George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians

by T. Martin Wood

"That Keene could have drawn the lovely be-Worthed young ladies and the splendidly proportioned and frock-coated young men with which Mr. du Maurier delights us week by week, not to speak of the god-like hero of his charming novel, I do not think anyone can doubt, had he set himself to do it, but it was part of the ineradicable Bohemianism of his character and the realistic bent of his genius that made him shun the representation of what he considered artificial and an outrage upon nature."

This, it will perhaps be admitted, is not very good art-criticism. Though in justice to its author it must be said that he did not wish to be regarded as Keene's critic as well as biographer.

An artist does not argue with himself that he will shun the representation of one particular side of life. He simply leaves it alone because he cannot help it; it does not attract him. He draws just that which interests him most and in the way in which it interests him; and exactly to the measure of his interest does his drawing possess vitality. Keene might have expressed with pungency his sense of certain things as being artificial and outrageous, but as long as his feelings towards them remained like that he could not express himself about them in any other way, certainly not in du Maurier's way—that is, with du Maurier's skill.

To the extent to which there is a glamour and a beauty in fashion du Maurier is a realist. People who only now and then become sensible of the charm in things are provoked by its strangeness in art, and call it romance, their definition for an untrue thing.

§3

During the period of thirty-six years over which du Maurier contributed to Punch the paper took upon itself a character unlike anything that had preceded it in comic journalism; it created a tradition for itself which placed it beside The Times—the "Thunderer," as one of the institutions of this country, recognised abroad as essentially expressive of national character. English humour, like American and French, has its own flavour; it lacks the high and extravagant fantasy that is so exhilarating in America; it avoids the subtlety of France; it is essentially a laughing humour. The Englishman, who cannot stand chaff himself, always laughs at others. It is curious that while an Englishman's conventions rest upon dislike of what is odd and fantastic—precisely the two most well-known sources of humour—he yet has a sense of humour. The first aim of every Englishman is to acquire a manner of some dignity. It is the breaking down of that dignity in other people that to his eyes places them in a light that is funny.

English humour seems to find its object in physical rather than mental aspects. The very notable feature of du Maurier's work was that it refined upon the characteristics of English humour; it dealt always with people placed by an absurd speech, or an unlucky gesture, in a foolish position—a position the shy distress of which was a physical experience. Du Maurier's humour was also English in its kindness; the points that are scored against the unfortunate object of it are the points that may be scored against the laugher himself to-morrow. His pictures were a running commentary upon the refinements of our manners and upon the quick changes of moral costume that fresh situations in the social comedy demand.

One thing peculiarly fitted the artist to be the satirist of English Society—his love of the comedy of people by nature honest finding themselves only able to get through the day with decent politeness by the aid of "the lie to follow." English people, Puritan by ancestry and by inclination, are nevertheless driven into frequent subterfuge by their good nature, and having pared their language and gesture of that extravagance in expression which they despise in the foreigner, they are thrown back upon a naturalness that betrays them in delicate situations. The consequence is that it is in Anglo-Saxon Society at its best that the art of delicate fence in conversation has been brought to its highest pitch. There the clairvoyance is so great that words can be used economically in relation to the realities of life, and are consequently often adopted merely as a screen before the feelings.

We have to realise how much more than any one preceding him in graphic satire du Maurier was able to dispense with exaggeration. Nevertheless, the studied avoidance of exaggeration has not had the happiest effect as a precedent in the art of Punch. Without du Maurier's sensitive response to the whole comedy of drawing-room life the tendency has been to lapse into the merely photographic.