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 DU MAURIER 545 tragic anxiety, for it seemed possible that the right eye than with the older humorist. He shows himself, in the might also become affected; but this did not happen, and best sense, a man of feeling in all his work. He is clearly the dismal cloud was soon to show its silver lining, for, himself in love with “his pretty woman,” as he calls her— about Christmas time 1858, there came to the forlorn every pen-stroke in his presentment of her is a caress. invalid a copy of Punch!s Almanac, and with it the dawn How affectionate, too, are his renderings of his fond young of a new era in his career. mothers and their big, handsome, simple-minded husbands; There can be little doubt that the study of this Almanac, his comely children and neat nurserymaids; even his dogs and especially of Leech’s drawings in it, fired him with the —his elongated dachshunds and magnificent St Bernards ! ambition of making his name as a graphic humorist; and And how he scorns the snobs and philistines—Sir Gorgius it was not long after his return to London in 1860 that Midas and Sir Pompey Bedell, Grigsby and Cadby, he sent in his first contribution (very much in Leech’s Soapley and Toadson ! How merciless is his ridicule of the manner) to Punch. Mark Lemon, then editor, appreciated aesthetes of the ’eighties—Maudle and Postlethwaite and his talent, and on Leech’s death in 1865 appointed him Mrs Cimabue Brown! Even to Mrs Ponsonby de Tomhis successor, counselling him with wise discrimination not kyns, his most conspicuous creation, his satire is scarcely to try to be “ too funny,” but “ to undertake the light and tempered, despite her prettiness. He shows up unsparingly graceful business” and be the “romantic tenor” in Mr all her unscrupulous little ways, all her cynical, cunning Punch s little company, while Keene, as Du Maurier puts little wiles. Like Leech, he revelled in the lighter aspects it, ‘‘with his magnificent highly trained basso, sang the of life the humours of the nursery, the drawing-room, the comic songs.” These respective roles the two artists con- club, the gaieties of the country house and the seaside— tinued to play until the end, seldom trespassing on each without being blind to the tragic and dramatic. Just as others province; the “comic songs” finding their inspira- Leech could rise to the height of the famous cartoon tion principally in the life of the homely middle and lower “General Fevrier turned Traitor,” so it was Du Maurier middle classes, while the “light and graceful business” who inspired Tenniel in that impressive drawing on the enacted itself almost exclusively in “ good Society.” To eve of the Eranco-Prussian War, in which the shade of the a great extent, also, Du Maurier had to leave outdoor life great Napoleon is seen warning back the infatuated Emperor to Keene, his weak sight making it difficult for him to from his ill-omened enterprise. In his tender drawings in study and sketch in the open air and sunshine, thus cutting Once a Week, also, and in his occasional excursions into the him off, as he records regretfully, from “ so much that is grotesque in Punch, such as his picture of “ Old Nickotin so popular, delightful, and exhilarating in English country stealing away the brains of his devotees,” he has given life ’’—hunting and shooting and fishing and the like. He ample proof of his faculty for moving and impressive art. contrived, however, to give due attention to milder forms The^ technique of Du Maurier’s work in the ’eighties and of outdoor recreation, and turned to good account his the ’nineties, though to the average man it seems a marvel familiarity with Hampstead Heath and Rotten Row, and of finish and dexterity, is considered by artists a falling off his holidays with his family at Whitby and Scarborough, from what was displayed in some of his earlier Punch Boulogne and Dieppe. drawings, and especially in his contributions to the Cornhill Of Du Maurier’s life during the thirty-six years of his Magazine and Once a Week. His later work is undoubtedly connexion with Punch there is not, apart from his work more mannered, more “finicking,” less simple, less broadly as an artist, much to record. In the early ’sixties he lived effective. But it is to his fellow-craftsmen only and toat 85 Newman Street in lodgings, which he shared with experts that this is noticeable. his friend Lionel Henley, afterwards R.B.A., working hard A quaint tribute has been paid to the literary talent at his Punch sketches and his more serious contributions shown in Du Maurier’s inscriptions to his drawings, by Mr to Once a Week and the Cornhill Magazine. After his F. Anstey, his colleague on the staff of Punch. “ In these marriage with Miss Emma Wightwick in 1862 he took a lines of letterpress,” says Mr Anstey, “he has brought the spacious and pleasant house near Hampstead Heath, in art of precis-writing to perfection.” They are indeed surroundings made familiar in his drawings. Shortly before singularly concise and to the point. It is the more curious, he died he moved to a house in Oxford Square. About therefore, to note that in his novels, and even in his 1866 he struck out a new line in his admirable illustrations critical essays, Du Maurier reveals very different qualities : to Jerrold s Story of a Feather. In 1869 he realized a the precis-writer has become an improvisatore, pouring out long-cherished aspiration, the illustrating of Thackeray’s his stories and ideas in full flood, his style changing with Esmond, and in 1879 he drew twelve additional vignettes every mood—by turn humorous, eloquent, tender, gay, for it, in the same year providing several illustrations for sometimes merely “skittish,” sometimes quite solemn, but the Ballads. From time to time he sent pretty and never for long; sometimes, again, breaking into graceful graceful pictures to the exhibitions of the Royal Society of and haunting verse. He writes with apparent artlessness Painters in Water-Colour, to which he was elected in but, in his novels at least, on closer examination, it is 1881. In 1885 the first exhibition of his works at the found that he has in fact exerted all his ingenuity to give Fine. Art Society took place. Thus occupied in the them what such flagrantly untrue tales most require— practice of his art, spending his leisure in social inter- verisimilitude. It is hard to say which of the three stories course with his many friends and at home with his growing is the more impossible: that of Trilby, the tone-deaf family, hearing all the new singers and musicians, seeing artist’s model who becomes a prima donna, that of Barty all the new plays, he lived the happiest of lives. He Josselin and his guardian angel from Mars, or that of the died somewhat suddenly on 8th October 1896, and was dream-existence of Peter Ibbetson and the Duchess of buried in the Hampstead Cemetery. Towers. They are all equally preposterous, and yet It is impossible, in considering Du Maurier’s work, to plausible. The drawings are cunningly made to serve avoid comparing it with that of Leech and Keene, the the purpose of evidence, circumstantial and direct. more so that in his little book on Social Pictorial Satire These books cannot be criticized by the ordinary canons he himself has set forth or suggested the points both of of the art of fiction. They are a genre by themresemblance and of difference. Like Keene, though Keene’s selves, a blend of unfettered day-dream and rose-coloured marvellous technique was his despair, Du Maurier was a reminiscence. much more finished draughtsman than John Leech, but in For the dramatic version of Trilby by Mr Paul Potter other respects he had less in common with the younger Du Maurier would accept no credit. The play was proS. III.— 69