ins to preserve his
days from being broken into. It is above the plane where human life is
open to crude forms of calamity and the stress of elemental passion,
upon a plane where freedom from anxiety is secure that art is able to
exert itself in attaining to the expression of the more valuable,
because more intimate, experiences of human nature.
Du Maurier died on the 8th October 1896. His grave at Hampstead is
singularly happily placed and constructed. It consists of two carved
wood crosses, respectively at head and foot, connected by a panel
containing, in addition to the name and dates, only the concluding lines
of _Trilby_:--
"A little trust that when we die
We reap our sowing! And so--good-bye!"
The grave is close to the pavement, and it is impossible to go that way
without seeing it. We can imagine that one who was so entirely the
opposite of misanthropic would wish to lie like this within sound of
passing conversation.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Pennell's _Life of Whistler_.
[5] Archibald Constable & Co.
V
THE ILLUSTRATIONS
Section 1
It may be well to touch upon some of the characteristics of our
illustrations in detail before closing this book. Many of them are so
obviously involved in what has already been said here of the artist's
work that we do not propose to mention them again; but others suggest
remarks which would not have incorporated easily in the attempt we have
made to demonstrate the significance of du Maurier's art in general.
Taken in the order in which they are printed here, the first
illustrations show the range of effect and variety of line which the
artist was afterwards to narrow into the conventions by which he is now
chiefly remembered. But if such an effect as that in the picture
_Caution_, for instance, would not have been possible with him in his
last period, it was because the nature of the subjects required on
the journal which absorbed most of his energies afforded no stimulus for
anything so Rembrandtesque. He brought such possibilities of style over
from his romantic period in _The Cornhill Magazine_, and it must be
admitted that the effect in this drawing seems too powerful for the
music-hall comedy it has to carry off.
[Illustration: Sketch for Initial Letter in
_The Cornhill_, October, 1883.]
A picture bewitching on account of the grace it contains is that called
"Berkeley Square." Du Maurier had quickly perceived that the quality of
grace co
|