George Du Maurier

“ Another, who is no fiddler, may love a fiddle too; for its symmetry, its neatness, its color—its delicate grainings, the lovely lines and curves of its back and front—for its own sake, so to speak. He may have a whole galleryful of fiddles to love in this innocent way—a harem!—and yet not know a single note of music, or even care to hear one. He will dust them and stroke them, and take them down and try to put them in tune—pizzicato!—and put them back again, and call them ever such sweet little pet names: viol, viola, viola d'amore, viol di gamba, violino mio! ”

“ As some things are too sad and too deep for tears, so some things are too grotesque and too funny for laughter. Of such a kind was Miss O'Ferrall's performance of "Ben Bolt."
From that capacious mouth and through that high-bridged bony nose there rolled a volume of breathy sound, not loud, but so immense that it seemed to come from all round, to be reverberated from every surface in the studio. She followed more or less the shape of the tune, going up when it rose and down when it fell, but with such immense intervals between the notes as were never dreamed of in any mortal melody. ”

“ This was the absurd old nursery rhyme with which la Svengali chose to make her début before the most critical audience in the world! She sang it three times over—the same verse. There is but one.
The first time she sang it without any expression whatever—not the slightest. Just the words and the tune; in the middle of her voice, and not loud at all; just as a child sings who is thinking of something else; or just as a young French mother sings who is darning socks by a cradle, and rocking her baby to sleep with her foot. ”

“ Svengali with his little flexible flageolet, I with my violin—that is how we taught her to make the sounds—and then how to use them. She was a phénomène, monsieur! She could keep on one note and make it go through all the colors in the rainbow—according to the way Svengali looked at her. It would make you laugh—it would make you cry—but, cry or laugh, it was the sweetest, the most touching, the most beautiful note you ever heard—except all her others! and each had as many overtones as the bells in the Carillon de Notre Dame. ”

“ Dodor and l'Zouzou no longer came so often, now that the charming Little Billee and his charming mother and still more charming sister had gone away—nor Carnegie, nor Antony, nor Lorrimer, nor Vincent, nor the Greek. Gecko never came at all. Even Svengali was missed, little as he had been liked. It is a dismal and sulky looking piece of furniture, a grand-piano that nobody ever plays—with all its sound and its souvenirs locked up inside—a kind of mausoleum! ”

“ There is no class so genial and sympathetic as our own, in the long-run—even if it be but the criminal class! none where the welcome is likely to be so genuine and sincere, so easy to win, so difficult to outstay, if we be but decently pleasant and successful; none where the memory of us will be kept so green (if we leave any memory at all!) .
So Little Billee found it expedient, when he wanted rest and play, to seek them at the houses of those whose rest and play were like his own—little halts in a seeming happy life-journey, full of toil and strain and endeavor ”

“ In this harmless fashion Little Billee was friends with more than one fine lady de par le monde.
Indeed, he had been reproached by his more bohemian brothers of the brush for being something of a tuft-hunter—most unjustly. But nothing gives such keen offence to our unsuccessful brother, bohemian or bourgeois, as our sudden intimacy with the so-called great, the little lords and ladies of this little world! Not even our fame and success, and all the joy and pride they bring us, are so hard to condone—so imbittering, so humiliating, to the jealous fraternal heart. ”

“ It always seems so pleasant to be going west! Little Billee loved that station, and often went there for a mere stroll, to watch the people starting on their westward way, following the sun towards Heaven knows what joys or sorrows, and envy them their sorrows or their joys—any sorrows or joys that were not merely physical, like a chocolate drop or a pretty tune, a bad smell or a toothache. ”

“ What a pity you have not also the musical organization!"
"Oh, but I have, monsieur; you heard me sing 'Ben Bolt,' didn't you? What makes you say that?"
Svengali was confused for a moment. Then he said: "When I play the 'Rosemonde' of Schubert, matemoiselle, you look another way and smoke a cigarette.... You look at the big Taffy, at the Little Billee, at the pictures on the walls, or out of window, at the sky, the chimney-pots of Notre Dame de Paris; you do not look at Svengali!—Svengali, who looks at you with all his eyes, and plays you the 'Rosemonde' of Schubert!" ”

“ Oh, ye impecunious, unpinnacled young inseparables of eighteen, nineteen, twenty, even twenty-five, who share each other's thoughts and purses, and wear each other's clothes, and swear each other's oaths, and smoke each other's pipes, and respect each other's lights o' love, and keep each other's secrets, and tell each other's jokes, and pawn each other's watches and merrymake together on the proceeds, and sit all night by each other's bedsides in sickness, and comfort each other in sorrow and disappointment with silent, manly sympathy—"wait till you get to forty year!" ”

“ It is a fairly good middle-class social creed, if you can only stick to it through life in despite of life's experience. It fosters independence and self-respect, and not a few stodgy practical virtues as well. At all events, it keeps you out of bad company, which is to be found both above and below.
And all this melancholy preoccupation, on Little Billee's part, from the momentary gleam and dazzle of a pair of over-perfect feet in an over-æsthetic eye, too much enamoured of mere form! ”

“ He bowed right and left to the thunderous applause that greeted him, gave his three little baton-taps, and the lovely music began at once. We have grown accustomed to strains of this kind during the last twenty years; but they were new then, and their strange seduction was a surprise as well as an enchantment.
Besides, no such band as Svengali's had ever been heard; and in listening to this overture the immense crowd almost forgot that it was a mere preparation for a great musical event, and tried to encore it. But Svengali merely turned round and bowed—there were to be no encores that night. ”

“ It is 'il bel canto' come back to the world after a hundred years...."
"But what voice is it?" asked Little Billee.
"Every voice a mortal woman can have—three octaves—four! and of such a quality that people who can't tell one tune from another cry with pleasure at the mere sound of it directly they hear her; just like anybody else. Everything that Paganini could do with his violin she does with her voice—only better—and what a voice! un vrai baume!" ”

“ Mon ami, an apple is an excellent thing—until you have tried a peach! Her voice to that of Alboni is as a peach to an apple—I give you my word of honor! but bah! the voice is a detail. It's what she does with it—it's incredible! it gives one cold all down the back! it drives you mad! it makes you weep hot tears by the spoonful! Ah! the tear, mon fy! tenez! I can draw everything but that! Ça n'est pas dans mes cordes! I can only madden with love! But la Svengali!... ”

“ What a magnificent old man he will make some day, should the Grand Hôtel ever run short of them! He looks as if he could be trusted down to the ground—in all things, little or big; as if his word were as good as his bond, and even better; his wink as good as his word, his nod as good as his wink; and, in truth, as he looks, so he is.
"'SVENGALI!... SVENGALI!... ”

“ What sweeter, fresher, wholesomer music than the sound of his voice when he doth so furiously rage?
Yes! That is "good production." As Svengali would have said, "C'est un cri du cœur!"
And then, when popular acclaim brings the great dealers and the big cheques, up rises the printed howl of the duffer, the disappointed one, the "wounded thing with an angry cry"—the prosperous and happy bagman that should have been, who has given up all for art, and finds he can't paint and make himself a name, after all, and never will, so falls to writing about those who can—and what writing! ”

“ Besides, Taffy's as simple as a little child himself, and couldn't fool any one, and wouldn't if he could—not even a parson. But if any one tries to fool him, my eyes! don't he cut up rough, and call names, and kick up a shindy, and even knock people down! That's the worst of fellows like Taffy. They're too good for this world and too solemn. They're impossible, and lack all sense of humor. In point of fact, Taffy's a gentleman—poor fellow! ”

“ 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 talking, talking, talking.... ”

“ So that Little Billee, who had the quick, prehensile, æsthetic eye, and knew by the grace of Heaven what the shapes and sizes and colors of almost every bit of man, woman, or child should be (and so seldom are) , was quite bewildered to find that a real, bare, live human foot could be such a charming object to look at, and felt that such a base or pedestal lent quite an antique and Olympian dignity to a figure that seemed just then rather grotesque in its mixed attire of military overcoat and female petticoat, and nothing else! ”

“ And Gecko, cuddling lovingly his violin and closing his upturned eyes, played that simple melody as it had probably never been played before—such passion, such pathos, such a tone!—and they turned it and twisted it, and went from one key to another, playing into each other's hands, Svengali taking the lead; and fugued and canoned and counterpointed and battle-doored and shuttlecocked it, high and low, soft and loud, in minor, in pizzicato, and in sordino—adagio, andante, allegretto, scherzo—and exhausted all its possibilities of beauty ”

“ As the Laird would say, they manage these things better there!
Taffy wears a short beard, which is turning gray. His kind blue eye is no longer choleric, but mild and friendly—as frank as ever; and full of humorous patience. He has grown stouter; he is very big indeed, in all three dimensions, but the symmetry and the gainliness of the athlete belong to him still in movement and repose; and his clothes fit him beautifully, though they are not new, and show careful beating and brushing and ironing, and even a faint suspicion of all but imperceptible fine-drawing here and there. ”

“ And if people are to be judged by their works, this worthy pair are no doubt both equally well compensated by now for the trials and struggles of their sordid earthly life.
So much for Trilby's parentage.
And as she sat and wept at Madame Doche's impersonation of la Dame aux Camélias (with her hand in Durien's) she vaguely remembered, as in a waking dream, now the noble presence of Taffy as he towered cool and erect, foil in hand, gallantly waiting for his adversary to breathe, now the beautiful sensitive face of Little Billee and his deferential courtesy. ”

“ Had he been in love with Trilby, too? Had he ever been in love with any one?
He couldn't say. But he thought of Trilby's sweetness and unselfishness, her gayety, her innocent kissings and caressings, her drollery and frolicsome grace, her way of filling whatever place she was in with her presence, the charming sight and the genial sound of her; and felt that no girl, no woman, no lady he had ever seen yet was a match for this poor waif and stray, this long-legged, cancan-dancing, quartier-latin grisette, blanchisseuse de fin, "and Heaven knows what besides!" ”

“ The doctor blows through your nose into your Eustachian tube with a little India-rubber machine; some obstacle gives way, there is a snap in your head, and straightway you hear better than you had ever heard in all your life, almost too well; and all your life is once more changed for you!
At length he sat up again, in the middle of la Svengali's singing of the "Nussbaum," and saw her; and saw the Laird sitting by him, and Taffy, their eyes riveted on Trilby, and knew for certain that it was no dream this time, and his joy was almost a pain! ”

“ And where her beauty fails (as it almost always does somewhere in the Venuses who sit for hire) , the failure is so lamentably conspicuous in the studio light—the fierce light that beats on this particular throne—that Don Juan himself, who has not got to paint, were fain to hide his eyes in sorrow and disenchantment, and fly to other climes.
All beauty is sexless in the eyes of the artist at his work—the beauty of man, the beauty of woman, the heavenly beauty of the child, which is the sweetest and best of all. ”

“ Young Lord Archie Waring was saying only last night that he wished he had half your talent! He's crazed about painting, you know, and actually wants to be a painter himself! The poor dear old marquis is quite sore about it!"
With this happy exordium the parson stopped and shook hands; and they both stood for a while, looking seaward. The parson said the usual things about the sea—its blueness; its grayness; its greenness; its beauty; its sadness; its treachery.
"'Who shall put forth on thee,
Unfathomable sea!'"
"Who indeed!" ”

“ How dreadful these sirens are, wrecking the peace of families!"
"You mustn't forget that she gave way at once at a word from you, Mrs. Bagot; and she was very fond of Willy. She wasn't a siren then."
"Oh yes—oh yes! that's true—she behaved very well—she did her duty—I can't deny that! You must try and forgive me, Mr. Wynne—although I can't forgive her!—that dreadful illness of poor Willy's—that bitter time in Paris...."
And Mrs. Bagot began to cry, and Taffy forgave. "Oh, Mr. Wynne—let us still hope that there's some mistake—that it's only somebody like her! ”

“ Poor Trilby!
The shape of those lovely slender feet (that were neither large nor small) , fac-similed in dusty, pale plaster of Paris, survives on the shelves and walls of many a studio throughout the world, and many a sculptor yet unborn has yet to marvel at their strange perfection, in studious despair.
For when Dame Nature takes it into her head to do her very best, and bestow her minutest attention on a mere detail, as happens now and then—once in a blue moon, perhaps—she makes it uphill work for poor human art to keep pace with her. ”

“ Then, catching sight of his own face and form in a mirror, he would curse himself for a puny, misbegotten shrimp, an imp—an abortion—no bigger, by the side of the herculean Taffy or the burly Laird of Cockpen, than six-pennorth o' half-pence: a wretched little overrated follower of a poor trivial craft—a mere light amuser! ”

“ Let any other singer in the world try to imitate them—they would make you sick! That was Svengali ... he was a magician!
"And how she looked, singing! do you remember? her hands behind her—her dear, sweet, slender foot on a little stool—her thick hair lying down all along her back! And that good smile like the Madonna's so soft and bright and kind! Ach! Bel ucel di Dio! it was to make you weep for love, merely to see her (c'était à vous faire pleurer d'amour, rien que de la voir) ! That was Trilby! Nightingale and bird-of-paradise in one! ”

“ I shall leave this hateful place and go and live in the country: I suppose I must manage to get through life somehow. I know of some poor people who were once very fond of me, and I could live with them and help them and keep myself. The difficulty is about Jeannot. I thought it all out before it came to this. I was well prepared, you see."
She smiled in a forlorn sort of way, with her upper lip drawn tight against her teeth, as if some one were pulling her back by the lobes of her ears.
"Oh! but Trilby—what shall we do without you? Taffy and I, you know! You've become one of us!" ”

“ So Trilby had written in her farewell letter to Taffy; and these words were true for Taffy and the Laird as well as for her.
And that is the worst of those dear people who have charm: they are so terrible to do without, when once you have got accustomed to them and all their ways.
And when, besides being charming, they are simple, clever, affectionate, constant, and sincere, like Trilby and Little Billee! Then the lamentable hole their disappearance makes is not to be filled up! And when they are full of genius, like Little Billee—and like Trilby, funny without being vulgar! ”

“ So Dodor and Little Billee remained sitting, with their arms round each other's necks and their feet in the gutter, while Zouzou went after the hat on all fours, and caught it, and brought it back in his mouth like a tipsy retriever. Little Billee wept for sheer love and gratitude, and called him a caryhatide (in English) , and laughed loudly at his own wit, which was quite thrown away on Zouzou! "No man ever had such dear, dear frenge! no man ever was s'happy!" ”

“ And the happiest day of all was when Trois Angliches took Trilby and Jeannot (for so the mite was called) to spend the Sunday in the woods at Meudon, and breakfast and dine at the garde champêtre's. Swings, peep-shows, donkey-rides; shooting at a mark with cross-bows and little pellets of clay, and smashing little plaster figures and winning macaroons; losing one's self in the beautiful forest; catching newts and tadpoles and young frogs; making music on mirlitons. Trilby singing "Ben Bolt" into a mirliton was a thing to be remembered, whether one would or no! ”

“ And what did he feel for Trilby? He couldn't tell yet. It was too vast as yet to be measured; and, alas! it was weighted with such a burden of sorrow and regret that he might well put off the thought of it a little while longer, and gather in what bliss he might: like the man whose hearing has been restored after long years, he would revel in the mere physical delight of hearing for a space, and not go out of his way as yet to listen for the bad news that was already in the air, and would come to roost quite soon enough. ”

“ Tell me, Trilby—do you ever pray to Him, as other people pray?"
"Pray to Him? Well, no—not often—not in words and on my knees and with my hands together, you know! Thinking's praying, very often—don't you think so? And so's being sorry and ashamed when one's done a mean thing, and glad when one's resisted a temptation, and grateful when it's a fine day and one's enjoying one's self without hurting any one else! What is it but praying when you try and bear up after losing all you cared to live for? And very good praying too! ”

“ All this, the memory and the feel of it, are in Trilby's voice as she warbles that long, smooth, lilting, dancing laugh, that wondrous song without words; and those who hear feel it all, and remember it with her. It is irresistible; it forces itself on you; no words, no pictures, could ever do the like! So that the tears that are shed out of all these many French eyes are tears of pure, unmixed delight in happy reminiscence! ”

“ He felt his fortune was secure, and ran into debt with tailors, hatters, shoemakers, jewellers, but paid none of his old debts to his friends. His pockets were always full of printed slips—things that had been written about him in the papers—and he would read them aloud to everybody he knew, especially to Trilby, as she sat darning socks on the model-throne while the fencing and boxing were in train. And he would lay his fame and his fortune at her feet, on condition that she should share her life with him. ”

“ For in his love of outward form he could not understand that any woman who had eyes to see should ever quite condone the signs of physical weakness in man, in favor of any mental gifts or graces whatsoever.
Little Greek that he was, he worshipped the athlete, and opined that all women without exception—all English women especially—must see with the same eyes as himself.
He had once been vain and weak enough to believe in Trilby's love (with a Taffy standing by—a careless, unsusceptible Taffy, who was like unto the gods of Olympus!) ”

“ Loud and shrill and sweet beyond compare—drowning the orchestra; of a piercing quality quite ineffable; a joy there is no telling; a clear, purling, crystal stream that gurgles and foams and bubbles along over sunlit stones; "a wonder, a world's delight!"
And there is not a sign of effort, of difficulty overcome. All through, Trilby smiles her broad, angelic smile; her lips well parted, her big white teeth glistening as she gently jerks her head from side to side in time to Svengali's bâton, as if to shake the willing notes out quicker and higher and shriller.... ”

“ She is now! But she had no more idea of singing than I have of winning a steeple-chase at the croix de Berny. She could no more sing than a fiddle can play itself! She could never tell one tune from another—one note from the next. Do you remember how she tried to sing 'Ben Bolt' that day when she first came to the studio in the Place St. Anatole des Arts? It was droll, hein? à se boucher les oreilles! Well, that was Trilby, your Trilby! that was my Trilby too—and I loved her as one loves an only love, an only sister, an only child—a gentle martyr on earth, a blessed saint in heaven! ”

“ Favorite types of beauty change with each succeeding generation. These were the days of Buckner's aristocratic Album beauties, with lofty foreheads, oval faces, little aquiline noses, heart-shaped little mouths, soft dimpled chins, drooping shoulders, and long side ringlets that fell over them—the Lady Arabellas and the Lady Clementinas, Musidoras and Medoras! A type that will perhaps come back to us some day.
May the present scribe be dead!
Trilby's type would be infinitely more admired now than in the fifties. ”

“ Nothing else that Mother Nature has to show, not even the human face divine, has more subtle power to suggest high physical distinction, happy evolution, and supreme development; the lordship of man over beast, the lordship of man over man, the lordship of woman over all!
En, voilà, de l'éloquence—à propos de bottes!
Trilby had respected Mother Nature's special gift to herself—had never worn a leather boot or shoe, had always taken as much care of her feet as many a fine lady takes of her hands. ”

“ I know all about that; still, facts are facts, and the world is the world, and we've got to live in it," said Mr. Bagot, whose satirical smile had died away under the gleam of Taffy's choleric blue eye.
Then said the good Taffy, frowning down on the parson (who looked mean and foolish, as people can sometimes do even with right on their side) : "And now, Mr. Bagot—I can't tell you how very keenly I have suffered during this—a—this most painful interview—on account of my very deep regard for Trilby O'Ferrall. ”

“ An artist's life should be away from the world—above all that meanness and paltriness ... all in his work. Social position, indeed! Over and over again we've said what fetid, bestial rot it all was—a thing to make one sick and shut one's self away from the world.... Why say one thing and act another?... Love comes before all—love levels all—love and art ... and beauty—before such beauty as Trilby's rank doesn't exist. ”

“ It's like a mahlstick!"
"It's strong enough to kick, if you don't leave off!"
And Little Billee, the young and tender, would let out his little heel and kick the German's shins; and just as the German was going to retaliate, big Taffy would pin his arms and make him sing another song, more discordant than Trilby's—for he didn't dream of kicking Taffy; of that you may be sure!
Such was Svengali—only to be endured for the sake of his music—always ready to vex, frighten, bully, or torment anybody or anything smaller and weaker than himself—from a woman or a child to a mouse or a fly. ”