"CHANG."
(Drawn by G. du Maurier. By Courtesy of the Fine Art Society.)
Like Keene, too, Mr. du Maurier loved to put his own dogs into Punch. Whether it was his magnificent St. Bernard, "Chang," whose seven-foot skeleton now graces the Royal College of Surgeons, or his little terrier, "Don," or his dachshund, "Punch," they have all played their part in public and justified their existence as models, and have in their time been the pets as much of you and me as of their legal owner. But, for all his connoisseurship in dogs, Mr. du Maurier is woefully deficient in certain forms of sportsmanlike knowledge, and could he but have heard the howls in the cricket world a few years since when he ventured on depicting a "mixed match," and showed the wickets about forty yards apart, he would almost have wished the excellent joke untold. Herein, of course, he was not more ignorant than his friend Keene, who had to be specially coached (yet with what disastrous results!) when he wished to present a picture involving the "placing" of the field.
"DON."
(Drawn by G. du Maurier.)
Apart from his artistic services to Punch, Mr. du Maurier has been a contributor to its pages of verse and prose, comparable with some of the best that has appeared there. Who can forget his admirable nonsense-verses, his "Vers Nonsensiques à l'usage des Familles Anglaises," or his exquisite fooling in his "Shalott" poem, or his "Alphabet" verses, or his vers de société? They worthily heralded the novelist as we know him now, who is also the author of one of the most brilliant lectures—brimming over with happy thought and sparkling epigram—that have been composed in recent years. It is by his long, varied, and effective service that Mr. du Maurier has to be recognised as one of the four artists—Leech, Keene, and Tenniel being the others—who bore the chief share in raising Punch to his pinnacle, and he is to be named with Keene as a truthful recorder of the life and humours of Society during the last forty years of the nineteenth century. But if it is for this achievement, and for his delightful genius that he is primarily esteemed in Whitefriars and throughout the English-speaking world, it is for himself and his own good-humour that "Kiki"—as he is known to his intimates—has been regarded with affection and admiration by his colleagues during the long period of his honourable, dignified, and brilliant connection.
For the space of one-and-twenty years—a period which drew to a close in 1895—Mr. du Maurier has lived and worked in his house near Hampstead Heath, from which he has wrought so many backgrounds for his Punch pictures. Whitby, Scarborough, Boulogne, as well as Paris and London, have oftentimes afforded him local colour; but you get to learn Hampstead as you look at his drawings better than any of the others, and to know his sanctum—his salon-studio. Its characteristic bits, its bow-window, its Late-Gothic fireplace, its window-seat, are all familiar. And here the artist's model has latterly been the draughtsman's more constant companion, for "the older I grow," says Mr. du Maurier, "the more careful, the more of a student I become." So, for every Punch drawing he now makes beautiful pencil studies which, in my opinion, are even more delightful and more dainty than the pen-and-ink pictures they assist in perfecting. Examples of these studies, accurately and simply drawn, are here reproduced, and they will be seen to reveal the draughtsman's graceful artistry more completely than any other work in his recognised medium.
PENCIL STUDY FOR "PUNCH" PICTURE.
(By George du Maurier.)