustration: Illustration for "The Story of a Feather" 1867.] + +The artist is again at his best in the work of illustrating fiction in +the following year in Douglas Jerrold's _Story of a Feather_. It is the +same refinement of technique that is evident as in Mrs. Gaskell's tale. +One of du Maurier's greatest characteristics was charm. One is forced +into ringing changes upon the word in the description of his work. But +charm it is, more than ever, that characterises his illustrations to +_The Story of a Feather_. The initial letters in this book afford him a +succession of opportunities for displaying that inventive genius which +is evident wherever he turns to the province of pure fancy. It was not +for nothing apparently that he was the son of an inventor. + +We have already spoken of his power in these days in the emotional use +of light and shade. It is perhaps even in this light book--in the +illustration reproduced opposite--that we have one of the best examples +of this power. But this book is all through a gold-mine of the work of +the real du Maurier. + +Another work in which his art is to be found at this time is Shirley +Brooks's _Sooner or Later_ (1868). The novel does not seem treated with +quite the same reverence and enthusiasm which has characterised his work +in the books we have just described, but it is among the representative +examples of his illustration in the sixties. This story also passed as a +serial through _Cornhill_. In the same year, with E.H. Corbould, he +provides illustrations to _The Book of Drawing-room Plays_, &c., a +manual of indoor recreation by H. Dalton. It is not impossible that +these were prepared long in advance of publication, for they are in a +very much earlier manner than the illustrations we have been speaking +of. In them du Maurier has not yet emerged from the influence of +Leech--the first influence we encountered when a few years previously he +joined himself to the band of those who solicit the publishers for +illustrative work. From the point of view of our subject the book does +not repay much study. In 1876, in illustrations to _Hurlock Chase, or +Among the Sussex Ironworks_, by George E. Sargent, published by The +Religious Tract Society, we have some pictures of extraordinary power, +in which it is to be seen how much his contact with Millais and other +great illustrators in the sixties inspired him, and developed his +resources. His work has a "weight" in this book which was common to the +best illustration of the period, a deliberation which shows the +influence of Durer over the illustrators of the sixties, and also the +influence of pre-Raphaelitism in precise elaboration of form. It is in +lighter vein we find him again in the same year in Jemmett Browne's +_Songs of Many Seasons_, published by Simpkin, Marshall & Co., and +illustrated also by Walter Crane and others. Every now and then at this +period du Maurier shows us a genius for "still-life" in interior _genre_ +which he did not seem to develop afterwards to the extent of the promise +shown in these pictures. He gained at this time a very great deal in his +art by the pre-Raphaelite influence. Never is he more exquisite than +when he embraces detail. The need to produce with rapidity, and the +effect of later fashions which did not suit his own nature so well, +induced him to give up a very deliberate style suited to his quick +perception of beauty in everyday incident, for one that sometimes only +achieved emptiness in its attempt at breadth. But to have kept his +pre-Raphaelite individuality with two such native impressionists as +Keene and Whistler for his most intimate friends would have perhaps +been more than could be expected of human nature. But it is true that he +seemed to lose where those two artists proved they had everything to +gain from a style that passed detail swiftly, treating it suggestively. +They were by nature impressionable to a different aspect of life, and in +self expression they required a different method. + +Du Maurier's artistic creed that everything should be drawn from +nature--and tables and chairs are "nature" for the artist--forced him to +return again and again to accessible properties which could be fitted +into his scenes. Notable among those were the big vases and the +constantly reappearing ornamental gilt clock. Though drawn in black and +white we are sure of its gilt, for it belongs to the Victorian period. +It is to be met with in all the surviving drawing-rooms of the +period--that is, it is to be met with in "Apartments." + +Du Maurier next furnishes a frontispiece and vignettes, which we do not +admire, to Clement Scott's _Round about the Islands_ (1874). + +In 1882 he is at work in the field he had made his own, illustrating the +story of a fad that had always amused him, illustrating the craze he +had helped to create, in _Prudence: A Story of Aesthetic London_, by +Lucy C. Lillie. We hope the reader of this page does not think we should +have read this book. We looked at the illustrations of a muscular +curate--whom we took to be the hero--making an impressive entrance into +a gathering of "aesthetes," and farther on leaving the church door with +"Prudence"; we read the legend to the final illustration--"It was odd to +see how completely Prudence forsook her brief period of aesthetic +light"--and we came to our own conclusions. The illustrations are made +very small in process of printing, but du Maurier's art never lost by +reduction. A picture of a Private View day in a Gallery--which at first +makes one think of the Royal Academy, but in which the pictures are too +well hung for that, and which is probably intended for the Grosvenor +Gallery--is one of those admirable drawings of a fashionable crush with +which du Maurier always excelled. In reviewing this book, however, we +are already away from the most characteristic period of du Maurier's +work as an illustrator of fiction. That was between 1860 and 1880. His +line is altogether less intense in the next book we have to +consider--Philips's _As in a Looking Glass_ (1889). The falling off +between this and the book we were reviewing here but a moment ago is the +most evident feature of the work before us. We have, we feel, said +good-bye to the du Maurier who added so much lustre to the illustrative +work of the period just preceding its publication. But in _Punch_ the +vivacity of his art is still sustained; and long afterwards in _Trilby_ +he scores successes again. In later years du Maurier _allowed_ in his +originals for reduction, and the original cannot be rightly judged until +the reduction is made. In the book under notice no reduction appears to +have been made, and the drawings are consequently lacking in precision +of detail. The book is a large drawing-room table book--in our opinion +the most hateful kind of book that was ever made--occupying more space +than any but the rarest works in the world are worth, giving more +trouble to hold than it is possible for any but a great masterpiece to +compensate for--and generally putting author and publisher in the debt +of the reader, which is quite the wrong way round. The curious may see +in this book what du Maurier's art was at its worst, and it may help +them to estimate his achievement to note how even on this occasion it +surpasses easily all later modern work in the same vein. + +There is one other book, published in 1874, which du Maurier illustrated +at that time which should be mentioned. It had, we believe, a great +success of a popular kind. We refer to _Misunderstood_, by Florence +Montgomery. In the light of the illustrations, which are in the artist's +finest vein, one wonders how much of this success could with justice +have been attributed to the illustrations. We are inclined to think not +a little. These pictures show many of the most interesting qualities of +his work. In the portrait of Sir Everard Duncombe, Misunderstood's +father, we have a skill in portraying a type that cannot have failed in +impressing readers with the reality of the character. The delicacy of du +Maurier's psychology in this portrait of a middle-aged man of the period +is in marked contrast with the improbability of so many of his +renderings of elderly people wherever he went outside of his stock +types. It justifies his realism and mistrust of memory drawing. Through +his failure to sustain his interest in life always at this pitch his art +at the end of his career showed just the lack of this close observation +of character. It often then seems too content to rest its claims on +accurate drawing, even when what was drawn was not worth accuracy. And +this is the fault of all the modern school. + +Good drawing does not so much interest us in things as in the drama +centred in them. Thus we have actually such things as horror, passion, +gentleness, and other invisible things conveyed to us in the lines of a +drawing. We may indeed know genius from talent by the much more of the +invisible which it transfers to visible line. Du Maurier, in drawing +children, for instance, secures their prepossessing qualities. Drawing +is great when it conveys something which in itself has not an +outline--like the "atmosphere" of a Victorian drawing-room. + + +Section 10 + +Intensely artistic natures make everything very self-expressive without +conscious intention. For this reason an artist's handwriting tends to be +more worth looking at than other people's. The draughtsman lavishes some +of his skill upon his handwriting. This more particularly applies to the +signature, which is written with fuller consciousness than other +words. Artists, owing to their intense interest in "appearances," +generally start by being a little self-conscious about their signature. +But that period passes, and the autograph becomes set, to grow fragile +with old age and shrink, but not to alter in its real characteristics. +The signature at the foot of a picture presents a rather different +problem from the signature at the foot of a letter. It must necessarily +be a more deliberate and self-conscious affair, but it is no less +expressive. German deliberation was never so well expressed as in Albert +Durer's signature. + +[Illustration: Caution + +"Don't keep your Beer-Barrel in the same cellar as your _Dust-Bin!_" + +_Punch_, February 23, 1867.] + +Self-advertisers always give themselves away with their signature. As a +rule, the finer the artist the more natural his signature in style. And +fine artists like to subscribe to the great tradition of their craft, +that the work is everything, the workman only someone in the fair light +of its effect; the name is added out of pride but not vain-glory, with +that modest air with which a hero turns the conversation from himself. +Naturalness and mastery arrive at the same moment; students cannot sign +their works naturally. Du Maurier's signature passed through many +transformations, and there were times, too, when the artist was quite +undecided between the plentiful choice of his Christian names--George +Louis Palmella Busson. An artist beginning his career at the present day +with such a choice of names would most certainly have made use of the +"Palmella" in full--an advertisement asset. But advertisement _is_ +vulgar. Du Maurier belonged to the Victorians, who were never vulgar. + +[Illustration] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[1] _The Life and Letters of Charles Samuel Keene_, by Charles Somes +Layard. London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., Ltd., 1892. + + + + +III + +DU MAURIER AS AUTHOR + +Section 1 + + +Queen Victoria was the Queen of Hearts; her reign was the reign of +sentiment. The redundancy of tender reference to Prince Albert at +Windsor has been known to bore visitors to the town. Life must have been +tiring in those days, tossed, as everyone was, if we believe the art of +the time, from one wave of sentiment to another. Men went "into the +city" to get a little rest, and there framed this code: that there +should be no sentiment in business. + +So the Victorians put their sentiment into art, into stories and +illustrations. They put some of the best of their black-and-white art +into a Magazine called _Good Words_. Only the Victorians could have +invented such a title for a Magazine, or lived up to it. + +The literary tradition of that time, so far as the novel was concerned, +expired with du Maurier. He came near to having a style as natural as +Thackeray's, and he was quite as sentimental. + +Before he began to write novels, he prided himself upon the fact that a +store of "plots" for novels lay undeveloped in his mind. It was the +offer of a "plot" to Mr. Henry James one evening when they were walking +up and down the High Street, Bayswater, that resulted in du Maurier +becoming a novelist. Du Maurier told him the plot of _Trilby._ "But you +ought to write that story," cried James. "I can't write," he replied; "I +have never written. If you like the plot so much you may take it." Mr. +James said that it was too valuable a present to take, and that du +Maurier must write the story himself. + +On reaching home that night he set to work. By the next morning he had +written the first two numbers not of _Trilby_ but of _Peter Ibbetson_. +"It seemed all to flow from my pen, without effort in a full stream," he +said, "but I thought it must be poor stuff, and I determined to look for +an omen to learn whether any success would attend this new departure. So +I walked out into the garden, and the very first thing that I saw was a +large wheelbarrow, and that comforted me and reassured me, for, as you +will remember, there is a wheelbarrow in the first chapter of _Peter +Ibbetson._"[2] + +_Peter Ibbetson_--"The young man, lonely, chivalrous and disquieted by a +touch of genius," as the hero has been well described--was written for +money, and brought its author a thousand pounds. + +_Peter Ibbetson_ was not put above _Trilby_ in the author's lifetime; +but we believe it to have much more vitality than the latter work. The +actual writing of it was not perhaps taken quite so seriously as that of +_Trilby_, and it gains nothing on that account; but it is a book in +which there is intensity, in which everything is not spread out thinly +as in _Trilby_. Du Maurier himself believed that _Peter Ibbetson_ was +the better book. It certainly witnesses to the nobility of the author's +mind; it expresses the quick sympathy of the artist temperament--the +instinct for finding extenuating circumstances which artists share with +women, and which both rightly regard as the same thing as the sense of +justice. The tale of _Peter Ibbetson_ breathes a great human sympathy. +The simplicity with which it is written adds to its effect. We cross a +track of horror in it by the ray of a generous light. It is by this book +I like to think that du Maurier will be remembered as a writer. It was +characteristic of him that he could touch a theme that in all +superficial aspects was sordid without the loss of the bloom of true +romance. The real plot of this story, however, does not lie with +incident, but with the maintenance of an elevated frame of mind in +defiance of circumstances. The author realises that mind triumphs always +more easily over matter than over "circumstances." To the damage of the +plot he brings his hero the utmost psychic assistance from an +inadmissible source, but the picture of the prisoner's soul prevailing +in the face of complete temporal disaster is still a true one. + +Du Maurier's publishers believed in _Trilby_ from the very first. They +began by offering double the _Peter Ibbetson_ terms, while generously +urging him to retain his rights in the book by accepting a little less +in a lump sum and receiving a royalty. But so little faith did he pin to +_Trilby_ that he said "No!" + +Within a few weeks the "boom" began. And when Harpers' saw what +proportions it was likely to assume, they voluntarily destroyed the +agreement, and arranged to allow him a handsome royalty on every copy +sold. An admirer of Byron, du Maurier repudiated as cruelly unfair the +poet's line, "Now Barabbas was a publisher." The publisher also handed +over to him the dramatic rights with which he had parted for a small sum +like fifty pounds, and thus he became a partner in the dramatic property +called _Trilby_ as a "play." + +[Illustration] + + +Section 2 + +_Trilby_ was a name that had long lain _perdu_ somewhere "at the back of +du Maurier's head." He traced it to a story by Charles Nodier, in which +Trilby was a man. The name Trilby also appears in a poem by Alfred de +Musset. And to this name, and to the story of a woman which was once +told to him, du Maurier's _Trilby_ owed her birth. "From the moment the +name occurred to me," he said, "I was struck with its value. I at once +realised that it was a name of great importance. I think I must have +felt as happy as Thackeray did when the title of _Vanity Fair_ suggested +itself to him." + +_Trilby_ is written with a daintiness that corresponds with the neatness +of its illustrations. It has the attractiveness which du Maurier had +such skill in giving. But though dealing with Bohemia, the author is +conventional; that is, he keeps strictly to the surface of things. And +every true sentiment of the book is spoilt by the quickly following +laugh in which the author betrays his dread of being thought to take +anything seriously. + +[Illustration: Berkeley Square, 5 P.M. + +_Punch_, August 24, 1867.] + +The machinery of the plot is crude; perhaps this reason as well as the +delicate one assigned made Mr. Henry James refuse it. But du Maurier had +a curious skill in revealing states of mind of real psychological and +pathological interest. The sudden cessation of the power to feel +affection, and of the ability to respond emotionally to nature, the +curious loss of bloom in mental faculty in the case of Little Billee, in +this we have an inquiry into a by no means unusual state of mind carried +out with scientific exactness to an artistic end. Mr. Henry James would +no doubt have preferred this phenomenon as the basis of a plot to the +preposterous mesmerism which forms the plot of _Trilby_, he being one of +the few who understand that a dramatic situation is a mental experience. +In _Peter Ibbetson_ the "dreaming truly"--the illusion that becomes as +great as reality--is the phenomenon the author examines. "Dreaming +truly" is like the ecstasy of the saints: it is the "will to believe" in +the very act of willing. + +Du Maurier was spoilt for romance by his long connection with a comic +paper. It had become a habit with him to be on his guard against +everything that could be travestied. This was the conventional side of +du Maurier in evidence, as it is also in that other flaw in the simple +story of _Trilby_--the adulation of worldly success. We find him +constantly writing in this strain in the description of character: "He +is now one of the greatest artists in the world, and Europeans cross the +Atlantic to consult him"; or of another character: "And now that his +name is a household word in two hemispheres"; and of another: "Whose +pinnacle (of pure unadulterated fame) is now the highest of all," &c. + +[Illustration] + + +Section 3 + +In all his books the author shows some of that response to old-time +associations which gives to authors like Dumas and Scott their freedom +from things that only belong to the present moment--precisely the +things, by the way, which do not last beyond the present. The +consciousness that the experiences of life to be valued are the ones +which unite us to those who preceded us in life, and which will in turn +give us a share in the future, is in the possession of the Romantic +school. But du Maurier seems to have felt himself paid to be funny, and +to conceal his sense of romance as Jack Point concealed his +love-sickness. His master, Thackeray, less than anyone apologised to his +readers for the parade of his own feelings. + +There is a note of smugness that spoils _Trilby_; in fact Little Billee, +"frock-coated, shirt-collared within an inch of his life, duly scarfed +and scarf-pinned, chimney-pot-hatted, most beautifully trousered, and +balmorally booted," is the most insufferable picture of a hero of a +romance. This person compromises the effect of the charmingly haunting +presence of Trilby herself, and of the great-hearted gentleman in +Taffy. There is, moreover, the failure to convince us of Little Billee's +genius. We are not assisted to belief in the immortality of his works, +by the illustrations of the mid-Victorian upholstery in the midst of +which they were manufactured. On the other hand, we merely have a vision +of the type of art which won popular success a generation ago, +encouraged by the Royal Academy at the expense of something better, and +keeping a large group of well-dressed painters so much in Society, that, +like Little Billee himself, they actually grew tired of the great before +the great had time to tire of them--"incredible as it may seem, and +against nature." + +Du Maurier put portraits of his friends into _Trilby_, softening the +outlines, and giving the touches, legitimate in a work of art, which +promote variation. He wrote impulsively, and a spirit of generous +recognition of the achievements of all his friends almost ruined his +book. The "lived happy ever afterwards" sentiment follows up every +reference to them. In the famous character of "Joe Sibley" +(Whistler)--afterwards altered to Antony, a Swiss, and ruined--a witty, +a debonair and careless genius was created. Just such an impression was +made upon us by this character as Whistler's own studied butterfly-pose +in life seemed intended to make. It was with the greatest regret we +missed the fascinating figure from the novel when published in book +form, a regret even confessed to by Whistler himself, though he had not +been able to refrain from dashing into print over its publication. There +was none other of the Bohemians described that so endeared himself to +us, or that was so alive--witnessing to the degree to which Whistler's +personality affected those with whom he was thrown in contact. Du +Maurier represented a character in Sibley with the defects of his +qualities, to the greater emphasis of the qualities. To attribute to a +man the genius to be king of Bohemia, and to receive from everyone +forgiveness for everything, _a cause de ses gentillesses_ to make him +witty also, and a most exquisite and original artist--this would have +been enough for most men, though it was not enough for Whistler. Joe +Sibley, not Little Billee, is the real creation of "an artist" that is +in the book. + + +Section 4 + +When _Trilby_ was put on the English stage a girl to play the heroine's +part had to be found. That was the first problem. And speaking of the +fact that a _Trilby_ did appear almost immediately, du Maurier said, +"There is a school which believes that wherever Art leads Nature is +bound to follow. I ought to belong to it, if there is." A _Trilby_ was +heard of; more, du Maurier had often commented upon the beauty of the +lady when she was a child living near him at Hampstead Heath. He +inquired her name. She was already on the stage, and showing promise as +an actress. He still felt sceptical, we are told, and so a photograph +was sent. He said, "No acting will be wanted; for here is Trilby." Miss +Baird was interviewed. "In face and manner," said du Maurier, telling +the story of the interview, "she seemed still more Trilby-like than +ever; but Mr. Tree, who was present, was on thoughts of acting-power +intent. And when he gravely announced that to be an actress a woman +should not be well-born and well-bred, and that if possible she should +have had her home in the wings or the gutter, I considered the matter +settled. We drove away in silence, and I, at any rate, in gloom. For +Miss Baird, refined and gentle, and well-born and well-bred, was still +Trilby for me, and I flatly refused to see either of the ladies whom Mr. +Tree had in mind. Finally, he thought he would see Miss Baird again, and +with her read over a scene or two. He got another cab--returned there +and then--in forty-eight hours the engagement was made." + +[Illustration: Illustration for "Esmond"] + +It may be found interesting if we revive here a criticism which throws +light on the first reception of the adaption of _Trilby_ for the stage. +The play was put on before the _Trilby_ boom had spent itself, but +critics would, from the nature of their species, be rather prejudiced +against, than carried away in favour of, anything which came in with a +"boom" that was not of their own making. There was a criticism written +of the play at the time by Mr. Justin Huntly Macarthy which, quoted, +will give us the history of the "boom." It was his good fortune to be in +the United States "when," he says, "the taste for _Trilby_ became a +passion, when the passion grew into a mania and the mania deepened into +a madness," and he noted that in England the play and not the novel +kindled the passion; though in the criticism of the novel, classed as it +had been even in this country with the work of Thackeray, he could only +recall one note of dispraise, "so earnest and scornful that, in its +loneliness, it seemed to fall like the clatter of a steel glove in a +house of prayer." He recalled a friend of his goaded to ferocity by +another's exuberance of rapture for some latter-day singers, crying out +"Hang your Decadents! Humpty-Dumpty is worth all they ever wrote." +"This," he continued, "is a variety of the mood which accepts _Trilby_. +In _Trilby_ we get back, as it were, to Humpty-Dumpty--to its simplicity +at least, if not to its pitch of art. The strong man and the odd man and +the boy man, brothers in Bohemianism, brothers in art, brothers +in love for youth and beauty; the girl, the fair, the kind, the +for-ever-desirable, pure in impurity, and sacred even in shame; the dingy +evil genius who gibbers in Yiddish to the God he denies; the hopeless, +devoted musician, whose spirit in a previous existence answered to the +name of Bowes; the mother who makes the appeal that so many parents have +made on behalf of their sons to fair sinners since the days when Duval +the elder interviewed Marguerite Gauthier; all this company of puppets +please in their familiarity, their straightforwardness, their undefeated +obviousness, very much as a game of bowls on a village green with decent +rustics, or a game of romps in a rose-garden with laughing children, +might please after a supper with Nana or an evening with the +Theosophists." + +This seems to us to diagnose the case as far as the success of the play +was concerned. But as regards the book at which it was partly aimed, it +is wide of the mark. There is something in a work of fiction when it is +of sufficient power to make a success simply as fiction which cannot be +carried over the footlights. If we only knew Shakespeare through seeing +him acted we should rate him much lower than we do. The success of +Shakespeare upon the stage rests with certain qualities that can only +properly tell upon the stage. But great as these qualities are, in +Shakespeare's case they far from represent his whole art; there remains +unexpressed the fragrance of field and flower, the secrets of mood, +which do not lie with facts that acting can express, and which float +like a perfume between us and the pages. All this the dust of stage +carpentry destroys, and the unnaturalness of lime-light dispels. The +charm in _Trilby_ is overlaid by the obvious, but the charm is there +for the reader, just as the obviousness is there for the stage when the +charm is gone in the adaptation. The stage is the throne of the obvious. +It is possible for art to be obvious and great, as the art of Turner was +in painting. His art was theatrical. It is the obvious that is +theatrical. For that which is theatrical, as the word implies, must be +spectacular. Theatricality before everything else in this world, in any +art, achieves wide and popular success, the kind of success that Turner +achieves in the pictures for which the English public admire him. + +Mr. W.D. Howells, in an article written just after the novelist's death, +said:[3]--"It was my good fortune to have the courage to write to du +Maurier when _Trilby_ was only half printed, and to tell him how much I +liked the gay sad story. In every way it was well that I did not wait +for the end, for the last third of it seemed to me so altogether forced +in its conclusions that I could not have offered my praises with a whole +heart, nor he accept them with any pleasure, if the disgust with its +preposterous popularity, which he so frankly, so humorously expressed, +had then begun in him." + +The American critic describes the fact of du Maurier commencing novelist +at sixty and succeeding, as one of the most extraordinary things in the +history of literature, and without parallel. Perhaps the parallel has +been shown in the case of Mr. de Morgan. Mr. Howells also speaks of du +Maurier perfecting an attitude recognisable in Fielding, Sterne, Heine, +and Thackeray--the confidential one. Du Maurier's _Trilby_ was a +confidence. But he adds, "It wants the last respect for the reader's +intelligence--it wants whatever is the very greatest thing in the very +greatest novelists--the thing that convinces in Hawthorne, George Eliot, +Tourgenief, Tolstoy. But short of this supreme truth, it has every +grace, every beauty, every charm." The word "Every" here seems to us an +American exaggeration. We should ask ourselves whether in spite of all +its confidentialness _Trilby_ makes an intimate revelation. The rare +quality of intimacy, that is the greatest thing in the very greatest +novels. + +The "boom" of _Trilby_, we are told, surprised du Maurier immensely, for +he had not taken himself _au serieux_ as a novelist. Indeed it rather +distressed him when he reflected that Thackeray never had a "boom." + +[Illustration: Unpublished drawing from sketch-book] + + +Section 5 + +Although du Maurier had said that his head was full of plots the supply +seemed to have run thin by the time he set to work on _The Martian_. The +value of this book rests with its autobiographical character. The knot +is not tied in the first half and unravelled in the second, after the +approved manner in which plots should be woven. The story is chiefly a +record of people and places, vivid, and written in a breathless, chatty +style. It somewhat resembles the conversation of a boy on returning from +his holidays. It reveals a perfectly amazing resource in imparting life +to mere description. As a writer, du Maurier seemed immediately to +acquire a style unlike that of anyone else. Everything is described with +a zest that carries the reader along, and this manner is even extended +to things that are not worth describing. But he was always slightly +apologetic with pen in hand, never permitting himself the professional +air, or giving a full challenge to criticism by disclaiming the +privileges of a distinguished amateur. + +In _Peter Ibbetson_ the artist told the story of his childhood; in +_Trilby_ he recounted the brightest period of his Bohemian youth; in +_The Martian_ he records the nature of the shock he received from +threatened blindness, and the depression of days before his genius had +discovered itself and revealed the prospect of a great career to him. +The effect of Pentonville, the grey suburb, and of the absence of worthy +companions upon a romantic, highly-strung young man in _Peter Ibbetson_ +is quite autobiographical, as is the description of student life in +Paris by which afterwards the uninspiring environment is replaced. The +continuation of the studentship at Antwerp, the consultation with the +specialist at Dusseldorf, completes the story of du Maurier's life until +he came to London. There is literally nothing that a biographer could +add to it. And du Maurier wrote his autobiography thus, in tales, which +are histories too, in their graphic description of the aspect of places +and people at a given time. Up to the day when the artist came to London +to seek employment from the publishers he seems to have had +disheartening times. In the last years of his life, when he went over +the ground of these early experiences in his books, it was, as is +evident from the style, in the mood of one who had survived danger by +flood and field to recount his tales in an atmosphere of peace he had +hardly hoped to realise. + +[Illustration: Illustration for "The Adventures of Harry Richmond" + +_The Cornhill_, 1870.] + +It is evident from his books that he had many inward experiences of a +dramatic kind; that his life was only uneventful upon the surface, and +in appearance. In each of his novels, as we have seen, the rather crude +machinery of his plot secures the revelation of a curious, but a not at +all uncommon state of mind. He experimented empirically in psychology, +interesting himself in the processes of his own mind. No one can doubt +that in more than in outward incident his novels were autobiographical; +that also he drew upon the resources of his personal history for some of +the less usual and partly religious frames of mind in which his +"Heroes," each in his own way, outwit the apparently ugly intentions of +destiny towards themselves. + + +Section 6 + +Du Maurier's literary contributions to _Punch_ were bound up in the +volume _A Legend of Camelot, &c._, issued from the _Punch_ office in +1898. Besides the title-piece, a satire of some length upon the +mediaevalism of the pre-Raphaelites, the book contains shorter +pieces--"Flirts in Hades," "Poor Pussy's Nightmare," "The Fool's +Paradise, or Love and Life," "A Lost Illusion," "Vers Nonsensiques," +"L'Onglay a Parry," "Two Thrones," "A Love-Agony," "A Simple Story," "A +Ballad of Blunders" (after Swinburne's "Ballad of Burdens"), and then a +story in prose, "The Rise and Fall of the Jack Spratts: A tale of Modern +Art and Fashion." All the poetry is in the ballad strain, and by its +monotony the reader is put into the right condition to receive a shock +from some felicitous twist at the end of a line. Thus it is almost +impossible to quote from them. The humour rests in each case with the +whole of the skit; and in the case of one of the best of the whole +series, "A Love-Agony," a poem for a picture by Maudle, given, there +must be understanding on the reader's part, of the art "cult" against +which it is directed. + +"The Rise and Fall of the Jack Spratts" is du Maurier's first attempt at +a work of fiction. It is significant that in style it has the lightness +of touch that would be expected from the disciple of Thackeray, and that +afterwards won by its "taking" character the hearts of the readers of +_Trilby_. It is the story of a painter, his wife and their twin +children. It opens with a picture of them at home, Jack Spratt +dreaming, even in those days, of Post-Impressionism, showing that du +Maurier was a prophet, "dreaming of the ante-pre-Raphaelite school. In +the depths of his bliss a feeling of discouragement would steal over him +as he thought of those immortal works, showing thereby that he was a +true artist, ever striving after the light. He little dreamt in his +modesty that, young and inexperienced though he might be, his pictures +were even quainter than theirs; for not only could he already draw, +colour, compose, and put into perspective quite as badly as they did, +but he had over them the advantage of a real lay figure to copy, whereas +they had to content themselves with the living model." + +"The amusements of this happy pair were the simplest, healthiest, and +most delightful kind; they never went to the play, nor to balls or +dances, which they thought immodest--(indeed they were not even +asked)--nor read such things as novels, magazines, or the newspaper; nor +visited exhibitions of modern art, which they held in contempt, as they +did all things modern; ... and they were devoted to music, not that of +the present day, which they despised, nor that of the future, of which +they had never heard; nor English music, which was not old enough." Of +their friends, "They were few, but true and trusty, with remarkably fine +heads for a painter ... their deportment grave, sad and very strange; +for the death of the early Italian masters still weighed on their soul +with all the force of some recent domestic bereavement. They looked on +themselves and each other and the Jack Spratts, and were looked upon by +the Jack Spratts in return as the sole incarnation on this degenerate +earth of all such as had still managed to survive there; and so they +were always telling each other and everyone else they met. And no +wonder, for they were marvellously accomplished; being each of them +painter, sculptor, architect, poet, critic and engraver, all in one; and +all this without ever having learnt...." + +"In their hours of sickness alone the Spratts were as other people, and +sent immediately for the nearest medical practitioner (or leech, as they +preferred to call him); their only sickness to speak of had arisen from +once feasting mediaevally on an old roast peacock, in company with the +trusty friends, who had also been taken very bad on that occasion; and +they ever afterwards avoided that dish, but at their banquets would +have the peacock's head and what was left of its tail tacked on to some +more digestible bird...." + +"As staunch Radicals, they hated the aristocracy, whose very existence +they ignored; shunned the professional class, which they scorned, on +account of its scientific and utilitarian tendency; and loathed the +middle class, from which they had sprung, because it was Philistine; and +although they professed to deeply honour the working man, they very +wisely managed to see as little of him as they possibly could." + +Owing to the sudden success of a picture--which scandalised his trusty +friends--and the beauty of his wife, the model for the picture, Jack +woke up one morning and found himself famous. They were lionised. Mrs. +Spratt's deep-rooted dislike to the female dress of the present day did +not last much longer than her life-long prejudice against the +aristocracy; she discarded the mediaeval garments she had hitherto worn +with such disdain for the eccentricities of modern fashion, and put +herself into the hands of the best dressmaker in town. And thus +snubbing, and being snubbed, dressing and dancing and feasting and +flirting, did she soar higher and higher in her butterfly career. The +denouement comes when they are cut out by "Ye rising Minnows"--an +American sculptor--one Pygmalion F. Minnow--whose wife was twice as +beautiful as Mrs. Spratt. + +Another shorter prose skit of du Maurier's which is included in the same +book satirises the splendid sort of hero, who conceals beneath a mask of +indifference the power to do anything on earth better than anybody else. + +These prose skits show the neat irony that _Punch_ was willing to +encourage by attaching du Maurier to the literary, as well as to the +artistic, staff. But we think it may be said that du Maurier hadn't the +heart to go on with a class of writing in which his great tendency to +sentimentalise would have been out of place. + + +Section 7 + +In 1890 du Maurier contributed two papers to the _Art Journal_ entitled +"The Illustrating of Books from the Serious Artist's Point of View." It +was an attempt to write down the ideas that had controlled him in book +illustration. The artist begins the article by protesting that of all +subjects in the world it is the one upon which he has the least and +fewest ideas, and that such ideas as he has consist principally of his +admiration for illustrations by others. He separates readers into two +classes--those who visualise what they read with the mind's eye so +satisfactorily that they want the help of no pictures, and those--the +greater number, he thinks--who do not possess this gift, to whom to have +the author's conceptions embodied for them in a concrete form is a boon. +The little figures in the picture are a mild substitute for the actors +at the footlights. The arrested gesture, the expression of face, the +character and costume, may be as true to nature and life as the best +actor can make them. His test of a good illustrator is that the +illustrations continue to haunt the memory when the letterpress is +forgotten. He cites Menzel as the highest example of such performance. +He next refers to the illustrated volume of Poems by Tennyson in 1860, +for which Millais and Rossetti and others designed small woodcuts, the +publishing of which, he says, made an epoch in English book +illustration, importing a new element to which he finds it difficult to +give a name. "I still adore," he says, "the lovely, wild, irresponsible +moon-face of Oriana, with a gigantic mailed archer kneeling at her feet +in the yew-wood, and stringing his fatal bow; the strange beautiful +figure of the Lady of Shalott, when the curse comes over her, and her +splendid hair is floating wide, like the magic web; the warm embrace of +Amy and her cousin (when their spirits rushed together at the touching +of the lips), and the dear little symmetrical wavelets beyond; the queen +sucking the poison out of her husband's arm; the exquisite bride at the +end of the Talking Oak; the sweet little picture of Emma Morland and +Edward Grey, so natural and so modern, with the trousers treated in +quite the proper spirit; the chaste Sir Galahad, slaking his thirst with +holy water, amid all the mystic surroundings; and the delightfully +incomprehensible pictures to the Palace of Art, that gave one a weird +sense of comfort, like the word 'Mesopotamia,' without one's knowing +why." + +[Illustration: Illustration for "The Adventures of Harry Richmond" + +_The Cornhill_, 1871.] + +In the second paper he makes interesting reflections on Thackeray and +Dickens. "When the honour devolved upon me of illustrating _Esmond_," he +writes, "what would I not have given to possess sketches, however +slight, of Thackeray's own from which to inspire myself--since he was no +longer alive to consult. For although he does not, any more than +Dickens, very minutely describe the outer aspect of his people, he +visualised them very accurately, as these sketches prove." + +"I doubt if Dickens did, especially his women--his pretty women--Mrs. +Dombey, Florence, Dora, Agnes, Ruth Pinch, Kate Nickleby, little +Emily--we know them all through Hablot Browne alone--and none of them +present any very marked physical characteristics. They are sweet and +graceful, neither tall nor short; they have a pretty droop in their +shoulders, and are very ladylike; sometimes they wear ringlets, +sometimes not, and each would do very easily for the other." + +In 1868 Messrs. Harper published in book form under the title _Social +Pictorial Satire_ a series of articles which du Maurier had written in +_Harper's Magazine_, and which had originally formed the substance of +lectures which he had delivered in the prominent towns of England. He +speaks first of his great admiration of Leech in his youth. "To be an +apparently hopeless invalid at Christmas-time in some dreary, deserted, +dismal little Flemish town, and to receive _Punch's Almanac_ (for 1858, +let us say) from some good-natured friend in England--that is a thing +not to be forgotten! I little dreamed that I should come to London +again, and meet John Leech and become his friend; that I should be, +alas! the last man to shake hands with him before his death (as I +believe I was), and find myself among the officially invited mourners by +his grave; and, finally, that I should inherit, and fill for so many +years (however indifferently), that half-page in _Punch_ opposite the +political cartoon, and which I had loved so well when he was the +artist!" Du Maurier draws a pleasant portrait of his friend, +sympathetically, and very picturesquely analyses his art, which has, he +says, the quality of inevitableness. Of "Words set to Pictures" his long +description of Leech's pretty woman is as good as anything that can be +read of the kind. Then he sketches the characteristics of Charles +Keene's personality and passes on to his art:--"From the pencil of this +most lovable man, with his unrivalled power of expressing all he saw and +thought, I cannot recall many lovable characters of either sex or of any +age." + +But the tribute to the craftsmanship, the skill, the ease and beauty of +Keene's line, to his knowledge of effect, to the very great artist is +unmeasured. In fulfilment of his contract du Maurier speaks of himself +and his "little bit of paper, a steel pen, and a bottle of ink--and, +alas! fingers and an eye less skilled than they would have been if I had +gone straight to a school of art instead of a laboratory for chemistry!" +He says very little about himself. He concludes with a review of social +pictorial satire considered as a fine art. It is evident from the +lecture that du Maurier was an illustrator by instinct as well as +training. "Now conceive," says he, speaking of Thackeray, "that the +marvellous gift of expression that he was to possess in words had been +changed by some fairy at his birth into an equal gift of expression by +means of the pencil, and that he had cultivated the gift as assiduously +as he cultivated the other, and, finally, that he had exercised it as +seriously through life, bestowing on innumerable little pictures in +black and white all the art and wisdom, the wide culture, the deep +knowledge of the world and of the human heart, all the satire, the +tenderness, the drollery, and last, but not least, that incomparable +perfection of style that we find in all or most that he has +written--what a pictorial record that would be!" + +"The career of the future social pictorial satirist is," he continues, +"full of splendid possibilities undreamed of yet.... The number of +youths who can draw beautifully is quite appalling. All we want for my +little dream to be realised is that, among these precocious wielders of +the pencil, there should arise here a Dickens, there a Thackeray, there +a George Eliot or an Anthony Trollope...." + +Does not this precisely sum the situation up? Du Maurier could not live +to foresee that, for all the expert skill of modern illustration, the +"youths who can draw beautifully" lack "a point of view." It was the +possession of this that distinguished Thackeray, George Eliot, Trollope, +Leech, and du Maurier. + +[Illustration] + +FOOTNOTES: + +[2] The circumstances in which du Maurier took up novel-writing, and the +history of the staging of _Trilby_ in England were related by him to Mr. +R.H. Sherard for an "Interview" which appeared in _McClure's Magazine_ +1895. And I have referred to this source for the genealogy of the +artist, as given by himself, and particulars of his early life.--AUTHOR. + +[3] _English Society_, "Du Maurier." London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Co. +Introduction: W.D. Howells. + + + + +IV + +LIFE OF THE ARTIST + +Section 1 + + +To write of the work of an artist who is not a contemporary without +reference to the circumstances of his life would be an incomplete +performance, and yet criticism and biography are hardly ever happily +fused. The gifts of a biographer are of a kind very dissimilar to those +employed in criticism. The true biographer loves uncritically every +detail that has to do with his subject, as a portrait-painter loves +every detail that has to do with the appearance of his sitter. The best +portraits, whether in biography--which is nothing if it is not +portraiture--or in painting, are those in which the interpreter has been +in a wholly receptive mood. This is not the critical attitude, which +involuntarily takes arms against first one thing and then another in the +subject before it; and this sensitiveness is in proportion to the +critic's interest in his subject. + +Du Maurier told us the story of himself completely in his novels. It was +said of de Quincey that in his writings he could tell the story of his +own life and no other. This might be said of du Maurier too. + +The story of his childhood, as we read it through his books, gives us +the picture of an extremely sensitive and romantic child possessed of a +great power of responding affectionately to the scenes in which he grew +up, as well as to the people who surrounded him. It is this sentiment +for place as well as for people that sometimes gives us in his books a +remarkable poetic strain--a strain like music in its caressing revival +of old associations. And we really get a very accurate idea of the +inward story of the artist when we contrast this temperamental +sensitiveness with the kind of work upon which he employed his skill +during the chief part of his career. + +Everywhere in du Maurier's life we find the testimony to his sweetness +of disposition. He had the great loyalty to friends which is really +loyalty to the world at large, made up of possible friends. Friends are +not an accident, but they are made by a process of natural selection, +which, if we are wise and generous, we do not attempt to superintend. + +[Illustration: + +Proxy + + "As you're going to say your Prayers, Maud, _please_ mention I'm so + dreadfully tired I can't say mine to-night, but I'll be sure to + remember to-morrow!" + +_Punch's Almanack_, 1874.] + +Du Maurier was optimistic, he had the genius for keeping tragedy at bay; +for enduring, for instance, such a dark cloud constantly threatening as +blindness without claiming pity. It is easy for such people to impart +charm in whatever art they practise. And it is not true, as modern +novelists and playwrights seem to imagine, that "depth" always implies +what is sinister, and that only the surface of life is charming. Let us +once again believe in fragrance in art. Summer is as great as winter. +Within a sweet-smelling blossom is the whole profound history of a tree +struggling to survive the vengeance of frost and gales. It is the +fragrant things of life that contain all that has been conserved through +unkind weather. + +One of the chief influences in du Maurier's life was his admiration of +Thackeray. This revealed sympathy with greatness. Thackeray was one who +was greater in life than in his art, as are all the greatest artists. He +was great as a man of the world. In a short life his presence made +itself prevail everywhere in London. It requires, too, considerable +genius to live only in precisely the street and the house in London you +want to. This Thackeray managed to do; and to know only the people you +want to, as Thackeray did. This is real sovereignty. + +There was a reserve about du Maurier in manner when he encountered +complete strangers. He retained the detached and distant manner with +slight acquaintances which his role of an observer in Society had taught +him. Like all those who have an exceptionally loyal friendship to give, +he could not pretend to give it to every person introduced to him. In +this he was, of course, no true Bohemian. In Bohemian circles it is the +fashion to make extravagant use of terms of endearment and to fall upon +the neck at first meetings, and men like du Maurier reserve the display +of affection for the home. + +Art-critics and secretaries of Art Galleries, frame-makers and all those +whose business throws them into constant contact with living artists and +their art, know how exactly like their pictures artists always are, +their work being immediately expressive of their own fibre, coarse or +refined. Du Maurier's art reveals a marked preference for certain kinds +of people. In life too he was selective; knowing well whom he liked, and +in whom he wished to inspire regard. + +The artist's family was of the small nobility of France. The name +Palmella was given him in remembrance of the great friendship between +his father's sister and the Duchess de Palmella, who was the wife of the +Portuguese Ambassador to France. The real family name was Busson; the +"du Maurier" came from the Chateau le Maurier, built in the fifteenth +century, and still standing in Anjou or Maine. It belonged to du +Maurier's cousins, the Auberys, and in the seventeenth century it was +the Auberys who wore the title of du Maurier; and an Aubery du Maurier, +who distinguished himself in that century, was Louis of that name, +French Ambassador to Holland. The Auberys and the Bussons married and +intermarried, the Bussons assuming the territorial name of du Maurier. + +George du Maurier's grandfather's name was Robert Mathurin Busson du +Maurier, _Gentilhomme verrier_--gentleman glass-blower. Until the +Revolution glass-blowing was a monopoly of the _gentilshommes_, no +commoner might engage in the industry, at that time considered an art. +The Busson genealogy dates from the twelfth century. The novelist made +use of many of the names which occur in papers relating to his family +history, in _Peter Ibbetson_. + +Du Maurier's father was a small _rentier_, deriving his income from the +family glass-works in Anjou. He was born in England, whither the +artist's grandfather had fled to escape the Revolution and the +guillotine, returning to France in 1816. + +His grandmother was a bourgeoise, by name Bruaire, a descendant of Jean +Bart, the admiral. His grandfather was not rich, and while in England +mainly depended on the liberality of the British Government, which +allowed him a pension of twenty pounds a year for each member of his +family. He died a schoolmaster at Tours. + +The mother of the artist was an Englishwoman married to his father at +the British Embassy in Paris, and the artist was born in Paris on March +6, 1834, in a little house in the Champs Elysees. His parents removed to +Belgium in 1863, where they stayed three years. When the child was five +they came to London, taking 1 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone Road--the +house which had been formerly occupied by Charles Dickens. Du Maurier +remembered riding in the park, on a little pony, escorted by a groom, +who led his pony by a strap. One day there cantered past a young woman +surrounded by horsemen; at the bidding of his groom he waved his hat, +and the lady smiled and kissed her hand to him. It was Queen Victoria +with her equerries. + +The father grew very poor. He was a man of scientific tastes, and lost +his money in inventions which never came to anything. After a year in +Devonshire Terrace the family had to wander again, going to Boulogne, +where they lived at the top of the Grand Rue. Here the artist said they +lived in a beautiful house, and had sunny hours and were happy. + +Apropos of du Maurier's early homes, Sir Francis Burnand, in his +_Records and Reminiscences_, tells an amusing story, which, whilst of +necessity abbreviating, we shall try to give as nearly as possible in +his own words. Some members of the _Punch_ staff who, with the +proprietors, were visiting Paris during the Exhibition year of 1889, +took a drive in the neighbourhood of Passy. Du Maurier, who had not +stayed in Paris for some years, pointed out house after house as being +his birthplace. He started with the selection of a small but attractive +suburban residence, afterwards correcting himself and pointing to a +house much more attractive-looking than the first. Soon, however, the +puzzled expression which his companions had noticed in him before, +returned to his face, and he called a halt for the third time, pointing +to a large house in an extensive garden with a fountain. "No," he +exclaimed with conviction, "I was wrong. This is where I was born. +There's the fountain, there are the green shutters! and in _that_ room!" +The party descended again and poured out libations. After the sleepy +stage of a long drive had been reached, du Maurier awoke, and, as if +soliloquising, muttered, "No, no, I was wrong, absurdly wrong. But I see +my mistake." And he aroused his companions to view a fine mansion +approached by a drive. + +"Yes," he exclaimed, "the other places were mistakes. It is so difficult +to remember the exact spot where one was born. But there can be no doubt +about this. _Cocher! Arretez! s'il vous plait_," he cried, and he was +about to open the door and descend, when William Bradbury, of the party, +stopped him. + +"No, you don't, Kiki; you've been born in three or four places already, +and we've drunk your health in every one of 'em; so we won't do it again +till you've quite made up your mind where you _were_ born." + +In vain du Maurier protested. "You bring us out for a holiday, you take +us about everywhere, and you won't let a chap be born where he likes." +But Mr. Bradbury was inexorable; the door was closed, the coachman +grinned, cracked his whip, and away they went, the party siding with Mr. +Bradbury in objecting to pulling up at every inn to toast the occasion. + +Sir Francis speaks of what fun du Maurier was at such times, and of +never remembering having seen him so boyish, so "Trilbyish" as on the +occasion of the memorable visit. + +From Boulogne du Maurier was brought by his family to Paris, to live in +an apartment on the first floor of the house No. 80 in the Champs +Elysees. In the artist's manhood the ground and first floor were a cafe, +and he said he felt sorry to look up at the windows from which his +mother used to watch his return from school, and see waiters bustling +about and his home invaded. + + +Section 2 + +He went to school at the age of thirteen, in the Pension Froussard, in +the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. He remembered with affection his master +Froussard, who became a deputy after the Revolution of 1848. He owned to +being lazy, with no particular bent; but he worked really hard, he +confessed, for one year. He made a number of friends, but of his +comrades at that school only one distinguished himself in after life, +Louis Becque de Fouquiere, the writer, whose life has been written by M. +Anatole France. + +The artist went up for his _bachot_, his baccalaureate degree, at the +Sorbonne, and was plucked for his written Latin version. It vexed him +and his mother, for they were poor at the time, and it was important +that he should do well. His father was then in England. Du Maurier +crossed to him before informing him of his failure, miserable with the +communication he had to make. They met at the landing at London Bridge, +and at the sight of his utterly woebegone face, guessing the truth, his +father burst into a roar of laughter, which, said the son afterwards, +gave him the greatest pleasure he ever experienced. + +His father was scientific, and hated everything that was not science. Du +Maurier, with his enthusiasm for Byron, had to meet this attitude as +best he could. His father never reproached him for the failure in the +_bachot_ examination. He had made up his mind that his son was intended +for a scientist, and determined to make him one, putting him as a pupil +at the Birkbeck Chemical Laboratory of University College, where he +studied chemistry under Dr. Williamson. The son's own ambition at that +time was to go in for music and singing. "My father," he said, +"possessed the sweetest, most beautiful voice that I have ever heard; +and if he had taken up singing as a profession, would most certainly +have been the greatest singer of his time. In his youth he had studied +music at the Paris Conservatoire, but his family objected to his +following the profession, for they were Legitimists and strong +Catholics, and held the stage in that contempt that was usual at the +beginning of the last century." + +The artist himself as a youth was crazy about music, and used to +practise his voice wherever and whenever he could. But his father +discouraged him. The father died in his arms, singing one of Count de +Segur's songs. + +He remained at the Birkbeck Laboratory for two years, leaving there in +1854, when his parent, still convinced of the future before his son in +the pursuit of science, set him up on his own account in a chemical +laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, in the City. The house is still +standing. "It was," says du Maurier, "a fine laboratory, for my father, +being a poor man, naturally fitted it up in the most expensive style." +"The only occasion," he continues, "on which the sage of Barge Yard was +able to render any real service to humanity was when he was engaged by +the directors of a Company for working certain gold mines in Devonshire +which were being greatly boomed, and to which the public was subscribing +heavily, to go down to Devonshire to assay the ore. I fancy they +expected me to send them a report likely to further tempt the public. If +this was their expectation, they were mistaken, for after a few +experiments I went back to town and told them that there was not a +vestige of gold in the ore. The directors were of course very +dissatisfied with this statement, and insisted on my returning to +Devonshire to make further investigation. I went and had a good time of +it down in the country, for the miners were very jolly fellows; but I +was unable to satisfy my employers, and sent up a report which showed +the public that the whole thing was a swindle, and so saved a good many +people from loss." + +[Illustration: Queen Prima-Donna at Home + + _Chorus_. "O, Mamma!--_Dear_ Mamma!--_Darling_ Mamma!! _Do_ leave + off!!!" + + (Showing that no one is a prophet in his own country.) + +_Punch_, November 7, 1874.] + +Du Maurier told the story of this business in _Once a Week_ in +1861; it is written in a highly amusing strain. + +We have taken relevant extracts, as follows, from the amusing story, +partly because it exhibits the artist for the first time as an Author, +and partly because it continues the narrative of his life:-- + + +Section 3 + +"Somebody who took a great interest in me (my father) had just +established me in the City as an analytical chemist and mining engineer. +Now, if there was one thing in the world for which I was peculiarly, and +I may even say extraordinarily, unfit, it was that very useful +profession; but it is a well-known fact that the fondest parents are not +always the most discriminating in the choice of professions for their +sons. So I had spent two years in a school of chemistry, attending +lectures and performing analyses, qualitative and quantitative, and +various other chemical experiments, which I used to think very droll and +amusing, in order to fit myself for my future career, and at length, +thanks to my father's kindness, I found myself master of a laboratory +which had been arranged in a manner regardless of expense, with water +and gas laid on in every possible corner, and bottles, chemical stoves, +and scales, &c., of a most ornamental brightness and perfection. + +"Here I waited for employment daily, and entertained my friends with +sumptuous hospitality at lunch and supper; here also I occasionally +astonished my mother and sister by dexterously turning yellow liquids +into blue ones, and performing other marvels of science--accomplishments +which I have almost entirely forgotten (in my prospectus it was stated +that assays of ore and analyses of minerals, &c., would be most +carefully conducted, and all business of the kind attended to, with +great steadiness and despatch); and pending the advent of work, the +scene of my future operations was enlivened by athletic sport and every +kind of jollification, which helped me to endure the anxiety of my +parents at seeing me start on the serious business of life so young." He +goes on to say that, thanks to kindness of friends of his family, +employment came: he was given an order for analysing various specimens +of soil from a friend's estate. "I conducted these experiments with +proper earnestness, and he paid me for them with becoming gravity. I +now thank him kindly for the same (it would have been undignified to do +so then) and sincerely hope that he has found my scientific research +beneficial to his land." Then the gold contagion suddenly broke out and +committed great ravages. "I caught it one rainy afternoon near the +Exchange; my mother and sister instantly became affected, but my father, +who was of a stout habit and robust temperament, and gifted with a very +practical turn of mind, fortunately escaped, and devoted himself to our +cure. Thanks to his judicious nursing, I was the first to recover." "The +gold fever raged worse and worse, and I waited impatiently for it to +give me employment; at length it did so, in a few months from the period +of its birth: somebody introduced me to somebody else, who introduced me +to the chairman of the Victoria Gold and Copper Mine, situated near +Moleville, in Blankshire." + +Then follows an interview with the directors. "It was necessary that in +my interview with the directors next day, I should cram them with every +possible technical term that had ever been invented for the purpose." + +He manages to squeeze "lodes," "gossans," "costeanings," and other +impressive words into almost every sentence. It produces a great effect +on the directors. + +The offer of a guinea and a half a day to go down the mine inspires a +wild impulse to embrace the whole board in the person of the venerable +fat old fellow who makes the offer. This is restrained. "I told him I +would think of the matter, and return him an answer the following day; +and, after bouncing myself first into the office-clerk and then into the +fire-place, I eventually succeeded in making an unconcerned exit." + +"I pass over my triumphant sensations and the family bliss, only +chequered by anxiety lest the Victoria Gold and Copper Mine should come +to grief before I got there." + +He then travels through enchanting scenery, and is conducted to the +mine. "Some five and twenty or thirty shaggy rough-looking men were +about. These were the miners. Their appearance was not reassuring, and +when the engineer left me alone with them, with a parting injunction +that I was to make them feel I had an iron will at once, I confess I +felt myself uncomfortably young, and a little bit at a loss. + +"We proceeded to business at once, however; and as I met their first +little symptoms of insubordination with one or two acts of summary +justice (which I will spare the reader, but which, emanating from me, +caused me unlimited astonishment), I soon established a proper authority +over them, and we thenceforward got on together capitally." + +We are then given extracts from a mining diary--significantly left off +at a particular stage of the proceedings--used as a sketch-book. An +unfavourable report as to the finding of gold is sent in to the board. + +"The miners did not believe in the mine, and as they perceived that I +did not either, they believed in me to a most flattering extent." He +soon got very much attached to the miners, and used to tell stories +about foreign lands while they were distilling the pure mercury, or +performing other innocent operations suggested by the board, +enlightening them on various subjects where he felt their ignorance to +be equal to his own. "My letters home contained descriptions and +sketches of them, and my mamma became interested in their spiritual +welfare." Surrounded by the halo of memory, they afterwards seemed to +him primitive gentlemen worthy of King Arthur's Round Table. He +describes existence between the hours of work as full of charm owing to +the friendship of surrounding farmers and small gentry. In a "Trilby" +way he describes how he "rode, and wrestled, and boxed with them! and +fell in love with their sisters, and sketched them, and sang Tyrolese +melodies to them, ... blessing the lucky stroke of fortune which had +made him mining engineer to a gold mine without any gold, and managed by +gentlemen who obstinately persisted in ignoring the latter important +fact, in spite of his honest endeavours to persuade them of it." "I +have," he says, "only to hum a certain 'jodel' chorus, and the whole +scene returns to me, surrounded by that peculiar fascination which +belongs to past pleasures--a phenomenon far more interesting to me than +the most marvellous phenomenon of science." + +Every artist is an experimental psychologist, the material for his art +is really always some mental experience. He wishes to communicate with +his public in the spirit of this experience. With Scott it was the old +associations of places, with du Maurier the associations of "old times," +of personal memory. This was the frame of mind the interpretation of +which absorbed him in his literary art, distinguishing it, except in +his early _Cornhill_ work, from his art with the pencil. + +There is not much in the remaining part of the gold-mine narrative which +can be shown to bear upon the artist's career. The conclusion of the +story shows his forfeiture of the regard of the directors by openness of +speech to the shareholders as to the proceedings at the mine. + +Such was his experience of a mine in Devonshire and of relationship with +the miners, who, with the limited experience of the mining classes in +those days, had some difficulty in "placing" du Maurier with his, to +them, unusual physical delicacy and yet more unusual personal charm. + + +Section 4 + +The literary gift in the above narration will, we think, be evident even +in our quotations. But during the greater part of his life du Maurier's +literary gift remained unknown to the general public, though more than +one editor under whom he served on _Punch_ urged him to take a writer's +salary and be on the literary as well as on the artistic staff. It was +said that he relied with comfort upon this second talent to support him +in the event of his sight failing him altogether. There was a space of +thirty years between the above contribution to _Once a Week_ and the +writing of his first novel, _Peter Ibbetson_. But it is in that novel +that he again returns to the story of his career, through boyhood and +youth, leading up to the period in which his father started him in the +laboratory. + +Du Maurier had in 1856, when his father died, practically the choice of +two arts, painting and singing, in both of which he seemed to have a +chance of distinguishing himself. And as the essay of 1861 was so soon +afterwards to prove, there was really another alternative, that of +authorship, for the gifted analytical chemist. He decided then to +forsake the chemistry to which he had been trained, but remained +undecided about everything else. + +In 1856, at the age of twenty-two, he returned to Paris with his mother, +to live in the Rue Paradis-Poissoniere, very poor, very dull, and very +miserable, as he himself has said; but almost at the entrance of what he +describes as the best time of his life--that period in which, deciding +to follow art as a profession, he entered the studio of Gleyre. Those +were the joyous Quartier Latin days. He has described Gleyre's studio +in _Trilby_. The happy life there lasted a year: Whistler and Poynter, +as is well known, were his fellow-students. + +[Illustration: Honour Where Honour is Due + +_Sir Gorgius Midas (who has not been made a Peer_). "Why, it's enough to +make a man turn _Radical_, 'anged if it ain't, to think of sich services +as mine bein' rewarded with no 'igher title than what's bestowed on a +heminent Sawbones, or a Hingerneer, or a Littery Man, or even a +successful Hartist!" + +_Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns (sympathetically_). "It does seem hard! But +you've only to bide your time, Sir Gorgius. No man of _your_ stamp need +ever despair of a Peerage!" (And Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns is, as usual, +quite right.) + +_Punch_, May 15, 1880.] + +The studio of Gleyre was inherited from Delaroche, and afterwards handed +down to Gerome. Whistler, Poynter, du Maurier, Lamont, and Thomas +Armstrong were the group of _Trilby_, Lamont was "the Laird," Aleco +Ionides "the Greek," and Rowley is supposed to have been "Taffy."[4] + +In 1857 du Maurier went on to the Antwerp Academy, where the masters +were De Keyser and Van Lerins. It was in the latter's studio that the +disaster of his life occurred. He was drawing from a model, when +suddenly the girl's head seemed to him to dwindle to the size of a +walnut. He clapped his hand over his left eye, and wondered if he had +been mistaken. He could see as well as ever. But when in its turn he +covered his right eye he learned what had happened. His left eye had +failed him. It might be altogether lost. It grew worse, until the fear +of blindness overtook him. In the spring of 1859 he went to a specialist +in Dusseldorf, who, while deciding that the left eye was lost, said that +with care there was no reason to fear losing the other. Du Maurier was +never able to shake off the terror of apprehension. He was apparently a +hopeless invalid at Christmas-time in 1859, "in some dreary, deserted, +dismal Flemish town," in hospital. Turning over _Punch's Almanack_, the +delight the paper afforded him in such unhappy circumstances was "a +thing not to be forgotten." It fired him with a new ambitious dream. The +astonishing thing was that before another year was over the dream was +beginning to come true: he was in England, making friends with Keene, +who introduced him to John Leech, whom he was destined to succeed at +_Punch's_ table. + +The artist left Antwerp in 1860, and for several months he and Whistler +lived together in Newman Street. Their studio has been described. +Stretched across it was a rope like a clothes-line, from which floated a +bit of brocade, their curtain to shut off the corner used as a bedroom. +There was hardly even a chair to sit on, and often with the brocade a +towel hung from the line. + + +Section 5 + +In the autumn of 1860 the artist began to contribute to _Once a Week_. +Then followed a contribution to _Punch_ for which he continued to draw +as an occasional contributor chiefly of initial letters and the like, +until he reached the stage of contributing regular "Pictures" with +legends beneath in 1864. It was not until 1865, however, that his full +pages in _Punch_ became frequent. In that year he succeeded Leech at the +_Punch_ table. + +His career practically began with his marriage to Miss Emma Wightwick. +Following the example of his master, Thackeray, he courageously married +upon "prospects," as soon as ever the promise of regular employment for +his pencil seemed to be secure. This was the year in which he +illustrated Mrs. Gaskell's _Sylvia's Lovers_. "My life," he once said, +"was a very prosperous one from the outset in London; I was married in +1863, and my wife and I never once knew financial troubles. My only +trouble has been my fear about my eyes. Apart from that I have been very +happy." + +Upon marrying, du Maurier moved to Great Russell Street, and, later, to +rooms in Earl's Terrace, Kensington, the house where Walter Pater died. + +In the days when he was living in Great Russell Street the journalistic +world of London was very Bohemian. It is true that Leech had not made a +good Bohemian, but it was not until some time after du Maurier's +accession to the _Punch_ table that the weekly dinner lost an uproarious +gaiety that is recognised as the true Bohemian note. Mr. Punch and his +staff all improved their tone, Bohemia is now only a memory. It is the +very genius of Mr. Punch that makes him respond to the moment and become +the most decorous figure in the world in decorous times. + +One cannot help being struck by a resemblance between the coming to town +and the almost immediate success there of du Maurier and Thackeray. The +comparison has its interest in the fact that as every man has his +master, beyond all dispute Thackeray was du Maurier's master. Both +quitted Bohemia, but in Society always retained the detachment of +artists. It was near to Thackeray's initials that du Maurier was +destined to cut his own on the great _Punch_ table. He himself described +the glamour Thackeray's name possessed for him, inspiring him as he +climbed out of the despair that followed the sudden partial deprivation +of his sight. The only time he met his master he was too diffident to +accept an invitation to be introduced. Thackeray seemed so great. But +all that evening he remained as close to him as possible, greedily +listening to his words. Like Thackeray, du Maurier thought that the +finest thing in the world was to live without fear and without reproach. +It is probable that Thackeray would not at all have minded not being +taken for a genius, but he would violently have resented not being +accounted a gentleman. For him that implied the great heart and the +scrupulous honour which Bohemia does not insist upon if you have great +spirits. + + +Section 6 + +Of du Maurier's great friendship with Canon Ainger, which commenced in +the seventies, light is to be obtained from Edith Sichel's _Life and +Letters of Alfred Ainger_.[5] + +"For fifteen years," says Miss Sichel, "they always met once, and +generally twice a day. Hampstead knew their figures as every afternoon +they walked round the pond on the Heath, deep in conversation. Edward +Fitzgerald himself never had a closer friendship than had these two men +for one another. Their mental climates suited; they were akin, yet had +strong differences. Perhaps in the quickness of their mutual attraction +Frenchman recognised Frenchman. But Ainger was the French Huguenot and +du Maurier the French sceptic. Both had mercurial perceptions, and +exercised them on much the same objects. Both were wits and humorists, +but Ainger was more of a wit than a humorist, and du Maurier was more of +a humorist than a wit. Both were men of fancy rather than of +imagination, men of sentiment rather than of passion. Both, too, were +fantastics; both loved what was beautiful and graceful rather than +what was grand; but du Maurier was more of the pure artist, while to +Ainger the moral side of beauty most appealed.... Both men were gifted +with an exquisite kindness.... Du Maurier was the keener and clearer +thinker of the two; he had the wider outlook and the fewer prejudices." +Their closest bond was _Punch_, which was to Ainger a delight from cover +to cover. + +[Illustration: Canon Ainger + +Portrait in water-colour by du Maurier. In the possession of the +artist's widow.] + +The artist's love of Whitby is well known; he expressed it himself in +his _Punch_ drawings over and over again. He wrote to Ainger in 1891: +"It is delightful to get a letter from you at Whitby--the place we all +like best in the world." He gives a list of places and things to be +especially seen there, among them the cottage of Sylvia Robson of +_Sylvia's Lovers_, and No 1 St. Hilda's Terrace, "the humble but +singularly charming little house where your friends have dwelt, and +would fain dwell again (and two of them end their days there, somewhere +towards the middle of the twentieth century)." + +It was at Whitby when Ainger and his nieces were there with the du +Mauriers that they were once delighted by seeing "Trilby Drops" +advertised in a little village sweet-shop. "Such is fame," said du +Maurier, but when his daughter went in to ask about the "drops," the +girl behind the counter had no idea what "Trilby" meant. + +In the summer numbers of past volumes of _Punch_ Whitby has figured in +the background of seaside scenes perhaps more than any other +watering-place. Du Maurier nearly always drew upon it for seaside +pictures and the humour of the summer holidays. He formed his first +acquaintance with it in illustrating _Sylvia's Lovers_. The scene of +that tale is Whitby under another name. Thus he started his connection +with the town in circumstances that seemed to him to give it a glamour. +Not only did he confess an immense liking for Mrs. Gaskell's novel, but, +as we have seen, he scored in the illustration of it the first of his +great successes with the general public. The gift of illustration, after +all, is a very rare one. Nothing is to be understood more easily than +the value the public began to put upon du Maurier's gift. In a response +of that sort the public display true discrimination. The ascendency of +du Maurier as a _Punch_ artist was more than anything due to the fact +that for his work in that paper he drew upon the sentiment of family +life from the resources of his own experience. And nothing that we +could write here would so entirely reveal the happy character of his own +family life as the reigning atmosphere of the "seaside" and "nursery" +pictures which he contributed to _Punch_. + +[Illustration] + + +Section 7 + +Many people remembering du Maurier's satires entertained a little fear +of him in Society, and of what he might be thinking about them. An +instance of this was shown on one occasion when he was dining alone with +Sir John Millais at the latter's splendid residence. "I suppose," said +Millais, waving his hand in the direction of the disappearing flunkeys +after dinner, "you think all this very _Sir Gorgius Midas-y_? To me it +is merely respectable." As a matter of fact there is everything to show +that du Maurier entertained the same sort of notions of "respectability" +as his host, though he did things on a less magnificent scale. By +temperament he was not quite a Bohemian, although he was convivial. It +was the convivial side of the weekly _Punch_ dinner that appealed to +him. He abstained from these meetings, or came in late, when a tendency +prevailed to make them too much, as he thought, the pretext of business. +He was regarded as singular in ordering an immense cup of tea to be put +before him immediately after dinner. He sat over his cup of tea with a +bent back, always with a cigarette, fuming whilst the business part +of the proceedings went forward. When that was over he entered into his +own, regaling his comrades with droll stories, creating a witty +atmosphere at his own corner by his taste for repartee. + +[Illustration: The Mutual Admirationists + +(Fragments overheard by Grigsby and the Colonel at one of Prigsby's +Afternoon Teas.) + + +_Young Maudle_ (_to Mrs. Lyon Hunter and her Daughters_). "In the +supremest Poetry, Shakespeare's for instance, or Postlethwaite's, or +Shelley's one always feels that," &c., &c., &c. + +_Young Postlethwaite_ (_to the three Miss Bilderbogies_). "The +_greatest_ Painters of ALL, such as Velasquez, or Maudle, or even +Titian, invariably suggest to one," &c., &c., &c. + +_Punch_, May 22, 1880.] + +The difficulties with his sight might well have been expected to poison +the artist's well of happiness. But it was noticed of Charles Lamb that +the very fact of possessing the little pleasures of everyday life only +under a lease, as it were, which Fate at any moment might refuse to +renew, caused him to be the very poet of such pleasures, experiencing +them with an acuteness that became to him an inspiration. With du +Maurier the enjoyment of social life, so manifestly evident in his art +at one time, may well have been entered into with something of the +fierce delight with which we take our sunshine in a rainy summer. In +later years he became home-staying in his habits. One imagines he felt +that he had taken from Society all that it had to give him--the +knowledge of life necessary to him in his work, and friends in +sufficient number. It is from about this time that his art shows +evidence that an intimate contact with the social movement was no longer +sustained. The tendency to repeat himself, to produce his weekly +picture by a sort of formula, becomes noticeable; and the absence of +variety in his work becomes oppressive. + +Du Maurier was a man of great natural versatility. For some reason or +other he was not fond of the theatre, but he was in possession of a +considerable genius for monodrama, and often delighted his friends by +his impersonations. We have seen that it was once within the bounds of +possibility that he would have become a professional singer. His +conversational gifts were great. He was a writer of singular +picturesqueness. A considerable interest in the progress of science was +noted in him to the last. If we look back at the record of the lives of +artists to find what manner of men as a rule they were, we shall find +that, in contradistinction to poets and musicians, they were pre-eminent +as men of the world. Skill in plastic art seems a final gift imparted to +men very highly constituted. It steals them entirely away from other +aims, but exists side by side with, while yet it transcends the ability +to achieve remarkable performances in dissimilar directions. Perhaps it +is because, of all men, the true artist regards the material world with +the clearest vision, living in no world of dreams, finding reality +itself so delightful. + +The artist never at any stage of his life lost the rollicking spirit of +a boy. It broke out in conversation and in his letters. In narration he +reserved the right of every _raconteur_ to make a point by some +exaggeration. In letters of his that I have seen the note of high +spirits may be said to be the prevailing one. + +For instance, to the head of the _Punch_ Firm, after a _Punch_ dinner: + + "_Jan._ 14. + + "Would you allow one of your retainers to look under the table and + see if I left a golosh there--and if so, tell him to leave it at + Swain's, to be returned by his messenger on Monday? I must have + been tight, and the golosh not tight enough, and I appeared at the + Duchess's with one golosh and my trousers tucked up. H.R.H. was + much concerned about it, and said, 'It's all that ---- _Punch_ + dinner!'" + +To the same: + + "I'm on for the 25th at the Albion and much delighted. Is it + evening dress? If not, tip us a card. If you do not I shall + conclude it is, and appear in full togs, which I will get out for + the evening. + +[Illustration: + + O + | + /|\ + / | \ + O O O + +(Attenborough)] + + "I had really hoped to have got down to Bouverie Street yesterday, + but the conviction forced itself on me as the day wore on that I + should never get a cab to bring me back. I know I am a back-slider + in the matter of the _Punch_ dinner (and all other dinners when I + can help it). I can get thro' my work so much better after the + frugal home repast, and in bed before 11 P.M. Not that I have been + able to indulge in the early couch these holidays, for Hampstead, + slow as it is, is a fearful place for juvenile dissipation, and + parents have to sit up night after night at Xmas time. I hope you + Wandsworthians have more sense." + +In an earlier stage of the book we fixed the period at which du +Maurier's work in _Punch_ was at the height of its vitality at about +1879--and on into the early "eighties." And the artist himself seems to +have had a strong feeling of increasing power at this time. In January +1880 he approached _Punch_ for a revision of the prices at which he was +then working. By the courtesy of Mr. W. Laurence Bradbury I am able to +quote in part from letters bearing out the inference that it was at this +time that du Maurier entered into consciousness of his own worth: + + "_Jan._ 1, 1880. + + "DEAR BRADBURY, AGNEW, & Co.,--The time has come when I think I may + fairly ask you to make an increase in my salary. + + "The quality of my work has greatly improved of late years and my + popularity has grown in proportion, and these results have been + obtained at great expense of thought and labour, and I find as a + rule that the more time I devote to each production, the more + favour it meets with from the public. + + "It is now a good many years (seven or eight I believe) since you + were kind enough at my request to raise the payment of the quarter + page.... + + "Since that period I have gradually become enabled thro' the + improvement in my health to give much more of my time to my _Punch_ + work--all the drawings selected by you for 'English Society at + Home' have been done since then--and whatever other qualities they + may possess, they are very careful and elaborate in most instances, + and without this care and elaboration they would lose most of their + value in the world's eye...." + +Then follows details as to the revision of the prices. And then a day +or two later he sends the following letter: + + "_Jan._ 4, 1880. + + "Mr DEAR BRADBURY,--Many thanks for your kind note. It is really a + painful effort to me to 'ask for more,' and I've been putting it + off from day to day these six months. The pleasure and enthusiasm + with which I have got to do my work for _Punch_ (since I have got + better in health and so forth) are such that I should be content to + go on so for ever, without any rise, if it weren't for my having + such a deuce of a family! but what's a fellow to do! + + "You've no idea what it is to go trapesing up and down, hunting for + a subject, _while all the time the hand remains idle. Punch_ + requires such a lot of thought, you see--and then when the time + comes for the hand to do its work, you can see what care and time + are taken with the execution.... + + "I only wish it would suit the convenience of _Punch_ to take all + the work I could send on a scale of prices literally fixed by + myself! (ye modern Hogarth!! 10,000,000 a year! R.A.--P.R.A.--Sir + George!!!)" + +At the foot of this letter is a thumb-nail picture of "Chang," du +Maurier's huge Newfoundland, leading a blind man, initialled D.M. The +dog holds a tin and begs from a passing fine lady, a well-known beauty +of Society and the Stage, and the legend "Sic transit Gloria Mundi" +describes the situation. + +[Illustration] + + +Section 8 + +The above letters were dated from New Grove House, Hampstead, where the +du Mauriers lived for twenty-one years. They had moved into this house +from Church Row, where they had gone when they first came to Hampstead, +and where their youngest son was born. During the period of their long +residence in New Grove House they frequently took a furnished house for +the winter season in Town for the convenience of going into Society. It +was the inaccessibility of Hampstead before the days of the Hampstead +Tube that made du Maurier latterly relinquish many social engagements, +and developed the disinclination for theatre-going which I have seen +ascribed to an aversion from the drama. + +Sir Frederick Wedmore says that it was at Hampstead evening parties that +du Maurier found his type of the Adonis up-to-date. Alas, that even by +Sir Frederick Wedmore the type should be regarded as salient of du +Maurier's pictures. It is further evidence that the artist is only +remembered by his later pictures. It is in these the type +monotonously appears. But we feel better disposed towards Hampstead +when the eminent critic adds that Church Row itself gave du Maurier more +than one of the models in whom one recognises his ideal of youthful +feminine charm. + +[Illustration: Manuscript of "Nocturne" + +"Sun of the Sleepless--Melancholy Star!"--BYRON. + +Translated into French by George du Maurier. + +_The English Illustrated Magazine_, September 13, 1886.] + +Du Maurier's tastes were very quiet. His interests were centred in his +home, and he found no companionship more acceptable than that of his own +children. He was not at all fond of being alone. He preferred even to +work with people round him; writing his novels in the drawing-room +standing with the MS. upon the top of the piano, and walking up and down +undisturbed by the conversation of his family round him. It caused him +no annoyance when members of his family broke into his studio during +working hours. His work both as draughtsman and writer was always +produced without any of that pathetic travail which for many artists and +writers lies between conception and expression. He did not exhibit the +most unpleasant of the traits of a talented person--the overstrung +condition of nerves which makes a man unpleasant to a household; he +preserved the serenity that pertains to greater genius still. His house +was always an open one, and the life in it must have been highly +typical of that English family life of which he was the pre-eminent poet +in his drawings. + +Du Maurier was elected a member of the Athenaeum Club under Rule 2. He +showed his appreciation of this Club by not making use of any other, +though he was such a highly sociable man. He was early a member of the +Arts Club, though using it less frequently after its removal to the +Dover Street house, of old-world distinction. At the Athenaeum he +frequented the billiard-room as a sociable place, though he was not very +fond of billiards or card games. He could get on quite well in life upon +"conversation" as a recreation, interspersed with music. + +After the great _Trilby_ boom, and when he was writing _The Martian_--in +fact, only a year before his death, the artist moved into town to live +in Oxford Square. He was partly influenced in this by the expiration of +the twenty-one years' lease upon which he held the Hampstead property. + +In a paper contributed to the _Hampstead Annual_ for 1897, the issue +following the artist's death, Canon Ainger traced various Hampstead +spots to be identified as the backgrounds of du Maurier's subjects, and +recalls how on Hampstead Heath many subjects for _Punch_ came to be +discussed between them in the course of conversation. He describes the +way that one of the artist's most famous jests, in the days of Maudle +and Postlethwaite, took its final shape one day in Hampstead, and by a +singular chance arose out of a University sermon at Cambridge. + +A certain well-known humorist of the time had remarked that the +objection to Blue China (it was the special craze at the moment) was +that it was so difficult to "live up to it." This utterance had been +lately taken somewhat over-seriously by a special preacher before the +University who, discoursing on the growing extravagances and frivolities +of the age, wound up an indignant tirade by an eloquent peroration to +the effect that things had come to a sad pass when persons were found to +talk of "_living up_--to a Tea-pot." At this juncture the jest seemed +ripe for treatment, and du Maurier thereupon produced his famous drawing +of the aesthetic bride and bridegroom comparing notes over the precious +piece of crockery in question: "Oh! Algernon! Let us live up to it!" + +Speaking of fifteen years of constant companionship in walks upon the +Heath, the Canon says no one could have had a better opportunity of +tasting the unfailing charm of du Maurier's conversation, the width of +his reading and observation, and his inexhaustible fund of anecdote. In +these conversations Canon Ainger heard every detail of his companion's +school life, his studio-life in Paris, which afterwards found a place in +the pages of his three novels. + +Referring to the long years of uninterrupted achievement of the artist's +life at Hampstead, "only once," says his friend, "in all the years I +knew him was he forced to lay his pencil by for a season. His solitary +eye had temporarily failed him, but, with spirits unsubdued, he promptly +took up the art of lecturer with marked success, although from the first +it was against the grain. When, however, after an interval his sight +returned to him, and the literary instinct, encouraged doubtless by the +success of his lectures, began to quicken, he gained, we all know, +though then past fifty years of age, a new public and a new career in +writing fiction." "Except," proceeds Canon Ainger, "to his intimate +friends and to his colleagues on _Punch_ the display of this gift was an +absolute surprise.... He wrote with extraordinary and even dangerous +facility. It is fair, however, to add that his best passages were often +produced as rapidly as all the rest. For instance, the scene in _Trilby_ +when the mother and uncle of Little Billee arrive in Paris, hearing of +the engagement, and have their first interview with Taffy, was written +straight off one evening between dinner and bed-time." This scene, in +the judgment of Ainger, represents du Maurier at his high-water mark as +a novelist and as a worthy follower of the great master on whom his +style was undoubtedly based. + +"Hampstead," continues the Canon, "was a real foster-mother to George du +Maurier, not only in what it brought him but in what it saved him from. +He was by nature and by practice one of the most generous and hospitable +of men. He loved to entertain his friends from town, and to take them +afterwards his favourite walks. But he disliked dinners and evening +parties in London, not because he was unsociable, but because good +dinners and long journeys 'took it out of him' and endangered the task +of the following morning. The distance from town and the long hills made +late hours inevitable. To listen to some new book read aloud in the +studio, which was also the common sitting-room of wife and children, +made the chief happiness of his evening." + +"We owed it," says his friend, "to Hampstead air with its many sylvan +beauties that du Maurier was able for so long, notwithstanding defective +sight and health gradually failing, to prosecute his daily work with +scarce an interruption." + +The link between the place and the work produced in it is in the case of +du Maurier, apart from the fact that Hampstead scenes so frequently +recur in his pictures, anything but a superficial one. "Hampstead," the +artist wrote, "is healthy but dull." It was the very monotony of the +place, the even conditions under which it was possible to work there in +his day--when it was farther away than it is in the present age of +"tubes"--that assisted the building up of the remarkable record in +_Punch_--the indispensable contribution made every week by du Maurier to +the journalism which, in the days when the fashionable world counted +several influential journals devoted to itself, placed _Punch_ in its +unique position among them. Society reserved quite a touching deference +for the opinions of Mr. Punch. It gives us some idea of the position +into which the paper had worked itself a generation ago when we find +Ruskin, the greatest social critic of his day, going straight to it for +an authoritative picture of the time. People have not sufficiently +remembered how often when they have referred to _Punch_ they were really +referring to du Maurier, or what is left now of his tradition--his way +of dealing with the foibles of society. The position of the paper in +Society was won by appositeness of political criticism, and the delicate +edge of its satire. It was du Maurier who put that edge on. Society +returned fascinated after every wound to inspect the weapon. Keene's pen +brought immense artistic prestige to _Punch_, but its social prestige it +owes to du Maurier more than to anyone; we only become aware that Leech +had begun a tradition in its pages by its supreme fulfilment in du +Maurier's art. + + +Section 9 + +Henry Silver, a member of the _Punch_ staff, who came to the table in +1858, kept a diary of the talk of the table until he retired in 1870. +The present writer was the more touched by the honour of being permitted +to look into this interesting document from the fact that the pen of the +exquisite E.V. Lucas has but lately inspired itself at the same source. +This was for a paper of Thackerayana which concluded, after reference to +the death of Leech, Thackeray's friend: "On November 7th (1864) Leech's +successor, George du Maurier, took his seat at the Table, and so the +world goes on." + +Thackeray bulks more largely in the diary than even du Maurier, for du +Maurier's genius in the table conversation was wholly for asides. We +have already mentioned his comparative lack of interest in the debates +over the large cartoon. And this Silver himself draws attention to: "Du +M. and H.S. generally mute when the 'L.C.' is discussed." The +conversation at each meeting is for some time closely confined to the +discussion of the cartoon, then it spreads to every imaginable topic. +One feels that one assists at the making of history when the Great +Cartoon, or Cut, as they called it, is discussed--as, for instance, when +the design for the one representing Disraeli on the side of the Angels +is decided upon, after his famous speech at Oxford in 1864. The +desultory conversation reported in the diary on each occasion after +settlement of the cartoon throws a light upon things uppermost in the +public mind at the time. It is noted when the Queen comes out of +retirement into the world again. And a vivid reflection is to be found +of the horror felt at the news of the assassination of Lincoln. Men as +closely united as the _Punch_ staff have prejudices as clearly defined +as those of an individual. There was great hostility to the Swinburne of +the sixties. Du Maurier on one occasion sticks up for Swinburne as "the +writer of lovely verses--the weaver of words--the rhymer of rhymes." "Du +M. and H.S. agree in thinking Tennyson will live 'chiefly by his songs +and minor lays.'" + +[Illustration: George du Maurier + +From a photograph.] + +"Du M. thinks _Vanity Fair_ a little Bible," "Rather an epistle by the +Corinthians," says Shirley Brooks. + +One night after dinner du Maurier walked home in the wet. "My carriage +is waiting for Silver," he said. "My carriage is waiting for gold," +answered Shirley Brooks. + +Sometimes the discourse at the table is of Religion. "Du M. believes in +God, and that whatever we do God will not punish us." + +"A comfortable faith," adds Silver. + +Once the discussion turned upon suicide. "Du M. says before he married +he often felt tempted to suicide." + +In heading his diary shortly after du Maurier joined the table, Silver +writes "Du M." and then corrects it "(no: DU M.)." And in another place +he writes, "Du Maurier says fellows write to him de Maurier: 'give the +devil his du.'" + +In 1865 the proprietors, getting old, have put their sons in their +stead, and taken the Agnews into partnership. The staff talk +sentimentally of old times. They drink success to the Firm. Mark Lemon, +the Editor, proposes the health of Bradbury & Evans, saying, "men work +well together because they are liberally treated. Thought our loss last +year (death of Leech) would have seriously affected _Punch_, but it did +not. And no single loss will." Bradbury, replying, speaks of the +brotherly affection between the editor and the proprietors. "Says if you +want men to serve you well treat them well, and win their sympathy and +esteem.... Evans is emphatic on the Brotherhood of the Punch table." +Thackeray's "Mahogany Tree" is sung; du Maurier sings a French song, and +F.C.B. also singeth a song with no words to speak of, &c. &c. &c. "So we +pass a jolly evening, and bear in mind--that Sociality is the secret of +the success of _Punch_." + +On another occasion there is the paper's "Silver Wedding." A watch and +chain with eleven links--the mystic number of the _Punch_ staff--is +handed over to Mark Lemon. In the morning he has received a letter with +a hundred guineas. He claims, in replying, "that the _Punch_ Brotherhood +is one of the most extraordinary literary brotherhoods the world has +seen." + +Shirley Brooks hands him letters written by the staff individually, +testifying their gladness at the gift proposed. Du Maurier wrote the +longest and Charles Keene the shortest. + +We have extracted the following items from the diary, quoting exactly, +except for the substitution sometimes of the full name for initials: + + _November 7th_--_Monday_. "S.B., du Maurier (his debut), H.S., + J.T., M.L., P.L., F.C.B., H.M., T.T. + + "(The initials stand for Shirley Brooks, Henry Silver, John + Tenniel, Mark Lemon, Professor Leigh, F.C. Burnand, Horace Mayhew, + Tom Taylor.) + + "Du Maurier tells of Whistler and Rossetti's rage for old china, + and how Rossetti once left his guests at dinner and rushed off to + buy a piece before Whistler could forestall him." + + _May_ 17, 1865. "Du Maurier was presented with a son and heir on + Saturday, so we baptized the infant in a bumper of Champagne." + + _December_ 20, 1865. "While the Great Cut is being hatched, + Burnand, du Maurier, and Silver all make little cuts of their + initials on the _Punch_ table. Henry Silver between William + Thackeray and John Leech--Burnand where a Beckett sat and du + Maurier where Leech." + + "Miss Bateman retired from the stage (at Her Majesty's) on + Friday--she has rather proved herself a one-part actress, and so + has Sothern, whom Burnand denounces as a practical joker--most + unscrupulous in tongue." + + "Du M. thinks it harder to write a poem than to paint a picture. + But surely there's no comparing them. One mind expresses itself + with a pen and another with a brush." + + _Jan_. 17, 1866. "Du Maurier tells of the gas blow-up at his 91 + Great Russell Street on Boxing-day. Girl dressing in the shop for + Hairdressers' Ball--turned on two burners and lit one and left it + burning. Du Maurier and wife dressing on top floor--bang! like a + hundred pounder, and then rattle--smash--crash. 'O! the children!' + 'D--n it! They're all right!' first time he ever swore before his + wife. Sister tried to jump from window, but Armstrong held her + back. Baby crowing in his arms at the fun as he came downstairs. + The nursemaids had run away of course. Lucky no one on the stairs, + or they'd have been killed." + + _April_ 4, 1866. "In reference to a Ball on the Haymarket + stage--'Would you like to go?' said S.B. to du Maurier. But du + Maurier's dancing days are over--only cares for dinners now! Fancy + the old fogydom of thirty!" + + _November_ 7, 1868. "Du Maurier cut down to five cigarettes a day, + resolves to ride daily and live frugally: frightened by his eye + this summer!!" + + _February_ 24, 1868. "Tenniel has almost given up smoking! Used to + smoke an ounce a day. Can eat a better breakfast now. Nearly all + our _Punch_ folk smoke less. Tom Taylor has given up cigars and + only takes a pipe occasionally. Du Maurier takes cigarettes four a + day in lieu of forty. H.S. never smokes at all after dinner. Only + Keene and Mark and Shirley stick to their tobacco." + + +Section 10 + +Sir Francis Burnand, till recently the distinguished Editor of _Punch_, +was du Maurier's senior on the paper by a year or two. He has very +kindly sent the writer the following impression of the artist: "That he +was beloved as a cheery, witty _confrere_, goes without saying. Rarely +did he mix himself up with politics in any shape or form. I doubt if he +ever gave us any assistance in devising a political cartoon. What his +politics were I am unable to say, and I do not think he troubled himself +about the matter. In 'the old days' he delighted in chaffing Horace +Mayhew, with whom he exchanged 'slang' in French. With the jovial +proprietor, William Bradbury, he was always on the best of terms of +friendly nonsense, being invariably his left-hand neighbour at 'The +Table.' He was a genuine Bohemian of the artistic fraternity (as given +in his _Trilby_) with the true polish of an English gentleman, of the +kindest disposition, and of the warmest heart. All who knew him well +loved him, and none missed him more than his fellow-workers on _Punch_." + +"His religion," Sir Francis volunteered in a further note, "as that of +the majority of his French _confreres_, you will find it in the artistic +sketches of the men and women in _La Boheme_" "His guardian angel, +humanly and socially, was his wife." + +Everyone who knew du Maurier now speaks of his attractiveness and the +simplicity and honesty of his nature. He was not really very fond of +"Society" because of its code of insincerity. He was its satirist for +the same reason that, much as he liked "to be with people," he was not +at-home where manners were affected. The Victorians who survive to this +day hold up their hands in horror at present-day manners; they object to +our natural, comfortable ways and clothes; they define our naturalness +as laziness. But just because it is so constitutional to be lazy, the +casual modern manners, so true to the exact shade of our enthusiasm for, +or indifference to any particular person or thing, express our virtue. +We are too honest to pretend. We look back with amusement to the +Victorians, who put all their goods in the shop window, whose very +movements were so far without freedom as to be subservient to the +maintenance of uncreased clothing. A regard for "appearances" seemed to +regulate action. It was an age of _poseurs_--the age of the +"professional air." In that age came into use among doctors "the bedside +manner." Shop-walkers then distinguished themselves from the rest of the +race by their preposterous antics, artists endured the misery of velvet +jackets; women tight-laced, men about town invented the crease in the +trouser-leg to keep which in order alone demands the fealty of a +lifetime. In summer men consented to be roasted alive on the London +pavement rather than part with the frock-coat in which their depraved +conception of beauty delighted. In those days one imagines people were +only comfortable when once safely in bed, and that was never for long at +a time; for the sake of appearances the Victorians got up early. + +[Illustration: + +Speed the Parting Guest + +(Things one would rather have left unsaid.) + +"We've had such a pleasant evening, Mr. Jones! _May_ I beg of you to ask +one of your servants to call a Hansom?" + +"With _pleasure_, Mrs. Smith!" + +_Punch_, March 10, 1883.] + +The Royal Academy Exhibitions of the time proved that it was impossible +for a Victorian to be an artist. The artists of the time did not belong +to their own age. We had Rossetti ever seeking to lose himself in the +illusion of another time and country, and Whistler trying to find +himself in the reality of another place. Chelsea was well outside of +Victorian London. Perhaps Hampstead, a place like Chelsea, that belongs +to no particular time, was outside of it too. Kensington and Bayswater +are Victorian to this day. Rossetti in Kensington is a vision from which +imagination recoils, Whistler in Bayswater one which passes the +invention of human fancy. Du Maurier liked to come into Victorian London +in a carriage from a distance, as a visitor, to be driven away again. He +approached its society critically. He acknowledged the distinction of +its grave self-consciousness while exposing its ridiculous airs. + + * * * * * + +Just as Chelsea is a more desirable place to live in because of its +"Rossetti" associations, so Hampstead gains from the memory of the witty +and generous satirist who made it his home. New Grove House, where du +Maurier lived for over twenty years, might have been designed for him; +it escapes the suburban style that would have been an affliction to one +so romantic. + +Nearly all artists who have sustained their powers in a refined field +of expression have been glad to count upon monotony in the passage of +their days. The adventurous temperament is not the artistic one. The +artist values security from interruptions above everything, and +interruption is of the essence of adventure. Du Maurier lived a life +that was for an artist characteristic. He was at pains to preserve his +days from being broken into. It is above the plane where human life is +open to crude forms of calamity and the stress of elemental passion, +upon a plane where freedom from anxiety is secure that art is able to +exert itself in attaining to the expression of the more valuable, +because more intimate, experiences of human nature. + +Du Maurier died on the 8th October 1896. His grave at Hampstead is +singularly happily placed and constructed. It consists of two carved +wood crosses, respectively at head and foot, connected by a panel +containing, in addition to the name and dates, only the concluding lines +of _Trilby_:-- + + "A little trust that when we die + We reap our sowing! And so--good-bye!" + +The grave is close to the pavement, and it is impossible to go that way +without seeing it. We can imagine that one who was so entirely the +opposite of misanthropic would wish to lie like this within sound of +passing conversation. + +FOOTNOTES: + +[4] Pennell's _Life of Whistler_. + +[5] Archibald Constable & Co. + + + + +V + +THE ILLUSTRATIONS + +Section 1 + + +It may be well to touch upon some of the characteristics of our +illustrations in detail before closing this book. Many of them are so +obviously involved in what has already been said here of the artist's +work that we do not propose to mention them again; but others suggest +remarks which would not have incorporated easily in the attempt we have +made to demonstrate the significance of du Maurier's art in general. + +Taken in the order in which they are printed here, the first +illustrations show the range of effect and variety of line which the +artist was afterwards to narrow into the conventions by which he is now +chiefly remembered. But if such an effect as that in the picture +_Caution_, for instance, would not have been possible with him in his +last period, it was because the nature of the subjects required on +the journal which absorbed most of his energies afforded no stimulus for +anything so Rembrandtesque. He brought such possibilities of style over +from his romantic period in _The Cornhill Magazine_, and it must be +admitted that the effect in this drawing seems too powerful for the +music-hall comedy it has to carry off. + +[Illustration: Sketch for Initial Letter in + +_The Cornhill_, October, 1883.] + +A picture bewitching on account of the grace it contains is that called +"Berkeley Square." Du Maurier had quickly perceived that the quality of +grace could well survive side by side with any amount of humour. It is +interesting to try and imagine what Phil May would have made of the +scene. It was intended for a poignant one, but it becomes chiefly a very +attractive one in du Maurier's hands, the pathos lying with the wording +rather than the picture. + +The drawing affords us many characteristics of his work. The lady in +white reclining in the vehicle is a very embodiment of elegance, and the +discerning drawing that defines the coachman repays observation, as also +the "style" with which the white horse is swiftly shaded in. It was once +the custom for the carriages of people in fashion to draw up under the +trees in Berkeley Square, in summer, for tea brought out from Gunter's. +Last summer one of the evening papers asked the question why the custom +had lapsed. Du Maurier's drawing of the scene was accompanied by the +following lines, which perhaps provide the answer. + + BERKELEY SQUARE, 5 P.M. + + The weather is warm as I walk in the Square, + And observe her barouche standing tranquilly there, + It is under the trees, it is out of the sun, + In the corner where Gunter retails a plain bun. + + How solemn she looks, I have seen a mute merrier-- + Plumes a sky-blue, and her pet a sky-terrier-- + The scene is majestic, and peaceful, and shady, + Miss Humble sits facing: I pity that lady. + + Her footman goes once, and her footman goes twice, + Ay, and each time returning he brings her an ice. + The patient Miss Humble receives, when he comes, + A diminutive bun; let us hope it has plums! + + Now is not this vile. When I tickle my chops, + Which I frequently do, I subside into shops: + We do not object to this solemn employment, + But why _afficher_ such material enjoyment? + + Some beggars stand by--I extremely regret it-- + They wish for a taste. Don't they wish they may get it? + She thus aggravates both the humble and needy, + You'll own she is thoughtless, perhaps she is greedy. + +The pictures "Queen Prima Donna" and "Proxy" are two early nursery +scenes of the many du Maurier contributed to _Punch_. They show the +style, the flowing and painter-like stroke of the pen that revealed such +a Rossetti-like sense of material beauty in his earlier drawings--a +style worthy of the refinement of the subject in "Proxy," the charm in +it of sentiment that humour strengthens rather than displaces. The +drawing expresses childhood, in circumstances where it can expand +without loss of bloom through contention with unhappy circumstances. It +shows the human beauty that expands from the conserved force of life +when it has not to contend with unfavourable environment. Beauty is +perhaps the one certain result of favourable environment. The ideal +within "Socialism" which makes even its opponents Socialists is the +aspiration that some day everyone will be favourably environed. + + +Section 2 + +It was a long while before the result of always working for a comic +paper took effect on du Maurier. Not for some time did the knowledge +that everything can be made to appear ridiculous persuade the artist to +believe with his editor that everything is ridiculous. The humour of his +subjects is still a part and not the whole of those subjects in his art, +and this was all to the glory of the great comic paper in which he drew, +for the humour of nothing in the world is the whole of that thing. Farce +represents it so to be. Du Maurier had no genius for Farce. He responded +to actual life; Farce is artificial; it is thus that the beauty and +charm as well as the humour of life were involved in his +representations. + +Humour for humour's sake has brought about the downfall of every comic +paper that has tried it. _Punch_ has been saved from it by the wilful +seriousness of some of its contributors. Every now and then, with +something like "The Song of the Shirt" or, in another vein, a cartoon of +Tenniel's, _Punch_ has been brought back to Reality and thus to the only +source of humour. + +In the drawing "Honour where Honour is Due" the point is made in the +legend, but the illustration illuminates it rather brutally. It is a +picture in which we find du Maurier expressing the prejudices of the old +regime against the _nouveau riche_. It illustrates a prejudice rather +than a fact. It was not at all true in Victoria's reign that money +would carry a man anywhere. In that time the man with money only but +without birth wanted better manners than the man with everything else +but money to get him into Society. It was less the objectionableness of +trade--as du Maurier in such a drawing as this tried to imply--than the +advance of it that the old aristocracy really resented. + +A drawing characteristic of the artist's work in the eighties--in 1880 +to be definite--is that entitled "Mutual Admirationists." It really +dates itself. It is descriptive of one of the moods of "passionate +Brompton." The satire of the three admiring ladies is perfect. In our +own time ladies have gazed like this at genius. Sometimes genius is +really there, sometimes it is not--but the profound and undying belief +of women in it, often expressed beautifully as well as absurdly, is the +rain from heaven enabling it to thrive. In the expressive drawing of the +faces and the bearing of the three ladies in this picture we have du +Maurier's real humour--its reality in its closeness to life, and his +genius in expressing through contour the whole tale of strange aesthetic +enthusiasm. + +In an earlier part of the book we showed that the artist exposed +"aestheticism" from the inside. He hardly draws any figures so happily as +those of bored, poetic youths. In _Sic Transit Gloria Mundi_ he does not +depict "The Duke" of the scene half so convincingly as the young gossip +talking to the Duchess. No one else in the world could have drawn so +well that young man, with his weak, but Oxford voice--it is almost to be +heard--and tired but graceful manners. + +The drawing "Post-Prandial Pessimists" is not so sympathetic--which +means that it is not so intimate in touch and full of knowledge. The +straight mechanical lines with which the clothes are drawn are rather +meaningless. This treatment represents a convention, and a bad one, +because it covers the paper without really conveying the elasticity of +clothing or the animation of muscle determining its folds. At this stage +of his career du Maurier has begun to work rather mechanically and by a +recipe; he is less curious of form as it actually is to be observed, and +more content with just making a drawing in as neat and as businesslike a +way as possible, with the wording of the legend uppermost in his +thoughts. The artist is disappearing in the "_Punch_ Artist." The +drawing of detail, for instance, inclines to be blotty; it is no +longer affectionately done. At least the pre-Raphaelite in du Maurier is +now dead. The artist's early drawings, where his native tastes break +into expression, are pre-Raphaelite in feeling. He made a bad +impressionist, a thoroughly bad imitator of Keene's success with +impressionism. He lost what was most his own when he "threw over" his +belief in glamour, and took to laughing at his own enthusiasms; when he +ceased to confine his mockery to things that he hated, as he hated the +aesthetic movement. The gods revenged his satire of the inspiration of +the pre-Raphaelites in the _Tale of Camelot_ by taking that inspiration +away from himself. + +[Illustration: "Sic Transit Gloria Mundi!" + +"By the way, Duchess, supposing that we _do_ succeed in getting the +House of Lords abolished this Session, won't it be a great blow to the +Duke?" + +"Yes, if he ever hears of it; but I shan't tell him, you know!" + + +_Punch_, March 22, 1884. ] + +The drawing "Things one would rather have expressed Differently" +(reproduced opposite page 194) represents du Maurier's final phase at +its very best. It has the precision of workmanship of a thing executed +to a well-tried recipe. It is dainty as well as precise; and still in +the way the dimpling of soft dress fabric is touched in, sympathetic, +and characteristic of the earlier du Maurier. It belongs to the _Trilby_ +period, but is better than the illustrations to _Trilby_. + + +Section 3 + +The unpublished sketches which we have been allowed to reproduce from du +Maurier's private sketch-book, and which we are using as end pieces, are +very interesting. In the strictest artistic sense there is very little +of the art of pen-drawing to-day. In the work done with the pen for +modern illustration the inking-in is too much of an after process of ink +upon pencil work. The quality of the drawing is really determined by the +pencil, which is the actual medium of work. In going over the pencil +work the ink-line follows it in many cases so closely that it cannot +assert the characteristics of penmanship. But in making preliminary +small studies for a picture with the pen, an artist, feeling less +necessity for a certain kind of accuracy, often uses the pen much more +freely, sympathetically, and happily because he is actually drawing with +it and not merely following over forms determined first in another +medium. We have printed the reproductions from the sketch-book about +their original size. Many of them express the freer qualities of real +pen-drawing--an autographic character in the line-work akin to that +secured in original etching. The pen is an instrument that works best on +a small scale, in which it can be manipulated flexibly in the fingers; +in this it is like the etching-needle itself. The artist working direct +with his pen has before him while he draws the actual effect of his ink +on paper, instead of having to imagine it in advance while he works out +his subject in pencil. The vignette of the man lying back in his chair +near the leaded window (page 147) has qualities in the shadow of the +window that we look to find in vain in du Maurier's professional work. +It is a sympathetic pen-drawing; the lines express much more than a +formula--they secure a dramatic play of shadow. + +This memorandum--for that is what the drawing is--was, we believe, never +used by du Maurier, though some of the sketches appearing here--that, +for instance, of the lady with a child in her arms (page 64), and that +of the girl in a window-seat, wearing a frilled dress (facing page +176)--can be found serving as initial letters and head-pieces in the +early _Cornhill Magazines_, carried no farther in finish than they are +here. + +So far as one can judge from the study for an illustration to _Wives and +Daughters_ (facing page 36), which we print with the illustration as it +actually appeared in the _Cornhill_, seems to show that the artist could +carry the conception of a drawing a long way without reference to a +model. The sketch of the girl near the window affords us, in its +Whistlerian suggestiveness and refinement, another instance of the +purely artistic qualities which some critics have denied du Maurier the +ability to secure, his professional ready style being too quickly +accepted as completely expressing to the full his artistic nature. Du +Maurier seems to have purchased his great journalistic and worldly +success at the expense of qualities not altogether dissimilar from those +shown in the works of Whistler, his companion at the beginning of his +career. The pen sketch referred to of the girl by the window, the soft +shadow outlining her face and falling upon the chair, the play of the +line that suggests the contour of her figure, all reveal something of +the refined skill, economy, and sensitiveness of expression that +distinguished everything of Whistler's. + +And du Maurier's handwriting--witness the manuscript for his French +version of Byron's "Sun of the sleepless--melancholy star!" which +appeared in the _Illustrated Magazine_--is characteristic of an +exquisite artist in its pleasant nervous beauty of style. It is the +writing of one who could have etched. Etching demands only the most +autographic features of a man's draughtsmanship; it prevents him from +spreading himself in the irrelevancies of space-covering lines necessary +in work done to meet the demand of the Editor's measure. The demand must +have its effect on those who meet it, in diluting the intimate quality +of their work, so that it is not always easy to estimate the real +strength of artistic impulse in it. + +As art becomes more self-expressive it becomes more subjective; it +demands that the student of it shall enter into the artist's feelings; +it does not go out to meet him and explain itself after the fashion of +the humbler forms of illustration with their purely objective ideal. It +is only an educated public that will allow an illustrator the +spontaneous style of drawing that some of the wittiest French +illustrators indulge in. In England the demand for what is wrongly +inferred to be good draughtsmanship has quenched spontaneity in +illustration. + +Photographs, which are driving pen illustrations out of the illustrated +papers, are in themselves many of them highly artistic and beautiful, +but in another sense familiarity with photographs has damaged the +public sense of art and lost us the taste for merry, irresponsible +freedom of drawing. There was no poverty in du Maurier's skill in +illustration; but one is compelled to believe his resources as an artist +never fully revealed themselves for the lack of the encouragement which +only a small cultivated public is prepared to give. He reconciled +himself to the big public with its less refined standard. His companion +Whistler remained loyal to the few who, by their quick response, could +follow the work of his genius in its last refinements. Du Maurier had +more artistic energy than Whistler, but he lived in a less exalted +artistic mood. Comparison of this kind would be irrelevant but for the +fact that behind all du Maurier's work in _Punch_ there seems to hover +an artist of a different kind from the one which it was possible for Mr. +Punch to employ. + +[Illustration: Post-Prandial Pessimists + +SCENE--The smoking-room at the Decadents. + +_First Decadent_ (M.A., Oxon.). "After all, Smythe, what would Life be +without Coffee?" + +_Second Decadent_ (B.A., Camb.). "True, Jeohnes, True! And yet, after +all, what is Life _with_ Coffee?" + +_Punch_, October 15, 1892.] + + +Section 4 + +Sometimes we hear critics discussing whether beauty is or is not the +object of Art. As a matter of fact it does not really matter much +whether beauty is the object, since it is always the result of true +art. Craft is the language of an artist's sympathies--inspiration +flagging at the point where sympathy evaporates. The quality of craft is +the barometer of the degree of the artist's response to some aspect of +life. Absence of beauty in craftsmanship indicates absence of +inspiration, the failure to respond to life. + +Though du Maurier fell short of Keene in breadth of inspiration, there +were still aspects of life which he represented better than that master, +phases of life which he approached with greater eagerness. He expressed +perfectly once and for all in art the life of the drawing-room in the +great days of the drawing-room, as did Watteau the life of the Court in +the great days of a Court. Men take their rank in art by expressing +completely something which others have expressed incidentally. + +There is now the glamour of the past upon du Maurier's work in _Punch_. +The farther we are away in distance of time from the date of the +execution of a work of art the more legendary and fabulous its tale +becomes. In good work forgotten costumes seem bizarre but not +preposterous. Whenever in a picture a thing looks preposterous--except +in the art of caricature, and du Maurier was not a caricaturist--the +representation of it in the picture is a bad one. We never find in the +paintings of Vandyke, Velasquez, Gainsborough, or other great artists, +however difficult the period of fashion with which they had to deal, +anything preposterous--always something beautiful, however unreasonable +in ornamentation and clothes. Sometimes it is said that beauty and +simplicity are the same. But we have to remember that complexity remains +simple whilst unconsciousness of complexity remains. There were several +periods of dress that retained beauty and complexity side by side. We +find beauty to-day in the avoidance of complexity, because, being at +last really civilised, we are impatient of irrelevance even in dress. Du +Maurier was never for a moment conscious that there was in all the +rigmarole of Victorian costume and decoration anything redundant. He +seemed to take, in decoration for instance, the draped mantelpiece with +its bows of ribbons, and pinned fans quite as seriously as Velasquez +took the hooped skirt in costume. Artifice is fascinating in those with +whom it is natural to be artificial. When du Maurier thought he +recognised merely a passing "fashion" and hit out at it, he made far +less interesting pictures for posterity than when he took the outward +aspect of the age he lived in as being in the natural order of things. + + +Section 5 + +The Victorian age--which invented _Punch_, the greatest humorous paper +the world has ever known--had no sense of humour. It was the age of +serious people. The secret of the character of _Punch_ as an organ of +satire is that it represents the times, scorning only what the English +people scorn. This representative attitude is, I believe, quite puzzling +to many editors of foreign publications, who seem to conceive the +business of satire to be mockery of everything. + +At one happy period of its career _Punch_ set itself a very high +artistic standard. The paper intended to avail itself of the services of +whatever artistic genius it could attach to itself by attractive +emoluments. It then pieced out its satiric business among its +distinguished staff, above everything else artists, perhaps not one of +them animated with that fervour of attack which is the genius of foreign +caricature. These men, by their several temperaments, founded the +characteristics and traditions of _Punch_. They were perfectly +friendly, not at all anxious to make themselves unpleasant; and the +traditions of _Punch_ remain the same to this day. It would always +rather laugh with people than against them. + + +Section 6 + +Du Maurier's novels are a proof of what an illustrator he was by nature; +he seemed to conceive matter and illustration together. It would be +strange to read either of his novels without their drawings. Probably +his tales would have failed of their immediate success but for the +wealth of admirable illustration which make them unique among novels. +The illustrations increase perceptibly the appeal of the text. The +draughtsmanship is so well identified with its purpose, that we think of +it always in connection with a "page." In these days, when art editors +think that any picture reduced to size will make an "illustration," it +is pleasant to take down our old _Punches_. Qualities of impressionism +which are everything in a picture hanging on a wall to be seen across +the breakfast table, will seldom be made suitable for book-embellishment +simply by process of reduction. + +Du Maurier established a more intimate relationship with the public who +admired his drawings than any humorous artist has. In America, where for +many years the opinion of English Society seems to have been formed from +his drawings, the unseen author of them was thought of quite +affectionately. The immediate success of his novels there took its rise +from this fact. The personal letters which he received from America with +the success of _Trilby_ ran into many hundreds. There must have been +something to account for all this--some curious flavour in everything he +did, just one of those secret influences which so often put the +technical rules of criticism out of court in dealing with an artist's +work. + +He succeeded to Leech in the Society subjects, but he himself has not +had a successor in these themes. No one has been able to enter the same +field as worthily, for instance, as Mr. Raven-Hill entered a field once +worked by Keene. There have been better draughtsmen--from the +photographic point of view--than du Maurier attempting to fill his +place. But "a place" on a newspaper can only be filled by a personality. +It is artistic personality that has been wanting in recent years in +_Punch_ on the side of the fashionable satire which Leech and du Maurier +successively had made their own. + +We have pointed out that his work in _Punch_ was at its best when he was +going most into Society. That is characteristic of all artists--that +their inspiration flames or dies in proportion to the immediacy of their +contact with actuality. Having chosen the world for his theme, he could +make nothing of it when he ceased to go out. In his earlier and middle +period, living in evening-clothes, he drew with an inexhaustible +impulse. When he thought he had his "world" by heart and could +reconstruct with the aid of some obliging friends who consented to pose, +he gave us pleasant pictures of his friends posing, but the great record +he had put together in the sixties, seventies, the early eighties of the +London of his time was at an end. Then it was that he repeated his +formulae, his "Things one would have expressed otherwise," and others of +like series without introducing any freshness of situation, carrying out +the brief dialogues with figures in which there was little variation of +character--as little variation as there is in the same model employed on +two different days. All this has been touched upon in this book, but +we must insist upon it, for the memory of the real du Maurier has +nothing so much to fear as our memory of du Maurier when he was, as an +artist, not quite himself. + +[Illustration: Things One Would Rather have Expressed Differently + +_Fair Hostess_. "Good-night, Major Jones. We're supposed to breakfast at +nine; but we're not very punctual people. Indeed, the later you appear +to-morrow morning, the better pleased we shall all be!" + +May 13, 1893.] + +We hope we have performed the funeral of the less deserving side of his +work, thereby releasing the immortal part of it to the fuller +recognition due to it from connoisseurs. + +All du Maurier's drawings in his best period are distinguished by the +sharpness of contrast between black and white in them. Ruskin, whilst +approving in his _Art of England_ of du Maurier's use of black to +indicate colour, thought he carried the black and white contrast to +chess-board pattern excess. In later years, submitting to the influence +of Keene's method, in which black is always used to secure effects of +tone instead of colour, du Maurier's style underwent a transformation +which, from the purely artistic point of view, was not to its advantage. +Keene's method was justified in his extreme sensitiveness to what +painters define as "values"--the relation in tone of one surface to +another. This particular kind of sensitiveness was not characteristic of +du Maurier's vision, nor was a style so dependent upon subtlety of the +kind suited to express his mind. And here it is interesting to emphasise +the connection which is so often overlooked between temperament and +style. In the observation of human character itself du Maurier always +perceived the broad and distinctive features; the broad ones of type +rather than the subtle ones of individuals; things for him were either +black or white, beautiful or ugly. The twilight in which beauty and +ugliness merge, in which the heroic and the villainous mingle, was +unknown to him--a region in which the white figure of a hero is as +impossible as the black one of a real villain. He observes subtly enough +the airs of those who interest him, but he is not interested in +everybody. He doesn't think much of people who, through lack either of +physical or moral stature, can enter the drawing-room unperceived. He is +not sympathetic to neutral characters. It was because the Victorians +cultivated magnificence that his somewhat rhetorical art described them +with such reality. His pictures were a mirror to the age. Keene was like +Shakespeare--the types he drew might change in costume with the times, +but would reappear in every generation. But du Maurier only drew +Victorians. And thus his art has that vivid local colour which is the +vital characteristic of effective satire. + +It is significant that the artist had nursed throughout his youth an +enthusiasm for Byron. Until the influence of Mr. Bernard Shaw had +chilled the air, England remained under the spell of that romantic poet. +The Victorians in everything betrayed the love of glamour. They exalted +the unknown Disraeli out of sheer delight at his Byronic ability to +irradiate everything with romance. There has never been a moment like +the present in which there is a complete absence of pride in tradition, +which is pleasure in romance. But the reason is simple. Our traditions +belong to the pre-Industrial time. The romance of the Victorians was a +last glow in the sky. We might even go as far as to read an occult +significance into the art of Turner, the great painter of the sunset. We +nowadays go back to du Maurier's pictures, where the after-glow remains, +and they seem separated from us by something thicker than time, as if a +great wall had been built up between the age of the twopenny tube and +that of the carriage-and-pair. And lest there should remain a link +between them, over which we might be sentimental, the face of Buckingham +Palace is to be despoiled, the long grey outline, characteristic of +English monarchy in its reticence and repose, is, we imagine, to give +place to something in the image of a prosperous Insurance Office. + +Already du Maurier's art is very precious; the environment of the people +whom he depicted is everywhere being smashed up. Our curiosity is +sharpened for everything that remains to reflect those people to us. Our +debt to the mirror of du Maurier's art increases every hour. + +[Illustration] + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE DU MAURIER, THE SATIRIST OF +THE VICTORIANS*** + + +******* This file should be named 14392.txt or 14392.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/4/3/9/14392 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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