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reater part of his life du Maurier's literary gift remained unknown to the general public, though more than one editor under whom he served on _Punch_ urged him to take a writer's salary and be on the literary as well as on the artistic staff. It was said that he relied with comfort upon this second talent to support him in the event of his sight failing him altogether. There was a space of thirty years between the above contribution to _Once a Week_ and the writing of his first novel, _Peter Ibbetson_. But it is in that novel that he again returns to the story of his career, through boyhood and youth, leading up to the period in which his father started him in the laboratory. Du Maurier had in 1856, when his father died, practically the choice of two arts, painting and singing, in both of which he seemed to have a chance of distinguishing himself. And as the essay of 1861 was so soon afterwards to prove, there was really another alternative, that of authorship, for the gifted analytical chemist. He decided then to forsake the chemistry to which he had been trained, but remained undecided about everything else. In 1856, at the age of twenty-two, he returned to Paris with his mother, to live in the Rue Paradis-Poissoniere, very poor, very dull, and very miserable, as he himself has said; but almost at the entrance of what he describes as the best time of his life--that period in which, deciding to follow art as a profession, he entered the studio of Gleyre. Those were the joyous Quartier Latin days. He has described Gleyre's studio in _Trilby_. The happy life there lasted a year: Whistler and Poynter, as is well known, were his fellow-students. [Illustration: Honour Where Honour is Due _Sir Gorgius Midas (who has not been made a Peer_). "Why, it's enough to make a man turn _Radical_, 'anged if it ain't, to think of sich services as mine bein' rewarded with no 'igher title than what's bestowed on a heminent Sawbones, or a Hingerneer, or a Littery Man, or even a successful Hartist!" _Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns (sympathetically_). "It does seem hard! But you've only to bide your time, Sir Gorgius. No man of _your_ stamp need ever despair of a Peerage!" (And Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns is, as usual, quite right.) _Punch_, May 15, 1880.] The studio of Gleyre was inherited from Delaroche, and afterwards handed down to Gerome. Whistler, Poynter, du Maurier, Lamont, and Thomas Armstrong were the group of _Trilby_, Lam
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