_The Cornhill_, 1870.]
It is evident from his books that he had many inward experiences of a
dramatic kind; that his life was only uneventful upon the surface, and
in appearance. In each of his novels, as we have seen, the rather crude
machinery of his plot secures the revelation of a curious, but a not at
all uncommon state of mind. He experimented empirically in psychology,
interesting himself in the processes of his own mind. No one can doubt
that in more than in outward incident his novels were autobiographical;
that also he drew upon the resources of his personal history for some of
the less usual and partly religious frames of mind in which his
"Heroes," each in his own way, outwit the apparently ugly intentions of
destiny towards themselves.
§ 6
Du Maurier's literary contributions to _Punch_ were bound up in the
volume _A Legend of Camelot, &c._, issued from the _Punch_ office in
1898. Besides the title-piece, a satire of some length upon the
mediævalism of the pre-Raphaelites, the book contains shorter
pieces--"Flirts in Hades," "Poor Pussy's Nightmare," "The Fool's
Paradise, or Love and Life," "A Lost Illusion," "Vers Nonsensiques,"
"L'Onglay à Parry," "Two Thrones," "A Love-Agony," "A Simple Story," "A
Ballad of Blunders" (after Swinburne's "Ballad of Burdens"), and then a
story in prose, "The Rise and Fall of the Jack Spratts: A tale of Modern
Art and Fashion." All the poetry is in the ballad strain, and by its
monotony the reader is put into the right condition to receive a shock
from some felicitous twist at the end of a line. Thus it is almost
impossible to quote from them. The humour rests in each case with the
whole of the skit; and in the case of one of the best of the whole
series, "A Love-Agony," a poem for a picture by Maudle, given, there
must be understanding on the reader's part, of the art "cult" against
which it is directed.
"The Rise and Fall of the Jack Spratts" is du Maurier's first attempt at
a work of fiction. It is significant that in style it has the lightness
of touch that would be expected from the disciple of Thackeray, and that
afterwards won by its "taking" character the hearts of the readers of
_Trilby_. It is the story of a painter, his wife and their twin
children. It opens with a picture of them at home, Jack Spratt
dreaming, even in those days, of Post-Impressionism, showing that du
Maurier was a prophet, "dreaming of the ante-pre-Raphaelite school. In
the depths of his bliss a feeling of discouragement would steal over him
as he thought of those immortal works, showing thereby that he was a
true artist, ever striving after the light. He little dreamt in his
modesty that, young and inexperienced though he might be, his pictures
were even quainter than theirs; for not only could he already draw,
colour, compose, and put into perspective quite as badly as they did,
but he had over them the advantage of a real lay figure to copy, whereas
they had to content themselves with the living model."
"The amusements of this happy pair were the simplest, healthiest, and
most delightful kind; they never went to the play, nor to balls or
dances, which they thought immodest--(indeed they were not even
asked)--nor read such things as novels, magazines, or the newspaper; nor
visited exhibitions of modern art, which they held in contempt, as they
did all things modern; ... and they were devoted to music, not that of
the present day, which they despised, nor that of the future, of which
they had never heard; nor English music, which was not old enough." Of
their friends, "They were few, but true and trusty, with remarkably fine
heads for a painter ... their deportment grave, sad and very strange;
for the death of the early Italian masters still weighed on their soul
with all the force of some recent domestic bereavement. They looked on
themselves and each other and the Jack Spratts, and were looked upon by
the Jack Spratts in return as the sole incarnation on this degenerate
earth of all such as had still managed to survive there; and so they
were always telling each other and everyone else they met. And no
wonder, for they were marvellously accomplished; being each of them
painter, sculptor, architect, poet, critic and engraver, all in one; and
all this without ever having learnt...."
"In their hours of sickness alone the Spratts were as other people, and
sent immediately for the nearest medical practitioner (or leech, as they
preferred to call him); their only sickness to speak of had arisen from
once feasting mediaevally on an old roast peacock, in company with the
trusty friends, who had also been taken very bad on that occasion; and
they ever afterwards avoided that dish, but at their banquets would
have the peacock's head and what was left of its tail tacked on to some
more digestible bird...."
"As staunch Radicals, they hated the aristocracy, whose very existence
they ignored; shunned the professional class, which they scorned, on
account of its scientific and utilitarian tendency; and loathed the
middle class, from which they had sprung, because it was Philistine; and
although they professed to deeply honour the working man, they very
wisely managed to see as little of him as they possibly could."
Owing to the sudden success of a picture--which scandalised his trusty
friends--and the beauty of his wife, the model for the picture, Jack
woke up one morning and found himself famous. They were lionised. Mrs.
Spratt's deep-rooted dislike to the female dress of the present day did
not last much longer than her life-long prejudice against the
aristocracy; she discarded the mediæval garments she had hitherto worn
with such disdain for the eccentricities of modern fashion, and put
herself into the hands of the best dressmaker in town. And thus
snubbing, and being snubbed, dressing and dancing and feasting and
flirting, did she soar higher and higher in her butterfly career. The
denouement comes when they are cut out by "Ye rising Minnows"--an
American sculptor--one Pygmalion F. Minnow--whose wife was twice as
beautiful as Mrs. Spratt.
Another shorter prose skit of du Maurier's which is included in the same
book satirises the splendid sort of hero, who conceals beneath a mask of
indifference the power to do anything on earth better than anybody else.
These prose skits show the neat irony that _Punch_ was willing to
encourage by attaching du Maurier to the literary, as well as to the
artistic, staff. But we think it may be said that du Maurier hadn't the
heart to go on with a class of writing in which his great tendency to
sentimentalise would have been out of place.
§ 7
In 1890 du Maurier contributed two papers to the _Art Journal_ entitled
"The Illustrating of Books from the Serious Artist's Point of View." It
was an attempt to write down the ideas that had controlled him in book
illustration. The artist begins the article by protesting that of all
subjects in the world it is the one upon which he has the least and
fewest ideas, and that such ideas as he has consist principally of his
admiration for illustrations by others. He separates readers into two
classes--those who visualise what they read with the mind's eye so
satisfactorily that they want the help of no pictures, and those--the
greater number, he thinks--who do not possess this gift, to whom to have
the author's conceptions embodied for them in a concrete form is a boon.
The little figures in the picture are a mild substitute for the actors
at the footlights. The arrested gesture, the expression of face, the
character and costume, may be as true to nature and life as the best
actor can make them. His test of a good illustrator is that the
illustrations continue to haunt the memory when the letterpress is
forgotten. He cites Menzel as the highest example of such performance.
He next refers to the illustrated volume of Poems by Tennyson in 1860,
for which Millais and Rossetti and others designed small woodcuts, the
publishing of which, he says, made an epoch in English book
illustration, importing a new element to which he finds it difficult to
give a name. "I still adore," he says, "the lovely, wild, irresponsible
moon-face of Oriana, with a gigantic mailed archer kneeling at her feet
in the yew-wood, and stringing his fatal bow; the strange beautiful
figure of the Lady of Shalott, when the curse comes over her, and her
splendid hair is floating wide, like the magic web; the warm embrace of
Amy and her cousin (when their spirits rushed together at the touching
of the lips), and the dear little symmetrical wavelets beyond; the queen
sucking the poison out of her husband's arm; the exquisite bride at the
end of the Talking Oak; the sweet little picture of Emma Morland and
Edward Grey, so natural and so modern, with the trousers treated in
quite the proper spirit; the chaste Sir Galahad, slaking his thirst with
holy water, amid all the mystic surroundings; and the delightfully
incomprehensible pictures to the Palace of Art, that gave one a weird
sense of comfort, like the word 'Mesopotamia,' without one's knowing
why."
[Illustration: Illustration for "The Adventures of Harry Richmond"
_The Cornhill_, 1871.]
In the second paper he makes interesting reflections on Thackeray and
Dickens. "When the honour devolved upon me of illustrating _Esmond_," he
writes, "what would I not have given to possess sketches, however
slight, of Thackeray's own from which to inspire myself--since he was no
longer alive to consult. For although he does not, any more than
Dickens, very minutely describe the outer aspect of his people, he
visualised them very accurately, as these sketches prove."
"I doubt if Dickens did, especially his women--his pretty women--Mrs.
Dombey, Florence, Dora, Agnes, Ruth Pinch, Kate Nickleby, little
Emily--we know them all through Hablot Browne alone--and none of them
present any very marked physical characteristics. They are sweet and
graceful, neither tall nor short; they have a pretty droop in their
shoulders, and are very ladylike; sometimes they wear ringlets,
sometimes not, and each would do very easily for the other."
In 1868 Messrs. Harper published in book form under the title _Social
Pictorial Satire_ a series of articles which du Maurier had written in
_Harper's Magazine_, and which had originally formed the substance of
lectures which he had delivered in the prominent towns of England. He
speaks first of his great admiration of Leech in his youth. "To be an
apparently hopeless invalid at Christmas-time in some dreary, deserted,
dismal little Flemish town, and to receive _Punch's Almanac_ (for 1858,
let us say) from some good-natured friend in England--that is a thing
not to be forgotten! I little dreamed that I should come to London
again, and meet John Leech and become his friend; that I should be,
alas! the last man to shake hands with him before his death (as I
believe I was), and find myself among the officially invited mourners by
his grave; and, finally, that I should inherit, and fill for so many
years (however indifferently), that half-page in _Punch_ opposite the
political cartoon, and which I had loved so well when he was the
artist!" Du Maurier draws a pleasant portrait of his friend,
sympathetically, and very picturesquely analyses his art, which has, he
says, the quality of inevitableness. Of "Words set to Pictures" his long
description of Leech's pretty woman is as good as anything that can be
read of the kind. Then he sketches the characteristics of Charles
Keene's personality and passes on to his art:--"From the pencil of this
most lovable man, with his unrivalled power of expressing all he saw and
thought, I cannot recall many lovable characters of either sex or of any
age."
But the tribute to the craftsmanship, the skill, the ease and beauty of
Keene's line, to his knowledge of effect, to the very great artist is
unmeasured. In fulfilment of his contract du Maurier speaks of himself
and his "little bit of paper, a steel pen, and a bottle of ink--and,
alas! fingers and an eye less skilled than they would have been if I had
gone straight to a school of art instead of a laboratory for chemistry!"
He says very little about himself. He concludes with a review of social
pictorial satire considered as a fine art. It is evident from the
lecture that du Maurier was an illustrator by instinct as well as
training. "Now conceive," says he, speaking of Thackeray, "that the
marvellous gift of expression that he was to possess in words had been
changed by some fairy at his birth into an equal gift of expression by
means of the pencil, and that he had cultivated the gift as assiduously
as he cultivated the other, and, finally, that he had exercised it as
seriously through life, bestowing on innumerable little pictures in
black and white all the art and wisdom, the wide culture, the deep
knowledge of the world and of the human heart, all the satire, the
tenderness, the drollery, and last, but not least, that incomparable
perfection of style that we find in all or most that he has
written--what a pictorial record that would be!"
"The career of the future social pictorial satirist is," he continues,
"full of splendid possibilities undreamed of yet.... The number of
youths who can draw beautifully is quite appalling. All we want for my
little dream to be realised is that, among these precocious wielders of
the pencil, there should arise here a Dickens, there a Thackeray, there
a George Eliot or an Anthony Trollope...."
Does not this precisely sum the situation up? Du Maurier could not live
to foresee that, for all the expert skill of modern illustration, the
"youths who can draw beautifully" lack "a point of view." It was the
possession of this that distinguished Thackeray, George Eliot, Trollope,
Leech, and du Maurier.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[2] The circumstances in which du Maurier took up novel-writing, and the
history of the staging of _Trilby_ in England were related by him to Mr.
R.H. Sherard for an "Interview" which appeared in _McClure's Magazine_
1895. And I have referred to this source for the genealogy of the
artist, as given by himself, and particulars of his early life.--AUTHOR.
[3] _English Society_, "Du Maurier." London: Osgood, McIlvaine and Co.
Introduction: W.D. Howells.
IV
LIFE OF THE ARTIST
§1
To write of the work of an artist who is not a contemporary without
reference to the circumstances of his life would be an incomplete
performance, and yet criticism and biography are hardly ever happily
fused. The gifts of a biographer are of a kind very dissimilar to those
employed in criticism. The true biographer loves uncritically every
detail that has to do with his subject, as a portrait-painter loves
every detail that has to do with the appearance of his sitter. The best
portraits, whether in biography--which is nothing if it is not
portraiture--or in painting, are those in which the interpreter has been
in a wholly receptive mood. This is not the critical attitude, which
involuntarily takes arms against first one thing and then another in the
subject before it; and this sensitiveness is in proportion to the
critic's interest in his subject.
Du Maurier told us the story of himself completely in his novels. It was
said of de Quincey that in his writings he could tell the story of his
own life and no other. This might be said of du Maurier too.
The story of his childhood, as we read it through his books, gives us
the picture of an extremely sensitive and romantic child possessed of a
great power of responding affectionately to the scenes in which he grew
up, as well as to the people who surrounded him. It is this sentiment
for place as well as for people that sometimes gives us in his books a
remarkable poetic strain--a strain like music in its caressing revival
of old associations. And we really get a very accurate idea of the
inward story of the artist when we contrast this temperamental
sensitiveness with the kind of work upon which he employed his skill
during the chief part of his career.
Everywhere in du Maurier's life we find the testimony to his sweetness
of disposition. He had the great loyalty to friends which is really
loyalty to the world at large, made up of possible friends. Friends are
not an accident, but they are made by a process of natural selection,
which, if we are wise and generous, we do not attempt to superintend.
[Illustration:
Proxy
"As you're going to say your Prayers, Maud, _please_ mention I'm so
dreadfully tired I can't say mine to-night, but I'll be sure to
remember to-morrow!"
_Punch's Almanack_, 1874.]
Du Maurier was optimistic, he had the genius for keeping tragedy at bay;
for enduring, for instance, such a dark cloud constantly threatening as
blindness without claiming pity. It is easy for such people to impart
charm in whatever art they practise. And it is not true, as modern
novelists and playwrights seem to imagine, that "depth" always implies
what is sinister, and that only the surface of life is charming. Let us
once again believe in fragrance in art. Summer is as great as winter.
Within a sweet-smelling blossom is the whole profound history of a tree
struggling to survive the vengeance of frost and gales. It is the
fragrant things of life that contain all that has been conserved through
unkind weather.
One of the chief influences in du Maurier's life was his admiration of
Thackeray. This revealed sympathy with greatness. Thackeray was one who
was greater in life than in his art, as are all the greatest artists. He
was great as a man of the world. In a short life his presence made
itself prevail everywhere in London. It requires, too, considerable
genius to live only in precisely the street and the house in London you
want to. This Thackeray managed to do; and to know only the people you
want to, as Thackeray did. This is real sovereignty.
There was a reserve about du Maurier in manner when he encountered
complete strangers. He retained the detached and distant manner with
slight acquaintances which his role of an observer in Society had taught
him. Like all those who have an exceptionally loyal friendship to give,
he could not pretend to give it to every person introduced to him. In
this he was, of course, no true Bohemian. In Bohemian circles it is the
fashion to make extravagant use of terms of endearment and to fall upon
the neck at first meetings, and men like du Maurier reserve the display
of affection for the home.
Art-critics and secretaries of Art Galleries, frame-makers and all those
whose business throws them into constant contact with living artists and
their art, know how exactly like their pictures artists always are,
their work being immediately expressive of their own fibre, coarse or
refined. Du Maurier's art reveals a marked preference for certain kinds
of people. In life too he was selective; knowing well whom he liked, and
in whom he wished to inspire regard.
The artist's family was of the small nobility of France. The name
Palmella was given him in remembrance of the great friendship between
his father's sister and the Duchess de Palmella, who was the wife of the
Portuguese Ambassador to France. The real family name was Busson; the
"du Maurier" came from the Château le Maurier, built in the fifteenth
century, and still standing in Anjou or Maine. It belonged to du
Maurier's cousins, the Auberys, and in the seventeenth century it was
the Auberys who wore the title of du Maurier; and an Aubery du Maurier,
who distinguished himself in that century, was Louis of that name,
French Ambassador to Holland. The Auberys and the Bussons married and
intermarried, the Bussons assuming the territorial name of du Maurier.
George du Maurier's grandfather's name was Robert Mathurin Busson du
Maurier, _Gentilhomme verrier_--gentleman glass-blower. Until the
Revolution glass-blowing was a monopoly of the _gentilshommes_, no
commoner might engage in the industry, at that time considered an art.
The Busson genealogy dates from the twelfth century. The novelist made
use of many of the names which occur in papers relating to his family
history, in _Peter Ibbetson_.
Du Maurier's father was a small _rentier_, deriving his income from the
family glass-works in Anjou. He was born in England, whither the
artist's grandfather had fled to escape the Revolution and the
guillotine, returning to France in 1816.
His grandmother was a bourgeoise, by name Bruaire, a descendant of Jean
Bart, the admiral. His grandfather was not rich, and while in England
mainly depended on the liberality of the British Government, which
allowed him a pension of twenty pounds a year for each member of his
family. He died a schoolmaster at Tours.
The mother of the artist was an Englishwoman married to his father at
the British Embassy in Paris, and the artist was born in Paris on March
6, 1834, in a little house in the Champs Elysées. His parents removed to
Belgium in 1863, where they stayed three years. When the child was five
they came to London, taking 1 Devonshire Terrace, Marylebone Road--the
house which had been formerly occupied by Charles Dickens. Du Maurier
remembered riding in the park, on a little pony, escorted by a groom,
who led his pony by a strap. One day there cantered past a young woman
surrounded by horsemen; at the bidding of his groom he waved his hat,
and the lady smiled and kissed her hand to him. It was Queen Victoria
with her equerries.
The father grew very poor. He was a man of scientific tastes, and lost
his money in inventions which never came to anything. After a year in
Devonshire Terrace the family had to wander again, going to Boulogne,
where they lived at the top of the Grand Rue. Here the artist said they
lived in a beautiful house, and had sunny hours and were happy.
Apropos of du Maurier's early homes, Sir Francis Burnand, in his
_Records and Reminiscences_, tells an amusing story, which, whilst of
necessity abbreviating, we shall try to give as nearly as possible in
his own words. Some members of the _Punch_ staff who, with the
proprietors, were visiting Paris during the Exhibition year of 1889,
took a drive in the neighbourhood of Passy. Du Maurier, who had not
stayed in Paris for some years, pointed out house after house as being
his birthplace. He started with the selection of a small but attractive
suburban residence, afterwards correcting himself and pointing to a
house much more attractive-looking than the first. Soon, however, the
puzzled expression which his companions had noticed in him before,
returned to his face, and he called a halt for the third time, pointing
to a large house in an extensive garden with a fountain. "No," he
exclaimed with conviction, "I was wrong. This is where I was born.
There's the fountain, there are the green shutters! and in _that_ room!"
The party descended again and poured out libations. After the sleepy
stage of a long drive had been reached, du Maurier awoke, and, as if
soliloquising, muttered, "No, no, I was wrong, absurdly wrong. But I see
my mistake." And he aroused his companions to view a fine mansion
approached by a drive.
"Yes," he exclaimed, "the other places were mistakes. It is so difficult
to remember the exact spot where one was born. But there can be no doubt
about this. _Cocher! Arrêtez! s'il vous plaît_," he cried, and he was
about to open the door and descend, when William Bradbury, of the party,
stopped him.
"No, you don't, Kiki; you've been born in three or four places already,
and we've drunk your health in every one of 'em; so we won't do it again
till you've quite made up your mind where you _were_ born."
In vain du Maurier protested. "You bring us out for a holiday, you take
us about everywhere, and you won't let a chap be born where he likes."
But Mr. Bradbury was inexorable; the door was closed, the coachman
grinned, cracked his whip, and away they went, the party siding with Mr.
Bradbury in objecting to pulling up at every inn to toast the occasion.
Sir Francis speaks of what fun du Maurier was at such times, and of
never remembering having seen him so boyish, so "Trilbyish" as on the
occasion of the memorable visit.