sed my page for this week's number, telegraph to me as soon
as you get this and I will have Social ready by 12 to-morrow (that is,
if it be not too late for me.)" Or what is evidently an invitation to
lunch--"Monday at 1 for light usual." The drawing where this particular
note appears is of three little girls with their dolls. The legend in
the artist's handwriting read as follows:--"_My papa's house has got a_
conservatory! _My papa's house has got a_ billiard-room! _My papa's
house has got a_ mortgage!!" This was printed with the much inferior
legend: "Dolly taking her degrees (of comparison): '_My_ doll's wood!'
_My_ doll's composition!' '_My_ doll's wax!'"

Some of these British Museum original drawings still retain in pencil
the price du Maurier put upon them for sale. Of the period when the
artist was drawing on a large scale with a view to reduction there is
one of the "Things one would rather have expressed differently" series
priced at twelve guineas. It gives an indication of the profits du
Maurier sometimes was able to make from the original drawing. For the
sake of comment on the low evening gown the half-dozen figures in this
picture are all in back view. It is rather a dull twelve-guineas-worth.
And this was evidently felt, as it remained unsold. The original of the
very exquisite "Res angusta domi," the beautiful drawing of the nurse by
the child's bed in the children's hospital, which appeared in _Punch_,
vol. cviii. p. 102 (1894), is only priced at "Ten guineas."

Turning over the Museum drawings one often sees the liberties with the
penknife by which the artist would secure difficult effects of snow, or
of light on foliage. And sometimes in the margin there are pencil
studies from which figures in the illustration have been re-drawn. And
nearly always not altogether rubbed out is a first wording of the
legend, repeated in ink in du Maurier's pretty "hand" beneath.

In turning over these drawings one finds him doing much more than merely
suggesting pattern work in such things as wall-papers. There is one
floral wall-paper in particular that we find him working out which will
no doubt prove an invaluable reference another day as to the sort of
decoration in which the subjects of Queen Victoria preferred to live, or
were forced to by their tradesmen. Photographs of du Maurier's studio
which appeared in a Magazine illustrating an interview with him at the
time of the "Trilby" boom, reveal the squat china