Read Ebook: Harper's Young People February 21 1882 An Illustrated Weekly by Various

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 164 lines and 21485 words, and 4 pages

"It is a pretty far cry from Paris to Omaha, but Trilby's voice seems to have carried that distance without the least trouble. It is worth remarking that these Omaha gentlemen made seven 'papers' about her without finding it necessary to discuss her morals."

OF THE MANY "Trilby" entertainments in New York one of the most successful was given in May, at the house of Postmaster Dayton, for the benefit of St. Luke's Home for Indigent Christian Females. A literary criticism of the book was read, and one of the chapters of the story; and the songs that are oftenest alluded to were sung. The affair was given under the auspices of the Daughters of the Revolution.

"TRILBY" REPRESENTATIONS have broken out in all sorts of strange places. At the Eden Mus?e, New York, Miss Ganthony has been restrained from impersonating du Maurier's heroine; and at "The Greatest Show on Earth," Miss Marie Meers, who has not been restrained, appears nightly in Trilby costume, riding bareback around the tan-bark to the snapping of ringmaster Svengali's whip.

Miscellanea

"With those who think these passages immoral, we cannot agree. Mr. du Maurier has treated with candor some facts belonging to the realm of things which are usually understood instead of being talked about; but he has done this with singular manliness and delicacy, and with entire absence of mawkish or other improper sentiment. The impression of Trilby's character left upon the reader is entirely that of a noble, generous woman, whose life is not a sin, but a tragedy."

The same paper reproduces "a letter Mr. du Maurier wrote to a Paterson, N. J., man who contended that the relations of Trilby with her hypnotizer were chaste, so far as her consciousness of them went, and decided to find out if he were right by writing to the novelist":--

"NEW GROVE HOUSE, HAMPSTEAD HEATH,

"October 31, 1894.

"DEAR SIR: In answer to your letter of September 24th, I beg to say that you are right about Trilby. When free from mesmeric influence, she lived with him as his daughter, and was quite innocent of any other relation. In haste, yours very truly,

"G. DU MAURIER."

EARLY IN March, 1895, one of the Boston clergymen advertised Robert Grant's "Art of Living," as our Boston correspondent reported at the time, and on Sunday, March 17, another prominent minister took up "Trilby." So it is evident that, even if Boston authorship is on the decline, as so many New Yorkers enviously declare, the Boston clergy are going to keep alive the interest in literary matters by emphatic words to their congregations. "Have you read 'Trilby'?" was the theme of the Rev. George W. Bicknell's sermon, and the topic crowded the church. The Reverend Doctor declared that he had spent five hours reading the book, and had decided that it was a story of magnificent possibilities, but that its morality was "as one viewed it." He considered the tale far-fetched and over-drawn and lacking in healthful flavor, and placed it in the same class of art with the nude paintings at the World's Fair--a position to which, we presume, the author would not object. Then he launched out into an emphatic declaration that it was time for the pulpit to speak out against art of this kind.

DU MAURIER'S heroine has been heard of over in Brooklyn. A married woman, aged twenty-nine, got into a dispute with her husband, recently, as to the morals of the young model, and proved her point by "smashing him over the head with an earthenware jar." In the newspaper in which we read of this intemperate act, the husband's age is not given, nor the side he took in the argument, before he was shown to be wrong. The fact that he got his head broken proves little--except the folly of arguing with a woman; nor the additional fact that he refused to appear against his wife in court. But the case is one in which a good deal might be said on both sides--if earthenware jars were not introduced too early in the discussion.

MR. DU MAURIER has worse offenses to atone for than the breaking of the Brooklyn man's silly head. But for his entertaining book we should have been spared the unreadable prose of "Biltry: a Parody on 'Trilby'" and the unspeakable verse of "Drilby Re-versed," the former by Mary Kyle Dallas, the latter by Leopold Jordan. In vulgarity and banality, these two precious productions run each other a close race. Of the two we think "Drilby" a trifle the less objectionable, merely because the proportion of text to white paper is somewhat smaller. Both are poorly illustrated, and printed on much better paper than they deserve.

E. C. OF NEW ALBANY, IND., thinks that "Trilby's" possibilities as a vehicle of evil to the much-considered American "young person" are emphasized by a conversation recently overheard by her between two feminine "young persons" in Indiana. "What is this 'Trilby' everybody is talking about?" asked one of these. "Oh," replied the other, "it's a book--a novel." "They say it is awfully bad," said the first young person. "Yes, I've heard so; but it isn't so at all. I read it clear through, and there wasn't anything bad in it. I didn't like it either; there is too much French in it." "French?" commented the first young woman; "well that's it, then--all the bad part is in French." "I hadn't thought of that," mused the other one; "I suppose that's just the way of it. Anyway, it isn't nearly as good as 'Dally.'"

A Broadway caterer now "molds his ice-cream in the shape of a model of Trilby's ever-famous foot." Mr. du Maurier can want no greater evidence of the popularity of his story in America. That there is not a "Trilby" shoe on the market reflects little credit upon the enterprise of our bootmakers. It is an opportunity that no soap-maker would neglect if it came his way. Possibly the fact that Trilby's foot was large has something to do with the shoemakers' backwardness. Hers were not Cinderella slippers.

G. A. D. writes from Philadelphia to deplore the Quaker City's vulgarization of the name and fame of Trilby; and in justification of his plaint encloses a Chestnut Street dealer's advertisement of the "Trilby Sausage"! This, it is claimed, "is something new, and fills a long-felt want"; "they melt in your mouth." They don't melt in G. A. D.'s mouth, but they rankle in his aesthetic soul. "What next?" he exclaims; "an Ophelia tooth-wash, a Duchess of Towers garbage-pail!" Our correspondent has not yet heard of the "Trilby Ham." This, if anything, is worse than the Sausage. It has been heard of in this city; whether or no it originated here, I do not care to inquire. But in an Eighth Avenue dime-museum, there are "Twenty Trilbys," and visitors vote for the handsomest! Moreover, we have now the "Trilby Hearth-brush"; and huge posters on the East Side announce a picnic of the "Trilby Coterie and Chowder Club."

"The strength of 'Trilby' as a novel lies in the exquisitely dear realization of the good in the girl's nature, which the fine art of the author has been able to give to the reader. The divine in the Laird, in Taffy and in Little Billee responded to the divine in that undeveloped girl, and to them the angel in her was the real Trilby in spite of all her past experience. But idealism and realism in this charming story are not quite happily balanced: the reader receives a blow on the spiritual side of his being from the manifestation of an agency in the universe that is endowed with an all-conquering malevolence, something extraneous from the individual and yet able to arrest in her the growth of the budding germ of holiness and moral beauty, a power triumphant even at the moment when her spirit was about to return to the God who gave it. Without Svengali there would be no novel of Trilby; nevertheless, he is the sole blot upon it."

TO THE EDITORS OF THE CRITIC:--

If there yet remains a word to be said in criticism of this book, it may, perhaps, be in regard to the musical part of it. Whether intentionally or not, du Maurier has certainly added an instance, which tends to prove the theory true, that music in itself is neither elevating nor refining. Svengali is drawn with inimitable skill, and with so much realism that the reader feels that he must have been known and hated by du Maurier in all his repulsiveness. And yet this loathsome creature has the power of so seizing and expressing the noblest works of the great masters of harmony as to move his hearers to tears, to sway them at his will by the tenderness and feeling he puts into the notes. It is a hard thing for a music-lover to comprehend, that a man of low and vicious life, and utterly without aspirations, can so express the penetrating beauty that lies in music more than in any other art. It shows, too, that music gives us only what it finds in us, and proves the folly of "program music," or music with a translation.

AUBURN, N. Y.

"A great deal has been said and written about 'Ben Bolt,'" said a woman who doesn't pretend to be musical, "and the other songs of the Trilby repertoire; but I have not yet seen or heard any comment on Trilby's 'great and final performance'--the vocalization of Chopin's Impromptu, A flat. Du Maurier devotes two entire pages to most wonderful description of this wonderful musical achievement; two exquisite pages of music painted in words, in most masterly and matchless fashion. Who can forget the depiction of La Svengali's voice, 'as a light nymph catching the whirl of a double-skipping rope as she warbles that long, smooth, lilting, dancing laugh, that wondrous song without words.' This impromptu should be rechristened the 'Trilby Impromptu,' and musicians everywhere should now--while the Trilby wave is riding high--be charming their audiences by playing it."

The Oliver Ditson Co. has published a pamphlet of "Trilby" songs, etc., containing the words and music of "Ben Bolt," "Malbrouck," "Bonjour, Suzon," "Der Nussbaum" "Cantique de No?l" and "Au Clair de la Lune," and the music of Chopin's "Impromptu."

"Dear Sir: The above questions are covered by our copyright, but in view of the popular interest in 'Trilby,' you may wish to reproduce them. We should be more than pleased to have you do so, if you will give us credit.

Yours very truly,

JAMES S. METCALFE,

The Songs in "Trilby"

"It is very pleasing to an old man like myself to have the literary work of a half-century since dragged to light and commended, as has been the case with 'Ben Bolt' of late. I was flattered by seeing my likeness--or, rather, the likeness of a younger man than myself--in your pages; but I must protest against some errors which, in spite of careful editing, enter into your transcription of the song. The words of the original were:--

'Don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt, With the master so cruel and grim, And the shaded nook in the running brook, Where the children went to swim?'

"This has been changed in the song, as usually sung, to read:--

'With the master so kind and so true. And the little nook by the clear-running brook, Where we gathered the flowers as they grew?'

"You have copied this, but in a better shape, with the exception of changing the rhythm. I must protest against this change, because the school-masters of between sixty and seventy years since were, to my memory, 'cruel and grim'; they were neither kind nor true. They seemed to think the only way to get learning into a boy's head was by the use of the rod. There may have been exceptions, but I never met them. At all events, 'what I have written I have written.'"

BEN BOLT

Oh, don't you remember, Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt? Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown, Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile, And trembled with fear at your frown! In the old churchyard, in the valley, Ben Bolt, In a corner obscure and alone, They have fitted a slab of the granite so gray. And Alice lies under the stone!

Under the hickory tree, Ben Bolt, Which stood at the foot of the hill, Together we've lain in the noon-day shade, And listened to Appleton's mill. The mill-wheel has fallen to pieces, Ben Bolt, The rafters have tumbled in, And a quiet that crawls round the walls as you gaze, Has followed the olden din.

Do you mind the cabin of logs, Ben Bolt, At the edge of the pathless wood, And the button-ball tree with its motley limbs, Which nigh by the door-step stood? The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt, The tree you would seek in vain; And where once the lords of the forest waved, Grows grass and the golden grain.

There is change in the things I loved, Ben Bolt, They have changed from the old to the new; But I feel in the depths of my spirit the truth, There never was change in you. Twelve-months twenty have past, Ben Bolt, Since first we were friends--yet I hail Thy presence a blessing, thy friendship a truth, Ben Bolt, of the salt-sea gale!

TO THE EDITORS OF THE CRITIC:--

In your columns of "Trilbyana" I have seen no mention of the fact that George W. Cable, in his "Dr. Sevier"--a thousand times better novel and better work, in every way, than "Trilby,"--has introduced the old song "Ben Bolt" with wonderful effect. It is strange that the old melody should have appealed to the two men, so widely apart, and it is but fair that the American's first, and most skilful, use of it should have due recognition.

PHILADELPHIA.

JOHN PATTERSON.

TO THE EDITORS OF THE CRITIC:--

Du Maurier says that there is but one verse of the little French song, which Trilby sings with so much effect--"Au clair de la lune." He mistakes; there is another, running thus:--

The two missing lines have escaped the memory of the writer.

AUBURN, N. Y.

Your correspondent, S. M. Cox, offers some more verses of "Mon Ami Pierrot." They do not quite agree with those taught me, shortly after the Revolution of 1848, by an old French gentleman. You will notice that the French of the last verse is quite "eighteenth-century" in style and diction.

Je n'ouvre pas ma porte Mais j'ouvre bien ma porte ? des savetiers, ? des officiers, Ils ont des al?nes, Ils ont des pistoles, C'est pour me piquer. C'est pour me les ba?ller.

PARIS, 1 Jan., 1895. B. F.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet