spirits with this condition, but many of its remedies were worse than
the disease. The _nouveau_ artist-craftsman stood less chance than
anybody of getting back to the secret of noble things, having forsaken
the path of pure utility which, wherever it may go for a time, always
leads back again to beauty. The disappearance of beauty for a time need
not have been a cause of despair. Beauty will always come back if it is
left alone. People had been swept off their feet with delight at what
machinery could do, and they expected beauty to come out of it as a
product at the same pace as everything else. It was not a mistake to
expect it from any source, but from this particular source it could only
come with time. There is evidence that it is on the way. And yet though
the results of crude mechanical industrialism spoilt the outward
appearance of the whole of the Victorian age, the earlier part at least
of that time was one of marked personal refinement. We have but to look
at portraits by George Richmond and others to receive a great impression
of distinction. And this fact enables us to throw into clearer light the
exact nature of du Maurier's work. If we seek for evidence in the old
volumes of _Punch_ for the distinction of the early Victorians we shall
not find it. We shall merely conceive instead a dislike for the type of
gentleman of the time. Leech and his contemporaries did nothing more for
their age than to make it look ridiculous for ever. But du Maurier gives
us a real impression of the Society in which he moved. His ability to
satirise society while still leaving it its dignity is unique. It may be
said to be his distinctive contribution to the art of graphic satire.
It gave to the Anglo-Saxon school its present-day characteristic,
putting upon one of the very lightest forms of art the stamp of a noble
time. The point is that whilst du Maurier thus deferred to the dignity
of human nature he remained a satirist, not a humorist merely, as was
Keene.
[Illustration]
II
THE ART OF DU MAURIER
§ 1
If we wish to estimate the art of du Maurier at its full worth we must
try and imagine _Punch_ from 1863 without this art, and try for a moment
to conceive the difference this absence would make to our own present
knowledge of the Victorians; also to the picture always entertained of
England abroad.
If we are to believe du Maurier's art England is a petticoat-governed
country. The men in his pictures are often made to recede into the
background of Victorian ornament merely as ornaments themselves. As for
the women, the mask of manner, the pleasantness concealing every shade
of uncharitableness, all the arts of the contention for social
precedence--in the interpretation of this sort of thing du Maurier is
often quite uncanny, but he is never ruthless.
We have noticed that when du Maurier tried to draw ugly people he often
only succeeded in turning out a figure of fun. Not to be beautiful and
charming is to fail of being human, seems the judgment of his pencil.
This was his limitation. And another was that, whilst professing to be
concerned with humanity as a whole, he nearly always broke down with
types that outraged the polite standard. He was a master in the
description of Bishops and Curates, Generals and Men-about-town, but he
broke down when he came to "the out-sider." And, as we have already
pointed out, he seldom got away from types to individuals.
In the last respect, however, we gain more perhaps than we lose. We gain
a very vivid impression of the whole tone of the society in his time.
And the fact of his art passing over the individual, for ever prevented
it from cruelty, for to be cruel the individual must be hit. He did not
satirise humanity, but Society. And his criticism was not of its
members, but of its ways. Except in the case of children, he left
unrevealed the individual heart that Keene so sympathetically exposed.
He made an original--and who will deny it?--a unique contribution to
the history of satire, when he went to work through literalness and care
for beauty in a field where nearly all previous success had rested with
a sort of ruffianism. But chiefly one praises Heaven for the nurseryful
of delightful children he let loose in his pages against the army of
little monsters who reign as children in the Comic Press, bearing
witness as they do to the unpleasant kind of mind even an artist can
possess.
Though he ridiculed "Camelot," his own tradition, as we have shown, was
received from the Arthurian source. His chivalry gave his satire a very
delicate edge. It was infinitely more cutting in showing the misfit of
vulgarity with beauty than in showing vulgarity alone.
But du Maurier's gentlemanliness narrowed his range. It forced him into
putting down something preposterous instead of a true type as soon as he
wished to create "a bounder." He found it impossible to get inside of a
"bounder"--to be for the time a "bounder" himself. It is necessary for
an artist to be able to be every character that he would create. And
perhaps a satirist never wounds others so much as when he most wounds
himself. Thackeray succeeded with snobbery because he had enough of it
to go on with himself. We have shown the success of du Maurier with the
æsthetes to go upon similar lines. The soul of satire is very often the
bitterness of confession. In his very style the satirist of the æsthetes
stood confessed almost as one of their number, whether he wished this to
be seen or not--at least as one of the romantic school from whom they
immediately descended. But he was genuine; where Postlethwaite and
Maudle posed, his irritation was with the pose, the pretended
preoccupation with beauty. He genuinely admired the Florentine revival,
and to admire is to be jealous of those who take in vain. He wished to
show up the "æsthetes" as the parasites they were, trading socially upon
an inspiration too fragrant to be traded with at all.
Du Maurier, who assuredly knew what elegance was as well as any man of
his time, took a great delight in pointing out to all whom it might
concern, by illustration, that if there was any beauty of representation
possible to him, as an artist, in depicting modern society, it was not
in anything put forward in the shape of costume by the ladies of the
æsthetic movement, but in the unacknowledged genius of ordinary
dressmakers.
It was in his time that Philistinism met its match in Oscar Wilde, and
for the first time in its history felt its self-complacency shaken. Up
to that time it had been very proud of itself. With the loss of that
pride it blundered, and it remained for du Maurier to show that the
height of Philistinism in a Philistine is to pretend not to be a
Philistine.
He had always seen what it would do present-day Londoners a world of
good to see as clearly, that it is just those who affect, and who, by
their lack of artistic constitution, are incapable of doing more than
merely affecting, the understanding of art, who are the worst enemies it
has in the world. He preferred the open Philistine. And so do we. The
affectation described lends to art an artificial support which betrays
those who attempt to rest any scheme for the promotion of art upon it.
But though du Maurier was not a Philistine he had the genius of
respectability. His pencil could get on well with Bishops. It is easy
enough to put a model into a Bishop's apron and gaiters, but that does
not secure the drawing of a Bishop. It is necessary to observe that du
Maurier found definite lines with his pencil for something so abstract
as Broad-Churchmanship. The High-Churchman, with his perilous
inclination to fervour, he was afraid of as a disturbing element, and
kept him out of his drawings.
[Illustration]
§2
We have noted that it was du Maurier's peculiar genius to respond to
"attainment" in life, even as the Greeks did, rather than to life's
pathetic and romantic struggle. Du Maurier, we believe, was of opinion
that if circumstances--he probably meant Editorial ones--had determined
that he should apply his art to the lower classes he would have
succeeded as well there as he did with Society. We prefer to believe
that the Editorial instinct in the direction it gave to his work knew
better. Many opportunities were afforded him for being as democratic in
spirit as he liked, but he left such opportunities alone. His
cab-runners run about in rain-shrunken suits that were obviously made in
Savile Row; everyone of them, they are broken-down gentlemen. Coachmen,
gardeners, footmen, pages, housekeepers, cooks, ladies' maids, and all
those who move in the domestic circle of the upper classes he could
draw, but his taste in life is a marked one, and that means it is a
limited one. It is as marked as Meredith's, and it is much of the same
kind; like that writer's great lady, Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, he
preferred persons "that shone in the sun." This had nothing whatever to
do with qualities of the heart; it was all an æsthetic predilection. The
moment his pencil touched the theme of life lived upon as gentle a plane
as possible, then something was kindled at its point which betrayed the
presence of genuine inspiration. The inspiration was of the same nature
as Watteau's, the grace of a certain aspect of life making an æsthetic
appeal. Let this attraction to what is gracious in appearance, however,
be kept distinct from the effect made by the spectacle of wealth upon
the snob. Those who show us the beauty in the world, enrich the world
with that much of beauty.
[Illustration: Pencil Studies from the Artist's Sketch Book]
In his _Life and Letters of Charles Keene_, Mr. G.S. Layard[1] says
this:--
"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.
The similitude we have already described between du Maurier's art with
the pencil and the art of the modern novel is not complete until we have
extended it further in the direction of a comparison with novels of
George Meredith and Henry James in particular. Like these two writers du
Maurier loved comedy, and your appreciator of comedy cannot stand the
presence of a "funny man." In the pages of _Punch_ it was Leech and not
du Maurier who first replaced the art of the merely "funny man." He
began with the pencil the kind of art that would answer to Meredith's
description of the comic muse. Throughout _The Egoist_, by George
Meredith, a comedy in which Clara Middleton's life comes near to being
tragic, the air would clear at any moment if Sir Willoughby and Clara
had not both lost through over-civilisation the power of saying
precisely what they mean. The book is the story of how Clara tries to
find words, and of how, when she finds them, the conversational genius
of Willoughby seemingly deflects them from the meaning she intends them
to bear. It was in the mid-region between two people in conversation
where false constructions are put by either party upon what is said that
du Maurier, like Meredith himself, perceived the source of comedy was to
be found.
§4
We have already defined the drawing-room as a Victorian institution. It
belonged to an age that was willing to sacrifice too much to
appearances--one in which everyone seemed to live for appearances. It
was a sort of stage, occupied by people in afternoon or evening
costume, with even the chairs arranged, not where they were wanted, but
where they made a good appearance. Oscar Wilde suggested to the
Victorians that they shouldn't _arrange_ chairs; they should let them
occur. Against the false setting manners were bound to become
false--good manners becoming almost synonymous with perfect insincerity.
Perhaps the only thing that ever really came to life in a drawing-room
was the æsthetic movement! At its worst it was what we have described
it; at its best it was a sort of blind protest against the patterns of
chair-covers that the eye was bound to absorb while listening to the
inanities of drawing-room conversation. It is significant that the
æsthetic movement was a man's movement. Until the leader of the movement
appeared on the scene, the decoration of the Victorian, as distinct from
the Georgian parlour, or that of every other period, was woman's
business. Most of the Victorian patterns embodied naturalistic and
sentimental representations of flowers. It was with the disappearance of
the eighteenth-century tradition, when drawing-room decoration passed
out of the hands of men, that beauty disappeared. Women took to heaping
masses of drapery on to the mantelpieces which had once displayed
classic proportion; on to this drapery they pinned all sorts of horrible
fans. Du Maurier exposed it all, and he exposed, too, the æsthetes to
whom the salvation of the appearance of a suburban drawing-room could
come to mean more than anything else in life. Their fault was not
confined to this. He always brought their "intensity" as a charge
against them, for it is of the very genius of good manners to merely
froth about things which, if taken seriously, would tend to destroy
amenity.
[Illustration: Illustration for "A Legend of Camelot"--Part III.
_Punch_, March 17, 1866.
A little castle she drew nigh,
With seven towers twelve inches high....
O Miserie!
A baby castle, all a-flame
With many a flower that hath no name,
O Miserie!
It had a little moat all round:
A little drawbridge too she found;
O Miserie!
On which there stood a stately maid,
Like her in radiant locks arrayed....
O Miserie!
Save that her locks grew rank and wild,
By weaver's shuttle undefiled!...
O Miserie!
Who held her brush and comb, as if
Her faltering hands had waxed stiff,
O Miserie!
With baulkt endeavour! whence she sung
A chant, the burden whereof rung:
O Miserie!
"These hands have striven in vain
To part
These locks that won GAUWAINE
His heart!"]
It is interesting, as an addition to the comparison we have drawn
between Meredith and du Maurier, to note that of the illustrators to
Meredith's own novels it was the latter who seemed to experience life in
a mood similar to the author's. In illustrating _Harry Richmond_ he
secured the Meredithian sense of romance and of pedigree in scenes as
well as people. However modern Meredith's characters were, they were all
the children of old-fashioned people; within them all was the pride of
the family tree, and, in the scenes in which they move, the memory of an
older world. Du Maurier, too, in his art was a patrician, and when he
gave up romance and took to satire pure and simple he put both beauty
and dignity into the world that he described. All the time he was
drawing his Society world others were working the same vein. But to him
alone it seemed to be given to glimpse the splendour of it, and to
suggest the link of romance that holds the present and the past
together.
Let us praise that very wise Editor who, appreciating the artist's
character, confined him to the art most natural to him. What has become
of Editors of this kind to-day? Is not this the very genius of the art
of editing--this and not the wholly fictitious "what the public wants?"
Who knows what the public want but the public themselves? It is the
artist who is allowed by his Editor to go his own way, who takes the
public with him. If he has not the same sympathies as the public no
Editorial direction will save the situation, while it will drive perhaps
a fine artist away to another trade.
§ 5
After the appearance of his first drawing in _Punch_, for more than a
year du Maurier's connection with the paper seems to have been
maintained by the execution of initial letters for it. Mr. W.L.
Bradbury, zealous in the preservation of all records that redound to the
glory of _Punch_, has in one or two instances had pulls taken from the
wood blocks upon special paper. These special proofs show all the charm
of wood engraving. In the case of the initial large C, reproduced on
page 91, Mr. Bradbury's specimen shows the beautiful quality which in
our own time Mr. Sturge Moore and Mr. Pissarro are at such pains to
secure in engravings made for love of the art. One only wishes that the
exigencies of book-production would allow us to attempt rivalry with Mr.
Bradbury's specimen in our reproduction. But we see no reason why
specimens of the wood-printing of du Maurier's work should not be on
view in the British Museum. The "impressions" in old volumes of _Punch_,
after the wear and tear, the opening and the shutting, and the effect of
time are not an adequate record of du Maurier's skill in accommodating
his art to the methods of reproduction of the period.
Moreover, du Maurier was better in securing an effect of painting than
of pure line work with his pen. It is just this effect which suited the
methods of engraving better than those of "process" work. And because it
demanded drawing to a smaller scale, with lines closer together, the
demands of engraving suited the nature of du Maurier's art better than
those of "process" work.
When the modern process came in artists enlarged their drawings so as to
secure delicacy of effect from the result of the reduction in printing.
In such a case they really work for the sake of a result upon the
printed page, and there is consequently less value to be attached to the
original drawing. It generally errs on the side of coarseness. And now
that a trade is driven in original drawings, artists are tempted to give
the purchaser as much in the matter of size for his money as he may
want. And, alas, it is true that many picture buyers do buy according to
measurement, or anything else on earth rather than merit.
Du Maurier could add a reason of his own for availing himself of the
opportunity to enlarge his drawings when he could, namely, that of his
weak sight. But it is certainly not among the large drawings that we
should look for the work that places him in the place we wish to claim
for him.
It will well repay the student of du Maurier's art to look into the
illustration for the novel _Wives and_ _Daughters_ reproduced on page
26. In this very highly finished picture the drawing of all the detail
seems done with the greatest pleasure to the artist. It has not the
breadth of style which du Maurier himself could admire in Keene, but the
line work is intensely sympathetic throughout; there is that enjoyment
in the actual touch of pen to paper which was always characteristic of
Keene, which is always special to great art; which, alas, was not always
characteristic of du Maurier. It is like the touch of a sympathetic
musician. Du Maurier, always generous to his contemporaries, in his
lecture upon art, instances the natural skill of Walker by his success
with the difficulties of drawing a tall hat. But Walker himself has
nothing of this kind better to show than the hat in the picture we are
describing.
§6
In the early eighties the change was made from drawing on wood to
drawing on paper for _Punch_, the drawing being afterwards photographed
on to the wood. Later, metal was made possible as a substitute for wood,
and this enabled illustrations and letterpress to be printed together.
The modern process of reproduction has introduced its own pleasant
qualities into journalism, and because they are different in effect they
do not rival the effect of wood engraving.
The modern methods reproduce the black lines of a drawing direct. But
the most practised engravers cut out the whites of a drawing with their
graver from between the black lines. This undoubtedly allowed the artist
a closer and less restricted use of line than modern illustration shows
us. If the reader examines du Maurier's illustration for _The Adventures
of Harry Richmond_ on page 106, he will be able to see at a glance how,
by cutting out the whites in the multiplicity of ivy leaves, detailed
drawing has been re-interpreted in the engraving with great economy.