The artist went up for his bachot, his baccalaureate degree, at the Sorbonne, and was plucked for his written Latin version. It vexed him and his mother, for they were poor at the time, and it was important that he should do well. His father was then in England. Du Maurier crossed to him before informing him of his failure, miserable with the communication he had to make. They met at the landing at London Bridge, and at the sight of his utterly woebegone face, guessing the truth, his father burst into a roar of laughter, which, said the son afterwards, gave him the greatest pleasure he ever experienced.
His father was scientific, and hated everything that was not science. Du Maurier, with his enthusiasm for Byron, had to meet this attitude as best he could. His father never reproached him for the failure in the bachot examination. He had made up his mind that his son was intended for a scientist, and determined to make him one, putting him as a pupil at the Birkbeck Chemical Laboratory of University College, where he studied chemistry under Dr. Williamson. The son's own ambition at that time was to go in for music and singing. "My father," he said, "possessed the sweetest, most beautiful voice that I have ever heard; and if he had taken up singing as a profession, would most certainly have been the greatest singer of his time. In his youth he had studied music at the Paris Conservatoire, but his family objected to his following the profession, for they were Legitimists and strong Catholics, and held the stage in that contempt that was usual at the beginning of the last century."
The artist himself as a youth was crazy about music, and used to practise his voice wherever and whenever he could. But his father discouraged him. The father died in his arms, singing one of Count de Ségur's songs.
He remained at the Birkbeck Laboratory for two years, leaving there in 1854, when his parent, still convinced of the future before his son in the pursuit of science, set him up on his own account in a chemical laboratory in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury, in the City. The house is still standing. "It was," says du Maurier, "a fine laboratory, for my father, being a poor man, naturally fitted it up in the most expensive style." "The only occasion," he continues, "on which the sage of Barge Yard was able to render any real service to humanity was when he was engaged by the directors of a Company for working certain gold mines in Devonshire which were being greatly boomed, and to which the public was subscribing heavily, to go down to Devonshire to assay the ore. I fancy they expected me to send them a report likely to further tempt the public. If this was their expectation, they were mistaken, for after a few experiments I went back to town and told them that there was not a vestige of gold in the ore. The directors were of course very dissatisfied with this statement, and insisted on my returning to Devonshire to make further investigation. I went and had a good time of it down in the country, for the miners were very jolly fellows; but I was unable to satisfy my employers, and sent up a report which showed the public that the whole thing was a swindle, and so saved a good many people from loss."
Queen Prima-Donna at Home
Chorus. "O, Mamma!—Dear Mamma!—Darling Mamma!! Do leave
off!!!"
(Showing that no one is a prophet in his own country.)
Punch, November 7, 1874.
Du Maurier told the story of this business in Once a Week in 1861; it is written in a highly amusing strain.
We have taken relevant extracts, as follows, from the amusing story, partly because it exhibits the artist for the first time as an Author, and partly because it continues the narrative of his life:—