is due to the fact that they print a more clearly cut line. The line
eaten in by "process" when examined under a very strong magnifying glass
proves to be a slightly jagged one. But we should rejoice that the art
of reproduction for journalistic purposes is free of the laborious
method of engraving, and from the sort of work that was put up by
over-tired engravers when they fought their last round to lose, against
the modern invention of picture reproduction.
There is no rivalry in art. All the rivalry is in the business connected
with it. A wood-engraving possesses a charm of its own for those whose
sense of quality is delicate enough for its appreciation. The life of
this art, apart from the purpose of weekly journalism, is safe. The life
of any art is safe while it commands, as wood engraving does, the
production of any particular effect in a way that cannot be rivalled.
According to Mr. Joseph Pennell, the first really important modern
illustrated book in which wood was substituted for metal engraving
appeared in France in 1830, and this authority asserts that in England,
just before the invention of photographing on wood, some of the most
marvellous engravings appeared that have ever been done in the country.
"It is," he writes, "with the appearance of Frederick Sandys, Rossetti,
Walker, Pinwell, A. Boyd, Houghton, Small, du Maurier, Keene, Crane,
Leighton, Millais, and Tenniel, with the publication of the _Cornhill,
Once a Week, Good Words, The Shilling Magazine_, and such books as
Moxon's _Tennyson_ that the best period of English illustration
begins."
"The incessant output of illustration," he continues, "killed not only
the artists themselves, but the process. In its stead arose a better,
truer method, a more artistic method, which we are even now only
developing."
But there is another side to this question. Illustration has lost
something by the uniformity of style which the modern method encourages.
Keene, whose style was supposed to suffer most at the hands of the
engraver, found it more difficult than anyone to accommodate his free
methods to the rules that govern the results of the modern process.
It may be noted that it was about the time of the transition from
working on wood to work on paper that that slavery to the model began,
which, as we have pointed out, has not in the end been without an
unhappy effect in the loss of spontaneity to English Illustration.
[Illustration: Initial Letter from _The Cornhill_]
As for the art of wood engraving itself, we hope it will now have a
future like that which the arts of lithography and etching are enjoying.
Reproduction by process serves commercial and journalistic purposes far
better. The demands of commerce formed for this art, as it once formed
for lithography, a chrysalis in which it perfected itself.
Reproduction by process serves commercial purposes much better than
ever wood-engraving could, but while the commercial demand for it
lasted, as in the case of the arts of lithography and etching, it
continued to improve; like them, let us hope, destined to find beautiful
wings upon its release from the cramping demands of modern printing
machines, in its practice by artists for sheer love of the peculiar
qualities which are its own. It has been said that wood-engravers killed
their own art so far as journalism was concerned by their surrender to
commerciality with its frequent demand for the ready-to-hand rather than
the superior thing. But his surrender was not the fault of the
engravers, but was rendered inevitable by the advent of the middleman,
to whom application was made by the Press for blocks, and whose
employees all engravers were practically forced into becoming, instead
of being able to retain their independence and make their own terms with
the Press.
§ 7
In the British Museum some of the originals of du Maurier's _Punch_
pictures may be seen. On the margins of these are the pencilled
instructions of the Editor as to the scale of the reproduction, and
very often pencil notes from Artist to Editor. This sort of thing--"If
they have used my page for this week's number, telegraph to me as soon
as you get this and I will have Social ready by 12 to-morrow (that is,
if it be not too late for me.)" Or what is evidently an invitation to
lunch--"Monday at 1 for light usual." The drawing where this particular
note appears is of three little girls with their dolls. The legend in
the artist's handwriting read as follows:--"_My papa's house has got a_
conservatory! _My papa's house has got a_ billiard-room! _My papa's
house has got a_ mortgage!!" This was printed with the much inferior
legend: "Dolly taking her degrees (of comparison): '_My_ doll's wood!'
_My_ doll's composition!' '_My_ doll's wax!'"
Some of these British Museum original drawings still retain in pencil
the price du Maurier put upon them for sale. Of the period when the
artist was drawing on a large scale with a view to reduction there is
one of the "Things one would rather have expressed differently" series
priced at twelve guineas. It gives an indication of the profits du
Maurier sometimes was able to make from the original drawing. For the
sake of comment on the low evening gown the half-dozen figures in this
picture are all in back view. It is rather a dull twelve-guineas-worth.
And this was evidently felt, as it remained unsold. The original of the
very exquisite "Res angusta domi," the beautiful drawing of the nurse by
the child's bed in the children's hospital, which appeared in _Punch_,
vol. cviii. p. 102 (1894), is only priced at "Ten guineas."
Turning over the Museum drawings one often sees the liberties with the
penknife by which the artist would secure difficult effects of snow, or
of light on foliage. And sometimes in the margin there are pencil
studies from which figures in the illustration have been re-drawn. And
nearly always not altogether rubbed out is a first wording of the
legend, repeated in ink in du Maurier's pretty "hand" beneath.
In turning over these drawings one finds him doing much more than merely
suggesting pattern work in such things as wall-papers. There is one
floral wall-paper in particular that we find him working out which will
no doubt prove an invaluable reference another day as to the sort of
decoration in which the subjects of Queen Victoria preferred to live, or
were forced to by their tradesmen. Photographs of du Maurier's studio
which appeared in a Magazine illustrating an interview with him at the
time of the "Trilby" boom, reveal the squat china jars, the leaf fans,
the upholstered "cosy corner" with its row of blue plates, with which
all who know their _Punch_ are familiar, and apparently the very
wall-paper to which we have just referred. It certainly is the mark of a
great artist to take practically whatever is before him for treatment.
The artist with the genius for "interior" subjects seems to be able to
re-interpret ugliness itself very often. Du Maurier's weak eyes
prevented him from bearing the strain of outdoor work. He was
practically driven indoors for his subjects; and in taking what was to
hand--the very environment of the kind of people his drawings
describe--he showed considerable genius. He succeeded in making whole
volumes of _Punch_ into a work of criticism on the domestic art of the
nineteenth century.
[Illustration: Illustration for "The Story of a Feather" 1867.]
Among the useful skits of du Maurier was that upon the conceited young
man concealing appalling ignorance with the display of a still more
appalling indifference to everything. The drawing among the Print-room
series--"_It is always well to be well informed_"--is a good instance.
It reveals a ballroom with couples dancing a quadrille. A lady asks
her partner: "Who's my sister's partner, vis-à-vis, with the star and
riband?" He: "Oh, he--aw--he's Sir Somebody Something, who went
somewhere or othaw to look after some scientific fellaw who was
murdered, or something, by someone--!" The word _othaw_ in this legend
is itself pictorial. Du Maurier was like our own Max Beerbohm in
this--his legends and drawings were inseparable. We find he has actually
penned in the side margin of the drawing the words "othaw fellaw," we
suppose as a possible variant to "scientific fellow," and in the legend
the word "other" has been written over with a thickened
termination--"_aw._" The usual first trial of the speech in pencil
remains but partly obliterated by india-rubber at the top of the
drawing.
In his series of "Happy Thoughts" du Maurier followed the course of the
sort of rapid thought that precedes a tactful reply with real
psychological skill. Take, for instance, his drawing of an artist
sitting gloomily before his fire, caressed by his wife, who bends over
him, saying, "You seem depressed, darling. Have you had a pleasant
dinner?" Edwin: "Oh, pretty well; Bosse was in the chair, of course. He
praised everybody's work this year except mine." Angelina: "Oh! I'm so
glad. _At last_ he is beginning to look upon you as his rival and his
_only_ one." The wings of tact are sympathy. This drawing appeared in
_Punch_, vol. xcvi. p. 222 (1889); it is signed with other drawings from
89 Porchester Terrace, April '89. Drawings in the Museum collection are
signed from "Stanhope Terrace," "Hampstead," "Drumnadrochit," or
apparently from wherever the artist happened to be when executing the
work.
[Illustration]
§8
Among our illustrations there is a portrait of Canon Ainger,
representing the artist as a painter. Du Maurier's colour was never such
that an injustice is done to it by reproducing it only by half-tone
process. The interest of this portrait is in the psychological grasp of
character it seems to show. The painter was in the habit of contributing
interior _genre_ scenes in water-colour to the Old Water-colour Society,
of which he was made an Associate in 1881. That may be said against his
painting, which may be said against the painting of so many eminent
black-and-white men who have changed to the art of painting too late in
the day. It shows failure to think in paint. An artist is only a great
"black-and-white" artist because he thinks in that medium. Possibly, if
there were no such thing as a "black-and-white" art, as we have it in
journalism to-day, some of the greatest men in it would instead have
been great painters. But successful transference to the one art after
unusual mastery has been acquired in the other is rarely witnessed. To
think in line, to see the world as resolving itself into the play of
alternating lines, so to habituate thought and vision to that one
aspect of everything is not the best preparation in the world for seeing
it over again in another art where the element of line is not the chief
incident of the impression to be created. Failure in the one art does
not mean failure as an artist. Those artists who have worked in a
variety of mediums with apparently equal success in each have always
attained the ability to make each medium in turn express the same
personal feeling. But nearly always there is in such cases that
sacrifice of the inherent qualities of one or other of the mediums
employed which a great virtuoso never makes.
Black-and-white men put themselves into an attitude of receptivity
towards that aspect of things which suggests representation in line.
Their acquired sensitiveness in this respect is expressed in the learned
character of their touch in drawing. Painters cultivate a similarly
receptive attitude towards nature, but lay themselves open to receive a
different impression of it. We might say of du Maurier that by the time
he tried to apply himself to painting he had become constitutionally a
black-and-white artist. Moreover, his impaired vision compromised the
more complex range of effect represented in painting in a way that it
never could the simplicity of good black-and-white work. How seriously
threatened du Maurier's sight was at times we may know by the reliance
he put upon being read to by others. Thus only did he manage to keep his
small stock of visual energy in reserve for his artistic work.
§ 9
During the sixties and seventies the artist illustrated many works of
fiction. The most notable instance was Thackeray's _Esmond_ in 1868--a
work which he had long wished to be chosen to illustrate.
Du Maurier had all his life an intense admiration for Thackeray. He
inherited none of Thackeray's bitterness, but upon every other ground as
an author, at least, he descends from Thackeray, notably in the studied
colloquialism of his style when writing, and in a general friendliness
to the Philistine. And in his drawings in _Punch_ his satire is aimed in
the same direction as Thackeray's always was. Like Thackeray, he was
most at home on the plane where a social art, a delicate art of life is
able to flourish. Of the concealed romanticist in du Maurier we have
more than once already spoken. A Romanticist always turns to the past.
Thackeray, in his lectures, also in the house he built for himself, and
in a proposed but never finished history, went back into the past at
least as far as Queen Anne's reign. _Esmond_, also of Queen Anne's
reign, was the expression of a feature of Thackeray's temperament which
never makes its full appearance in any other of his fictions. We believe
that it was his own favourite among his works. But Thackeray did not
succeed in expressing the whole of himself in the romantic vein; perhaps
because he did not cultivate it from the start like Scott and Dumas. He
was able to put more of himself into _Vanity Fair_. To think of
Thackeray is to think first of _Vanity Fair_. From the unerring--because
instinctive--judgment of the world this book received recognition as his
masterpiece.
Du Maurier had not so much of the genuine _flair_ for the eighteenth
century as Thackeray. At heart he was much more in sympathy with the
pre-Raphaelites and the love of early romance, whatever his pretence to
the contrary in his satire, _A Legend of Camelot_. But there was no
illustrator of his time with a greater gift for the romantic novel of
any period; and inevitably, he became, in due course, the illustrator of
_Esmond_.
It is impossible to return to the past except by the path of poetry. It
was possible to du Maurier in his illustrations to _Esmond_, because he
was a poet. He used the effect of fading light in the sky seen through
old leaded windows, and all the resources of poetic effect with a poet's
and not an actor-manager's inspiration, wrapping the tale in the glamour
in which Thackeray conceived it.
In 1865 du Maurier contributed a full page illustration and two
vignettes to Foxe's _Book of Martyrs_, published in parts by Cassell.
Other signed illustrations are by G.H. Thomas, John Gilbert, J.D.
Watson, A.B. Houghton, W. Small, A. Parquier, R. Barnes, M.E. Edwards,
and T. Morten. No book can be imagined which would afford the essential
nature of his art less opportunity of showing itself than this one. He
was no good at horrors, though his resourcefulness in the manifestation
of emotional light and shadow was encouraged by the character of the
full-page illustration which he had to supply. A signed full page
appears in Part XVI., page 541. It is a scene in which the four
martyrs, Bland, Frankesh, Sheterden, and Middleton, condemned by the
Bishop of Dover, 25th June 1555, are shown being burned at the stakes.
One of the martyrs certainly looks intensely smug with his hands folded
as if he were at grace before a favourite dinner. Yes, du Maurier
certainly failed to attain quite to the heights of the horror of this
book.
The following year we have from the artist's pencil illustrations to a
book of the heroine of which he was so fond that he named his own
daughter after her. That book was Mrs. Gaskell's _Wives and Daughters_,
"an everyday story," as it is called in its sub-title. For this story du
Maurier's art was much more fitted than for any other. In it, certainly,
and not in Foxe's book, we should expect his temperament to reveal
itself--and we are not disappointed. It is here that du Maurier is at
his best. His illustrations have a daintiness in this tale which they
have nowhere else. A sign of the presence of fine art is the
accommodation of style to theme. The illustrations had been made for
this book when it appeared serially in the _Cornhill_, and were
afterwards published in the issue in two volumes. There is a picture at
the beginning of the second volume called "The Burning Gorse," in
which du Maurier makes an imaginative appeal through landscape almost
worthy of Keene.
[Illustration: Illustration for "The Story of a Feather" 1867.]
The artist is again at his best in the work of illustrating fiction in
the following year in Douglas Jerrold's _Story of a Feather_. It is the
same refinement of technique that is evident as in Mrs. Gaskell's tale.
One of du Maurier's greatest characteristics was charm. One is forced
into ringing changes upon the word in the description of his work. But
charm it is, more than ever, that characterises his illustrations to
_The Story of a Feather_. The initial letters in this book afford him a
succession of opportunities for displaying that inventive genius which
is evident wherever he turns to the province of pure fancy. It was not
for nothing apparently that he was the son of an inventor.
We have already spoken of his power in these days in the emotional use
of light and shade. It is perhaps even in this light book--in the
illustration reproduced opposite--that we have one of the best examples
of this power. But this book is all through a gold-mine of the work of
the real du Maurier.
Another work in which his art is to be found at this time is Shirley
Brooks's _Sooner or Later_ (1868). The novel does not seem treated with
quite the same reverence and enthusiasm which has characterised his work
in the books we have just described, but it is among the representative
examples of his illustration in the sixties. This story also passed as a
serial through _Cornhill_. In the same year, with E.H. Corbould, he
provides illustrations to _The Book of Drawing-room Plays_, &c., a
manual of indoor recreation by H. Dalton. It is not impossible that
these were prepared long in advance of publication, for they are in a
very much earlier manner than the illustrations we have been speaking
of. In them du Maurier has not yet emerged from the influence of
Leech--the first influence we encountered when a few years previously he
joined himself to the band of those who solicit the publishers for
illustrative work. From the point of view of our subject the book does
not repay much study. In 1876, in illustrations to _Hurlock Chase, or
Among the Sussex Ironworks_, by George E. Sargent, published by The
Religious Tract Society, we have some pictures of extraordinary power,
in which it is to be seen how much his contact with Millais and other
great illustrators in the sixties inspired him, and developed his
resources. His work has a "weight" in this book which was common to the
best illustration of the period, a deliberation which shows the
influence of Durer over the illustrators of the sixties, and also the
influence of pre-Raphaelitism in precise elaboration of form. It is in
lighter vein we find him again in the same year in Jemmett Browne's
_Songs of Many Seasons_, published by Simpkin, Marshall & Co., and
illustrated also by Walter Crane and others. Every now and then at this
period du Maurier shows us a genius for "still-life" in interior _genre_
which he did not seem to develop afterwards to the extent of the promise
shown in these pictures. He gained at this time a very great deal in his
art by the pre-Raphaelite influence. Never is he more exquisite than
when he embraces detail. The need to produce with rapidity, and the
effect of later fashions which did not suit his own nature so well,
induced him to give up a very deliberate style suited to his quick
perception of beauty in everyday incident, for one that sometimes only
achieved emptiness in its attempt at breadth. But to have kept his
pre-Raphaelite individuality with two such native impressionists as
Keene and Whistler for his most intimate friends would have perhaps
been more than could be expected of human nature. But it is true that he
seemed to lose where those two artists proved they had everything to
gain from a style that passed detail swiftly, treating it suggestively.
They were by nature impressionable to a different aspect of life, and in
self expression they required a different method.
Du Maurier's artistic creed that everything should be drawn from
nature--and tables and chairs are "nature" for the artist--forced him to
return again and again to accessible properties which could be fitted
into his scenes. Notable among those were the big vases and the
constantly reappearing ornamental gilt clock. Though drawn in black and
white we are sure of its gilt, for it belongs to the Victorian period.
It is to be met with in all the surviving drawing-rooms of the
period--that is, it is to be met with in "Apartments."
Du Maurier next furnishes a frontispiece and vignettes, which we do not
admire, to Clement Scott's _Round about the Islands_ (1874).
In 1882 he is at work in the field he had made his own, illustrating the
story of a fad that had always amused him, illustrating the craze he
had helped to create, in _Prudence: A Story of Aesthetic London_, by
Lucy C. Lillie. We hope the reader of this page does not think we should
have read this book. We looked at the illustrations of a muscular
curate--whom we took to be the hero--making an impressive entrance into
a gathering of "æsthetes," and farther on leaving the church door with
"Prudence"; we read the legend to the final illustration--"It was odd to
see how completely Prudence forsook her brief period of æsthetic
light"--and we came to our own conclusions. The illustrations are made
very small in process of printing, but du Maurier's art never lost by
reduction. A picture of a Private View day in a Gallery--which at first
makes one think of the Royal Academy, but in which the pictures are too
well hung for that, and which is probably intended for the Grosvenor
Gallery--is one of those admirable drawings of a fashionable crush with
which du Maurier always excelled. In reviewing this book, however, we
are already away from the most characteristic period of du Maurier's
work as an illustrator of fiction. That was between 1860 and 1880. His
line is altogether less intense in the next book we have to
consider--Philips's _As in a Looking Glass_ (1889). The falling off
between this and the book we were reviewing here but a moment ago is the
most evident feature of the work before us. We have, we feel, said
good-bye to the du Maurier who added so much lustre to the illustrative
work of the period just preceding its publication. But in _Punch_ the
vivacity of his art is still sustained; and long afterwards in _Trilby_
he scores successes again. In later years du Maurier _allowed_ in his
originals for reduction, and the original cannot be rightly judged until
the reduction is made. In the book under notice no reduction appears to
have been made, and the drawings are consequently lacking in precision
of detail. The book is a large drawing-room table book--in our opinion
the most hateful kind of book that was ever made--occupying more space
than any but the rarest works in the world are worth, giving more
trouble to hold than it is possible for any but a great masterpiece to
compensate for--and generally putting author and publisher in the debt
of the reader, which is quite the wrong way round. The curious may see
in this book what du Maurier's art was at its worst, and it may help
them to estimate his achievement to note how even on this occasion it
surpasses easily all later modern work in the same vein.