Serials to Graphic Novels

by Catherine J Golden

  Of course, the most delightful illustrations in the world are those one loved when one was young…. And, indeed, what does not the great Dickens himself owe to Cruikshank and Hablôt Browne, those two delightful etchers who understood and interpreted him so well!

  Our recollections of Bill Sikes and Nancy, and Fagin, and Noah Claypole, and the Artful Dodger, of Pickwick and the Wellers, père et fils, Pecksniff, Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Prig, Micawber, Mr. Dombey, Mr. Toots, and the rest, have become fixed, crystallised, and solidified into imperishable concrete by these little etchings in that endless gallery, printed on those ever-welcome pages of thick yellow paper, which one used to study with such passionate interest before reading the story, and after, and between. (1: 350)

  Critics often cite this passage for its description of the Victorian reading experience: the Victorians “studied” illustrations before and after reading each part issue and between serial installments to refresh their memories. This excerpt is also psychologically revealing of Du Maurier’s taste for illustration formed as a child: the original caricature-style illustrations for Oliver Twist and other Dickens’s serials were etched in Du Maurier’s mind. Du Maurier identifies himself with illustrators of “the new school, [who] are too much the slaves of the model” (“The Illustrating,” 1: 351). But might he, albeit subconsciously, have modeled his Jewish villain Svengali after an image of Cruikshank’s Fagin from Oliver Twist that was “fixed, crystallised, and solidified” in his mind since boyhood? In Trilby we see the imprint of the caricature tradition through Du Maurier’s use of theatricality and a persistent racialized stereotype of the Jew.

  In 1880, a decade before the publication of his best-known Trilby, George Du Maurier began his association with an American publisher, Harper’s. He worked closely with Harper’s London agents: first R. R. Bowker with whom he had a falling out after illustrating Hardy’s A Laodicean (1881); then with James Ripley Osgood in 1886, publishing society scenes that recall his work for Punch. “Peter Ibbetson” (June–November 1891), “Trilby” (January–August 1894), and “The Martian” (October 1896–July 1897) appeared serially in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine before they came out as bound editions; Harper & Brothers Publishers reprinted all his illustrations. Akin to illustrated books published in the heyday of the Victorian illustrated book in England, Du Maurier’s novels in serial and volume form are chock-full of vignettes and full-page engravings—86 illustrations for Peter Ibbetson, 120 for Trilby, and 48 for The Martian. That one so well established in the British publishing scene elected to bring out his illustrated fiction with an American publishing house speaks to Du Maurier’s keen awareness that the future of the illustrated book that he so eloquently supported lay across the Atlantic. The popularity of his illustrated fiction, in turn, demonstrates a transnational development in the evolution of the Victorian illustrated book.

  For his three author-illustrated novels, Du Maurier created a fictional formula that combines veiled recollections of his Parisian boyhood, a wistfulness for the past, and psychic phenomena in vogue in the latter half of the nineteenth century—telepathic dreaming, mesmerism, automatic writing, and reincarnation.48 Trilby quickly became a bestseller and is credited for impacting the publishing of “sellers” (as publishers called bestsellers then).49 It tells about a menacing Jewish musical genius named Svengali, who hypnotized late nineteenth-century readers along with Trilby O’Ferrall; a French-Irish laundress and an artist’s model, Trilby, under Svengali’s control, becomes an opera virtuoso. Trilby boosted sales of Harper’s and sold close to 300,000 copies during the first year of its publication (Kelly, George Du Maurier 87). Du Maurier admits his amazement that Trilby resonated with readers in America and England: “‘So “Peter Ibbetson” was sent over to America, and accepted at once. Then “Trilby” followed, and the “boom” came—a “boom” which surprised me immensely, for I never took myself au sérieux as a novelist’” (qtd. in Sherard 24). “‘Indeed this “boom” rather distresses me,’” Du Maurier confides further to Sherard, “‘when I reflect that Thackeray never had a “boom.” And I hold that a “boom” means nothing as a sign of literary excellence, nothing but money’” (24). But a “boom” in this case did signal literary excellence to many of Du Maurier’s contemporaries like Henry James, who notes in an 1897 article published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine: “it was not till the first instalment of Trilby appeared that we really sat up” (603).

  With the publication of Trilby, manufacturers and consumers “sat up,” too. Du Maurier’s novels created a consumer phenomenon called Trilby-mania. Galleries displayed prints from the book. Real and fictitious claims about the novel filled British and American newspapers. And Trilby, like Sherlock Holmes, attained the stature of a real person. Svengali Square, Little Billee Lake, and a town called Trilby popped up in Florida. Merchandizers capitalized on the scene where rising artist Little Billee draws Trilby’s exquisite left foot on his Latin Quarter studio wall. A Chicago manufacturer marketed a high-heeled shoe named “the Trilby,” and a New York caterer sold ice cream bars shaped to look like Trilby’s left foot. There were many late nineteenth-century commercial ventures—Trilby sweets, games, puzzles, and even chowder and toothpaste. Parodies arose as early as 1895.50 Quickly adapted for the Boston and London stage, Trilby as a play also stimulated consumerism: demand grew for a Trilby hat, a type of narrow-brimmed fedora worn in the first stage production that men still wear today. The mania for all things Trilby died down after Du Maurier’s death in 1896, although several feature films came out in the twentieth century—most famously in 1931 with John Barrymore as the consummately devilish Svengali, and in 1954 with Donald Wolfit as the evil hypnotist. These productions were named Svengali since “Svengali’s persona as the evil Jewish hypnotist was sufficiently recognizable to be deemed a better box-office draw than the eponymous heroine of the novel” (Kerker).51 The name Svengali is still synonymous with a manipulator, even to those who have never read the novel.

  Some of Du Maurier’s book illustrations for Trilby and his other two novels are pretty travel scenes and portraits in the Sixties style that critic John Harvey deems superfluous while other illustrations potentially undermine a psychological phenomenon like “dreaming true” (see fig. 41). But in his well-executed drawings, Du Maurier uses to effect theatrical elements (pose, props, gestures, lighting, et cetera) derived from his beloved caricaturists—Cruikshank, Phiz, Doyle, and his Punch colleague, Leech. In Peter Ibbetson, the eponymous hero assumes a melodramatic pose in “Weltschmertz”: Ibbetson, now living in England following his mother’s death, is sorely missing his former French life; he leans forward in his chair “with his head bowed over the black and yellow key-board of a venerable square piano-forte (on which he could not play), dropping the bitter tear of loneliness and Weltschmertz combined” (PI 120). The plate is a continuation of the Sixties style in that Ibbetson’s sole figure commands the page, but the pose and the stage lighting reengage the caricature tradition. Ibbetson’s entire figure is illuminated with a spotlight effect. His hands fully cover his face to hide his tears, but his sadness and weariness expressively carry into his body language, particularly his “bowed” head and hunched shoulders.

  Equally dramatic is the plate entitled “‘Bastard! Parricide!,’” illustrating a confrontation between Peter and his Uncle Ibbetson just as the eponymous protagonist finds out that his mother was once his uncle’s mistress and that his uncle is likely his father. In contents and composition, this plate evokes Cruikshank’s “Oliver Plucks Up a Spirit” for Oliver Twist. In these two plates, Cruikshank and Du Maurier, respectively, draw a son defending his dead mother’s honor. Cruikshank captures large-fisted young Oliver about to deliver another blow to his tormentor, Noah Claypole. Likewise, Du Maurier foreshadows Peter killing his Uncle Ibbetson with the long stick that he holds high above his head. In both plates, the aggressors are really the victims of their tormentors and act in self-defense.

  Theatrical elements also appear
in Du Maurier’s lesser-known third novel, The Martian.52 The protagonist, Barty Josselin, becomes a world-renowned writer when an extraterrestrial named Martia inhabits his body during sleep, inspires him to write great books, and brings him renown. Barty is the recipient of automatic writing, a phenomenon in which a second personality is believed to transmit messages to the writer when he or she is in a hypnotic trance or asleep. Du Maurier never attempts to draw Martia until she reincarnates herself as Josselin’s daughter Marty. However, the author-illustrator hints at Martia’s presence in one well-executed, full-page illustration that sets a theatrical stage and leads the viewer’s eye beyond the picture plane. “Martia, I Have Done My Best” (see fig. 44) captures handsome Barty Josselin, who has an aquiline nose, piercing light eyes, and a tall, graceful build. Looking out his open window at nightfall, Josselin is reaching his outstretched arms imploringly into the night sky. Of course, we do not see the extraterrestrial—she is offstage. But Josselin’s compelling body language—an intent gaze, outstretched arms, and bent knee—intimates that Josselin is speaking to Martia, who comes to him in his sleep and prompts his astronomical writing. Martia thus hovers provocatively in the night sky beyond the picture plane but within the viewer’s imagination.

  The final plate of The Martian entitled “Marty” also employs theatrical staging. Martia, now reincarnated as Barty Josselin and Leah Gibson’s daughter Marty, lies dying on an outdoor chaise. Du Maurier draws Marty and Leah as beautiful, majestic women, his specialty as an artist. Both dark-haired Leah and light-haired Marty are beautifully dressed and coiffed. Marty stretches out on a divan in a posture that accentuates her long limbs and slender form, while tall Leah bends over her dying daughter and tenderly holds her hand. Josselin, handsomely dressed in a tux and top hat, sits on the edge of the chaise and leans toward Marty at an angle that also magnifies his height. In this illustration, Barty’s and Leah’s eyes steadily fix upon Marty, forming a triangular configuration, while Barty’s friend, Robert Maurice, positioned at the far right of the illustration, gazes in the opposite direction beyond the picture plane. Marty holds her hands close to her chest as if in prayer. Her eyes have a distant look, suggesting she is not long for this world. This illustration captures a moment before the deaths of Marty, Barty, and Leah that dramatically occur simultaneously. Marty wakes “from a gentle doze” (M 457), raises her head, and calls to her parents, “‘Barty—Leah—come to me, come!’” (M 457). All three characters in this intense triangle of affection are simply “‘no more’” (457), and so the novel ends.

  Figure 44. “Martia, I Have Done My Best.” Illustration by George Du Maurier for his “The Martian” in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, April 1897. From Special Collections, Scribner Library, Skidmore College.

  Trilby is even more theatrical than The Martian. Like many serials illustrated by Cruikshank and Phiz, Trilby was easily adapted to the nineteenth-century stage in part owing to its most dramatic character, Svengali. C. C. Hoyar Miller refers to Beerbohm Tree’s stage adaptation as the “complete embodiment of the pictures and descriptions in the book … it was fantastic, weird and comical in turns, and rose to great heights of tragic intensity” (154). Du Maurier draws Svengali playing the piano with intense passion in “A Voice He Didn’t Understand” (T 63) and wielding a conductor’s baton in “Au Clair de la Lune” (318), thus commanding Trilby to sing. Whether Svengali is reaching for piano keys in “A Voice He Didn’t Understand,” inspecting Trilby’s throat in “‘Himmel! The Roof of Your Mouth’” (73), playing a musical instrument in “The Flexible Flageolet” (31), or simply folding his arms in “All as it Used to Be” (133), Svengali possesses an intensity that recalls the villains of melodrama.

  Svengali’s hypnotic powers emerge to theatrical effect in a full-page engraving entitled “‘Et Maintenant Dors, Ma Mignonne!’” (T 395) (see fig. 45A). Svengali in this plate is in the process of mesmerizing tone-deaf, tuneless Trilby O’Ferrall; the virtuoso performs in all the great European cities, but wakes with no recollection of her success as a singer. This illustration includes three figures—Marta, Svengali’s aunt, who looks after Trilby and here places the diva’s crown on her head; Trilby herself, dressed up as the opera diva called La Svengali; and Svengali, kneeling before Trilby, inducing a trance. Trilby is a majestic female in the fashion of Peter Ibbetson’s Mary, Duchess of Towers (see fig. 41) and The Martian’s Leah Gibson. In “‘Et Maintenant Dors, Ma Mignonne!,’” Du Maurier captures Trilby’s regal beauty and sensuality that entrances the three English painters. Her long neck and straight posture intimate her height even though she is seated. Trilby’s attractive facial features are arresting even in her mesmeric state. Her shapely form appears visible through her low-cut, fitted gown with frills that accentuate her ample bosom and folds that reveal her rounded posterior and shapely thighs. But the caricatured figure of Svengali, bookended by the figure of his caricatured elderly aunt with the same prominent Semitic nose, dominates the illustrative stage. Svengali’s demonic eyes and dark hair mark him a demon while his pointed left ear accentuates his resemblance to a devil.

  Du Maurier’s convincing depiction of hypnosis is crucial to the plot. Light emanating from Svengali’s moving hands gives concrete form to a pseudoscience that fascinated Victorian audiences as much as it did Du Maurier, who first encountered it in Malines in 1859. Hypnotism is also called mesmerism after German physician Franz Mesmer. In the late eighteenth century, Mesmer theorized about animal magnetism from which hypnotism is derived. Mesmerism attracted attention in England in the early 1800s and engendered a craze called “mesmeric mania” in the 1840s. Though not a new phenomenon when Du Maurier published Trilby, hypnotism still fascinated the Victorian public. Some Victorians championed mesmerism as a magical cure-all while others feared that the person under hypnosis would lose all self-control. The Laird expresses the latter view when he warns Trilby that Svengali used hypnotism to cure the neuralgia in her eyes: “‘He mesmerized you; … They get you into their power, and just make you do any blessed thing they please—lie, murder, steal—anything! and kill yourself into the bargain when they’ve done with you!’” (T 75). Trilby’s motionless face and figure in this plate give concrete form to the mesmerist’s ability to “just make you do any blessed thing they please.’”

  Du Maurier also compellingly recalls qualities of Dickens’s and Cruikshank’s Fagin and incorporates them into his illustrations of Svengali. In Part First, Du Maurier describes Svengali as a character “of Jewish aspect, well-featured but sinister” (T 11) with “bold, brilliant black eyes, with long heavy lids” and “a beard of burnt-up black which grew almost from his under eyelids” (12). Over the course of the novel, Du Maurier calls Svengali a “demon,” “an incubus,” a “black spider-cat,” and a “magician” (136, 137, 108, 452); likewise, he draws Svengali in a manner that accentuates his dark and diabolical nature. Pictured for the first time in “The ‘Rosemonde’ of Schubert” (21), Svengali leers at Trilby, who gazes beyond him to les trois Angliches (Taffy, Sandy, and Little Billee), not pictured. Playing a stirring rendition of this Schubert piece, Svengali “flashed a pair of languishing black eyes at [Trilby] with intent to kill” (20). In this plate, Du Maurier dramatically lights up Svengali’s killer eyes and hooked nose that appears even longer and larger in profile.

  In making Svengali a Jew and a devil, Du Maurier is reengaging a racialized depiction of the Jew prominent in Oliver Twist. Cruikshank’s depiction recalls the medieval conception of the wandering Jew, excluded from Christian nation-states, that also appears in cartoons by Isaac Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson. Edgar Rosenberg in From Shylock to Svengali and, more recently, Milton Kerker in “Svengali, Another Byword in the Lexicon of Jewish Villainy” and Joseph Bristow in “‘Dirty Pleasure’: Trilby’s Filth” examine the villainous Jew—a type that extends from Shakespeare’s Jewish moneylender in The Merchant of Venice to Dickens’s “receiver of stolen goods” (OT, Oxf. 1982 xxv) to Du Maurier’s evil hypnotist.53 R
osenberg aligns the look of Cruikshank’s Fagin and Du Maurier’s Svengali, noting, “Detail for detail the two Jews run equally true to type” (234).54 Du Maurier’s biographer Richard Kelly likewise draws a connection between the demonic qualities of Fagin and Svengali as well as their physical appearance: “In Oliver Twist, for example, Fagin is suggested to have Satanic powers, and Cruikshank’s illustration of [Fagin] bears a close resemblance to Du Maurier’s drawing of Svengali” (117). Since Cruikshank’s drawing came before Du Maurier’s, and Du Maurier was a fan of both Dickens and Cruikshank, it seems more accurate to say that Du Maurier’s Svengali bears a close resemblance to Cruikshank’s Fagin. Moreover, as critics have often noted, Dickens and Cruikshank’s Fagin prescribes to conventions of the archetypal “stage Jew,” noted not only for strangeness and ugliness, but also deceitfulness, demonism, smarminess, and greed, qualities that reappear in Svengali’s characterization.55

  Figure 45. A: “‘Et Maintenant Dors, Ma Mignonne!’” Illustration by George Du Maurier for his “Trilby” in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, July 1894. From Special Collections, Scribner Library, Skidmore College;

  Figure 45. B: “The Jew and Morris Bolter Begin to Understand Each Other.” Illustration by George Cruikshank for Charles Dickens’s “Oliver Twist” in Bentley’s Miscellany, November 1838. From the Norman M. Fox Collection, Scribner Library, Skidmore College.