ts; women tight-laced, men about town invented the crease in the
trouser-leg to keep which in order alone demands the fealty of a
lifetime. In summer men consented to be roasted alive on the London
pavement rather than part with the frock-coat in which their depraved
conception of beauty delighted. In those days one imagines people were
only comfortable when once safely in bed, and that was never for long at
a time; for the sake of appearances the Victorians got up early.

[Illustration:

Speed the Parting Guest

(Things one would rather have left unsaid.)

"We've had such a pleasant evening, Mr. Jones! _May_ I beg of you to ask
one of your servants to call a Hansom?"

"With _pleasure_, Mrs. Smith!"

_Punch_, March 10, 1883.]

The Royal Academy Exhibitions of the time proved that it was impossible
for a Victorian to be an artist. The artists of the time did not belong
to their own age. We had Rossetti ever seeking to lose himself in the
illusion of another time and country, and Whistler trying to find
himself in the reality of another place. Chelsea was well outside of
Victorian London. Perhaps Hampstead, a place like Chelsea, that belongs
to no particular time, was outside of it too. Kensington and Bayswater
are Victorian to this day. Rossetti in Kensington is a vision from which
imagination recoils, Whistler in Bayswater one which passes the
invention of human fancy. Du Maurier liked to come into Victorian London
in a carriage from a distance, as a visitor, to be driven away again. He
approached its society critically. He acknowledged the distinction of
its grave self-consciousness while exposing its ridiculous airs.

* * * * *

Just as Chelsea is a more desirable place to live in because of its
"Rossetti" associations, so Hampstead gains from the memory of the witty
and generous satirist who made it his home. New Grove House, where du
Maurier lived for over twenty years, might have been designed for him;
it escapes the suburban style that would have been an affliction to one
so romantic.

Nearly all artists who have sustained their powers in a refined field
of expression have been glad to count upon monotony in the passage of
their days. The adventurous temperament is not the artistic one. The
artist values security from interruptions above everything, and
interruption is of the essence of adventure. Du Maurier lived a life
that was for an artist characteristic. He was at pa