Trilbyana: The Rise and Progress of a Popular Novel. Gilder Jeannette Leonard

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СКАЧАТЬ Not only has the text been altered, but our friend Sibley is now called Antony, and his hitherto unbearded face is adorned with a non-Whistlerian beard. (See "Trilby," opposite page 132.) One picture has been omitted altogether. It needed not the accidental advertising of Mr. Whistler's threatened libel suit to draw attention to the book. It is its own best advertisement, and has fairly earned the success implied in advance orders so numerous as to cause the postponement until to-day (8 Sept. 1894) of the original date of publication.

      Mr. du Maurier as a Draughtsman

      It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. du Maurier's work as a novelist is in no way matched by his work as a draughtsman, as exemplified, for instance, in the 120 drawings for "Trilby," exhibited in December, 1894, at the Avery gallery. Until he began to write he was known merely as the author of innumerable caricatures, which had a certain vogue because they were at the same time pictures of fashionable society; but even of these the legend was often the best part. He had mastered many types, but they were nothing more than that; and one had seen his millionaires and swells and singing people and artists until one had grown rather tired of them. Then, suddenly, it was found, with the first chapters of his first novel, that in writing he could give to all these well-known figures individuality, could make flesh and blood of them. The drawings themselves, at least those done as illustrations for his two romances, seem to have gained by that discovery. These do not appear to be the same French blouses and English guardsmen. Something has got into them, a touch of life, which they did not have before. Yet no one will say that the Little Billee of the drawings now exhibited at Avery's gallery is even a shadow of the Little Billee of the text. Of Trilby there is not so much as the famous foot. Any schoolboy, almost, might have made as clever a travesty of the Venus de Milo. The best presentment of the gigantic Taffy is that in which he poses as the Ilyssus. The Laird o' Cockpen is much better, being frequently very like Mr. George W. Cable, particularly where he listens to Trilby's confession – an accidental likeness, no doubt, but one that increases our respect for the Laird. The intentional likeness of Frederick Walker, who is said to be the real original of Little Billee, is vastly superior to the ideal one; and the many unnamed figures in the more crowded compositions that appear to have been sketched from the life or from a particularly vivid memory are among the most amusing and enjoyable things in the drawings.

      But it must not be denied that there is here and there a bit of chic that approaches the ideal – something not easily to be discovered in the artist's former work. Svengali is throughout a creation of this sort. He is as grotesquely romantic, as Mephistophelian a figure in the illustration as in the printed page. The only failure is the head (on page 59 of the book) which is in more senses than one "as bad as they make them." He is excellent where he laughs over the two Englishmen cleaning themselves; he is delightful where he examines the roof of Trilby's mouth, "like the dome of the Panthéon," "room in it for 'toutes les gloires de la France.'" Where he stands in the midst of the crowded studio, "All as it Used to Be," he looks every inch the artist, more so than the "idle apprentice," lounging against the door-jamb. If there were such a man, one who had sunk his whole soul in his art, he might look like this, or like the same figure in the hussar uniform, a Semitic conqueror "out of the mysterious East." There is a touch of the spirit of the illustrators of the romantic period in the pictures of the Christmas festivities, especially in the two that illustrate the peculiar interchange of rôles between Little Billee and the festive Ribot, and in the sketch of Zouzou as the "Ducal French Fighting-Cock." The scenes of common life, too, are admirable, the free-and-easy, the "Happy Dinner," the bargaining of the Laird with Mme. Vinard – "Je prong!" – and the scene at the rehearsal where "The First Violin Loses his Temper." The art of the drawings is all in expression and action, and Du Maurier, in spite of all that is French in him, is thoroughly British in this, and a descendant in the right line of Hogarth, Cruikshank and Leech.

      The "Trilby" drawings were bought en bloc by some one in England. They had been sent here to be engraved for Harper's Monthly and the book; the sale occurred before they were placed on exhibition in New York. A representative of The Critic asked Mr. Avery, who said that a number of people had expressed a desire to buy some of them, what he thought they would have brought, if sold over here. He replied that he could not tell with any degree of accuracy, but he thought they would have averaged at least $50 apiece. As there are 120 drawings, this would have meant $6,000 more for Mr. du Maurier. En bloc, no doubt, they brought a smaller sum.

      A painting of "Trilby," by Mr. Constant Mayer, was shown at Knoedler's gallery, in December, along with half a dozen other and more satisfactory paintings by the same artist. The hypnotic condition of the subject was declared by Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton to be admirably suggested in this fancy portrait.

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      To the Editors of The Critic: —

      Those who express surprise at the sudden literary development of du Maurier's genius do not apparently recognize the fact that the whole series of his drawings has included the literary element. His thoughts as expressed in art have always shown a close and philosophical observation of life, an understanding of the actions and motives of men. Every one of his illustrations tells not only an individual story, but a story of surroundings and times, of tendencies, fads and foibles. And the text is always as important as the picture; sometimes it is far more so. Who can have forgotten the history and culmination of the "old china" craze given by du Maurier in a four-inch-square illustration of the young husband and wife examining an old teapot, with the exquisite text, "Oh, Algernon, do you think we can ever live up to it?" Certainly the man who could invent the application of that phrase must have stores of wit and sense equal to the writing of many "Peter Ibbetsons" and "Trilbys." And those stores were bound to find their larger expression in literature.

      New York, 22 Nov., 1894. Candace Wheeler.

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      The New York Tribune has printed the following protest against the insinuation that the author of the book was not its illustrator also: —

      "It ought not to be necessary for any formal contradiction to be made of that absurd rumor which has just been set adrift concerning the illustrations to 'Trilby.' On the face of it, it is impossible for either Mrs. du Maurier or her daughter to have given the pictures the character they possess. They have du Maurier's style, du Maurier's technique, du Maurier's peculiar little touches of humor, not merely in the broad idea but in that minute turn of the pen which makes all the difference in the world between an empty profile and a funny one. It is true that there is a dissimilarity between Trilby in one illustration and Trilby in another, but it should be remembered that du Maurier's eyesight has been failing him, that he has been compelled to be prolific at a time when he has most needed to lie fallow as an artist; and, in brief, the shortcomings of the 'Trilby' designs, if serious shortcomings they have, are to be explained on the most natural and logical of grounds. The intrinsic character of the drawings proclaims their authorship. Only George du Maurier could have done them, and not any of the trifling assistance which he may have received from his family in matters of posing, costume, etc., could deprive him of his responsibility or his honor. The recent tendency to criticise these designs with some severity will soon be counteracted. As a matter of fact, they present some of the cleverest work du Maurier has ever done."

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      The New York Sun printed a letter, not long ago, in which the drawings were declared to be anachronistic. "Why," it was asked, "should Mr. du Maurier deny to his characters the crinolines, waterfalls, surtouts, cravats, chignons, peg-top trousers and hoop-skirts of the early sixties, and make them, despite Taffy's whiskers, of the monde of to-day? Is it that his artistic instincts have reverted to that fine school of old masters who delighted to portray, saving Taffy's grace, Hector fighting in the armor of the Black Prince, or turned out Madonnas by the score in Margaret of Anjou skirts?"

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      In "Trilby" every stroke of pen or pencil seems to be significant. Is there special meaning in the fact that, in the dainty tail-piece, one glass in the spectacles appears to be heavily shaded, while the other is clear? Is Mr. du Maurier, like so many literary people, afflicted with partial loss of sight or other visual СКАЧАТЬ