Some eminent Victorians: Personal recollections in the world of art and letters

by J. Comyns Carr

Du Maurier was one of the constant attendants at the Arts Club during the afternoon, and was always a delightful companion. He loved discussion, loved especially to appraise and value the different ideals of contemporary painting in eager, and sometimes excited, dispute in regard to the merits of men whose work made, perhaps, a stronger appeal to me than to him. But our talk, even when it was most animated, never grew embittered. With Du Maurier, indeed, that would hardly have been possible, for the innate charm of his nature, linked with a constant desire to be just and fair, even to those towards whom his judgment was sometimes unfavourable, sufficed in itself to keep even the most heated controversy agreeable and urbane.

Despite his partly French origin, or perhaps by reason of it, he possessed an enthusiastic appreciation for the purely English type of beauty, whether in men or women. The athletic sanity of our English life appealed to him strongly, and it was, perhaps, the consciousness of something in himself of the Gallic spirit, something that leaned towards greater refinement and delicacy, that kept him obstinately devoted to the more solid ideals of the land in which he dwelt. It was this, I am sure, that so strongly attracted him to Millais, whose robust character, both as expressed in the man and exhibited in his art, he passionately admired. And I think it was the suspicion of a danger lest he might be tempted to surrender himself to something not so healthy in its outlook that left him with a constant sense of reserve in his appreciation of men like Rossetti and Burne-Jones. And yet he was far too gifted an artist not to be sensible to the genius of both.

But it was as a man, and apart from any profession of faith, that he was so wholly delightful. His professed principles, though always sincerely held and admirably expressed, and his constant respect for the steady decorum of English character, gave scarcely a hint of the special charm of his own temperament. In moments of gaiety his high spirits were infectious, and he became on certain occasions, when the mood stirred him, the veriest and most delightful of Bohemians.

I recall him, at one of the annual feasts at Maidenhead held by a little club called “The Lambs,” keeping the whole table in roars of laughter by an impromptu speech wherein he gave free rein to his humour and fancy—a speech which, I think, made us all feel that his constantly expressed reverence for the English ideal must have occasionally suffered some sense of fatigue that needed for its cure a sudden reversion to the land of his blood. We none of us suspected in those days—he himself perhaps least of all—that he was destined to win such world-wide fame as an author, and it was perhaps not until he became an author that it was possible to realise in what affectionate remembrance he held the days of his studentship in Paris.

Du Maurier’s early contributions to Once a Week scarcely gave more than a hint of that humorous quality which he afterwards developed in the pages of Punch. It was there that he translated with caricature the extravagances and eccentricities of that æsthetic cult which had indeed little counterpart in real life, excepting in so far as they were summed up in the conscious affectations of poor Oscar Wilde.

But at the time they were accepted by the public as in some sense a satire upon the newer school of painting, and—although that, I know, was no part of Du Maurier’s intention—these drawings served in no small degree to encourage the spirit of ridicule with which some of the more serious work of the time was received.

Humour, as we may here perceive, was always at Du Maurier’s command, and yet it is not specially by this quality that his best contributions to Punch are distinguished. They hold a place apart, as compared, for instance, with the caricatures of John Leech or Charles Keene, by reason of a certain grace and beauty which was their constant attribute. They formed a just and sometimes a flattering picture of the English social life of the time, betraying, in the rendering of form and in charm of bearing, the artist’s devotion to that type of English beauty—fitting models for which Du Maurier could always find without wandering beyond the limits of his own home.

One or two of his most highly finished drawings I was enabled to publish in the English Illustrated Magazine, and there is one in particular called “A Nocturne” which shows with what a fine sense of reality he could render on occasion the most delicate effects in landscape.

Du Maurier loved music, and by common consent was an accomplished musician, though his voice boasted no great range or power. But when he chose to sing to his intimate friends—and he never cared to seek a wider audience—it was impossible to resist the taste and charm which belonged to him as surely in music as in the traffic of social life. Even here, however, as in pictorial art, he could never quite determine with himself to what school he owned the strongest allegiance, and I have often heard him declare that he was torn in divided admiration between the perfect vocalisation of a singer like De Soria and the more passionate appeal of some of the later German music as it was interpreted by Henschell.

Richard Doyle—or Dicky Doyle, as he was better known to his countless friends—seemed rather by the quality of his work, which claims a certain kinship with the style of Sir John Gilbert, to belong to an earlier generation, and yet he was well known and well loved by even the youngest of those who were working under a newer impulse.