drawings are those of æsthetes. They are spiteful to the extent of the
great disgust which he, the most amiable of satirists, felt for them.
But still he was careful not to treat a craze which afforded him
inexhaustible variations of subject matter with so much bitterness as
to kill it right out. It was only towards this craze that he showed any
bitterness at all, for the rest he is always amused with Society. He has
none of the bitter Jeremiahlike anger against it of a Swift.

Mr. Henry James defending du Maurier from a charge of being malignant,
brought against him for his ugly representation of queer people,
failures, and grotesques, refused to allow that the taint of "French
ferocity" of which the artist was accused, existed. But Mr. Henry James
sees in du Maurier's ugly people a real specification of type, where we
confess that we have felt that his "ferocity" missed the point of
resemblance to type through clumsy exaggeration. One noticeable
instance, however, to our mind, where the too frequent outrageousness is
replaced by an exquisite study of character, is in the face of the fair
authoress who, when the gallant Colonel, anxious to break the ice, and
full of the fact that he has just been made a proud father, asks if she
takes any interest in very young children, replies, "I loathe _all_
children!" (January 13, 1880).

[Illustration: Illustration for "Wives and Daughters"

_The Cornhill_, 1864.]


§7

The story of children's conversation has perhaps never been told quite