The Martian: A Novel

by George Du Maurier

"Here lies Kitty, full of grace;
Died of an abbess in her face!"

This was her first attempt at verse‑making, and here's her last, from the French of Sully‑Prudhomme:

"If you but knew what tears, alas!
One weeps for kinship unbestowed,
In pity you would sometimes pass
My poor abode!
"If you but knew what balm, for all
Despond, lies in an angel's glance,
Your looks would on my window fall
As though by chance!
"If you but knew the heart's delight
To feel its fellow‑heart is by,
You'd linger, as a sister might,
These gates anigh!
"If you but knew how oft I yearn
For one sweet voice, one presence dear,
Perhaps you'd even simply turn
And enter here!"

"If you but knew what tears, alas!
One weeps for kinship unbestowed,
In pity you would sometimes pass
My poor abode!
"If you but knew what balm, for all
Despond, lies in an angel's glance,
Your looks would on my window fall
As though by chance!
"If you but knew the heart's delight
To feel its fellow‑heart is by,
You'd linger, as a sister might,
These gates anigh!
"If you but knew how oft I yearn
For one sweet voice, one presence dear,
Perhaps you'd even simply turn
And enter here!"

She was only just seventeen when she wrote them, and, upon my word, I think they're almost as good as the original!

Her intimate friendship with Chucker‑out, the huge St. Bernard, lasted for nearly both their lives, alas! It began when they both weighed exactly the same, and I could carry both in one arm. When he died he turned the scale at sixteen stone, like me.

It has lately become the fashion to paint big dogs and little girls, and engravings of these pictures are to be seen in all the print‑sellers' shops. It always touches me very much to look at these works of art, although—and I hope it is not libellous to say so—the big dog is always hopelessly inferior in beauty and dignity and charm to Chucker‑out, who was champion of his day. And as for the little girls—Ah, mon Dieu!

Such pictures are not high art of course, and that is why I don't possess one, as I've got an æsthetic character to keep up; but why they shouldn't be I can't guess. Is it because no high artist—except Briton Riviere—will stoop to so easily understood a subject?

A great master would not be above painting a small child or a big dog separately—why should he be above putting them both in the same picture? It would be too obvious, I suppose—like a melody by Mozart, or Handel's "Harmonious Blacksmith," or Schubert's Serenade, and other catchpenny tunes of the same description.

I was also very intimate with Chucker‑out, who made more of me than he even did of his master.