LIFE OF THE ARTIST
§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.
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 Château 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 Elysées. 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! Arrêtez! s'il vous plaît," 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 Elysées. In the artist's manhood the ground and first floor were a café, 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.
§ 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 Fouquière, 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 Ségur'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."
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:—
§ 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.
§ 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.
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.
In 1856, at the age of twenty-two, he returned to Paris with his mother, to live in the Rue Paradis-Poissonière, 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.
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.
§ 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.
§ 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.
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.
§ 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.
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.
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.
§ 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.
Manuscript of "Nocturne"
"Sun of the Sleepless—Melancholy Star!"—BYRON.
Translated into French by George du Maurier.
The English Illustrated Magazine, September 13, 1886.
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.
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 Athenæum 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 Athenæum 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 æsthetic 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.
§ 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."
George du Maurier
From a photograph.
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.'"
"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 début), 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 à 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."
§ 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 confrère, 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 confrères, you will find it in the artistic sketches of the men and women in La Bohème" "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.
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:
Pennell's Life of Whistler.
Archibald Constable & Co.