superficial levels of Society in all ages. We realise the waste of
energy and diplomacy expended to score small points in the social game.
His art is a mirror to weed-like qualities of human nature which enjoy a
spring-time with every generation. But it also provides a remarkable
record of the effect of the sudden replacement of old by new ideals in
the world which it depicted.

The rise of the merchant capitalist upon the results of industrial
enterprises rendered possible through the invention and rapid perfecting
of machinery, created a class who suddenly appeared in the drawing-rooms
of the aristocrats as strangers. Du Maurier himself seems to join in the
amazement at their intrusion. Much of this first surprise is the theme
of his art. Before the death of the artist the newcomers had proved
their right to be there, having shamed an Aristocracy, which had lost
nearly all its natural occupations, by bringing home to it the fact that
the day was over for despising men who traded instead of fighting, who
achieved through barter what the brave would once have been too proud to
take except by conquest. The business of the original division of human
possessions by the sanguinary method was well over; it was now the
merchant's day. It was plain that trade could no longer be despised,
when, literally in an age of peace and inventive commerce, indolence was
the only alternative to engagement in it.

Du Maurier was very tolerant to social intruders when they were pretty.
He rather entered into Mrs. de Tomkyns' aims, and showed it by making
her pretty. Her ends might not be the highest, but the tact and the
subtlety displayed in her campaign were aristocratic in character, and
he would not have her laughed at personally, though we may laugh at the
topsy-turvy of a Society in which the entrance into a certain
drawing-room becomes the fun reward for the perseverance of a lifetime.