George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians Part 6

-- 7

In 1890 du Maurier contributed two papers to the Art Journal ent.i.tled "The Ill.u.s.trating 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 ill.u.s.tration. 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 princ.i.p.ally of his admiration for ill.u.s.trations by others. He separates readers into two cla.s.ses-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 subst.i.tute 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 ill.u.s.trator is that the ill.u.s.trations 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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."

Ill.u.s.tration for "The Adventures of Harry Richmond"

The Cornhill, 1871.

In the second paper he makes interesting reflections on Thackeray and d.i.c.kens. "When the honour devolved upon me of ill.u.s.trating 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 d.i.c.kens, very minutely describe the outer aspect of his people, he visualised them very accurately, as these sketches prove."

"I doubt if d.i.c.kens 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 t.i.tle 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 a.n.a.lyses 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 pa.s.ses 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 s.e.x 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 ill.u.s.trator 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 a.s.siduously 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 d.i.c.kens, 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[2]

The circ.u.mstances 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 circ.u.mstances 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 att.i.tude, 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 a.s.sociations. 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.

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, coa.r.s.e 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 n.o.bility of France. The name Palmella was given him in remembrance of the great friendship between his father's sister and the d.u.c.h.ess de Palmella, who was the wife of the Portuguese Amba.s.sador to France. The real family name was Busson; the "du Maurier" came from the Chateau 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 t.i.tle of du Maurier; and an Aubery du Maurier, who distinguished himself in that century, was Louis of that name, French Amba.s.sador to Holland. The Auberys and the Bussons married and intermarried, the Bussons a.s.suming the territorial name of du Maurier.

George du Maurier's grandfather's name was Robert Mathurin Busson du Maurier, Gentilhomme verrier-gentleman gla.s.s-blower. Until the Revolution gla.s.s-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 gla.s.s-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 Emba.s.sy in Paris, and the artist was born in Paris on March 6, 1834, in a little house in the Champs Elysees. 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 d.i.c.kens. 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 hors.e.m.e.n; 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 Pa.s.sy. 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! Arretez! s'il vous plait," 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.

From Boulogne du Maurier was brought by his family to Paris, to live in an apartment on the first floor of the house No. 80 in the Champs Elysees. In the artist's manhood the ground and first floor were a cafe, 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 Fouquiere, 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 att.i.tude 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 Segur'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 a.s.say 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."

Queen Prima-Donna at Home

Chorus. "O, Mamma!-Dear Mamma!-Darling Mamma!! Do leave off!!!"