George Du Maurier (1834 - 1896). George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a Franco-British cartoonist and writer, known for his work in Punch and for his Gothic novel Trilby, which featured the character Svengali. He was the father of actor Sir Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier. He was also the father of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and grandfather of the five boys who inspired J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan. George du Maurier was born in Paris, the son of Louis-Mathurin Busson du Maurier and Ellen Clarke, daughter of Regency courtesan Mary Anne Clarke. He was brought up to believe that his aristocratic grandparents fled France during the Revolution, leaving vast estates behind in France, to live in England as émigrés. However, du Maurier's grandfather, Robert-Mathurin Busson, was actually a tradesman who left Paris in 1789 to avoid fraud charges, and later changed the family name to du Maurier. Du Maurier studied art in Paris, and moved to Antwerp, Belgium, where he lost vision in his left eye. He consulted an oculist in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he met his future wife, Emma Wightwick. Reportedly he studied chemistry at University College, London in 1851. He is recorded in the 1861 England Census as living as a lodger at 85 Newman St in Marylebone. On 3 January 1863, he married Emma at St Marylebone, Westminster. Moving frequently over the course of their marriage, the couple first settled in Hampstead around 1877, initially at 27 Church Row and later at New Grove House in 1881. In 1891, the family is recorded as residing at 2 Porchester Rd in Paddington. They had five children: Beatrix, Guy, Sylvia, Marie Louise and Gerald. He became a member of the staff of the British satirical magazine Punch in 1865, drawing two cartoons a week. His most common targets were the affected manners of Victorian society, the bourgeoisie and members of Britain's growing middle class in particular. His most enduring cartoon, True Humility, popularized the expressions good in parts and a curate's egg. In it, a bishop addresses a humble curate whom he has invited to breakfast: I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr Jones. The curate replies, Oh no, my Lord, I assure you-parts of it are excellent! The gag was not original to du Maurier, however, appearing in a similar cartoon a few months earlier in Judy, a less widely read competitor to Punch. In an earlier cartoon, du Maurier coined the expression bedside manner, by which he satirized actual medical skill. Another of du Maurier's notable cartoons depicted a fanciful videophone conversation in 1879, using a device he called Edison's telephonoscope. In addition to producing black-and-white drawings for Punch, du Maurier created illustrations for several other popular periodicals: Harper's, The Graphic, The Illustrated Times, The Cornhill Magazine, and the religious periodical Good Words. Furthermore, he did illustrations for the serialization of Charles Warren Adams's The Notting Hill Mystery, which is thought to be the first detective story of novel length to have appeared in English. Among several other novels he illustrated was Misunderstood by Florence Montgomery in 1873. Owing to his deteriorating eyesight, du Maurier reduced his involvement with Punch in 1891 and settled in Hampstead, where he wrote three novels. His first, Peter Ibbetson, was a modest success at the time and later adapted to stage and screen, most notably in a film, and as an opera. His second novel Trilby, was published in 1894. It fit into the gothic horror genre which was undergoing a revival during the fin de siècle, and the book was hugely popular. The story of the poor artist's model Trilby O'Ferrall, transformed into a diva under the spell of the evil musical genius Svengali, created a sensation. Soap, songs, dances, toothpaste, and even the city of Trilby in Florida, were all named for the heroine, and the variety of soft felt hat with an indented crown that was worn in the London stage dramatization of the novel, is known to this day as a trilby. The plot inspired Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel Phantom of the Opera and the innumerable works derived from it. Du Maurier eventually came to dislike the persistent attention given to his novel. The third novel was a long, largely autobiographical work entitled The Martian, published posthumously in 1898. He died on 8 October 1898 and was buried in St John-at-Hampstead churchyard in Hampstead parish in London. Due to the success of his writings and illustrations, du Maurier left the then staggering amount of E47,555 in his will.