I do not think that there is anything in the situation to lead you to postpone the proposed play of Tess. If it is a good play it will stand on its merits.

Wishing you every success and a Happy New Year, I remain, Yours sincerely,

H. M. Alden.

I received the following kind suggestion from Hardy, of which I duly availed myself:

i, Arundel Terrace, Trinity Road, Upper Tootings, S. W.,

Monday Evening. Dear Mr. Harper,—I have just received a note from Mr. Du Maurier, in which he suggests that, instead of our meeting and dining at my club, you and I come and lunch with him—one of his reasons being that he wants me to see the grouping of his drawing for the story before he finishes it off. He is going away after this week, and asks us to come to-morrow, or Wednesday, or Thursday. To-morrow would suit him best.

I will therefore call for you to-morrow at 12—with the view of our going together—unless you send me a telegram on receipt of this, saying that you would prefer Wednesday or Thursday. Yours sincerely,

Thomas Hardy.

I ought to have said before that Mr. Du Maurier will be glad to make your acquaintance.

When we entered George du Maurier's cheerful home I found the walls of the entrance-hall covered with his original drawings of illustrations which had appeared in Punch; and he afterward told me that he thought they would be as good a legacy as he could leave his family, for they would probably be more valuable after he was gone. Right across the hall lay his famous dog Chang, who was pictured in so many of his Punch comics, and we were obliged to climb over him to effect an entrance. Du Maurier* s family received us with the most cordial hospitality, and after the introductions we were ushered into the dining-room. The editor of Punch—I think it was Tom Taylor — had recently died, and that afternoon a successor was to be chosen, which accounted for Du Maurier's nervousness, which was quite apparent as we sat down to luncheon. The names of several available candidates came up and were discussed, and finally Hardy asked what chance F. C. Burnand had. "None at all," replied Du Maurier, "for he is a Roman Catholic, and every one is aware of the emphatic stand Punch has always taken against Romanism." But notwithstanding that, Burnand was elected editor, as we heard the next day. I have always thought that Du Maurier would have made a most competent editor, and I am sure that he must have considered himself a possible candidate. Henry James said of Du Maurier:

He has interpreted for us for so many years the social life of England that the interpretation has become the text itself. We have accepted his types, his categories, his conclusions, his sympathies, and his ironies. It is not given to all the world to thread the mazes of London society, and for the great body of the disinherited, the vast majority of the Anglo-Saxon public, Mr. Du Maurier's representation is the thing represented. Is the effect of it to nip in the bud any remote yearning for personal participation? I feel tempted to say yes, when I think of the follies, the flatnesses, the affectations and stupidities which his teeming pencil has made so vivid. But that vision immediately merges itself in another—a panorama of tall, pleasant, beautiful people placed in becoming attitudes in charming gardens, in luxurious rooms, so that I can scarcely tell which is the more definite, the impression satiric or the impression plastic.

At one time Du Maurier described most minutely his plot of Trilby to James, and offered him the story if he thought it worth telling. Du Maurier told me that James was favorably impressed with the tale as he nar

rated it, and assured him that if he would write it out in the natural way in which he had recounted it, he would surely make a success of it.

Du Maurier began to furnish us with full-page comics for the "Drawer" of our Magazine in May, 1888.

His amusing pictures of people in London society were not caricatures, but, as Du Maurier assured me, faithful representations of the ridiculous side of life as he saw it. Bishops and flunkies, he admitted, were his favorite types for illustration, and many of the absurd situations which he has depicted were actual occurrences. The gowns and bonnets which he drew were true to the fashions of the times, and were largely copied from those worn by his wife and daughters. Du Maurier lived on the top of a hill, at the edge of Hampstead Heath, in a house full of works of art. A little grandson and his dogs, who often appeared in his pictures, were among his companions. Amid these home-like surroundings this man, who pictured fun for the English-reading public for over thirty years, led an ideal home life.

Du Maurier was born in Paris, but was fetched away from there while still young, and in due time was put to work in the laboratory of University College, in London, to learn to be a chemist. But he gave promise of being so bad a chemist, and showed such an incorrigible propensity to draw pictures, that he was sent back to Paris again to study art, which he did in the same academy with Poynter and Whistler. Later he went to Antwerp, where he had Alma Tadema for a fellow-student. When Leech died, Du Maurier was appointed to his seat at the round table in the office of Punch, He obeyed the summons and carved his monogram on the board between those of the