When I think how easily and spontaneously such sketches dropped from his pen, I am reminded of a passage in one of Mendelssohn's letters to my mother; he sends her the Mailied and says: "This morning a song came to me. I really must write it down for you." So, too, from the first the pen-and-ink compositions came to du Maurier. His talent manifested itself not only in a desire to illustrate this or that incident or adventure, but also in his inexhaustible capacity for making something out of nothing, and as the nothing was never lacking, he might well say: "Dear Bobtail, I will never write without sending my compliments to thine album." His rendering of "Cher Lix," for instance, takes the shape of a graceful monogram, or diplogram, or whatever I ought to call a combination of our two profiles and my name.
He starts a short missive with a sketch of himself seated in his trunk, pipe in mouth, and says: "Dear Bobtail, I write to you out of sheer idleness, so as to have an excuse not to pack up for the next half-hour." Or he draws himself looking over my shoulder whilst I am writing to my sister and puts the supposed context of my letter:—
"Bobtail writes (in German of course):
"I won't write any more, for there's an indiscreet fellow looking over my ——"
"Rag. It's not true, I swear. (For Miss Clara.)"
