ier's first attempt at
a work of fiction. It is significant that in style it has the lightness
of touch that would be expected from the disciple of Thackeray, and that
afterwards won by its "taking" character the hearts of the readers of
_Trilby_. It is the story of a painter, his wife and their twin
children. It opens with a picture of them at home, Jack Spratt
dreaming, even in those days, of Post-Impressionism, showing that du
Maurier was a prophet, "dreaming of the ante-pre-Raphaelite school. In
the depths of his bliss a feeling of discouragement would steal over him
as he thought of those immortal works, showing thereby that he was a
true artist, ever striving after the light. He little dreamt in his
modesty that, young and inexperienced though he might be, his pictures
were even quainter than theirs; for not only could he already draw,
colour, compose, and put into perspective quite as badly as they did,
but he had over them the advantage of a real lay figure to copy, whereas
they had to content themselves with the living model."

"The amusements of this happy pair were the simplest, healthiest, and
most delightful kind; they never went to the play, nor to balls or
dances, which they thought immodest--(indeed they were not even
asked)--nor read such things as novels, magazines, or the newspaper; nor
visited exhibitions of modern art, which they held in contempt, as they
did all things modern; ... and they were devoted to music, not that of
the present day, which they despised, nor that of the future, of which
they had never heard; nor English music, which was not old enough." Of
their friends, "They were few, but true and trusty, with remarkably fine
heads for a painter ... their deportment grave, sad and very strange;
for the death of the early Italian masters still weighed on their soul
with all the force of some recent domestic bereavement. They looked on
themselves and each other and the Jack Spratts, and were looked upon by
the Jack Spratts in return as the sole incarnation on this degenerate
earth of all such as had still managed to survive there; and so they
were always telling each other and everyone else they met. And no
wonder, for they were marvellously accomplished; being each of them
painter, sculptor, architect, poet, critic and engraver, all in one; and
all this without ever having learnt...."

"In their hours of sickness alone the Spratts were as other people, and
sent immediately for the nearest