George Du Maurier

“ Even the Knights and Baronets failed her at last, and their dames ignored.
For some little while longer the would-be fashionable people—the hangers-on at the tail-end of Society, who had not yet received the straight tip about the sculptor's wife, or couldn't get her—would still ask Mrs. Spratt, in spite of the snubs she had showered on them the preceding year. And much as she sickened at the contact of their vulgarity—for what can be more vulgar than second or third-rate people of fashion?—she was glad of their countenance as long as it lasted. ”

“ Spratt, a wiser, if not a sadder woman, is once more the brightest ornament of her home; her locks have grown again in all their sable splendour, the roses and lilies are blooming once more in her cheeks, and she is as plump and hearty as when she used to darn the family socks, ever so many months ago. ”

“ Female finery is very costly nowadays, and has to be paid for. Think of Jack Spratt, in the intervals of his domestic duties, painting against time, and wasting all that eagle-winged genius of his on pot-boilers, to pay for his wife's gorgeous apparel!
All his pictures represent pretty sock-darners, for it was the sock-darning and the pretty face, and nothing else, that had so touched the great heart of the British public in his first exhibited work; so he turns them out by the dozen in every variety of size, costume, attitude, and complexion. ”

“ Is as of one that wasteth amorously,
⁠So an thou be!
Shepherd art thou, or nymph, that ailest there?
Lily of Love, or Rose? Search they, who care,
Thy likeness for a sign! For, verily,
Naught reck I, Fairest, so an thou be but Fair!
E'en as he recks not, that hath limned thee,
⁠So an thou Be!
"With love-wan eyelids on love-wonton eyes." ”

“ A more commonplace nature might have felt some jealousy; but Jack Spratt, who knew that he had within him all the jealous potentialities of an Othello, should any real cause for jealousy arise, could scarcely so insult his wife's good sense as to suppose that any of these amiable but mindless trifiers who pestered her with their well-meant attentions, could ever be possible rivals for such an one as he. ”

“ And then they keep us in such tortures of suspense! either forgetting to bid us to the feast our Spratty souls are hungering for, or else inviting us, as by an afterthought, at the eleventh hour, when we feel puzzled as to whether we had better be Sprattishly dignified, and decline with thanks, or put our prides in our pockets and go; and if we go, it is ten to one they will look as if they wondered what the deuce we are doing there; and if we don't, they never perceive our absence, and we are none the better in their eyes for the self-respect that has cost us so much self-denial. ”

“ Most Baronets are equal to that; and as for my Lady, a good-natured and impulsive person, she was quite beside herself with delight at the notion of Genius painting Beauty, while Beauty darned the socks of Genius. She immediately looked upon Mr. and Mrs. Jack Spratt as a pet little invention of her own; and before she had been five minutes in their company, invited them to a "small and early" at her mansion, in Belgrave Square. By this time also the Spratts' life-long prejudice against the aristocracy had quite evaporated; and they accepted this invitation with alacrity. ”

“ Jack Spratt also gloried in the possession of two beautiful and costly lay figures, representing a mother and a child, the only modern objects in the house, whose open countenances and curiously-wrought limbs, duly draped, he would never tire of painting, while his lovely wife sat by, darning his socks, may be, or embroidering some quaint device, as she read to him aloud old tales of chivalry, to which he was extremely partial, while the twins frolicked at her pretty feet. ”

“ One invitation leads to another, when the invited are as beautiful as Mrs. Spratt, and as clever and modest as her husband, and especially when they possess such unhackneyed social accomplishments; soon she could scarcely see her lovely face in the Chippendale mirror over the front parlour mantelpiece, for the coroneted notes and cards of invitation she was able to stick there. ”

“ Inconstant beats the manly heart—
⁠The present Bard's extremely so!
Wit, Wisdom, Strength, and Valour meet
(The Bard amongst them) , at thy feet
⁠To kneel in homage, as of old;
Yet turn a rival Queen to greet,
⁠Whose crown is of a purer gold!
Preen as thou wilt thy feathers fine,
A gift is hers, by grace divine,
⁠Even more potent to enthral,
O Bird of Paradise, than thine,
⁠The hearts and souls of one and all! ”

“ And, by some strange fatality, the doors of the Royal Academy, and of the Grosvenor Gallery, and, indeed, of all the Galleries, British or foreign (especially foreign) , seem inexorably closed to their productions. And having been led thereby, and also by the persistent gnawing of their empty stomachs, to the conviction that it is ever the fate of genius to starve, while mediocrity battens on the fat of the land, they have very sensibly cut the Fine Arts, and taken to commercial pursuits instead; and they are doing uncommonly well. ”

“ Whence she somewhat hastily concluded, that geniuses were careless in dress, eccentric in manner, very much taken up with themselves, and connected in some way or other with business; and she divided Society into two portions, those who were in Burke, Debrett & Co., and those who were out of it, and looked upon all the latter as though they had been meritorious and more or less gifted hatters, worthy of all respect, but whose attentions conferred no social distinction on a pretty woman. ”

“ There was to have been a dress evening with the trusty friends at Jack's house that night; and one of them, Peter Leonardo Pye, was to have read a series of original poems, entitled Dank Kisses from Mildewed Lips. Mrs. Spratt bade a regretful farewell to all the smart young men, and on entering her dwelling with a sigh, she found the trusty friends assembled in the hall. They were austerely pulling off their trousers, and revealing themselves in brand-new mediæval tights of purple silk, and short green doublets of a stuff they called "samite." ”

“ Sorrow and sickness seldom visit those who lead such pure, simple, and innocent lives. In their hours of sorrow, the Spratts and their friends would find comfort in gazing at some pretty combination of form and colour; such as a dead frog lying on a blue china plate in the sun, or a cracked sackbut with a peacock's feather sticking out of its bung-hole. ”

“ Sometimes an organ would be playing a popular melody, such as "Tommy, make room," or "Don't make a noise" (which are not so bad when you don't know the words) , and, excited by the pretty tune, they would pretend that the dust was a golden cloud, and the brougham or victoria a fiery chariot, and their mother a being made up of a fairy, a queen, an angel, a saint, and a goddess, going straight off to heaven in a mist of glory; till the nurse would come and box their ears for standing in the draught, for her love was tempered with a wise severity. ”

“ And they can smoke their pipes and cigars, the rogues, and toss, off their brandies and sodas, and their claret cups, and their pale dry sherries; and even roar at the endless buffooneries of Spratt Senior (whom they have learnt to love) , in spite of the death of the grand Old Masters. And they are always welcome at Acacia Lodge as flowers in May, for whatever we may think of their genius, their unsophisticated hearts are fond and faithful, warm and true. ”

“ Not only the Fine Arts, as represented by the Royal Academy, but poetry, literature, and the exact sciences followed suit, and paid homage to the popular Mrs. Spratt in the persons of their most famous representatives—shining lights, whose names are household words all over the habitable globe; and such homage she would receive at first with gracious condescension, for she made it her queenly boast that she honoured true genius irrespective of birth or breeding ”

“ A more worldly and suspicious nature would have taken umbrage at once, and run away with the unhappy idea that homage of this kind, openly addressed to a wife and a mother, was but an insult in disguise, involving moral degradation instead of social dignity, and instead of honour and glory, only ridicule and contempt. ”

“ Youth, health, simplicity of life, a modest competency, self-respect, friendship, domestic affection, the love of Art, innocence of mundane ambition, blameless aspirations and regrets, everything seems combined to make their existence happy and blessed ”

“ She dresses just like any of her neighbours, only better, and her stately beauty is much admired. Indeed, when she walks (no longer mobbed) with her ruddy children (no longer quaint and old-fashioned) in the Zoological Gardens, and Spratt Senior, that nice, clean, respectable old gentleman, leaning on her arm, they form a picture of English middle-class domestic felicity which it does the intelligent foreigner good to see. ”

“ So he discovered, in the vernal glades of Camden Town, an American sculptor—one Pygmalion F. Minnow—whose wife was ever so much taller, plumper, redder, and whiter than Mrs. Spratt, and consequently twice as beautiful. So beautiful was she, in fact, that her husband had made a life-size statue of her, in illustration of Mr. Tennyson's beautiful poem, The Mermaid; and so beautiful was this statue, that the Royal Academicians found a place of honour for it all by itself (in the refreshment-room) . ”

“ Seven times had the Sepoy's scalping knife performed on him its revolting office, as he lay steeped in some wild haschish dream, in lone wildernesses and remote "waste places of the fern;" seven times had he risen, Phœnix-like, from his own sack-cloth and ashes, and blown the slumbering spark of vitality into a lurid flame, wreaking a fearful holocaust on the red-skinned bravos who had, in the short lived triumph of their bloody vendetta, dared to trifle with the tawny crest that fair hands, braceletted with the ducal strawberry-leaf, had been proud to toy with! ”

“ Spratt; and all his sock-darners are inferior to that first one, and each sock-darner inferior to the last; so that a time must inevitably come when the great dealers will give him good advice instead of commissions, and finally cease to darken his doors, and he will have to darken theirs instead.
"A weary chase, a wasted hour!"
Be warned in time, ye rising young geniuses! Let no consideration tempt you into painting for filthy lucre, till you have realised a handsome independence by patient and steady devotion to Art for its own sweet sake! ”

“ Every husband, every father, every brother, feared and loathed him as the incarnation of the Evil one—in their mean, narrow, tedious nauseating philosophy they held him as a perjured villain of the deepest dye, steeped in utterest infamy! ”

“ Stray broken glass to greet the dawn; grey dead
⁠Strewn ashes of the weeds of thy delight;
⁠Sick sterile leavings of the hot fierce night;
Yet must thou bend thee to thy business
⁠Thy brain to brood; thy tremulous hand to write;
This is the end of every man's excess. ”

“ Perhaps there are no such fish or people in that democratic country, so we will return instead to the trusty friends, who, thank Heaven! are to be found in all countries. In this country, alas! which is not democratic, trusty friends who are not asked to dine and dance with the Aristocracy, very seldom tolerate those who are. They say spiteful things calculated to take one down; and Mrs. Spratt did not like to be taken down. ”

“ RS. SPRATT'S bed was not all roses neither. Smart people have at times a very provoking way with them. One day they are quite playful and familiar. The next, when we would be playful and familiar in our turn, with all the world looking on, they will publicly ignore us through a double eyeglass, to our great discomfiture, as we would naturally like to pass before the world for being their bosom friends. ”

“ This is the end of every man's excess.
The Blunder of Long Ballads. Bide in peace;
⁠For when the night is near, the day shall die,
And when the day shall dawn the night shall cease,
⁠And all things have an end of all ”

“ For the nurse, a warm-hearted, but vain and extremely pretty woman in her humble way, was almost as fond of late hours and congenial society as her mistress, and much as she loved the pretty little darlings, who doated on her in return, she would sometimes yield to temptation, and leave them for gayer scenes. ”

“ Spratt's beauty, and the very ample justice that was done to it both by herself and by the gorgeous Swells, did not greatly recommend that lady to the glittering Swellesses; so that she often met with cruel snubs and haunting slights from Ladies less beautiful, but of infinitely greater social importance than herself. ”

“ Well, they have come back to the arms of Spratt, as true and as trusty as ever, but in different guise.
Disgusted at never finding a publisher, and to revenge himself on the world for its neglect, Peter Leonardo Pye has foresworn the Muse, and is now travelling for his father's firm. He has hardly as yet acquired that ready smartness so useful in such an occupation, but is much improved in health and appearance, dresses better, and, though somewhat reserved and dreamy, is not unpopular "on the road;" ”

“ He who knew every living idiom down to its very finger-nails—he for whom every dead and decayed tongue had yielded up its fragrance—had long found out the vanity of all things. Every science had he mastered, but only to sound the emptiness thereof. ”

“ READER, how shall I limn this man for you, when the very sun has failed to do him justice—when the first photographers of the day have been driven baffled into their cameros obscuri! How account for the fearful impression that Vavasour Brabazon de Vere made on all women who crossed his path, ending but too often in the madhouse and the grave! ”

“ Spratt being there. Indeed, the only people who in that magic presence seemed to retain some self-possession, and keep an eye to business as well as an eye to beauty, were the pickpockets, who voted Mrs. Spratt a public benefactor; and the photographers, who blessed her very name!
And the best of it is, that everybody wondered how everybody else could be such a fool! especially the intelligent foreigner, who could not make out why, in this land of pretty women, there should be so much commotion about one pretty woman the more. And not such a very pretty woman either, he thought ”

“ Against all such upstart intruders of her own sex she would level her double eyeglass with happily copied impertinence. For just as those who rise from the ranks learn how to command by having first learnt how to obey, Mrs. Spratt had learnt how to snub by having been well and frequently snubbed herself. ”