Honoré, and liqueurs
of every description — chartreuse, curaçoa, ratafia de cassis, and
anisette; no expense was spared.
of every description — chartreuse, curaçoa, ratafia de cassis, and
anisette; no expense was spared.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v09 - Dra to Eme
] And now, Clarkson, my dear, let us get out of this.
You are a good and a brave fellow. I will go anywhere with
you. I have had enough of Europe - things here are too small.
Do you know, I really believe I am going to find myself in love
with you! Come, let us go! I am positively smothering.
Clarkson — Yes, let us go.
## p. 5040 (#208) ###########################################
5040
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
(At the moment that Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson are going out, servants and
police officials, accompanied by a commissioner of the police service,
appear in the door. Clarkson is pointed out. ]
Commissioner -- I beg your pardon, monsieur,- there seems to
have been a murder here.
Clarkson - Oh no, monsieur, not at all a murder -- only a duel.
Commissioner - And am I to understand, monsieur, that it is
you who
Clarkson - Oh yes, monsieur, it is I. You have come to take
me into custody ?
Commissioner — Yes, monsieur.
Clarkson — What a ridiculous country! I am ready to follow
you, monsieur. But I am an American citizen.
I shall give you
bail — but of course, the law before anything.
Mrs. Clarkson Reckon on me, Clarkson. I shall take charge
of this matter.
Clarkson How are you going to do that?
Mrs. Clarkson --Oh, that's my affair.
[Mrs. Clarkson crosses the stage and whispers a word to the commis-
sioner. The commissioner bows very respectfully. Mrs. Clarkson
goes out. ]
Commissioner [to Dr. Rémonin]- You are a doctor, monsieur ?
Rémonin - Yes, monsieur.
Commissioner — Will you have the goodness to give a certifi-
cate of death?
Rémonin [significantly) - With great pleasure!
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature, by E. Irenæus
Stevenson
## p. 5041 (#209) ###########################################
5041
GEORGE DU MAURIER
(1834-1896)
EORGE Louis PALMELLA BUSSON DU MAURIER was born in Paris
on March 6th, 1834, and his early life was passed there. His
father was a Frenchman, who had married an English woman
in Paris. The Du Mauriers came of an old family in Brittany, Du
Maurier's grandfather having been a small rentier, who derived his
living from glass-works. During Du Maurier's childhood his parents
removed to Belgium and thence to London. At seventeen years of age
he tried for a degree at the Sorbonne in Paris, but was not success-
ful; and he was put, much against his will,
to study chemistry under Dr. Williamson at
University College, London. Du Maurier's
father, whose characteristics are described
in Peter Ibbetson,' was an amateur of sci-
ence.
It has been hinted by the son that
certain unlucky experiments, which were
the result of the elder Du Maurier's fancy
for the natural sciences, considerably im-
paired the family fortunes. The father had
bent his heart on the son's being a man of
science, but the son's tastes were all for art.
He did therefore little good in his chemical
studies.
GEORGE DU MAURIER
Du Maurier's father died in 1856, and he
then devoted himself definitely to art. He worked at the British Mu-
seum, and made considerable progress there. He next went to Paris,
and lived the life which he has described in "Trilby. ' In 1857 he at-
tended the Academy at Antwerp, and studied under De Kaiser and
Van Lerius. His severe studies at Antwerp had the result that his
sight was seriously impaired, and he lost the use of his left eye.
After two years of enforced idleness he went to London to seek his
fortune. An old acquaintance of his student life in Paris introduced
him to Charles Reade, who in turn introduced him to Mark Lemon,
the editor of Punch. Through these acquaintances he obtained em-
ployment in drawing for Once a Week, Punch, and the Cornhill Maga-
zine. On the death of Leech in 1864 he was regularly attached to
the staff of Punch, and till the time of his death continued to work
IX-316
## p. 5042 (#210) ###########################################
5042
GEORGE DU MAURIER
for that periodical with ever-increasing success. It is not too much
to say that for many years Punch was chiefly and mainly Du Maurier.
He early marked out for himself an entirely new path, which was not
in the direction of caricature or broad comedy; grace, sentiment, and
wit, rather than fun, were the characteristics of his work.
He con-
fined himself almost entirely to society, so that his field was a nar-
rower one than that of some of his coadjutors. He had not, for
instance, the masculine breadth of Leech, who represented with great
strength and humor the chief characters of English life, — the parson,
the soldier, the merchant, the farmer, etc.
Du Maurier was almost entirely a carpet knight. He drew Lon-
don society, and a certain phase of London society. The particular
society which he represented is of very recent existence. Thirty
years ago there was but one society in London. This was simply the
ancient aristocratic society of England, which gathered in London in
the season. It is true that there was an artistic society in London
at that time, but it was quite apart and of little general recognition
or influence. But since then there has come up in London a society
made up chiefly of artists, professional people, and successful mer-
chants (having moreover its points of contact with the old society),
which is very strong and influential. It is this which Du Maurier
knew, and which he represented. Even here, however, the types he
has selected for description were very special. But they were pre-
sented with so much grace and charm that the public never tired of
them. To his type of woman he was especially faithful: the tall
woman with long throat and well-defined chin, much resembling the
figures of Burne-Jones and Rossetti, only somewhat more mundane.
We have the same woman in the heroine of "Trilby. '
Though Du Maurier, before beginning Peter Ibbetson, had never
written a book, he had had considerable literary experience, for he
is said to have spent as much time upon the construction of the dia-
logues which accompanied his pictures as upon the pictures them-
selves. The story of Peter Ibbetson? he had often related to his
friends, who had urged him to write it down. This he finally did, -
at the special instance, it is said, of Henry James. It appeared in
Harper's Magazine in 1891. Trilby) was published in 1894 in Har-
per's Magazine, and at once attained a great popular success. The
publishers estimate that about 250,000 copies of the book have been
sold. Du Maurier had sold the book outright for £2,000, but when it
became apparent that the work was to be a success, the publishers
admitted the author to a royalty, paying at one time $40,000. They
also shared with him the large sums paid for the dramatization of
the work. For The Martian, his last novel, he received £10,000
outright. This also was published in Harper's Magazine.
## p. 5043 (#211) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5043
It is perhaps too early to pass judgment upon the merits of these
works. They have, no doubt, grave faults. The story of Peter
Ibbetson) has been completed when it is but two-thirds told. The
remaining portion of the book is a dream. This is of course a dan-
gerous reversal of the usual method of the story-teller, which is to
make dreams seem like facts. The hypnotic part of Trilby) is said
by the professional authorities on the subject to be bad science. The
hypnotism in Trilby) was perhaps a journalist's idea, that subject
being much talked of at the time the book was written. ) Du Maurier,
it need hardly be said, was by training a journalist, although the
training had been of the pencil rather than of the pen. The literary
style of the novels is curious. It makes no pretensions to finish; the
grammar even is sometimes at fault. But on the other hand, it has
decided merits. It is particularly easy, Aowing, and simple. These
are not the qualities we should have expected from the nature of Du
Maurier's literary training. The brief dialogues which he has for so
many years appended to his sketches in Punch would have edu-
cated, we should have thought, the qualities of brevity and point
rather than those of ease and fullness, Certain peculiarities of the
style cannot be defended, but the author produces his effects in spite
of such solecisms. This is true of the matter of his stories as well
as of the style. They are at many points inartistically constructed:
but the stuff is good, and the works therefore hold their own in spite
of these drawbacks. >They certainly have one virtue, which is most
necessary to the success of any work of the imagination: they have
reality. We believe as we read, and continue to believe after we
have ceased reading, that the Major and Mimsey and Taffy and
Trilby are real persons. They are real to us because they have in
the first case been real to their creator. It is possible, however, that
the pictures which accompany the text may increase the strength of
the illusion.
No book, in recent years at any rate, has had so instantaneous
and prodigious a popular success as "Trilby Popularity is always
hard to explain with any certainty. It seems to be a quality in the
warp and woof of the mind of the man that has it. One condition
appears to be that he shall be in sympathy with the minds of the
mass of his fellow-beings. >There was such a sympathy in Du Mau-
rier's case; and to be more particular, his kindly and friendly enthu-
siasm was a quality to commend him to men. He had a power of
enjoying beauty in his fellow-beings. Then he had had a long edu.
cation in the qualities that make popularity. He had long studied
the art of pleasing. It is not improbable that in these novels, which
were intended for the American public, he may have played upon
certain of our national susceptibilities. We in this country like to
## p. 5044 (#212) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5044
have our literature taken seriously by the European. It may be that
Du Maurier may have had an inkling of this, for it is curious to note
how much of our poetry appears in these novels. Du Maurier had a
very nice taste in poetry, a genuine enthusiasm for it which it is
heartily to be wished were shared by all college professors of English
literature. Thus, he could not have chosen better lines than those
which Peter Ibbetson was in the habit of reciting to Mimsey, (The
Water-fowl' of Bryant, - perhaps the most perfect poem ever pro-
duced in this country,-a poem so beautifully carried,” as Matthew
Arnold once described it to the present writer. Poe's beautiful and
musical lines, written by him at fourteen, -Helen, thy beauty is to
me,' — are also made use of. We have a good deal of Longfellow and
other American writers. (Ben Bolt) is of course an American song.
These appeals to our national predilections may have influenced us.
But the interest and curiosity of our practical and hard-working
American public in the Bohemian art life of the Latin Quarter was
also, no doubt, a chief cause of the popularity of Trilby. '
Du Maurier did not live long to enjoy his success. He had always
been known to his friends as a sensitive man, this quality being
ascribed to ill health. Ill health was no doubt a chief cause of the
vexation with which he received certain comments upon his books,
in some cases inspired by envy of his success. Many of his recent
contributions to Punch have been at the expense of the unsuccessful
author, and have supported the thesis that ill success was not an
indubitable proof of genius. When Lord Wolseley asked him what
would be the title of his next novel, he said (Soured by Success. '
He died in London on October 8th, 1896.
AT THE HEART OF BOHEMIA
From Trilby) Copyright 1894, by Harper & Brothers
ND then — well, I happen to forget what sort of a day this
particular day turned into, about six of the clock.
If it was decently fine, the most of them went off to dine at
the Restaurant de la Couronne, kept by the Père Trin, in the
Rue de Monsieur, who gave you of his best to eat and drink for
twenty sols Parisis, or one franc in the coin of the empire.
Good distending soups, omelets that were only too savory, lentils,
red and white beans, meat so dressed and sauced and seasoned
that you didn't know whether it was beef or mutton, flesh, fowl,
or good red herring,— or even bad, for that matter,- nor very
greatly care.
## p. 5045 (#213) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5045
And just the same lettuce, radishes, and cheese of Gruyère or
Brie as you got at the Trois Frères Provençaux (but not the
same butter! ). And to wash it all down, generous wine in
wooden brocs,” that stained a lovely æsthetic blue everything it
was spilled over.
And you hobnobbed with models, male and female, students
of law and medicine, painters and sculptors, workmen and blan-
chisseuses and grisettes, and found them very good company, and
most improving to your French, if your French was of the usual
British kind, and even to some of your manners, if these were
very British indeed.
And the evening was innocently wound
with billiards, cards, or dominoes at the Café du Luxembourg
opposite; or at the Théâtre du Luxembourg, in the Rue de
Madame, to see funny farces with screamingly droll Englishmen
in them; or still better, at the Jardin Bullier (la Closerie des
Lilas), to see the students dance the cancan, or try and dance it
yourself, which is not so easy as it seems; or best of all, at the
Théâtre de l'Odéon, to see Fechter and Madame Doche in the
Dame aux Camélias. '
Or if it were not only fine, but a Saturday afternoon into the
bargain, the Laird would put on a necktie and a few other neces-
sary things, and the three friends would walk arm-in-arm to
Taffy's hotel in the Rue de Seine, and wait outside till he had
made himself as presentable as the Laird, which did not take
very long. And then (Little Billee was always presentable) they
would, arm-in-arm, the huge Taffy in the middle, descend the
Rue de Seine and cross a bridge to the Cité, and have a look in
at the Morgue. Then back again to the quays on the Rive
Gauche by the Pont Neuf, to wend their way westward; now on
one side to look at the print and picture shops and the magasins
of bric-à-brac, and haply sometimes buy thereof, now on the
other to finger and cheapen the second-hand books for sale on
the parapet, and even pick one or two utterly unwanted bargains,
never to be read or opened again.
When they reached the Pont des Arts they would cross it,
stopping in the middle to look up the river towards the old Cité
and Notre Dame, eastward, and dream unutterable things and
try to utter them. Then turning westward, they would gaze at
the glowing sky and all it glowed upon — the corner of the Tui-
leries and the Louvre, the many bridges, the Chamber of Depu-
ties, the golden river narrowing its perspective and broadening
## p. 5046 (#214) ###########################################
5046
GEORGE DU MAURIER
its bed, as it went flowing and winding on its way between
Passy and Grenelle to St. Cloud, to Rouen, to the Havre, to
England perhaps — where they didn't want to be just then; and
they would try and express themselves to the effect that life was
uncommonly well worth living in that particular city at that par-
ticular time of the day and year and century, at that particular
epoch of their own mortal and uncertain lives.
Then, still arm-in-arm and chatting gayly, across the court-
yard of the Louvre, through gilded gates well guarded by reck-
less imperial Zouaves, up the arcaded Rue de Rivoli as far as
the Rue Castiglione, where they would stare with greedy eyes at
the window of the great corner pastry-cook, and marvel at the
beautiful assortment of bonbons, pralines, dragées, marrons glacés
saccharine, crystalline substances of all kinds and colors, as
charming to look at as an illumination; precious stones, delicately
frosted sweets, pearls and diamonds so arranged as to melt in
the mouth; especially, at this particular time of the year, the
monstrous Easter eggs of enchanting hue, enshrined like costly
jewels in caskets of satin and gold; and the Laird, who was well
read in his English classics and liked to show it, would opine
that they managed these things better in France. ”
Then across the street by a great gate into the Allée des
Feuillants, and up to the Place de la Concorde - to gaze, but
quite without base envy, at the smart people coming back from
the Bois de Boulogne. For even in Paris “carriage people have
a way of looking bored, of taking their pleasure sadly, of having
nothing to say to each other, as though the vibration of so many
wheels all rolling home the same way every afternoon had hyp-
notized them into silence, idiocy, and melancholia.
And our three musketeers of the brush would speculate on
the vanity of wealth and rank and fashion; on the satiety that
follows in the wake of self-indulgence and overtakes it; on the
weariness of the pleasures that become a toil - as if they knew
all about it, had found it all out for themselves, and nobody else
had ever found it out before!
Then they found out something else — namely, that the sting
of healthy appetite was becoming intolerable; so they would
betake themselves to an English eating-house in the Rue de la
Madeleine (on the left-hand side near the top), where they would
renovate their strength and their patriotism on British beef and
beer, and household bread, and bracing, biting, stinging yellow
## p. 5047 (#215) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5047
mustard, and horseradish, and noble apple-pie, and Cheshire
cheese; and get through as much of these in an hour or so as
they could for talking, talking, talking; such happy talk! as full
of sanguine hope and enthusiasm, of cocksure commendation or
condemnation of all painters, dead or alive, of modest but firm
belief in themselves and each other, as a Paris Easter egg is full
of sweets and pleasantness (for the young).
And then a stroll on the crowded, well-lighted boulevards,
and a bock at the café there, at a little three-legged marble table
right out on the genial asphalt pavement, still talking nineteen
to the dozen.
Then home by dark old silent streets and some deserted
bridge to their beloved Latin Quarter, the Morgue gleaming
cold and still and fatal in the pale lamplight, and Notre Dame
pricking up its watchful twin towers, which have looked down
for so many centuries on so many happy, sanguine, expansive
youths walking arm-in-arm by twos and threes, and forever talk-
ing, talking, talking.
The Laird and Little Billee would see Taffy safe to the door
of his hôtel garni in the Rue de Seine, where they would find
much to say to each other before they said good-night - so much
that Taffy and Little Billee would see the Laird safe to his door,
in the Place St. Anatole des Arts. And then a discussion would
arise between Taffy and the Laird on the immortality of the
soul, let us say, or the exact meaning of the word "gentleman,"
or the relative merits of Dickens and Thackeray, or some such
recondite and quite unhackneyed theme, and Taffy and the Laird
would escort Little Billee to his door, in the Place de l'Odéon,
and he would re-escort them both back again, and so on till any
hour you please.
Or again, if it rained, and Paris through the studio window
loomed lead-colored, with its shiny slate roofs under skies that
were ashen and sober, and the wild west wind made woeful music
among the chimney-pots, and little gray waves ran up the river
the wrong way, and the Morgue looked chill and dark and wet,
and almost uninviting (even to three healthy-minded young
Britons), they would resolve to dine and spend a happy evening
at home.
Little Billee, taking with him three francs (or even four),
would dive into back streets and buy a yard or so of crusty
new bread, well burned on the flat side, a fillet of beef, a litre
## p. 5048 (#216) ###########################################
5048
GEORGE DU MAURIER
of wine, potatoes and onions, butter, a little cylindrical cheese
called "bondon de Neufchâtel,” tender curly lettuce, with cher-
vil, parsley, spring onions, and other fine herbs, and a pod of
garlic, which would be rubbed on a crust of bread to flavor
things with
Taffy would lay the cloth English-wise, and also make the
salad, for which, like everybody else I ever met, he had a special
receipt of his own (putting in the oil first and the vinegar after);
and indeed, his salads were quite as good as everybody else's.
The Laird, bending over the stove, would cook the onions
and beef into a savory Scotch mess so cunningly that you could
not taste the beef for the onions nor always the onions for the
garlic!
And they would dine far better than at le Père Trin's, far
better than at the English Restaurant in the Rue de la Made-
leine — better than anywhere else on earth!
And after dinner, what coffee, roasted and ground on the
spot, what pipes and cigarettes of "caporal,” by the light of the
three shaded lamps, while the rain beat against the big north
window, and the wind went howling round the quaint old medi-
æval tower at the corner of the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres
(the old street of the bad lepers), and the damp logs hissed and
crackled in the stove!
What jolly talk into the small hours! Thackeray and Dick-
ens again, and Tennyson and Byron (who was not dead yet”
in those days); and Titian and Velasquez, and young Millais and
Holman Hunt (just out); and Monsieur Ingres and Monsieur
Delacroix, and Balzac and Stendhal and George Sand; and the
good Dumas! and Edgar Allan Poe; and the glory that was
Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.
Good, honest, innocent, artless prattle - not of the wisest,
perhaps, nor redolent of the very highest culture (which by the
way can mar as well as make), nor leading to any very practical
result; but quite pathetically sweet from the sincerity and fervor
of its convictions, a profound belief in their importance, and a
proud trust in their lifelong immutability.
Oh happy days and happy nights, sacred to art and friend-
ship! oh happy times of careless impecuniosity, and youth and
hope and health and strength and freedom — with all Paris for
a playground, and its dear old unregenerate Latin Quarter for a
workshop and a home!
## p. 5049 (#217) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5049
CHRISTMAS IN THE LATIN QUARTER
From "Trilby. ) Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers
C"
HRISTMAS was drawing near.
There were days when the whole Quartier Latin would
veil its iniquities under fogs almost worthy of the Thames
Valley between London Bridge and Westminster, and out of the
studio window the prospect was a dreary blank. No Morgue! no
towers of Notre Dame! not even the chimney-pots over the way
not even the little mediæval toy turret at the corner of the
Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, Little Billee's delight!
The stove had to be crammed till its sides grew a dull deep
red, before one's fingers could hold a brush or squeeze a blad-
der; one had to box or fence at nine in the morning, that one
might recover from the cold bath and get warm for the rest of
the day!
Taffy and the Laird grew pensive and dreamy, childlike and
bland; and when they talked, it was generally about Christmas
at home in merry England and the distant land of cakes, and
how good it was to be there at such a time- hunting, shooting,
curling, and endless carouse!
It was Ho! for the jolly West Riding, and Hey! for the bon-
nets of Bonnie Dundee, till they grew quite homesick, and wanted
to start by the very next train.
They didn't do anything so foolish. They wrote
to
friends in London for the biggest turkey, the biggest plum-
pudding, that could be got for love or money, with mince-pies,
and holly and mistletoe, and sturdy, short, thick English sau.
sages, half a Stilton cheese, and a sirloin of beef — two sirloins,
in case one should not be enough.
For they meant to have a Homeric feast in the studio on
Christmas Day - Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee - and invite
all the delightful chums I have been trying to describe; and
that is just why I tried to describe them - Durien, Vincent, An-
tony, Lorrimer, Carnegie, Petrolicoconose, l'Zouzou, and Dodor!
The cooking and waiting should be done by Trilby, her friend
Angèle Boisse, M. et Mme. Vinard, and such little Vinards as
could be trusted with glass and crockery and mince-pies; and if
that was not enough, they would also cook themselves and wait
upon each other.
over
## p. 5050 (#218) ###########################################
5050
GEORGE DU MAURIER
When dinner should be over, supper was to follow, with
scarcely any interval to speak of; and to partake of this, other
guests should be bidden - Svengali and Gecko, and perhaps one
or two more. No ladies!
For as the unsusceptible Laird expressed it, in the language
of a gillie he had once met at a servants' dance in a Highland
country-house, “Them wimmen spiles the ball! ”
Elaborate cards of invitation were sent out, in the designing
and ornamentation of which the Laird and Taffy exhausted all
their fancy (Little Billee had no time).
Wines and spirits and English beers were procured at great
cost from M. E. Delevigne's, in the Rue St.
Honoré, and liqueurs
of every description — chartreuse, curaçoa, ratafia de cassis, and
anisette; no expense was spared.
Also truffled galantines of turkey, tongues, hams, rillettes de
Tours, pâtés de foie gras, “fromage d'Italie (which has nothing
to do with cheese), saucissons d'Arles et de Lyon, with and with-
out garlic, cold jellies, peppery and salt - everything that French
charcutiers and their wives can make out of French pigs, or any
other animal whatever, beast, bird, or fowl (even cats and rats),
for the supper; and sweet jellies and cakes, and sweetmeats, and
confections of all kinds, from the famous pastry-cook at the cor-
ner of the Rue Castiglione.
Mouths went watering all day long in joyful anticipation.
They water somewhat sadly now at the mere remembrance of
these delicious things — the mere immediate sight or scent of
which in these degenerate latter days would no longer avail
to promote any such delectable secretion. Hélas! ahimè! ach
weh! ay de mi! eheu! 071204 — in point of fact, alas!
That is the very exclamation I wanted.
Christmas eve
came round The pieces of resistance and
plum-pudding and mince-pies had not yet arrived from London
but there was plenty of time.
Les trois Angliches dined at le Père Trin's, as usual, and
played billiards and dominoes at the Café du Luxembourg, and
possessed their souls in patience till it was time to go and hear
the midnight mass at the Madeleine, where Roucouly, the great
baritone of the Opéra Comique, was retained to sing Adam's
famous Noël.
The whole Quarter seemed alive with the réveillon.
It was
a clear frosty night, with a splendid moon just past the full, and
## p. 5051 (#219) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5051
most exhilarating was the walk along the quays on the Rive
Gauche, over the Pont de la Concorde and across the Place
thereof, and up the thronged Rue de la Madeleine to the massive
Parthenaic place of worship that always has such a pagan, worldly
look of smug and prosperous modernity.
They struggled manfully, and found standing and kneeling
room among that fervent crowd, and heard the impressive serv-
ice with mixed feelings, as became true Britons of very ad-
vanced liberal and religious opinions; not with the unmixed
contempt of the proper British Orthodox (who were there in full
force, one may be sure).
But their susceptible hearts soon melted at the beautiful
music, and in mere sensuous attendrissement they were quickly
in unison with all the rest.
For as the clock struck twelve, out pealed the organ, and up
rose the finest voice in France:
“Minuit, Chrétiens! c'est l'heure solennelle
Où l'Homme-Dieu descendit parmi nous! ”
And a wave of religious emotion rolled over Little Billee and
submerged him; swept him off his little legs, swept him out of
his little self, drowned him in a great seething surge of love -
love of his kind, love of love, love of life, love of death, love of
all that is and ever was and ever will be
a very large order
indeed, even for Little Billee.
And it seemed to him that he stretched out his arms for love
to one figure especially beloved beyond all the rest — one figure
erect on high, with arms outstretched to him, in more than com-
mon fellowship of need: not the sorrowful Figure crowned with
thorns, for it was in the likeness of a woman; but never that of
the Virgin Mother of our Lord.
It was Trilby, Trilby, Trilby! a poor fallen sinner and waif,
all but lost amid the scum of the most corrupt city on earth.
Trilby, weak and mortal like himself, and in woeful want of
pardon! and in her gray dove-like eyes he saw the shining of so
great a love that he was abashed; for well he knew that all
that love was his, and would be his forever, come what would
or could.
« Peuple, debout! Chante ta délivrance!
Noël! Noël! Voici le Rédempteur! »
## p. 5052 (#220) ###########################################
5052
GEORGE DU MAURIER
So sang and rang and pealed and echoed the big deep metal-
lic baritone bass — above the organ, above the incense, above
everything else in the world - till the very universe seemed to
shake with the rolling thunder of that great message of love and
forgiveness!
Thus at least felt Little Billee, whose way it was to magnify
and exaggerate all things under the subtle stimulus of sound,
and the singing human voice had especially strange power to
penetrate into his in most depths — even the voice of man!
And what voice but the deepest and gravest and grandest
there is, can give worthy utterance to such a message as that,-
the epitome, the abstract, the very essence of all collective
humanity's wisdom at its best!
«DREAMING TRUE »
From Peter Ibbetson. Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers
A
s I sat down on a bench by the old willow (where the rat
lived), and gazed and gazed, it almost surprised me that
the very intensity of my desire did not of itself suffice to
call up the old familiar faces and forms, and conjure away these
modern intruders. The power to do this seemed almost within
my reach: I willed and willed and willed with all my might, but
in vain; I could not cheat my sight or hearing for a moment.
There they remained, unconscious and undisturbed, those happy,
well-mannered, well-appointed little French people, and fed the
gold and silver fish; and there with an aching heart I left them.
Oh, surely, surely, I cried to myself, we ought to find some
means of possessing the past more fully and completely than we
do. Life is not worth living for many of us, if a want so des-
perate and yet so natural can never be satisfied. Memory is but
a poor rudimentary thing that we had better be without, if it can
only lead us to the verge of consummation like this, and madden
us with a desire it cannot slake. The touch of a vanished hand,
the sound of a voice that is still, the tender grace of a day that
is dead, should be ours forever at our beck and call, by some
exquisite and quite conceivable illusion of the senses.
Alas! alas! I have hardly the hope of ever meeting my
beloved ones again in another life. Oh, to meet their too dimly
remembered forms in this, just as they once were, by some trick
## p. 5053 (#221) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5053
of my own brain! To see them with the eye, and hear them with
the ear, and tread with them the old obliterated ways as in a
waking dream! It would be well worth going mad, to become
such a self-conjurer as that.
I
got back to my hotel in the Rue de la Michodière.
Prostrate with emotion and fatigue, the tarantella still
jingling in my ears, and that haunting, beloved face, with its
ineffable smile, still printed on the retina of my closed eyes, I
fell asleep.
And then I dreamed a dream, and the first phase of my real,
inner life began!
All the events of the day, distorted and exaggerated and
jumbled together after the usual manner of dreams, wove them-
selves into a kind of nightmare and oppression. I was on my
way to my old abode; everything that I met or saw
was gro-
tesque and impossible, yet had now the strange, vague charm of
association and reminiscence, now the distressing sense of change
and desolation.
As I got near to the avenue gate, instead of the school on my
left there was a prison; and at the door a little thick-set jailer,
three feet high and much deformed, and a little deformed jail-
eress no bigger than himself, were cunningly watching me out of
the corners of their eyes, and toothlessly smiling. Presently they
began to waltz together to an old familiar tune, with their enor-
mous keys dangling at their sides; and they looked so funny that
I laughed and applauded.
But soon
I perceived that their
crooked faces were not really funny; indeed, they were fatal and
terrible in the extreme, and I was soon conscious that these
deadly dwarfs were trying to waltz between me and the avenue
gate for which I was bound — to cut me off, that they might run
me into the prison, where it was their custom to hang people of
a Monday morning.
In an agony of terror I made a rush for the avenue gate, and
there stood the Duchess of Towers, with mild surprise in her eyes
and a kind smile - a heavenly vision of strength and reality.
“You are not dreaming true! ” she said. “Don't be afraid
those little people don't exist! Give me your hand and come in
here. "
## p. 5054 (#222) ###########################################
5054
GEORGE DU MAURIER
With my
And as I did so she waved the troglodytes away, and they
vanished; and I felt that this was no longer a dream, but some-
thing else---some strange thing that had happened to me, some
new life that I had woke up to.
For at the touch of her hand my consciousness, my sense of
being I, myself, which hitherto in my dream (as in all previous
dreams up to then) had been only partial, intermittent, and
vague, suddenly blazed into full, consistent, practical activity —
just as it is in life, when one is well awake and much interested
in what is going on; only with perceptions far keener and more
alert.
I knew perfectly who I was and what I was, and remembered
all the events of the previous day. I was conscious that my real
body, undressed and in bed, now lay fast asleep in a small room
on the fourth floor of an hôtel garni in the Rue de la Micho-
dière. I knew this perfectly; and yet here was my body too,
just as substantial, with all my clothes on; my boots rather dusty,
my shirt collar damp with the heat, for it was hot.
disengaged hand I felt in my trousers pocket; there were my Lon-
don latch-key, my purse, my penknife; my handkerchief in the
breast pocket of my coat, and in its tail pockets my gloves and
pipe-case, and the little water-color box I had bought that morn-
ing. I looked at my watch; it was going, and marked eleven.
I pinched myself, I coughed, I did all one usually does under the
pressure of some immense surprise, to assure myself that I was
awake; and I was, and yet here I stood, actually hand in hand
with a lady to whom I had never been introduced (and who
seemed much tickled at my confusion); and staring now at her,
now at my old school.
The prison had tumbled down like a house of cards, and lo!
in its place was M. Saindou's maison d'éducation, just as it had
been of old. I even recognized on the yellow wall the stamp of
a hand in dry mud, made fifteen years ago by a day boy called
Parisot, who had fallen down in the gutter close by, and thus
left his mark on getting up again; and it had remained there for
months, till it had been whitewashed away in the holidays.
Here it was anew, after fifteen years.
The swallows were flying and twittering. A yellow omnibus
was drawn up to the gates of the school; the horses stamped and
neighed, and bit each other, as French horses always did in those
days. The driver swore at them perfunctorily.
## p. 5055 (#223) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5055
A crowd was looking on — le Père et la Mère François,
Madame Liard the grocer's wife, and other people, whom I
remembered at once with delight. Just in front of us a small
boy and girl were looking on, like the rest, and I recognized the
back and the cropped head and thin legs of Mimsey Seraskier.
A barrel organ was playing a pretty tune I knew quite well,
and had forgotten.
The school gates opened, and M. Saindou, proud and full of
self-importance (as he always was), and half a dozen boys whose
faces and names were quite familiar to me, in smart white trou-
sers and shining boots, and silken white bands round their left
arms, got into the omnibus, and were driven away in a glorified
manner as it seemed — to heaven in a golden chariot. It was
beautiful to see and hear.
I was still holding the duchess's hand, and felt the warmth of
it through her glove; it stole up my arm like a magnetic cur-
rent. I was in Elysium; a heavenly sense had come over me
that at last my periphery had been victoriously invaded by a
spirit other than mine - a most powerful and beneficent spirit.
There was a blessed fault in my impenetrable armor of self,
after all, and the genius of strength and charity and loving-kind-
ness had found it out.
“Now you're dreaming true,” she said. « Where are those
boys going? ”
« To church, to make their première communion,” I replied.
“That's right. You're dreaming true because I've got you
by the hand. Do you know that tune ? »
I listened, and the words belonging to it came out of the
past, and I said them to her, and she laughed again, with her
eyes screwed up deliciously.
"Quite right - quite! ” she exclaimed. «How odd that you
should know them! How well you pronounce French for an
Englishman! For you are Mr. Ibbetson, Lady Cray's architect ? »
I assented, and she let go my hand.
The street was full of people — familiar forms and faces and
voices, chatting together and looking down the road after the
yellow omnibus; old attitudes, old tricks of gait and manner, old
forgotten French ways of speech - all was long ago.
Nobody noticed us, and we walked up the now deserted avenue.
· The happiness, the enchantment of it all! Could it be that
I was dead, that I had died suddenly in my sleep, at the hotel
as it
## p. 5056 (#224) ###########################################
5056
GEORGE DU MAURIER
in the Rue de la Michodière ? Could it be that the Duchess of
Towers was dead too — had been killed by some accident on her
way from St. Cloud to Paris ? and that, both having died, so near
each other, we had begun our eternal after-life in this heavenly
fashion ?
That was too good to be true, I reflected; some instinct told
me that this was not death, but transcendent earthly life — and
also, alas! that it would not endure forever!
I was deeply conscious of every feature in her face, every
movement of her body, every detail of her dress,— more so than
I could have been in actual life, - and said to myself, "Whatever
this is, it is no dream. ” But I felt there was about me the
unspeakable elation which can come to us only in our waking
moments when we are at our very best; and then only feebly, in
comparison with this, and to many of us never. It never had to
me, since that morning when I had found the little wheelbarrow.
I was also conscious, however, that the avenue itself had a
slight touch of the dream in it. It was no longer quite right,
and was getting out of drawing and perspective, so to speak. I
had lost my stay — the touch of her hand.
"Are you still dreaming true, Mr. Ibbetson? ”
“I am afraid not quite,” I replied.
«You must try by yourself a little — try hard. Look at this
house; what is written on the portico ? ”
I saw written in gold letters the words « Tête Noire," and
said so.
She rippled with laughter, and said, “No, try again;
» and
just touched me with the tip of her finger for a moment.
I tried again, and said "Parvis Notre Dame. ”
“That's rather better,” she said, and touched me again; and I
read, Parva sed Apta, as I had so often read there before in
old days.
“And now look at that old house over there,” pointing to my
old home; how many windows are there in the top story? ”
I said seven.
“No; there are five. Look again: » and there were five; and
the whole house was exactly, down to its minutest detail, as it
had been once upon a time. I could see Thérèse through one of
the windows, making my bed.
« That's better,” said the duchess; "you will soon do it — it's
very easy — ce n'est que le premier pas! My father taught me;
## p. 5057 (#225) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5057
you must always sleep on your back with your arms above your
head, your hands clasped under it and your feet crossed, the
right one over the left, unless you are left-handed; and you must
never for a moment cease thinking of where you want to be in
your dream till you are asleep and get there; and you must
never forget in your dream where and what you were when
awake. You must join the dream on to reality. Don't forget.
And now I will say good-by; but before I go, give me both
your hands, and look round everywhere as far as your eye can
see. »
It was hard to look away from her; her face drew my eyes,
and through them all my heart; but I did as she told me, and
took in the whole familiar scene, even to the distant woods of
Ville d'Avray,, a glimpse of which was visible through an open-
ing in the trees; even to the smoke of a train making its way to
Versailles, miles off; and the old telegraph, working its black
arms on the top of Mont Valérien.
"Is it all right ? ” she asked. «That's well. Henceforward,
whenever you come here, you will be safe as far as your sight
can reach, - from this spot, - all through my introduction. See
what it is to have a friend at court! No more little dancing
jailers! And then you can gradually get farther by yourself.
“Out there, through that park, leads to the Bois de Boulogne-
there's a gap in the hedge you can get through; but mind and
make everything plain in front of you - true, before you go a
step farther, or else you'll have to wake and begin it all over
again. You have only to will it, and think yourself as awake,
and it will come -on condition, of course, that you have been
there before. And mind, also, you must take care how you
touch things or people - you may hear, see, and smell; but you
mustn't touch, nor pick flowers or leaves, nor move things about.
It blurs the dream, like breathing on a window-pane. I don't
know why, but it does. You must remember that everything
here is dead and gone by. With you and me it is different;
we're alive and real — that is, I am; and there would seem to be
no mistake about your being real too, Mr. Ibbetson, by the grasp
of your hands. But you're not; and why you are here, and what
business you have in this my particular dream, I cannot under-
stand; no living person has ever come into it before. I can't
make it out. I suppose it's because I saw your reality this after-
noon, looking out of the window at the Tête Noire, and you are
IX-317
## p. 5058 (#226) ###########################################
5058
GEORGE DU MAURIER
just a stray figment of my over-tired brain - a very agreeable
figment, I admit; but you don't exist here just now — you can't
possibly; you are somewhere else, Mr. Ibbetson; dancing at Ma-
bille, perhaps, or fast asleep somewhere, and dreaming of French
churches and palaces, and public fountains, like a good young
British architect -- otherwise I shouldn't talk to you like this, you
may be sure!
“Never mind. I am very glad to dream that I have been of
use to you, and you are very welcome here, if it amuses you to
come — especially as you are only a false dream of mine, for
what else can you be ? And now I must leave you: so good-by. ”
She disengaged her hands and laughed her angelic laugh, and
then turned towards the park. I watched her tall straight figure
and blowing skirts, and saw her follow some ladies and children
into a thicket that I remembered well, and she was soon out of
sight.
I felt as if all warmth had gone out of my life; as if a joy
had taken flight; as if a precious something had withdrawn itself
from my possession, and the gap in my periphery had closed
again.
Long I stood in thought, with my eyes fixed on the spot
where she had disappeared; and I felt inclined to follow, but
then considered this would not have been discreet. For although
she was only a false dream of mine, a mere recollection of the
exciting and eventful day, a stray figment of my over-tired and
excited brain-a more than agreeable figment (what else could she
be! ) — she was also a great lady, and had treated me, a perfect
stranger and a perfect nobody, with singular courtesy and kind-
ness; which I repaid, it is true, with a love so deep and strong
that my very life was hers to do what she liked with, and always
had been since I first saw her, and always would be as long as
there was breath in my body! But this did not constitute an
acquaintance without a proper introduction, even in France -
even in a dream. Even in dreams one must be polite, even to
stray figments of one's tired, sleeping brain.
And then what business had she in this, my particular dream
as she herself had asked of me?
But was it a dream ? I remembered my lodgings at Penton-
ville, that I had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I
was — why I came to Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at
the Paris hotel where I was now fast asleep, its loudly ticking
## p. 5059 (#227) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5059
clock, and all the meagre furniture. And here was I, broad
awake and conscious in the middle of an old avenue that had
long ceased to exist — that had been built over by a huge brick
edifice covered with newly painted trellis-work. I saw it, - this
edifice,- myself, only twelve hours ago. And yet here was every-
thing as it had been when I was a child; and all through the
agency of this solid phantom of a lovely young English duchess,
whose warm gloved hands I had only this minute been holding
in mine! The scent of her gloves was still in my palm. I looked
at my watch; it marked twenty-three minutes to twelve. All
this had happened in less than three-quarters of an hour!
Pondering over all this in hopeless bewilderment, I turned
my steps towards my old home, and to my surprise, was just
able to look over the garden wall, which I had once thought
about ten feet high.
Under the old apple-tree in full bloom sat my mother, darning
small socks; with her flaxen side-curls (as it was her fashion to
wear them) half concealing her face. My emotion and astonish-
ment were immense. My heart beat fast. I felt its pulse in my
temples, and my breath was short.
At a little green table that I remembered well sat a small
boy, rather quaintly dressed in a bygone fashion, with a frill
round his wide shirt collar, and his golden hair cut quite close
at the top, and rather long at the sides and back. It was Gogo
Pasquier. He seemed a very nice little boy. He had
pen and
ink and copy-book before him, and a gilt-edged volume bound in
red morocco. I knew it at a glance; it was Elegant Extracts. '
The dog Médor lay asleep in the shade. The bees were droning
among the nasturtiums and convolvulus.
A little girl ran up the avenue from the porter's lodge and
pushed the garden gate, which rang the bell as it opened, and
she went into the garden, and I followed her; but she took no
notice of me, nor did the others. It was Mimsey Seraskier.
I went and sat at my mother's feet, and looked long in her
face.
I must not speak to her nor touch her — not even touch her
busy hand with my lips, or I should "blur the dream. ”
I got up and looked over the boy Gogo's shoulder.
He was
translating Gray's Elegy into French; he had not got very far,
and seemed to be stumped by the line-
“And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
You are a good and a brave fellow. I will go anywhere with
you. I have had enough of Europe - things here are too small.
Do you know, I really believe I am going to find myself in love
with you! Come, let us go! I am positively smothering.
Clarkson — Yes, let us go.
## p. 5040 (#208) ###########################################
5040
ALEXANDRE DUMAS, JUNIOR
(At the moment that Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson are going out, servants and
police officials, accompanied by a commissioner of the police service,
appear in the door. Clarkson is pointed out. ]
Commissioner -- I beg your pardon, monsieur,- there seems to
have been a murder here.
Clarkson - Oh no, monsieur, not at all a murder -- only a duel.
Commissioner - And am I to understand, monsieur, that it is
you who
Clarkson - Oh yes, monsieur, it is I. You have come to take
me into custody ?
Commissioner — Yes, monsieur.
Clarkson — What a ridiculous country! I am ready to follow
you, monsieur. But I am an American citizen.
I shall give you
bail — but of course, the law before anything.
Mrs. Clarkson Reckon on me, Clarkson. I shall take charge
of this matter.
Clarkson How are you going to do that?
Mrs. Clarkson --Oh, that's my affair.
[Mrs. Clarkson crosses the stage and whispers a word to the commis-
sioner. The commissioner bows very respectfully. Mrs. Clarkson
goes out. ]
Commissioner [to Dr. Rémonin]- You are a doctor, monsieur ?
Rémonin - Yes, monsieur.
Commissioner — Will you have the goodness to give a certifi-
cate of death?
Rémonin [significantly) - With great pleasure!
Translated for (A Library of the World's Best Literature, by E. Irenæus
Stevenson
## p. 5041 (#209) ###########################################
5041
GEORGE DU MAURIER
(1834-1896)
EORGE Louis PALMELLA BUSSON DU MAURIER was born in Paris
on March 6th, 1834, and his early life was passed there. His
father was a Frenchman, who had married an English woman
in Paris. The Du Mauriers came of an old family in Brittany, Du
Maurier's grandfather having been a small rentier, who derived his
living from glass-works. During Du Maurier's childhood his parents
removed to Belgium and thence to London. At seventeen years of age
he tried for a degree at the Sorbonne in Paris, but was not success-
ful; and he was put, much against his will,
to study chemistry under Dr. Williamson at
University College, London. Du Maurier's
father, whose characteristics are described
in Peter Ibbetson,' was an amateur of sci-
ence.
It has been hinted by the son that
certain unlucky experiments, which were
the result of the elder Du Maurier's fancy
for the natural sciences, considerably im-
paired the family fortunes. The father had
bent his heart on the son's being a man of
science, but the son's tastes were all for art.
He did therefore little good in his chemical
studies.
GEORGE DU MAURIER
Du Maurier's father died in 1856, and he
then devoted himself definitely to art. He worked at the British Mu-
seum, and made considerable progress there. He next went to Paris,
and lived the life which he has described in "Trilby. ' In 1857 he at-
tended the Academy at Antwerp, and studied under De Kaiser and
Van Lerius. His severe studies at Antwerp had the result that his
sight was seriously impaired, and he lost the use of his left eye.
After two years of enforced idleness he went to London to seek his
fortune. An old acquaintance of his student life in Paris introduced
him to Charles Reade, who in turn introduced him to Mark Lemon,
the editor of Punch. Through these acquaintances he obtained em-
ployment in drawing for Once a Week, Punch, and the Cornhill Maga-
zine. On the death of Leech in 1864 he was regularly attached to
the staff of Punch, and till the time of his death continued to work
IX-316
## p. 5042 (#210) ###########################################
5042
GEORGE DU MAURIER
for that periodical with ever-increasing success. It is not too much
to say that for many years Punch was chiefly and mainly Du Maurier.
He early marked out for himself an entirely new path, which was not
in the direction of caricature or broad comedy; grace, sentiment, and
wit, rather than fun, were the characteristics of his work.
He con-
fined himself almost entirely to society, so that his field was a nar-
rower one than that of some of his coadjutors. He had not, for
instance, the masculine breadth of Leech, who represented with great
strength and humor the chief characters of English life, — the parson,
the soldier, the merchant, the farmer, etc.
Du Maurier was almost entirely a carpet knight. He drew Lon-
don society, and a certain phase of London society. The particular
society which he represented is of very recent existence. Thirty
years ago there was but one society in London. This was simply the
ancient aristocratic society of England, which gathered in London in
the season. It is true that there was an artistic society in London
at that time, but it was quite apart and of little general recognition
or influence. But since then there has come up in London a society
made up chiefly of artists, professional people, and successful mer-
chants (having moreover its points of contact with the old society),
which is very strong and influential. It is this which Du Maurier
knew, and which he represented. Even here, however, the types he
has selected for description were very special. But they were pre-
sented with so much grace and charm that the public never tired of
them. To his type of woman he was especially faithful: the tall
woman with long throat and well-defined chin, much resembling the
figures of Burne-Jones and Rossetti, only somewhat more mundane.
We have the same woman in the heroine of "Trilby. '
Though Du Maurier, before beginning Peter Ibbetson, had never
written a book, he had had considerable literary experience, for he
is said to have spent as much time upon the construction of the dia-
logues which accompanied his pictures as upon the pictures them-
selves. The story of Peter Ibbetson? he had often related to his
friends, who had urged him to write it down. This he finally did, -
at the special instance, it is said, of Henry James. It appeared in
Harper's Magazine in 1891. Trilby) was published in 1894 in Har-
per's Magazine, and at once attained a great popular success. The
publishers estimate that about 250,000 copies of the book have been
sold. Du Maurier had sold the book outright for £2,000, but when it
became apparent that the work was to be a success, the publishers
admitted the author to a royalty, paying at one time $40,000. They
also shared with him the large sums paid for the dramatization of
the work. For The Martian, his last novel, he received £10,000
outright. This also was published in Harper's Magazine.
## p. 5043 (#211) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5043
It is perhaps too early to pass judgment upon the merits of these
works. They have, no doubt, grave faults. The story of Peter
Ibbetson) has been completed when it is but two-thirds told. The
remaining portion of the book is a dream. This is of course a dan-
gerous reversal of the usual method of the story-teller, which is to
make dreams seem like facts. The hypnotic part of Trilby) is said
by the professional authorities on the subject to be bad science. The
hypnotism in Trilby) was perhaps a journalist's idea, that subject
being much talked of at the time the book was written. ) Du Maurier,
it need hardly be said, was by training a journalist, although the
training had been of the pencil rather than of the pen. The literary
style of the novels is curious. It makes no pretensions to finish; the
grammar even is sometimes at fault. But on the other hand, it has
decided merits. It is particularly easy, Aowing, and simple. These
are not the qualities we should have expected from the nature of Du
Maurier's literary training. The brief dialogues which he has for so
many years appended to his sketches in Punch would have edu-
cated, we should have thought, the qualities of brevity and point
rather than those of ease and fullness, Certain peculiarities of the
style cannot be defended, but the author produces his effects in spite
of such solecisms. This is true of the matter of his stories as well
as of the style. They are at many points inartistically constructed:
but the stuff is good, and the works therefore hold their own in spite
of these drawbacks. >They certainly have one virtue, which is most
necessary to the success of any work of the imagination: they have
reality. We believe as we read, and continue to believe after we
have ceased reading, that the Major and Mimsey and Taffy and
Trilby are real persons. They are real to us because they have in
the first case been real to their creator. It is possible, however, that
the pictures which accompany the text may increase the strength of
the illusion.
No book, in recent years at any rate, has had so instantaneous
and prodigious a popular success as "Trilby Popularity is always
hard to explain with any certainty. It seems to be a quality in the
warp and woof of the mind of the man that has it. One condition
appears to be that he shall be in sympathy with the minds of the
mass of his fellow-beings. >There was such a sympathy in Du Mau-
rier's case; and to be more particular, his kindly and friendly enthu-
siasm was a quality to commend him to men. He had a power of
enjoying beauty in his fellow-beings. Then he had had a long edu.
cation in the qualities that make popularity. He had long studied
the art of pleasing. It is not improbable that in these novels, which
were intended for the American public, he may have played upon
certain of our national susceptibilities. We in this country like to
## p. 5044 (#212) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5044
have our literature taken seriously by the European. It may be that
Du Maurier may have had an inkling of this, for it is curious to note
how much of our poetry appears in these novels. Du Maurier had a
very nice taste in poetry, a genuine enthusiasm for it which it is
heartily to be wished were shared by all college professors of English
literature. Thus, he could not have chosen better lines than those
which Peter Ibbetson was in the habit of reciting to Mimsey, (The
Water-fowl' of Bryant, - perhaps the most perfect poem ever pro-
duced in this country,-a poem so beautifully carried,” as Matthew
Arnold once described it to the present writer. Poe's beautiful and
musical lines, written by him at fourteen, -Helen, thy beauty is to
me,' — are also made use of. We have a good deal of Longfellow and
other American writers. (Ben Bolt) is of course an American song.
These appeals to our national predilections may have influenced us.
But the interest and curiosity of our practical and hard-working
American public in the Bohemian art life of the Latin Quarter was
also, no doubt, a chief cause of the popularity of Trilby. '
Du Maurier did not live long to enjoy his success. He had always
been known to his friends as a sensitive man, this quality being
ascribed to ill health. Ill health was no doubt a chief cause of the
vexation with which he received certain comments upon his books,
in some cases inspired by envy of his success. Many of his recent
contributions to Punch have been at the expense of the unsuccessful
author, and have supported the thesis that ill success was not an
indubitable proof of genius. When Lord Wolseley asked him what
would be the title of his next novel, he said (Soured by Success. '
He died in London on October 8th, 1896.
AT THE HEART OF BOHEMIA
From Trilby) Copyright 1894, by Harper & Brothers
ND then — well, I happen to forget what sort of a day this
particular day turned into, about six of the clock.
If it was decently fine, the most of them went off to dine at
the Restaurant de la Couronne, kept by the Père Trin, in the
Rue de Monsieur, who gave you of his best to eat and drink for
twenty sols Parisis, or one franc in the coin of the empire.
Good distending soups, omelets that were only too savory, lentils,
red and white beans, meat so dressed and sauced and seasoned
that you didn't know whether it was beef or mutton, flesh, fowl,
or good red herring,— or even bad, for that matter,- nor very
greatly care.
## p. 5045 (#213) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5045
And just the same lettuce, radishes, and cheese of Gruyère or
Brie as you got at the Trois Frères Provençaux (but not the
same butter! ). And to wash it all down, generous wine in
wooden brocs,” that stained a lovely æsthetic blue everything it
was spilled over.
And you hobnobbed with models, male and female, students
of law and medicine, painters and sculptors, workmen and blan-
chisseuses and grisettes, and found them very good company, and
most improving to your French, if your French was of the usual
British kind, and even to some of your manners, if these were
very British indeed.
And the evening was innocently wound
with billiards, cards, or dominoes at the Café du Luxembourg
opposite; or at the Théâtre du Luxembourg, in the Rue de
Madame, to see funny farces with screamingly droll Englishmen
in them; or still better, at the Jardin Bullier (la Closerie des
Lilas), to see the students dance the cancan, or try and dance it
yourself, which is not so easy as it seems; or best of all, at the
Théâtre de l'Odéon, to see Fechter and Madame Doche in the
Dame aux Camélias. '
Or if it were not only fine, but a Saturday afternoon into the
bargain, the Laird would put on a necktie and a few other neces-
sary things, and the three friends would walk arm-in-arm to
Taffy's hotel in the Rue de Seine, and wait outside till he had
made himself as presentable as the Laird, which did not take
very long. And then (Little Billee was always presentable) they
would, arm-in-arm, the huge Taffy in the middle, descend the
Rue de Seine and cross a bridge to the Cité, and have a look in
at the Morgue. Then back again to the quays on the Rive
Gauche by the Pont Neuf, to wend their way westward; now on
one side to look at the print and picture shops and the magasins
of bric-à-brac, and haply sometimes buy thereof, now on the
other to finger and cheapen the second-hand books for sale on
the parapet, and even pick one or two utterly unwanted bargains,
never to be read or opened again.
When they reached the Pont des Arts they would cross it,
stopping in the middle to look up the river towards the old Cité
and Notre Dame, eastward, and dream unutterable things and
try to utter them. Then turning westward, they would gaze at
the glowing sky and all it glowed upon — the corner of the Tui-
leries and the Louvre, the many bridges, the Chamber of Depu-
ties, the golden river narrowing its perspective and broadening
## p. 5046 (#214) ###########################################
5046
GEORGE DU MAURIER
its bed, as it went flowing and winding on its way between
Passy and Grenelle to St. Cloud, to Rouen, to the Havre, to
England perhaps — where they didn't want to be just then; and
they would try and express themselves to the effect that life was
uncommonly well worth living in that particular city at that par-
ticular time of the day and year and century, at that particular
epoch of their own mortal and uncertain lives.
Then, still arm-in-arm and chatting gayly, across the court-
yard of the Louvre, through gilded gates well guarded by reck-
less imperial Zouaves, up the arcaded Rue de Rivoli as far as
the Rue Castiglione, where they would stare with greedy eyes at
the window of the great corner pastry-cook, and marvel at the
beautiful assortment of bonbons, pralines, dragées, marrons glacés
saccharine, crystalline substances of all kinds and colors, as
charming to look at as an illumination; precious stones, delicately
frosted sweets, pearls and diamonds so arranged as to melt in
the mouth; especially, at this particular time of the year, the
monstrous Easter eggs of enchanting hue, enshrined like costly
jewels in caskets of satin and gold; and the Laird, who was well
read in his English classics and liked to show it, would opine
that they managed these things better in France. ”
Then across the street by a great gate into the Allée des
Feuillants, and up to the Place de la Concorde - to gaze, but
quite without base envy, at the smart people coming back from
the Bois de Boulogne. For even in Paris “carriage people have
a way of looking bored, of taking their pleasure sadly, of having
nothing to say to each other, as though the vibration of so many
wheels all rolling home the same way every afternoon had hyp-
notized them into silence, idiocy, and melancholia.
And our three musketeers of the brush would speculate on
the vanity of wealth and rank and fashion; on the satiety that
follows in the wake of self-indulgence and overtakes it; on the
weariness of the pleasures that become a toil - as if they knew
all about it, had found it all out for themselves, and nobody else
had ever found it out before!
Then they found out something else — namely, that the sting
of healthy appetite was becoming intolerable; so they would
betake themselves to an English eating-house in the Rue de la
Madeleine (on the left-hand side near the top), where they would
renovate their strength and their patriotism on British beef and
beer, and household bread, and bracing, biting, stinging yellow
## p. 5047 (#215) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5047
mustard, and horseradish, and noble apple-pie, and Cheshire
cheese; and get through as much of these in an hour or so as
they could for talking, talking, talking; such happy talk! as full
of sanguine hope and enthusiasm, of cocksure commendation or
condemnation of all painters, dead or alive, of modest but firm
belief in themselves and each other, as a Paris Easter egg is full
of sweets and pleasantness (for the young).
And then a stroll on the crowded, well-lighted boulevards,
and a bock at the café there, at a little three-legged marble table
right out on the genial asphalt pavement, still talking nineteen
to the dozen.
Then home by dark old silent streets and some deserted
bridge to their beloved Latin Quarter, the Morgue gleaming
cold and still and fatal in the pale lamplight, and Notre Dame
pricking up its watchful twin towers, which have looked down
for so many centuries on so many happy, sanguine, expansive
youths walking arm-in-arm by twos and threes, and forever talk-
ing, talking, talking.
The Laird and Little Billee would see Taffy safe to the door
of his hôtel garni in the Rue de Seine, where they would find
much to say to each other before they said good-night - so much
that Taffy and Little Billee would see the Laird safe to his door,
in the Place St. Anatole des Arts. And then a discussion would
arise between Taffy and the Laird on the immortality of the
soul, let us say, or the exact meaning of the word "gentleman,"
or the relative merits of Dickens and Thackeray, or some such
recondite and quite unhackneyed theme, and Taffy and the Laird
would escort Little Billee to his door, in the Place de l'Odéon,
and he would re-escort them both back again, and so on till any
hour you please.
Or again, if it rained, and Paris through the studio window
loomed lead-colored, with its shiny slate roofs under skies that
were ashen and sober, and the wild west wind made woeful music
among the chimney-pots, and little gray waves ran up the river
the wrong way, and the Morgue looked chill and dark and wet,
and almost uninviting (even to three healthy-minded young
Britons), they would resolve to dine and spend a happy evening
at home.
Little Billee, taking with him three francs (or even four),
would dive into back streets and buy a yard or so of crusty
new bread, well burned on the flat side, a fillet of beef, a litre
## p. 5048 (#216) ###########################################
5048
GEORGE DU MAURIER
of wine, potatoes and onions, butter, a little cylindrical cheese
called "bondon de Neufchâtel,” tender curly lettuce, with cher-
vil, parsley, spring onions, and other fine herbs, and a pod of
garlic, which would be rubbed on a crust of bread to flavor
things with
Taffy would lay the cloth English-wise, and also make the
salad, for which, like everybody else I ever met, he had a special
receipt of his own (putting in the oil first and the vinegar after);
and indeed, his salads were quite as good as everybody else's.
The Laird, bending over the stove, would cook the onions
and beef into a savory Scotch mess so cunningly that you could
not taste the beef for the onions nor always the onions for the
garlic!
And they would dine far better than at le Père Trin's, far
better than at the English Restaurant in the Rue de la Made-
leine — better than anywhere else on earth!
And after dinner, what coffee, roasted and ground on the
spot, what pipes and cigarettes of "caporal,” by the light of the
three shaded lamps, while the rain beat against the big north
window, and the wind went howling round the quaint old medi-
æval tower at the corner of the Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres
(the old street of the bad lepers), and the damp logs hissed and
crackled in the stove!
What jolly talk into the small hours! Thackeray and Dick-
ens again, and Tennyson and Byron (who was not dead yet”
in those days); and Titian and Velasquez, and young Millais and
Holman Hunt (just out); and Monsieur Ingres and Monsieur
Delacroix, and Balzac and Stendhal and George Sand; and the
good Dumas! and Edgar Allan Poe; and the glory that was
Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.
Good, honest, innocent, artless prattle - not of the wisest,
perhaps, nor redolent of the very highest culture (which by the
way can mar as well as make), nor leading to any very practical
result; but quite pathetically sweet from the sincerity and fervor
of its convictions, a profound belief in their importance, and a
proud trust in their lifelong immutability.
Oh happy days and happy nights, sacred to art and friend-
ship! oh happy times of careless impecuniosity, and youth and
hope and health and strength and freedom — with all Paris for
a playground, and its dear old unregenerate Latin Quarter for a
workshop and a home!
## p. 5049 (#217) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5049
CHRISTMAS IN THE LATIN QUARTER
From "Trilby. ) Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers
C"
HRISTMAS was drawing near.
There were days when the whole Quartier Latin would
veil its iniquities under fogs almost worthy of the Thames
Valley between London Bridge and Westminster, and out of the
studio window the prospect was a dreary blank. No Morgue! no
towers of Notre Dame! not even the chimney-pots over the way
not even the little mediæval toy turret at the corner of the
Rue Vieille des Mauvais Ladres, Little Billee's delight!
The stove had to be crammed till its sides grew a dull deep
red, before one's fingers could hold a brush or squeeze a blad-
der; one had to box or fence at nine in the morning, that one
might recover from the cold bath and get warm for the rest of
the day!
Taffy and the Laird grew pensive and dreamy, childlike and
bland; and when they talked, it was generally about Christmas
at home in merry England and the distant land of cakes, and
how good it was to be there at such a time- hunting, shooting,
curling, and endless carouse!
It was Ho! for the jolly West Riding, and Hey! for the bon-
nets of Bonnie Dundee, till they grew quite homesick, and wanted
to start by the very next train.
They didn't do anything so foolish. They wrote
to
friends in London for the biggest turkey, the biggest plum-
pudding, that could be got for love or money, with mince-pies,
and holly and mistletoe, and sturdy, short, thick English sau.
sages, half a Stilton cheese, and a sirloin of beef — two sirloins,
in case one should not be enough.
For they meant to have a Homeric feast in the studio on
Christmas Day - Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee - and invite
all the delightful chums I have been trying to describe; and
that is just why I tried to describe them - Durien, Vincent, An-
tony, Lorrimer, Carnegie, Petrolicoconose, l'Zouzou, and Dodor!
The cooking and waiting should be done by Trilby, her friend
Angèle Boisse, M. et Mme. Vinard, and such little Vinards as
could be trusted with glass and crockery and mince-pies; and if
that was not enough, they would also cook themselves and wait
upon each other.
over
## p. 5050 (#218) ###########################################
5050
GEORGE DU MAURIER
When dinner should be over, supper was to follow, with
scarcely any interval to speak of; and to partake of this, other
guests should be bidden - Svengali and Gecko, and perhaps one
or two more. No ladies!
For as the unsusceptible Laird expressed it, in the language
of a gillie he had once met at a servants' dance in a Highland
country-house, “Them wimmen spiles the ball! ”
Elaborate cards of invitation were sent out, in the designing
and ornamentation of which the Laird and Taffy exhausted all
their fancy (Little Billee had no time).
Wines and spirits and English beers were procured at great
cost from M. E. Delevigne's, in the Rue St.
Honoré, and liqueurs
of every description — chartreuse, curaçoa, ratafia de cassis, and
anisette; no expense was spared.
Also truffled galantines of turkey, tongues, hams, rillettes de
Tours, pâtés de foie gras, “fromage d'Italie (which has nothing
to do with cheese), saucissons d'Arles et de Lyon, with and with-
out garlic, cold jellies, peppery and salt - everything that French
charcutiers and their wives can make out of French pigs, or any
other animal whatever, beast, bird, or fowl (even cats and rats),
for the supper; and sweet jellies and cakes, and sweetmeats, and
confections of all kinds, from the famous pastry-cook at the cor-
ner of the Rue Castiglione.
Mouths went watering all day long in joyful anticipation.
They water somewhat sadly now at the mere remembrance of
these delicious things — the mere immediate sight or scent of
which in these degenerate latter days would no longer avail
to promote any such delectable secretion. Hélas! ahimè! ach
weh! ay de mi! eheu! 071204 — in point of fact, alas!
That is the very exclamation I wanted.
Christmas eve
came round The pieces of resistance and
plum-pudding and mince-pies had not yet arrived from London
but there was plenty of time.
Les trois Angliches dined at le Père Trin's, as usual, and
played billiards and dominoes at the Café du Luxembourg, and
possessed their souls in patience till it was time to go and hear
the midnight mass at the Madeleine, where Roucouly, the great
baritone of the Opéra Comique, was retained to sing Adam's
famous Noël.
The whole Quarter seemed alive with the réveillon.
It was
a clear frosty night, with a splendid moon just past the full, and
## p. 5051 (#219) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5051
most exhilarating was the walk along the quays on the Rive
Gauche, over the Pont de la Concorde and across the Place
thereof, and up the thronged Rue de la Madeleine to the massive
Parthenaic place of worship that always has such a pagan, worldly
look of smug and prosperous modernity.
They struggled manfully, and found standing and kneeling
room among that fervent crowd, and heard the impressive serv-
ice with mixed feelings, as became true Britons of very ad-
vanced liberal and religious opinions; not with the unmixed
contempt of the proper British Orthodox (who were there in full
force, one may be sure).
But their susceptible hearts soon melted at the beautiful
music, and in mere sensuous attendrissement they were quickly
in unison with all the rest.
For as the clock struck twelve, out pealed the organ, and up
rose the finest voice in France:
“Minuit, Chrétiens! c'est l'heure solennelle
Où l'Homme-Dieu descendit parmi nous! ”
And a wave of religious emotion rolled over Little Billee and
submerged him; swept him off his little legs, swept him out of
his little self, drowned him in a great seething surge of love -
love of his kind, love of love, love of life, love of death, love of
all that is and ever was and ever will be
a very large order
indeed, even for Little Billee.
And it seemed to him that he stretched out his arms for love
to one figure especially beloved beyond all the rest — one figure
erect on high, with arms outstretched to him, in more than com-
mon fellowship of need: not the sorrowful Figure crowned with
thorns, for it was in the likeness of a woman; but never that of
the Virgin Mother of our Lord.
It was Trilby, Trilby, Trilby! a poor fallen sinner and waif,
all but lost amid the scum of the most corrupt city on earth.
Trilby, weak and mortal like himself, and in woeful want of
pardon! and in her gray dove-like eyes he saw the shining of so
great a love that he was abashed; for well he knew that all
that love was his, and would be his forever, come what would
or could.
« Peuple, debout! Chante ta délivrance!
Noël! Noël! Voici le Rédempteur! »
## p. 5052 (#220) ###########################################
5052
GEORGE DU MAURIER
So sang and rang and pealed and echoed the big deep metal-
lic baritone bass — above the organ, above the incense, above
everything else in the world - till the very universe seemed to
shake with the rolling thunder of that great message of love and
forgiveness!
Thus at least felt Little Billee, whose way it was to magnify
and exaggerate all things under the subtle stimulus of sound,
and the singing human voice had especially strange power to
penetrate into his in most depths — even the voice of man!
And what voice but the deepest and gravest and grandest
there is, can give worthy utterance to such a message as that,-
the epitome, the abstract, the very essence of all collective
humanity's wisdom at its best!
«DREAMING TRUE »
From Peter Ibbetson. Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers
A
s I sat down on a bench by the old willow (where the rat
lived), and gazed and gazed, it almost surprised me that
the very intensity of my desire did not of itself suffice to
call up the old familiar faces and forms, and conjure away these
modern intruders. The power to do this seemed almost within
my reach: I willed and willed and willed with all my might, but
in vain; I could not cheat my sight or hearing for a moment.
There they remained, unconscious and undisturbed, those happy,
well-mannered, well-appointed little French people, and fed the
gold and silver fish; and there with an aching heart I left them.
Oh, surely, surely, I cried to myself, we ought to find some
means of possessing the past more fully and completely than we
do. Life is not worth living for many of us, if a want so des-
perate and yet so natural can never be satisfied. Memory is but
a poor rudimentary thing that we had better be without, if it can
only lead us to the verge of consummation like this, and madden
us with a desire it cannot slake. The touch of a vanished hand,
the sound of a voice that is still, the tender grace of a day that
is dead, should be ours forever at our beck and call, by some
exquisite and quite conceivable illusion of the senses.
Alas! alas! I have hardly the hope of ever meeting my
beloved ones again in another life. Oh, to meet their too dimly
remembered forms in this, just as they once were, by some trick
## p. 5053 (#221) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5053
of my own brain! To see them with the eye, and hear them with
the ear, and tread with them the old obliterated ways as in a
waking dream! It would be well worth going mad, to become
such a self-conjurer as that.
I
got back to my hotel in the Rue de la Michodière.
Prostrate with emotion and fatigue, the tarantella still
jingling in my ears, and that haunting, beloved face, with its
ineffable smile, still printed on the retina of my closed eyes, I
fell asleep.
And then I dreamed a dream, and the first phase of my real,
inner life began!
All the events of the day, distorted and exaggerated and
jumbled together after the usual manner of dreams, wove them-
selves into a kind of nightmare and oppression. I was on my
way to my old abode; everything that I met or saw
was gro-
tesque and impossible, yet had now the strange, vague charm of
association and reminiscence, now the distressing sense of change
and desolation.
As I got near to the avenue gate, instead of the school on my
left there was a prison; and at the door a little thick-set jailer,
three feet high and much deformed, and a little deformed jail-
eress no bigger than himself, were cunningly watching me out of
the corners of their eyes, and toothlessly smiling. Presently they
began to waltz together to an old familiar tune, with their enor-
mous keys dangling at their sides; and they looked so funny that
I laughed and applauded.
But soon
I perceived that their
crooked faces were not really funny; indeed, they were fatal and
terrible in the extreme, and I was soon conscious that these
deadly dwarfs were trying to waltz between me and the avenue
gate for which I was bound — to cut me off, that they might run
me into the prison, where it was their custom to hang people of
a Monday morning.
In an agony of terror I made a rush for the avenue gate, and
there stood the Duchess of Towers, with mild surprise in her eyes
and a kind smile - a heavenly vision of strength and reality.
“You are not dreaming true! ” she said. “Don't be afraid
those little people don't exist! Give me your hand and come in
here. "
## p. 5054 (#222) ###########################################
5054
GEORGE DU MAURIER
With my
And as I did so she waved the troglodytes away, and they
vanished; and I felt that this was no longer a dream, but some-
thing else---some strange thing that had happened to me, some
new life that I had woke up to.
For at the touch of her hand my consciousness, my sense of
being I, myself, which hitherto in my dream (as in all previous
dreams up to then) had been only partial, intermittent, and
vague, suddenly blazed into full, consistent, practical activity —
just as it is in life, when one is well awake and much interested
in what is going on; only with perceptions far keener and more
alert.
I knew perfectly who I was and what I was, and remembered
all the events of the previous day. I was conscious that my real
body, undressed and in bed, now lay fast asleep in a small room
on the fourth floor of an hôtel garni in the Rue de la Micho-
dière. I knew this perfectly; and yet here was my body too,
just as substantial, with all my clothes on; my boots rather dusty,
my shirt collar damp with the heat, for it was hot.
disengaged hand I felt in my trousers pocket; there were my Lon-
don latch-key, my purse, my penknife; my handkerchief in the
breast pocket of my coat, and in its tail pockets my gloves and
pipe-case, and the little water-color box I had bought that morn-
ing. I looked at my watch; it was going, and marked eleven.
I pinched myself, I coughed, I did all one usually does under the
pressure of some immense surprise, to assure myself that I was
awake; and I was, and yet here I stood, actually hand in hand
with a lady to whom I had never been introduced (and who
seemed much tickled at my confusion); and staring now at her,
now at my old school.
The prison had tumbled down like a house of cards, and lo!
in its place was M. Saindou's maison d'éducation, just as it had
been of old. I even recognized on the yellow wall the stamp of
a hand in dry mud, made fifteen years ago by a day boy called
Parisot, who had fallen down in the gutter close by, and thus
left his mark on getting up again; and it had remained there for
months, till it had been whitewashed away in the holidays.
Here it was anew, after fifteen years.
The swallows were flying and twittering. A yellow omnibus
was drawn up to the gates of the school; the horses stamped and
neighed, and bit each other, as French horses always did in those
days. The driver swore at them perfunctorily.
## p. 5055 (#223) ###########################################
GEORGE DU MAURIER
5055
A crowd was looking on — le Père et la Mère François,
Madame Liard the grocer's wife, and other people, whom I
remembered at once with delight. Just in front of us a small
boy and girl were looking on, like the rest, and I recognized the
back and the cropped head and thin legs of Mimsey Seraskier.
A barrel organ was playing a pretty tune I knew quite well,
and had forgotten.
The school gates opened, and M. Saindou, proud and full of
self-importance (as he always was), and half a dozen boys whose
faces and names were quite familiar to me, in smart white trou-
sers and shining boots, and silken white bands round their left
arms, got into the omnibus, and were driven away in a glorified
manner as it seemed — to heaven in a golden chariot. It was
beautiful to see and hear.
I was still holding the duchess's hand, and felt the warmth of
it through her glove; it stole up my arm like a magnetic cur-
rent. I was in Elysium; a heavenly sense had come over me
that at last my periphery had been victoriously invaded by a
spirit other than mine - a most powerful and beneficent spirit.
There was a blessed fault in my impenetrable armor of self,
after all, and the genius of strength and charity and loving-kind-
ness had found it out.
“Now you're dreaming true,” she said. « Where are those
boys going? ”
« To church, to make their première communion,” I replied.
“That's right. You're dreaming true because I've got you
by the hand. Do you know that tune ? »
I listened, and the words belonging to it came out of the
past, and I said them to her, and she laughed again, with her
eyes screwed up deliciously.
"Quite right - quite! ” she exclaimed. «How odd that you
should know them! How well you pronounce French for an
Englishman! For you are Mr. Ibbetson, Lady Cray's architect ? »
I assented, and she let go my hand.
The street was full of people — familiar forms and faces and
voices, chatting together and looking down the road after the
yellow omnibus; old attitudes, old tricks of gait and manner, old
forgotten French ways of speech - all was long ago.
Nobody noticed us, and we walked up the now deserted avenue.
· The happiness, the enchantment of it all! Could it be that
I was dead, that I had died suddenly in my sleep, at the hotel
as it
## p. 5056 (#224) ###########################################
5056
GEORGE DU MAURIER
in the Rue de la Michodière ? Could it be that the Duchess of
Towers was dead too — had been killed by some accident on her
way from St. Cloud to Paris ? and that, both having died, so near
each other, we had begun our eternal after-life in this heavenly
fashion ?
That was too good to be true, I reflected; some instinct told
me that this was not death, but transcendent earthly life — and
also, alas! that it would not endure forever!
I was deeply conscious of every feature in her face, every
movement of her body, every detail of her dress,— more so than
I could have been in actual life, - and said to myself, "Whatever
this is, it is no dream. ” But I felt there was about me the
unspeakable elation which can come to us only in our waking
moments when we are at our very best; and then only feebly, in
comparison with this, and to many of us never. It never had to
me, since that morning when I had found the little wheelbarrow.
I was also conscious, however, that the avenue itself had a
slight touch of the dream in it. It was no longer quite right,
and was getting out of drawing and perspective, so to speak. I
had lost my stay — the touch of her hand.
"Are you still dreaming true, Mr. Ibbetson? ”
“I am afraid not quite,” I replied.
«You must try by yourself a little — try hard. Look at this
house; what is written on the portico ? ”
I saw written in gold letters the words « Tête Noire," and
said so.
She rippled with laughter, and said, “No, try again;
» and
just touched me with the tip of her finger for a moment.
I tried again, and said "Parvis Notre Dame. ”
“That's rather better,” she said, and touched me again; and I
read, Parva sed Apta, as I had so often read there before in
old days.
“And now look at that old house over there,” pointing to my
old home; how many windows are there in the top story? ”
I said seven.
“No; there are five. Look again: » and there were five; and
the whole house was exactly, down to its minutest detail, as it
had been once upon a time. I could see Thérèse through one of
the windows, making my bed.
« That's better,” said the duchess; "you will soon do it — it's
very easy — ce n'est que le premier pas! My father taught me;
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GEORGE DU MAURIER
5057
you must always sleep on your back with your arms above your
head, your hands clasped under it and your feet crossed, the
right one over the left, unless you are left-handed; and you must
never for a moment cease thinking of where you want to be in
your dream till you are asleep and get there; and you must
never forget in your dream where and what you were when
awake. You must join the dream on to reality. Don't forget.
And now I will say good-by; but before I go, give me both
your hands, and look round everywhere as far as your eye can
see. »
It was hard to look away from her; her face drew my eyes,
and through them all my heart; but I did as she told me, and
took in the whole familiar scene, even to the distant woods of
Ville d'Avray,, a glimpse of which was visible through an open-
ing in the trees; even to the smoke of a train making its way to
Versailles, miles off; and the old telegraph, working its black
arms on the top of Mont Valérien.
"Is it all right ? ” she asked. «That's well. Henceforward,
whenever you come here, you will be safe as far as your sight
can reach, - from this spot, - all through my introduction. See
what it is to have a friend at court! No more little dancing
jailers! And then you can gradually get farther by yourself.
“Out there, through that park, leads to the Bois de Boulogne-
there's a gap in the hedge you can get through; but mind and
make everything plain in front of you - true, before you go a
step farther, or else you'll have to wake and begin it all over
again. You have only to will it, and think yourself as awake,
and it will come -on condition, of course, that you have been
there before. And mind, also, you must take care how you
touch things or people - you may hear, see, and smell; but you
mustn't touch, nor pick flowers or leaves, nor move things about.
It blurs the dream, like breathing on a window-pane. I don't
know why, but it does. You must remember that everything
here is dead and gone by. With you and me it is different;
we're alive and real — that is, I am; and there would seem to be
no mistake about your being real too, Mr. Ibbetson, by the grasp
of your hands. But you're not; and why you are here, and what
business you have in this my particular dream, I cannot under-
stand; no living person has ever come into it before. I can't
make it out. I suppose it's because I saw your reality this after-
noon, looking out of the window at the Tête Noire, and you are
IX-317
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5058
GEORGE DU MAURIER
just a stray figment of my over-tired brain - a very agreeable
figment, I admit; but you don't exist here just now — you can't
possibly; you are somewhere else, Mr. Ibbetson; dancing at Ma-
bille, perhaps, or fast asleep somewhere, and dreaming of French
churches and palaces, and public fountains, like a good young
British architect -- otherwise I shouldn't talk to you like this, you
may be sure!
“Never mind. I am very glad to dream that I have been of
use to you, and you are very welcome here, if it amuses you to
come — especially as you are only a false dream of mine, for
what else can you be ? And now I must leave you: so good-by. ”
She disengaged her hands and laughed her angelic laugh, and
then turned towards the park. I watched her tall straight figure
and blowing skirts, and saw her follow some ladies and children
into a thicket that I remembered well, and she was soon out of
sight.
I felt as if all warmth had gone out of my life; as if a joy
had taken flight; as if a precious something had withdrawn itself
from my possession, and the gap in my periphery had closed
again.
Long I stood in thought, with my eyes fixed on the spot
where she had disappeared; and I felt inclined to follow, but
then considered this would not have been discreet. For although
she was only a false dream of mine, a mere recollection of the
exciting and eventful day, a stray figment of my over-tired and
excited brain-a more than agreeable figment (what else could she
be! ) — she was also a great lady, and had treated me, a perfect
stranger and a perfect nobody, with singular courtesy and kind-
ness; which I repaid, it is true, with a love so deep and strong
that my very life was hers to do what she liked with, and always
had been since I first saw her, and always would be as long as
there was breath in my body! But this did not constitute an
acquaintance without a proper introduction, even in France -
even in a dream. Even in dreams one must be polite, even to
stray figments of one's tired, sleeping brain.
And then what business had she in this, my particular dream
as she herself had asked of me?
But was it a dream ? I remembered my lodgings at Penton-
ville, that I had left yesterday morning. I remembered what I
was — why I came to Paris; I remembered the very bedroom at
the Paris hotel where I was now fast asleep, its loudly ticking
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GEORGE DU MAURIER
5059
clock, and all the meagre furniture. And here was I, broad
awake and conscious in the middle of an old avenue that had
long ceased to exist — that had been built over by a huge brick
edifice covered with newly painted trellis-work. I saw it, - this
edifice,- myself, only twelve hours ago. And yet here was every-
thing as it had been when I was a child; and all through the
agency of this solid phantom of a lovely young English duchess,
whose warm gloved hands I had only this minute been holding
in mine! The scent of her gloves was still in my palm. I looked
at my watch; it marked twenty-three minutes to twelve. All
this had happened in less than three-quarters of an hour!
Pondering over all this in hopeless bewilderment, I turned
my steps towards my old home, and to my surprise, was just
able to look over the garden wall, which I had once thought
about ten feet high.
Under the old apple-tree in full bloom sat my mother, darning
small socks; with her flaxen side-curls (as it was her fashion to
wear them) half concealing her face. My emotion and astonish-
ment were immense. My heart beat fast. I felt its pulse in my
temples, and my breath was short.
At a little green table that I remembered well sat a small
boy, rather quaintly dressed in a bygone fashion, with a frill
round his wide shirt collar, and his golden hair cut quite close
at the top, and rather long at the sides and back. It was Gogo
Pasquier. He seemed a very nice little boy. He had
pen and
ink and copy-book before him, and a gilt-edged volume bound in
red morocco. I knew it at a glance; it was Elegant Extracts. '
The dog Médor lay asleep in the shade. The bees were droning
among the nasturtiums and convolvulus.
A little girl ran up the avenue from the porter's lodge and
pushed the garden gate, which rang the bell as it opened, and
she went into the garden, and I followed her; but she took no
notice of me, nor did the others. It was Mimsey Seraskier.
I went and sat at my mother's feet, and looked long in her
face.
I must not speak to her nor touch her — not even touch her
busy hand with my lips, or I should "blur the dream. ”
I got up and looked over the boy Gogo's shoulder.
He was
translating Gray's Elegy into French; he had not got very far,
and seemed to be stumped by the line-
“And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
