artistic standard. The paper intended to avail itself of the services of
whatever artistic genius it could attach to itself by attractive
emoluments. It then pieced out its satiric business among its
distinguished staff, above everything else artists, perhaps not one of
them animated with that fervour of attack which is the genius of foreign
caricature. These men, by their several temperaments, founded the
characteristics and traditions of _Punch_. They were perfectly
friendly, not at all anxious to make themselves unpleasant; and the
traditions of _Punch_ remain the same to this day. It would always
rather laugh with people than against them.
§6
Du Maurier's novels are a proof of what an illustrator he was by nature;
he seemed to conceive matter and illustration together. It would be
strange to read either of his novels without their drawings. Probably
his tales would have failed of their immediate success but for the
wealth of admirable illustration which make them unique among novels.
The illustrations increase perceptibly the appeal of the text. The
draughtsmanship is so well identified with its purpose, that we think of
it always in connection with a "page." In these days, when art editors
think that any picture reduced to size will make an "illustration," it
is pleasant to take down our old _Punches_. Qualities of impressionism
which are everything in a picture hanging on a wall to be seen across
the breakfast table, will seldom be made suitable for book-embellishment
simply by process of reduction.
Du Maurier established a more intimate relationship with the public who
admired his drawings than any humorous artist has. In America, where for
many years the opinion of English Society seems to have been formed from
his drawings, the unseen author of them was thought of quite
affectionately. The immediate success of his novels there took its rise
from this fact. The personal letters which he received from America with
the success of _Trilby_ ran into many hundreds. There must have been
something to account for all this--some curious flavour in everything he
did, just one of those secret influences which so often put the
technical rules of criticism out of court in dealing with an artist's
work.
He succeeded to Leech in the Society subjects, but he himself has not
had a successor in these themes. No one has been able to enter the same
field as worthily, for instance, as Mr. Raven-Hill entered a field once
worked by Keene. There have been better draughtsmen--from the
photographic point of view--than du Maurier attempting to fill his
place. But "a place" on a newspaper can only be filled by a personality.
It is artistic personality that has been wanting in recent years in
_Punch_ on the side of the fashionable satire which Leech and du Maurier
successively had made their own.
We have pointed out that his work in _Punch_ was at its best when he was
going most into Society. That is characteristic of all artists--that
their inspiration flames or dies in proportion to the immediacy of their
contact with actuality. Having chosen the world for his theme, he could
make nothing of it when he ceased to go out. In his earlier and middle
period, living in evening-clothes, he drew with an inexhaustible
impulse. When he thought he had his "world" by heart and could
reconstruct with the aid of some obliging friends who consented to pose,
he gave us pleasant pictures of his friends posing, but the great record
he had put together in the sixties, seventies, the early eighties of the
London of his time was at an end. Then it was that he repeated his
formulæ, his "Things one would have expressed otherwise," and others of
like series without introducing any freshness of situation, carrying out
the brief dialogues with figures in which there was little variation of
character--as little variation as there is in the same model employed on
two different days. All this has been touched upon in this book, but
we must insist upon it, for the memory of the real du Maurier has
nothing so much to fear as our memory of du Maurier when he was, as an
artist, not quite himself.
[Illustration: Things One Would Rather have Expressed Differently
_Fair Hostess_. "Good-night, Major Jones. We're supposed to breakfast at
nine; but we're not very punctual people. Indeed, the later you appear
to-morrow morning, the better pleased we shall all be!"
May 13, 1893.]
We hope we have performed the funeral of the less deserving side of his
work, thereby releasing the immortal part of it to the fuller
recognition due to it from connoisseurs.
All du Maurier's drawings in his best period are distinguished by the
sharpness of contrast between black and white in them. Ruskin, whilst
approving in his _Art of England_ of du Maurier's use of black to
indicate colour, thought he carried the black and white contrast to
chess-board pattern excess. In later years, submitting to the influence
of Keene's method, in which black is always used to secure effects of
tone instead of colour, du Maurier's style underwent a transformation
which, from the purely artistic point of view, was not to its advantage.
Keene's method was justified in his extreme sensitiveness to what
painters define as "values"--the relation in tone of one surface to
another. This particular kind of sensitiveness was not characteristic of
du Maurier's vision, nor was a style so dependent upon subtlety of the
kind suited to express his mind. And here it is interesting to emphasise
the connection which is so often overlooked between temperament and
style. In the observation of human character itself du Maurier always
perceived the broad and distinctive features; the broad ones of type
rather than the subtle ones of individuals; things for him were either
black or white, beautiful or ugly. The twilight in which beauty and
ugliness merge, in which the heroic and the villainous mingle, was
unknown to him--a region in which the white figure of a hero is as
impossible as the black one of a real villain. He observes subtly enough
the airs of those who interest him, but he is not interested in
everybody. He doesn't think much of people who, through lack either of
physical or moral stature, can enter the drawing-room unperceived. He is
not sympathetic to neutral characters. It was because the Victorians
cultivated magnificence that his somewhat rhetorical art described them
with such reality. His pictures were a mirror to the age. Keene was like
Shakespeare--the types he drew might change in costume with the times,
but would reappear in every generation. But du Maurier only drew
Victorians. And thus his art has that vivid local colour which is the
vital characteristic of effective satire.
It is significant that the artist had nursed throughout his youth an
enthusiasm for Byron. Until the influence of Mr. Bernard Shaw had
chilled the air, England remained under the spell of that romantic poet.
The Victorians in everything betrayed the love of glamour. They exalted
the unknown Disraeli out of sheer delight at his Byronic ability to
irradiate everything with romance. There has never been a moment like
the present in which there is a complete absence of pride in tradition,
which is pleasure in romance. But the reason is simple. Our traditions
belong to the pre-Industrial time. The romance of the Victorians was a
last glow in the sky. We might even go as far as to read an occult
significance into the art of Turner, the great painter of the sunset. We
nowadays go back to du Maurier's pictures, where the after-glow remains,
and they seem separated from us by something thicker than time, as if a
great wall had been built up between the age of the twopenny tube and
that of the carriage-and-pair. And lest there should remain a link
between them, over which we might be sentimental, the face of Buckingham
Palace is to be despoiled, the long grey outline, characteristic of
English monarchy in its reticence and repose, is, we imagine, to give
place to something in the image of a prosperous Insurance Office.
Already du Maurier's art is very precious; the environment of the people
whom he depicted is everywhere being smashed up. Our curiosity is
sharpened for everything that remains to reflect those people to us. Our
debt to the mirror of du Maurier's art increases every hour.
[Illustration]