an apartment on the first floor of the house No. 80 in the Champs
Elysées. In the artist's manhood the ground and first floor were a café,
and he said he felt sorry to look up at the windows from which his
mother used to watch his return from school, and see waiters bustling
about and his home invaded.
§ 2
He went to school at the age of thirteen, in the Pension Froussard, in
the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. He remembered with affection his master
Froussard, who became a deputy after the Revolution of 1848. He owned to
being lazy, with no particular bent; but he worked really hard, he
confessed, for one year. He made a number of friends, but of his
comrades at that school only one distinguished himself in after life,
Louis Becque de Fouquière, the writer, whose life has been written by M.
Anatole France.
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."
[Illustration: 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:--
§ 3
"Somebody who took a great interest in me (my father) had just
established me in the City as an analytical chemist and mining engineer.
Now, if there was one thing in the world for which I was peculiarly, and
I may even say extraordinarily, unfit, it was that very useful
profession; but it is a well-known fact that the fondest parents are not
always the most discriminating in the choice of professions for their
sons. So I had spent two years in a school of chemistry, attending
lectures and performing analyses, qualitative and quantitative, and
various other chemical experiments, which I used to think very droll and
amusing, in order to fit myself for my future career, and at length,
thanks to my father's kindness, I found myself master of a laboratory
which had been arranged in a manner regardless of expense, with water
and gas laid on in every possible corner, and bottles, chemical stoves,
and scales, &c., of a most ornamental brightness and perfection.
"Here I waited for employment daily, and entertained my friends with
sumptuous hospitality at lunch and supper; here also I occasionally
astonished my mother and sister by dexterously turning yellow liquids
into blue ones, and performing other marvels of science--accomplishments
which I have almost entirely forgotten (in my prospectus it was stated
that assays of ore and analyses of minerals, &c., would be most
carefully conducted, and all business of the kind attended to, with
great steadiness and despatch); and pending the advent of work, the
scene of my future operations was enlivened by athletic sport and every
kind of jollification, which helped me to endure the anxiety of my
parents at seeing me start on the serious business of life so young." He
goes on to say that, thanks to kindness of friends of his family,
employment came: he was given an order for analysing various specimens
of soil from a friend's estate. "I conducted these experiments with
proper earnestness, and he paid me for them with becoming gravity. I
now thank him kindly for the same (it would have been undignified to do
so then) and sincerely hope that he has found my scientific research
beneficial to his land." Then the gold contagion suddenly broke out and
committed great ravages. "I caught it one rainy afternoon near the
Exchange; my mother and sister instantly became affected, but my father,
who was of a stout habit and robust temperament, and gifted with a very
practical turn of mind, fortunately escaped, and devoted himself to our
cure. Thanks to his judicious nursing, I was the first to recover." "The
gold fever raged worse and worse, and I waited impatiently for it to
give me employment; at length it did so, in a few months from the period
of its birth: somebody introduced me to somebody else, who introduced me
to the chairman of the Victoria Gold and Copper Mine, situated near
Moleville, in Blankshire."
Then follows an interview with the directors. "It was necessary that in
my interview with the directors next day, I should cram them with every
possible technical term that had ever been invented for the purpose."
He manages to squeeze "lodes," "gossans," "costeanings," and other
impressive words into almost every sentence. It produces a great effect
on the directors.
The offer of a guinea and a half a day to go down the mine inspires a
wild impulse to embrace the whole board in the person of the venerable
fat old fellow who makes the offer. This is restrained. "I told him I
would think of the matter, and return him an answer the following day;
and, after bouncing myself first into the office-clerk and then into the
fire-place, I eventually succeeded in making an unconcerned exit."
"I pass over my triumphant sensations and the family bliss, only
chequered by anxiety lest the Victoria Gold and Copper Mine should come
to grief before I got there."
He then travels through enchanting scenery, and is conducted to the
mine. "Some five and twenty or thirty shaggy rough-looking men were
about. These were the miners. Their appearance was not reassuring, and
when the engineer left me alone with them, with a parting injunction
that I was to make them feel I had an iron will at once, I confess I
felt myself uncomfortably young, and a little bit at a loss.
"We proceeded to business at once, however; and as I met their first
little symptoms of insubordination with one or two acts of summary
justice (which I will spare the reader, but which, emanating from me,
caused me unlimited astonishment), I soon established a proper authority
over them, and we thenceforward got on together capitally."
We are then given extracts from a mining diary--significantly left off
at a particular stage of the proceedings--used as a sketch-book. An
unfavourable report as to the finding of gold is sent in to the board.
"The miners did not believe in the mine, and as they perceived that I
did not either, they believed in me to a most flattering extent." He
soon got very much attached to the miners, and used to tell stories
about foreign lands while they were distilling the pure mercury, or
performing other innocent operations suggested by the board,
enlightening them on various subjects where he felt their ignorance to
be equal to his own. "My letters home contained descriptions and
sketches of them, and my mamma became interested in their spiritual
welfare." Surrounded by the halo of memory, they afterwards seemed to
him primitive gentlemen worthy of King Arthur's Round Table. He
describes existence between the hours of work as full of charm owing to
the friendship of surrounding farmers and small gentry. In a "Trilby"
way he describes how he "rode, and wrestled, and boxed with them! and
fell in love with their sisters, and sketched them, and sang Tyrolese
melodies to them, ... blessing the lucky stroke of fortune which had
made him mining engineer to a gold mine without any gold, and managed by
gentlemen who obstinately persisted in ignoring the latter important
fact, in spite of his honest endeavours to persuade them of it." "I
have," he says, "only to hum a certain 'jodel' chorus, and the whole
scene returns to me, surrounded by that peculiar fascination which
belongs to past pleasures--a phenomenon far more interesting to me than
the most marvellous phenomenon of science."
Every artist is an experimental psychologist, the material for his art
is really always some mental experience. He wishes to communicate with
his public in the spirit of this experience. With Scott it was the old
associations of places, with du Maurier the associations of "old times,"
of personal memory. This was the frame of mind the interpretation of
which absorbed him in his literary art, distinguishing it, except in
his early _Cornhill_ work, from his art with the pencil.
There is not much in the remaining part of the gold-mine narrative which
can be shown to bear upon the artist's career. The conclusion of the
story shows his forfeiture of the regard of the directors by openness of
speech to the shareholders as to the proceedings at the mine.
Such was his experience of a mine in Devonshire and of relationship with
the miners, who, with the limited experience of the mining classes in
those days, had some difficulty in "placing" du Maurier with his, to
them, unusual physical delicacy and yet more unusual personal charm.
§ 4
The literary gift in the above narration will, we think, be evident even
in our quotations. But during the greater part of his life du Maurier's
literary gift remained unknown to the general public, though more than
one editor under whom he served on _Punch_ urged him to take a writer's
salary and be on the literary as well as on the artistic staff. It was
said that he relied with comfort upon this second talent to support him
in the event of his sight failing him altogether. There was a space of
thirty years between the above contribution to _Once a Week_ and the
writing of his first novel, _Peter Ibbetson_. But it is in that novel
that he again returns to the story of his career, through boyhood and
youth, leading up to the period in which his father started him in the
laboratory.
Du Maurier had in 1856, when his father died, practically the choice of
two arts, painting and singing, in both of which he seemed to have a
chance of distinguishing himself. And as the essay of 1861 was so soon
afterwards to prove, there was really another alternative, that of
authorship, for the gifted analytical chemist. He decided then to
forsake the chemistry to which he had been trained, but remained
undecided about everything else.
In 1856, at the age of twenty-two, he returned to Paris with his mother,
to live in the Rue Paradis-Poissonière, very poor, very dull, and very
miserable, as he himself has said; but almost at the entrance of what he
describes as the best time of his life--that period in which, deciding
to follow art as a profession, he entered the studio of Gleyre. Those
were the joyous Quartier Latin days. He has described Gleyre's studio
in _Trilby_. The happy life there lasted a year: Whistler and Poynter,
as is well known, were his fellow-students.
[Illustration: Honour Where Honour is Due
_Sir Gorgius Midas (who has not been made a Peer_). "Why, it's enough to
make a man turn _Radical_, 'anged if it ain't, to think of sich services
as mine bein' rewarded with no 'igher title than what's bestowed on a
heminent Sawbones, or a Hingerneer, or a Littery Man, or even a
successful Hartist!"
_Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns (sympathetically_). "It does seem hard! But
you've only to bide your time, Sir Gorgius. No man of _your_ stamp need
ever despair of a Peerage!" (And Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns is, as usual,
quite right.)
_Punch_, May 15, 1880.]
The studio of Gleyre was inherited from Delaroche, and afterwards handed
down to Gerome. Whistler, Poynter, du Maurier, Lamont, and Thomas
Armstrong were the group of _Trilby_, Lamont was "the Laird," Aleco
Ionides "the Greek," and Rowley is supposed to have been "Taffy."[4]
In 1857 du Maurier went on to the Antwerp Academy, where the masters
were De Keyser and Van Lerins. It was in the latter's studio that the
disaster of his life occurred. He was drawing from a model, when
suddenly the girl's head seemed to him to dwindle to the size of a
walnut. He clapped his hand over his left eye, and wondered if he had
been mistaken. He could see as well as ever. But when in its turn he
covered his right eye he learned what had happened. His left eye had
failed him. It might be altogether lost. It grew worse, until the fear
of blindness overtook him. In the spring of 1859 he went to a specialist
in Dusseldorf, who, while deciding that the left eye was lost, said that
with care there was no reason to fear losing the other. Du Maurier was
never able to shake off the terror of apprehension. He was apparently a
hopeless invalid at Christmas-time in 1859, "in some dreary, deserted,
dismal Flemish town," in hospital. Turning over _Punch's Almanack_, the
delight the paper afforded him in such unhappy circumstances was "a
thing not to be forgotten." It fired him with a new ambitious dream. The
astonishing thing was that before another year was over the dream was
beginning to come true: he was in England, making friends with Keene,
who introduced him to John Leech, whom he was destined to succeed at
_Punch's_ table.
The artist left Antwerp in 1860, and for several months he and Whistler
lived together in Newman Street. Their studio has been described.
Stretched across it was a rope like a clothes-line, from which floated a
bit of brocade, their curtain to shut off the corner used as a bedroom.
There was hardly even a chair to sit on, and often with the brocade a
towel hung from the line.
§ 5
In the autumn of 1860 the artist began to contribute to _Once a Week_.
Then followed a contribution to _Punch_ for which he continued to draw
as an occasional contributor chiefly of initial letters and the like,
until he reached the stage of contributing regular "Pictures" with
legends beneath in 1864. It was not until 1865, however, that his full
pages in _Punch_ became frequent. In that year he succeeded Leech at the
_Punch_ table.
His career practically began with his marriage to Miss Emma Wightwick.
Following the example of his master, Thackeray, he courageously married
upon "prospects," as soon as ever the promise of regular employment for
his pencil seemed to be secure. This was the year in which he
illustrated Mrs. Gaskell's _Sylvia's Lovers_. "My life," he once said,
"was a very prosperous one from the outset in London; I was married in
1863, and my wife and I never once knew financial troubles. My only
trouble has been my fear about my eyes. Apart from that I have been very
happy."
Upon marrying, du Maurier moved to Great Russell Street, and, later, to
rooms in Earl's Terrace, Kensington, the house where Walter Pater died.
In the days when he was living in Great Russell Street the journalistic
world of London was very Bohemian. It is true that Leech had not made a
good Bohemian, but it was not until some time after du Maurier's
accession to the _Punch_ table that the weekly dinner lost an uproarious
gaiety that is recognised as the true Bohemian note. Mr. Punch and his
staff all improved their tone, Bohemia is now only a memory. It is the
very genius of Mr. Punch that makes him respond to the moment and become
the most decorous figure in the world in decorous times.
One cannot help being struck by a resemblance between the coming to town
and the almost immediate success there of du Maurier and Thackeray. The
comparison has its interest in the fact that as every man has his
master, beyond all dispute Thackeray was du Maurier's master. Both
quitted Bohemia, but in Society always retained the detachment of
artists. It was near to Thackeray's initials that du Maurier was
destined to cut his own on the great _Punch_ table. He himself described
the glamour Thackeray's name possessed for him, inspiring him as he
climbed out of the despair that followed the sudden partial deprivation
of his sight. The only time he met his master he was too diffident to
accept an invitation to be introduced. Thackeray seemed so great. But
all that evening he remained as close to him as possible, greedily
listening to his words. Like Thackeray, du Maurier thought that the
finest thing in the world was to live without fear and without reproach.
It is probable that Thackeray would not at all have minded not being
taken for a genius, but he would violently have resented not being
accounted a gentleman. For him that implied the great heart and the
scrupulous honour which Bohemia does not insist upon if you have great
spirits.
§ 6
Of du Maurier's great friendship with Canon Ainger, which commenced in
the seventies, light is to be obtained from Edith Sichel's _Life and
Letters of Alfred Ainger_.[5]
"For fifteen years," says Miss Sichel, "they always met once, and
generally twice a day. Hampstead knew their figures as every afternoon
they walked round the pond on the Heath, deep in conversation. Edward
Fitzgerald himself never had a closer friendship than had these two men
for one another. Their mental climates suited; they were akin, yet had
strong differences. Perhaps in the quickness of their mutual attraction
Frenchman recognised Frenchman. But Ainger was the French Huguenot and
du Maurier the French sceptic. Both had mercurial perceptions, and
exercised them on much the same objects. Both were wits and humorists,
but Ainger was more of a wit than a humorist, and du Maurier was more of
a humorist than a wit. Both were men of fancy rather than of
imagination, men of sentiment rather than of passion. Both, too, were
fantastics; both loved what was beautiful and graceful rather than
what was grand; but du Maurier was more of the pure artist, while to
Ainger the moral side of beauty most appealed.... Both men were gifted
with an exquisite kindness.... Du Maurier was the keener and clearer
thinker of the two; he had the wider outlook and the fewer prejudices."
Their closest bond was _Punch_, which was to Ainger a delight from cover
to cover.
[Illustration: Canon Ainger
Portrait in water-colour by du Maurier. In the possession of the
artist's widow.]
The artist's love of Whitby is well known; he expressed it himself in
his _Punch_ drawings over and over again. He wrote to Ainger in 1891:
"It is delightful to get a letter from you at Whitby--the place we all
like best in the world." He gives a list of places and things to be
especially seen there, among them the cottage of Sylvia Robson of
_Sylvia's Lovers_, and No 1 St. Hilda's Terrace, "the humble but
singularly charming little house where your friends have dwelt, and
would fain dwell again (and two of them end their days there, somewhere
towards the middle of the twentieth century)."
It was at Whitby when Ainger and his nieces were there with the du
Mauriers that they were once delighted by seeing "Trilby Drops"
advertised in a little village sweet-shop. "Such is fame," said du
Maurier, but when his daughter went in to ask about the "drops," the
girl behind the counter had no idea what "Trilby" meant.
In the summer numbers of past volumes of _Punch_ Whitby has figured in
the background of seaside scenes perhaps more than any other
watering-place. Du Maurier nearly always drew upon it for seaside
pictures and the humour of the summer holidays. He formed his first
acquaintance with it in illustrating _Sylvia's Lovers_. The scene of
that tale is Whitby under another name. Thus he started his connection
with the town in circumstances that seemed to him to give it a glamour.
Not only did he confess an immense liking for Mrs. Gaskell's novel, but,
as we have seen, he scored in the illustration of it the first of his
great successes with the general public. The gift of illustration, after
all, is a very rare one. Nothing is to be understood more easily than
the value the public began to put upon du Maurier's gift. In a response
of that sort the public display true discrimination. The ascendency of
du Maurier as a _Punch_ artist was more than anything due to the fact
that for his work in that paper he drew upon the sentiment of family
life from the resources of his own experience. And nothing that we
could write here would so entirely reveal the happy character of his own
family life as the reigning atmosphere of the "seaside" and "nursery"
pictures which he contributed to _Punch_.
[Illustration]
§ 7