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I murmured, with awe, for whenever she won't go to Du Maurier's grave with me, and when I won't do the crown jewels in the Tower with her, we always compromise amiably on Bond Street, and come home beaming with joy. "We might go now just to look," I said. "I have the addresses of some very good lodgings."
Perhaps the subjoined "joke" of du Maurier's from Punch is the worst in the world: "I say, cousin Constance, I've found out why you always call your Mamma 'Mater." "Why, Guy?" "Because she's always trying to find a mate for you girls." And yet if the drawing accompanying this joke be looked at first, it delights with its charm and distinction.
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.
Du Maurier's work bids fair to live in the enjoyment of many generations, from the fact that its chaff, for the most part, is directed against vanities that recur in human nature. Mr. James tells us that the lady of whom we write "hesitates at nothing; she is very modern.
It was of no avail. The letter may still be seen in the Royal Archives at the Hague, drawn up entirely in du Maurier's clear and beautiful handwriting. Although possibly a first draft, written as it was under such a mortal pressure for time, its pages have not one erasure or correction. It was seven o'clock.
Many of them are so obviously involved in what has already been said here of the artist's work that we do not propose to mention them again; but others suggest remarks which would not have incorporated easily in the attempt we have made to demonstrate the significance of du Maurier's art in general.
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.
In Du Maurier's perfect romance, Peter Ibbetson and the Duchess of Towers lived their hearts out in a dream-world. So Frau von Meck and Peter Iljitsch lived theirs in a letter-world. In 1877, before his marriage, learning of his financial troubles, she had offered to pay him well for a composition. He had said he could not conscientiously degrade his art for a price.
Du Maurier's work, in regard to the life it embodies, is not so much a thing we see as one of the conditions of seeing. He has interpreted for us for so many years the social life of England that the interpretation has become the text itself.
And du Maurier's handwriting witness the manuscript for his French version of Byron's "Sun of the sleepless melancholy star!" which appeared in the Illustrated Magazine is characteristic of an exquisite artist in its pleasant nervous beauty of style. It is the writing of one who could have etched.
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