Part 1
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.)
Typographical errors have been corrected. A list follows the etext. With a few exceptions, the spelling of French words has not been normalized or corrected. (note of etext transcriber)
_SPECIAL LIMITED EDITION_
TRILBY
A Novel
_By_
GEORGE DU MAURIER
AUTHOR OF
"PETER IBBETSON" "THE MARTIAN" "SOCIAL PICTORIAL SATIRE"
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR
NEW YORK INTERNATIONAL BOOK AND PUBLISHING COMPANY 1899
_This volume is issued for sale in paper covers only._
Copyright, 1894, 1899, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
_All rights reserved._
_"Hélas! Je sais un chant d'amour, Triste et gai, tour à tour!"_
ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"IT WAS TRILBY!" _Frontispiece_
TAFFY, ALIAS TALBOT WYNNE 4
"THE LAIRD OF COCKPEN" 5
"THE THIRD HE WAS 'LITTLE BILLEE'" 7
"IT DID ONE GOOD TO LOOK AT HIM" 9
AMONG THE OLD MASTERS 13
"WISTFUL AND SWEET" 17
THE "ROSEMONDE" OF SCHUBERT 21
TRILBY'S LEFT FOOT 27
THE FLEXIBLE FLAGEOLET 31
THE BRIDGE OF ARTS 34
"THREE MUSKETEERS OF THE BRUSH" 39
TAFFY MAKES THE SALAD 43
"THE GLORY THAT WAS GREECE" 47
TRILBY'S FOREBEARS 52
TAIL-PIECE 56
"AS BAD AS THEY MAKE 'EM" 59
"A VOICE HE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND" 63
"AND SO, NO MORE" 67
"'TWO ENGLANDERS IN ONE DAY'" 70
"'HIMMEL! THE ROOF OF YOUR MOUTH'" 73
"'ÇA FERA UNE FAMEUSE CRAPULE DE MOINS!'" 77
"'AV YOU SEEN MY FAHZER'S OLE SHOES?'" 81
TAFFY À L'ÉCHELLE! 85
"THE FOX AND THE CROW" 89
THE LATIN QUARTER 92
CUISINE BOURGEOISE EN BOHÈME 95
"THE SOFT EYES" 98
ILYSSUS 101
"'VOILÀ L'ESPAYCE DE HOM KER JER SWEE!'" 105
TIT FOR TAT 111
THE HAPPY LIFE 116
"'LET ME GO, TAFFY...'" 119
"'QU'EST CE QU'IL A DONC, CE LITREBILI?'" 121
REPENTANCE 125
CONFESSION 129
"ALL AS IT USED TO BE" 133
"TWIN GRAY STARS" 135
"AN INCUBUS" 137
THE CAPITALIST AND THE SWELL 141
"'I WILL NOT! I WILL NOT!'" 151
DODOR IN HIS GLORY 153
HÔTEL DE LA ROCHEMARTEL 155
CHRISTMAS EVE 161
"'ALLONS GLYCÈRE! ROUGIS MON VERRE....'" 163
SOUVENIR 168
"MY SISTER DEAR" 173
A DUCAL FRENCH FIGHTING-COCK 175
"'ANSWER ME, TRILBY!'" 179
A CARY_HAT_IDE 180
"'LES GLOUGLOUX DU VIN À QUAT' SOUS....'" 183
"'IS SHE A _LADY_, MR. WYNNE?'" 187
"'_FOND_ OF HIM? AREN'T _YOU_?'" 191
"SO LIKE LITTLE BILLEE" 195
"'I MUST TAKE THE BULL BY THE HORNS'" 199
"'TRILBY! WHERE IS SHE?'" 203
LA SŒUR DE LITREBILI 205
"HE FELL A-WEEPING, QUITE DESPERATELY" 207
"THE SWEET MELODIC PHRASE" 211
"SORROWFULLY, ARM IN ARM" 215
DEMORALIZATION 225
FRED WALKER 227
_PLATONIC LOVE_ 230
"DARLINGS, OLD OR YOUNG" 235
"THE MOON-DIAL" 237
THE CHAIRMAN 239
A HAPPY DINNER 245
"A-SMOKIN' THEIR POIPES AND CIGYARS" 247
"BONJOUR, SUZON!" 253
A HUMAN NIGHTINGALE 257
CUP-AND-BALL 263
SWEET ALICE 267
"MAY HEAVEN GO WITH HER!" 272
"'SO MUCH FOR ALICE, TRAY'" 277
"'YOU'RE A _THIEF_, SIR!'" 287
"AN ATMOSPHERE OF BANK-NOTES AND GOLD" 293
"A LITTLE PICTURE OF THE THAMES" 296
"'AH! THE BEAUTIFUL INTERMENT, MESSIEURS!'" 301
"PAUVRE TRILBY". 303
"'JE PRONG!'" 307
"'OON PAIR DE GONG BLONG'" 311
GECKO 315
"AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE" 319
"OUVRE-MOI TA PORTE POUR L'AMOUR DE DIEU!" 322
"MALBROUCK S'EN VA-T'EN GUERRE" 325
"AUX NOUVELLES QUE J'APPORTE, VOS BEAUX YEUX VONT PLEURER!". 329
UN IMPROMPTU DE CHOPIN 331
"AND THE REMEMBRANCE OF THEM--HAND IN HAND" 338
"'I BELIEVE YOU, MY BOY!'" 341
"MAMAN DUCHESSE" 351
THE CUT DIRECT 354
"PETIT ENFANT, J'AIMAIS D'UN AMOUR TENDRE...." 358
"'VITE! VITE! UN COMMISSAIRE DE POLICE!'" 363
"I SUPPOSE YOU DO ALL THIS KIND OF THING FOR MERE AMUSEMENT, MR. WYNNE?" 367
THE FIRST VIOLIN LOSES HIS TEMPER 373
"HAST THOU FOUND ME, O MINE ENEMY?" 375
"'OH, DON'T YOU REMEMBER SWEET ALICE, BEN BOLT?'" 377
"THE LAST THEY SAW OF SVENGALI" 383
"'THREE NICE CLEAN ENGLISHMEN'" 386
"PŒNA PEDE CLAUDO" 389
"THE OLD STUDIO" 391
"'ET MAINTENANT DORS, MA MIGNONNE!'" 395
"TAFFY WAS ALLOWED TO SEE GECKO" 400
A FAIR BLANCHISSEUSE DE FIN 403
A THRONE IN BOHEMIA 407
"'OH, MY POOR GIRL! MY POOR GIRL!'" 410
"'AH, POOR MAMMA! SHE WAS EVER SO MUCH PRETTIER THAN THAT!'" 416
"'TO SING LIKE THAT IS _TO PRAY_!'" 422
"'THE REMEMBRANCE OF THAT PALM SUNDAY!'" 425
FOR GECKO 431
"OUT OF THE MYSTERIOUS EAST" 432
"'SVENGALI!... SVENGALI!... SVENGALI!...'" 437
"TOUT VIENT À POINT, POUR QUI SAIT ATTENDRE!" 439
"I, PETE COELESTES...." 441
"PETITS BONHEURS DE CONTREBANDE" 447
ENTER GECKO 451
"'WE TOOK HER VOICE NOTE BY NOTE'" 455
THE NIGHTINGALE'S FIRST SONG 459
"'ICH HABE _GELIEBT UND GELEBET_!'" 461
TAIL-PIECE 464
TRILBY
Part First
"Mimi Pinson est une blonde, Une blonde que l'on connaît; Elle n'a qu'une robe au monde, Landérirette! et qu'un bonnet!"
It was a fine, sunny, showery day in April.
The big studio window was open at the top, and let in a pleasant breeze from the northwest. Things were beginning to look shipshape at last. The big piano, a semi-grand by Broadwood, had arrived from England by "the Little Quickness" (_la Petite Vitesse_, as the goods trains are called in France), and lay, freshly tuned, alongside the eastern wall; on the wall opposite was a panoply of foils, masks, and boxing-gloves.
A trapeze, a knotted rope, and two parallel cords, supporting each a ring, depended from a huge beam in the ceiling. The walls were of the usual dull red, relieved by plaster casts of arms and legs and hands and feet; and Dante's mask, and Michael Angelo's altorilievo of Leda and the swan, and a centaur and Lapith from the Elgin marbles--on none of these had the dust as yet had time to settle.
There were also studies in oil from the nude; copies of Titian, Rembrandt, Velasquez, Rubens, Tintoret, Leonardo da Vinci--none of the school of Botticelli, Mantegna, and Co.--a firm whose merits had not as yet been revealed to the many.
Along the walls, at a great height, ran a broad shelf, on which were other casts in plaster, terra-cotta, imitation bronze; a little Theseus, a little Venus of Milo, a little discobolus; a little flayed man threatening high heaven (an act that seemed almost pardonable under the circumstances!); a lion and a boar by Barye; an anatomical figure of a horse with only one leg left and no ears; a horse's head from the pediment of the Parthenon, earless also; and the bust of Clytie, with her beautiful low brow, her sweet wan gaze, and the ineffable forward shrug of her dear shoulders that makes her bosom a nest, a rest, a pillow, a refuge--to be loved and desired forever by generation after generation of the sons of men.
Near the stove hung a gridiron, a frying-pan, a toasting-fork, and a pair of bellows. In an adjoining glazed corner cupboard were plates and glasses, black-handled knives, pewter spoons, and three-pronged steel forks; a salad-bowl, vinegar cruets, an oil-flask, two mustard-pots (English and French), and such like things--all scrupulously clean. On the floor, which had been stained and waxed at considerable cost, lay two chetah-skins and a large Persian praying-rug. One-half of it, however (under the trapeze and at the farthest end from the window, beyond the model throne), was covered with coarse matting, that one might fence or box without slipping down and splitting one's self in two, or fall without breaking any bones.
Two other windows of the usual French size and pattern, with shutters to them and heavy curtains of baize, opened east and west, to let in dawn or sunset, as the case might be, or haply keep them out. And there were alcoves, recesses, irregularities, odd little nooks and corners, to be filled up as time wore on with endless personal knick-knacks, bibelots, private properties and acquisitions--things that make a place genial, homelike, and good to remember, and sweet to muse upon (with fond regret) in after-years.
And an immense divan spread itself in width and length and delightful thickness just beneath the big north window, the business window--a divan so immense that three well-fed, well-contented Englishmen could all lie lazily smoking their pipes on it at once without being in each other's way, and very often did!
At present one of these Englishmen--a Yorkshireman, by-the-way, called Taffy (and also the Man of Blood, because he was supposed to be distantly related to a baronet)--was more energetically engaged. Bare-armed, and in his shirt and trousers, he was twirling a pair of Indian clubs round his head. His face was flushed, and he was perspiring freely and looked fierce. He was a very big young man, fair, with kind but choleric blue eyes, and the muscles of his brawny arm were strong as iron bands.
For three years he had borne her Majesty's commission, and had been through the Crimean campaign without a scratch. He would have been one of the famous six hundred in the famous charge at Balaklava but for a sprained ankle (caught playing leapfrog in the trenches), which kept him in hospital on that momentous day. So that he lost his chance of glory or the grave, and this humiliating misadventure had sickened him of soldiering for life, and he never quite got over it. Then, feeling within himself an irresistible vocation for art, he had sold out; and here he was in Paris, hard at work, as we see.
He was good-looking, with straight features; but I regret to say that, besides his heavy plunger's mustache, he wore an immense pair of drooping auburn whiskers, of the kind that used to be called Piccadilly weepers, and were afterwards affected by Mr. Sothern in Lord Dundreary. It was a fashion to do so then for such of our gilded youth as could afford the time (and the hair); the bigger and fairer the whiskers, the more beautiful was thought the youth! It seems incredible in these days, when even her Majesty's household brigade go about with smooth cheeks and lips, like priests or play-actors.
"What's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms ...?"
Another inmate of this blissful abode--Sandy, the Laird of Cockpen, as he was called--sat in similarly simple attire at his easel, painting at a lifelike little picture of a Spanish toreador serenading a lady of high degree (in broad daylight). He had never been to Spain, but he had a complete toreador's kit--a bargain which he had picked up for a mere song in the Boulevard du Temple--and he had hired the guitar. His pipe was in his mouth--reversed; for it had gone out, and the ashes were spilled all over his trousers, where holes were often burned in this way.
Quite gratuitously, and with a pleasing Scotch accent, he began to declaim:
"A street there is in Paris famous For which no rhyme our language yields; Roo Nerve day Petty Shong its name is-- The New Street of the Little Fields...."
And then, in his keen appreciation of the immortal stanza, he chuckled audibly, with a face so blithe and merry and well pleased that it did one good to look at him.
He also had entered life by another door. His parents (good, pious people in Dundee) had intended that he should be a solicitor, as his father and grandfather had been before him. And here he was in Paris famous, painting toreadors, and spouting the "Ballad of the Bouillabaisse," as he would often do out of sheer lightness of heart--much oftener, indeed, than he would say his prayers.
Kneeling on the divan, with his elbow on the window-sill, was a third and much younger youth. The third he was "Little Billee." He had pulled down the green baize blind, and was looking over the roofs and chimney-pots of Paris and all about with all his eyes, munching the while a roll and a savory saveloy, in which there was evidence of much garlic. He ate with great relish, for he was very hungry; he had been all the morning at Carrel's studio, drawing from the life.
Little Billee was small and slender, about twenty or twenty-one, and had a straight white forehead veined with blue, large dark-blue eyes, delicate, regular features, and coal-black hair. He was also very graceful and well built, with very small hands and feet, and much better dressed than his friends, who went out of their way to outdo the denizens of the quartier latin in careless eccentricity of garb, and succeeded. And in his winning and handsome face there was just a faint suggestion of some possible very remote Jewish ancestor--just a tinge of that strong, sturdy, irrepressible, indomitable, indelible blood which is of such priceless value in diluted homœopathic doses, like the dry white Spanish wine called montijo, which is not meant to be taken pure; but without a judicious admixture of which no sherry can go round the world and keep its flavor intact; or like the famous bull-dog strain, which is not beautiful in itself; and yet just for lacking a little of the same no greyhound can ever hope to be a champion. So, at least, I have been told by wine-merchants and dog-fanciers--the most veracious persons that can be. Fortunately for the world, and especially for ourselves, most of us have in our veins at least a minim of that precious fluid, whether we know it or show it or not. _Tant pis pour les autres!_
As Little Billee munched he also gazed at the busy place below--the Place St. Anatole des Arts--at the old houses opposite, some of which were being pulled down, no doubt lest they should fall of their own sweet will. In the gaps between he would see discolored, old, cracked, dingy walls, with mysterious windows and rusty iron balconies of great antiquity--sights that set him dreaming dreams of mediæval French love and wickedness and crime, bygone mysteries of Paris!
One gap went right through the block, and gave him a glimpse of the river, the "Cité," and the ominous old Morgue; a little to the right rose the gray towers of Notre Dame de Paris into the checkered April sky. Indeed, the top of nearly all Paris lay before him, with a little stretch of the imagination on his part; and he gazed with a sense of novelty, an interest and a pleasure for which he could not have found any expression in mere language.
Paris! Paris!! Paris!!!
The very name had always been one to conjure with, whether he thought of it as a mere sound on the lips and in the ear, or as a magical written or printed word for the eye. And here was the thing itself at last, and he, he himself, ipsissimus, in the very midst of it, to live there and learn there as long as he liked, and make himself the great artist he longed to be.
Then, his meal finished, he lit a pipe, and flung himself on the divan and sighed deeply, out of the over-full contentment of his heart.
He felt he had never known happiness like this, never even dreamed its possibility. And yet his life had been a happy one. He was young and tender, was Little Billee; he had never been to any school, and was innocent of the world and its wicked ways; innocent of French especially, and the ways of Paris and its Latin quarter. He had been brought up and educated at home, had spent his boyhood in London with his mother and sister, who now lived in Devonshire on somewhat straitened means. His father, who was dead, had been a clerk in the Treasury.
He and his two friends, Taffy and the Laird, had taken this studio together. The Laird slept there, in a small bedroom off the studio. Taffy had a bedroom at the Hôtel de Seine, in the street of that name. Little Billee lodged at the Hôtel Corneille, in the Place de l'Odéon.
He looked at his two friends, and wondered if any one, living or dead, had ever had such a glorious pair of chums as these.
Whatever they did, whatever they said, was simply perfect in his eyes; they were his guides and philosophers as well as his chums. On the other hand, Taffy and the Laird were as fond of the boy as they could be.
His absolute belief in all they said and did touched them none the less that they were conscious of its being somewhat in excess of their deserts. His almost girlish purity of mind amused and charmed them, and they did all they could to preserve it, even in the quartier latin, where purity is apt to go bad if it be kept too long.
They loved him for his affectionate disposition, his lively and caressing ways; and they admired him far more than he ever knew, for they recognized in him a quickness, a keenness, a delicacy of perception, in matters of form and color, a mysterious facility and felicity of execution, a sense of all that was sweet and beautiful in nature, and a ready power of expressing it, that had not been vouchsafed to them in any such generous profusion, and which, as they ungrudgingly admitted to themselves and each other, amounted to true genius.
And when one within the immediate circle of our intimates is gifted in this abnormal fashion, we either hate or love him for it, in proportion to the greatness of his gift; according to the way we are built.
So Taffy and the Laird loved Little Billee--loved him very much indeed. Not but what Little Billee had his faults. For instance, he didn't interest himself very warmly in other people's pictures. He didn't seem to care for the Laird's guitar-playing toreador, nor for his serenaded lady--at all events, he never said anything about them, either in praise or blame. He looked at Taffy's realisms (for Taffy was a realist) in silence, and nothing tries true friendship so much as silence of this kind.
But, then, to make up for it, when they all three went to the Louvre, he didn't seem to trouble much about Titian either, or Rembrandt, or Velasquez, Rubens, Veronese, or Leonardo. He looked at the people who looked at the pictures, instead of at the pictures themselves; especially at the people who copied them, the sometimes charming young lady painters--and these seemed to him even more charming than they really were--and he looked a great deal out of the Louvre windows, where there was much to be seen: more Paris, for instance--Paris, of which he could never have enough.