Jeannette L. Gilder

“ But idealism and realism in this charming story are not quite happily balanced: the reader receives a blow on the spiritual side of his being from the manifestation of an agency in the universe that is endowed with an all-conquering malevolence, something extraneous from the individual and yet able to arrest in her the growth of the budding germ of holiness and moral beauty, a power triumphant even at the moment when her spirit was about to return to the God who gave it. Without Svengali there would be no novel of Trilby ”

“ 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. ”

“ Have you read "Trilby?" Svengali was a bad, wicked man, who used to hypnotize poor, sweet little Trilby and make her sing and act as he pleased—With apologies to Du Maurier.
"Trilby" has even got into American politics. This shows better than anything else how wide an audience the story most have reached. How many allusions to a book of the current year would be comprehensible to the average reader of a New York daily paper? ”

“ Little Billee's heart is broken, too; or if not broken, benumbed; and henceforth, though he becomes a most successful artist, and the pet of all London, he takes his pleasures and successes sadly and listlessly, caring nothing for the wealth and fame that come to him.
In the meantime a great prima-donna appears upon the European stage, and all the world bows down before her. Happening to be in Paris, Little Billee is persuaded by his old chums, Taffy the Yorkshireman ex-soldier, and the "Laird of Cockpen"—painters both,—to go and hear the prodigy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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?"
* * *
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 difficulty? ”

“ For Little Billee (whose sister he marries, after the death of Trilby, whom he, too, loved) is, truth to tell, somewhat of a prig, even after the sight of Trilby at the concert in Paris has roused him from the unemotional state to which her flight consigned him, years before; and Svengali is a beast, and Gecko is insignificant.
The text of the book is the counterpart of its illustrations, for Mr. du Maurier writes as he draws—with infinite precision and detail. Nothing is omitted that could possibly heighten an effect. ”

“ It is quite possible to make an enemy in advertising oneself; and nothing is easier than to draw general attention to oneself, by the same act that incurs the enmity of individual—especially if the individual be eminent. At the present moment M. du Maurier happens to be one of the most conspicuous figures in the field jointly occupied by Art and Letters. ”

“ A Broadway caterer now "molds his ice-cream in the shape of a model of Trilby's ever-famous foot." Mr. du Maurier can want no greater evidence of the popularity of his story in America. That there is not a "Trilby" shoe on the market reflects little credit upon the enterprise of our bootmakers. It is an opportunity that no soap-maker would neglect if it came his way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is a hard thing for a music-lover to comprehend, that a man of low and vicious life, and utterly without aspirations, can so express the penetrating beauty that lies in music more than in any other art. It shows, too, that music gives us only what it finds in us, and proves the folly of "program music," or music with a translation.
Auburn, N. Y. S. M. Cox.
(Mrs. Emma Carleton, in the Louisville Courier-Journal.)
"A great deal has been said and written about 'Ben Bolt,'" said a woman who doesn't pretend to be musical, "and the other songs of the Trilby repertoire ”

“ Beerbohm Tree, the eminent English actor, for the privilege of producing the play in England, where he himself wished to impersonate Svengali. It would be a pity if the Lyceum company did not secure the English rights; for Mr. Irving would make an inimitable Svengali, and Ellen Terry would be Trilby without trying.
As nobody has ever succeeded, or is likely to succeed, in really dramatizing a novel, it is not surprising that the stage version of "Trilby" should prove in some respects unsatisfactory. ”

“ There will be love in the tale, of course, and du Maurier also brings in the supernatural again. There will be plenty of liveliness and some tragedy. The book, I am given to understand, will be capable of illustration; but I am sorry to say there is some doubt as to whether du Maurier himself will illustrate it. It will depend entirely upon the state of his health, which of late has not been of the best. The length of the story will be greater than 'Trilby' and will run through about twelve numbers of Harper's Magazine, in which it will first be published in serial form. ”

“ He was able to answer, more by accident certainly than as the result of erudition, that the name was not invented by du Maurier but belongs to the French classics—possibly to Scottish folk-lore. In the year 1822 there was first published in Paris a nouvelle, by Charles Nodier, afterward a member of the French Academy, entitled, "Trilby, or the Fay of Argyle"; it was a sort of fairy-story, in which a fay is in love with a mortal woman, and the woman is very far from being indifferent to his sentiment. ”

“ When awake the girl durst not even attempt to do anything of the sort; and, after all, wonderful as it was, it was only phonic imitation, for she did not understand the meaning of a single word of the foreign language which she had uttered so correctly."
* * *
(Miss Frances Albert Doughty, in The Critic, 15 June, 1895.)
"The strength of 'Trilby' as a novel lies in the exquisitely dear realization of the good in the girl's nature, which the fine art of the author has been able to give to the reader. ”

“ Its charm is emotional rather than intellectual. With all its art, it impresses one as essentially ingenuous. It is a book to be loved, not merely to be liked or admired.
On 16 June, 1894, The Critic printed, with comment, a letter in which Mr. Whistler protested to the editor of an English newspaper against the libellous likeness of himself to be found in the character of Joe Sibley, one of the minor personages in the story of "Trilby." ”

“ Du Maurier's heroine has been heard of over in Brooklyn. A married woman, aged twenty-nine, got into a dispute with her husband, recently, as to the morals of the young model, and proved her point by "smashing him over the head with an earthenware jar." In the newspaper in which we read of this intemperate act, the husband's age is not given, nor the side he took in the argument, before he was shown to be wrong. The fact that he got his head broken proves little—except the folly of arguing with a woman ”

“ Editor and Manager Life's Monthly Calendar."
The Songs in "Trilby"
Dr. Thomas Dunn English wrote the words of "Ben Bolt" in New York, in 1842, when he was a young man of three-and-twenty. Mr. N. P. Willis had asked him to write a sea-song for The New Mirror, and so he wound up the last stanza with an allusion to "the salt-sea gale!" As a sea-song, "Ben Bolt" is not a success; but it has been sung on every sea and in every land where the English tongue is spoken. ”

“ No one who loves "Trilby" should fail to read the "autobiographic interview" with du Maurier which Mr. Robert H. Sherard contributed, with illustrations, to McClure's Magazine for April, 1895. From this singularly intimate and interesting article, one learns that the author's first picture in Punch represented himself and his chum Whistler [A] ; also, that the studio in the Latin Quarter where Trilby visited the three English artists was drawn from that of his master, Gleyre. ”

“ Apropos of the use made of the song in "Trilby," Harper's Bazar published the words and music; whereupon the author sent this letter to the editor:—
"It is very pleasing to an old man like myself to have the literary work of a half-century since dragged to light and commended, as has been the case with 'Ben Bolt' of late. I was flattered by seeing my likeness—or, rather, the likeness of a younger man than myself—in your pages; but I must protest against some errors which, in spite of careful editing, enter into your transcription of the song. ”

“ Every one of our 54,000 card-holders seems determined to read the book."
On the point of the morality or immorality of the book, The Independent says:—
"Mr. du Maurier, apparently in deference to the current craze for heroines that have been seduced, or are just going to be, bedaubs the first fifty pages of his otherwise clean story with telling how his pure heroine, Trilby, a blanchisseuse de fin, had been led astray, and so forth. That is to say, he unnecessarily goes behind the true door of his story to wash some dirty linen, and then he sets forth." ”

“ As we have said, the whole story rests for a while on one of these handsome feet; but the novelist manages at last to free his neck from the thraldom of the "slim, straight, rosy heel, clean-cut and smooth as the back of a razor," and proceeds to gratify our curiosity to know something about the strange being who poked about the studios in the Quartier Latin in the early fifties, bare-headed, and wearing a big, military coat with epaulets, which she could throw off when she posed for the ensemble as easily as she could kick off the loose slippers when only her foot was desired as a model. ”

“ Lang, what a delightful coil this romancing Frenchman, let loose among your Hielan' men, fairies, monks and Scotch novels, has made for you to straighten out, and how many strange discoveries may be made while you are about the job!
Miss Smith (2) has prepared another translation of Nodier's story, and, though there is little choice between her version and Mr. Dole's, we prefer it. ”

“ Whistler has shown himself a past-master of the art of advertising oneself. By identifying himself with one of the characters in a story that everyone is reading, he brings himself more conspicuously before the public than by painting a new picture. Moreover, in sending to an English newspaper a letter in which he vituperates his quondam friend and fellow-artist, he interrupts himself for but a moment in the pursuit of his legitimate calling as a painter.
In America, at least, few readers of "Trilby" would have known that, in Joe Sibley, Mr. ”

“ Harper have, however, done a more than generous thing by him: they have informed him that they will pay him a royalty, and a good big one, too, on all sales after 1 Jan., 1895, on both "Trilby" and "Peter Ibbetson." The 600 copies of the édition de luxe of "Trilby," at $10 a copy, were sold outright to the Syndicate Trading Co.
Our London correspondent, Mr. Arthur Waugh, wrote to us on 16 April, 1895:—"The English reading public is to have its illustrated 'Trilby' in one volume in June. Hitherto the three-volume edition has alone been in circulation, and that without the illustrations. ”

“ W. I. Fletcher.
[Unhappily he is, and has been for many years. It is only with the greatest difficulty that he is able to work with either pen or pencil.]
From "Trilby." Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers.
"Trilby" on the Stage
Mr. Paul M. Potter's dramatization of "Trilby" was produced by Mr. A. M. Palmer's company at the Boston Museum on Monday, 4 March, 1895, and achieved so great a success that several companies were immediately put upon the road to play it throughout the country. Its first production in New York, with the original cast, occurred at the Garden Theatre, on April 15. ”