Customer Reviews

Trilby (Everyman's Library)

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I have to disagree with the reviewer who commented that this novel is at best a curiosity and that it deserved to fade into obscurity. I read this in a course on 19th century novels and fell in love with du Maurier's writings and his drawings. He uses such wonderful devices to flavor the text and in many ways this satirical view of the aesthetic movement informs the period as much as Oscar Wilde's work does. That the work has some anti-Semitic sentiment it is no more worrisome than anything in Shakespeare (meaning that you must take the work as a work in a period of time). The character types are common enough and the message of the story is timeless--I'll leave the discernment of the message to the reader. Reading this was like uncovering your grandad's favorite toy in the attic and realizing it was still fun to play with today.

Three British artists go to paint in the Bohemian Latin Quarter of Paris, in the 1860s. Taffy Wynn, a reserved and good-natured English giant, resigned his cavalry commission after missing, by mischance, death or glory in the Charge of the Light Brigade. Sandy, the Laird of Cockpen, is a Scottish lawyer's son. Little Billee Bagot is the youngest, slight of build, of almost childish innocence, and yet the others realise that as a painter, he may someday tower above them.

The life and characters of the Latin Quarter are marvellously described, and we can only guess, nowadays, at some of the identities. Whistler the painter was much aggrieved. The three strike up a friendship with Trilby, daughter of a deceased Irish drunkard and Scottish barmaid, who is a laundress and artists' model. She is deeply unsettled by the sinister Svengali, a Jewish pianist with hypnotic powers.

The book is often accused of crude antisemitism, but "crude" seems unjust. Du Maurier claims that Little Billee has some proportion of that Jewish blood which is best diluted, but adds something to all others. Svengali's cruelest jest - they think - is to encourage Trilby to sing, saying she has the finest voice he knows. For she is tone-deaf, and the exhibition is grotesque.

Billee proposes marriage, and Trilby, who loves him, is induced to flee Paris. For besides being a laundress, she sits for "the altogether", and would destroy Billee's life in respectable society. She disappears, and only many years later is she discovered, as Madame Svengali, the singer whose fame is taking Europe by storm. For Svengali spoke nothing but the truth. She did indeed have the finest voice in Europe, which she was entirely unable to use, and that consummate but warped artist, by skill as much as hypnotism, has taught her to be the nightingale of her age.

The story ends tragically, as Victorian melodramas do. But high tragedy arises when a great and noble hero comes to grief through some fatal misconception. Trilby, in her last years, is highly enough respected to have elevated even the great William Bagot, rather than dragged him down. Suppose he and his family had realised? Suppose Svengali, although partially redeemed, had been unselfish enough to tell all, and teach her in Paris?

Joseph Heller wrote of a character whose girlfriends had to wait until a play was over, to know whether they were enjoying it, and then they knew at once. The literary establishment does not like sentiment, because the ordinary reader does not need any help to know if he likes it. But if you want to sample Victorian sentimentalism at its best, this is where to start.

Set in bohemian Paris, Trilby is the name of the artless and innocent Scot-Irish girl who stumbles upon a group of artists who call themselves the "Three Musketeers of the Brush." The orphaned daughter of a drunken scholar, she is fluent in English and French, but speaks them in slang, has an unaffected air and thinks nothing of posing nude in front of a roomful of artists. She is the prettiest, sweetest and most wistful creature they had laid eyes upon. Little Billee is her biggest admirer. He especially loves her feet -- artists' feet, perfect feet. There is one big drawback: the girl cannot sing a single note, and this is most noticeable with Svengali, an ambitious and horrid German-Jewish musician. He notices, with great amusement, that she cannot tell one high note from another. An attraction ensues between Little Billee and Trilby, but circumstances tear them apart. At the same time, she becomes the object of Svengali's obsession. He takes every opportunity to seduce her, but she fears him, especially after he cures her headache by way of mesmerism. So imagine everyone's surprise when, some time later, she becomes a local diva with the voice of an angel, with Svengali as her manager and mentor. What could have caused such a transformation? Why is she under Svengali's protection? The secrets behind her success are quite sinister, and so will be the outcome if she doesn't free herself from Svengali.

First published in 1894, Trilby is a disturbing and tragic gothic novel centered on mind control and ruthless ambition. Pygmalion, The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Phantom of the Opera sprang to mind when I read this. The writing is quite good (with an interesting second-person narrative style), the characters flawed, and the plot is both bewitching and beguiling. The relationship between Svengali and Trilby is surprisingly brief. The novel concentrates more on the backdrop of bohemian Paris and of various characters. (In fact, the first half of this book is extremely slow and boring. I read The Other Rebecca by Maureen Freely along with this one and actually enjoyed that one more on most occasions.) Yet the Trilby-Svengali relationship is the central storyline. Very interesting. The way Svengali controls Trilby, turning her into his puppet, is what intrigues me the most about this story. Various passages might strike some as anti-Semitic, for Jews are described in a not-so-flattering light in this book. Also, the constant quotations, stanzas and dialogues in French, German and Latin detract from the storyline. After all, I couldn't understand a word of it. Other than that, I enjoyed Trilby. George du Maurier was a good writer as well as an accomplished caricaturist. He drew the characters in this book, all of the pictures are found in the Oxford World's Classics edition. He passed his writing talent on to his granddaughter, Daphne du Maurier, who wrote Julius, a novel about a sinister, ambitious and manipulative man not unlike Svengali. (But the plot in Julius is quite different.) All in all, this is a memorable Victorian classic. Not the best I've read, but definitely worth rereading (at least the second half of the novel is worth giving a second go). Recommended if you're into late-Victorian gothics.

The book which put "Svengali" into the English language. I had heard of this book long ago, of course, though i can't remember whether it was first from learning about Svengali or finding out that du Maurier was Daphne du Maurier's father. But i had never read it. In a way i'm glad i didn't, becuase that has given me the opportunity to read it now, for the first time. It has taken me a little longer than i might have expected, but was well worth the time. The story of the tragic Trilby, who cannot sing a note to save her life, and how she is moulded into the singer who takes Europe by storm, by the evil (?)(i'm not sure) musician Svengali, who uses mesmerism of some kind to play her as an instrument. The story is told from the persepective of three Englishmen who lived in Paris during the time Trilby was an artists' model, before she fell under Svengali's spell. The three, Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee, who was her fiancé at one point, briefly, are artists, of a sort; they love Trilby for herself, and are devastated when she is removed from them by events. Naturally, they are shocked by her reappearance in the world of Culture. But they are delighted at the possibility of renewing her acquaintance.

I could wish that du Maurier had not been so cute with his French as "spoken" by the English. I could wish that there is less French altogether, as it does slow down the reading ~ perhaps one reason "Trilby" isn't read any more (is it?). It does generate an atmosphere, though, and you begin to know what Western Europe was like in the middle years of two centuries ago. This edition, Dover, has over a hundred illustrations by du Maurier, who had made his name as a cartoonist for Punch. They are lovely, and add immeasurably to the book.

The story essentially centres on the competition between two men for love of one woman, but ultimately each of them abuses her with their own notoins of ownership. It seems to focus on the nature by which we can kill those we love with strangulating beliefs of ownership and imposing standards of behaviour which kill the spirit of the being we direct them at.
Given that "ownership" was a strong theme in Victorian marriage, this book was being ultimately brave but it seems the audience at the time of it's release, revelled in it's horror form a gothic point of view, a hugely popular novel movement at the time.
It has taken time and changes in attitudes to see the themes beyond the story. This book still has enormous contempary resonance and is a disturbing but important read.

What you would not realize, from these reviews, is how funny and well-written Trilby is. The journey (plot) is sometimes slow, but along the way you are entertained by the author's humorous, satiric play of mind: "...if you weren't up to Bach, you didn't have a very good time! But if you were (or wished it to be understood or thought you were), you seized the opportunity and you scored; and by the earnestness of your rapt and tranced immobility, and the stony, gorgon-like intensity of your gaze, you rebuked the frivolous--as you had rebuked them before by the listlessness and carelessness of your bored resignation to the Signorina Patti's trills and fioritures, or M. Roucouly's pretty little French mannerisms." Over a page later he returns to these earnest listeners: "He could sing both high and low and soft and loud, and the frivolous were bewitched, as was only to be expected; but even the earnestest of all, caught, surprised, rapt, astounded, shaken, tickled, teased, harrowed, tortured, tantalized, aggravated, seduced, demoralized, degraded, corrupted into mere naturalness, forgot to dissemble their delight."

There were times when I was laughing at the characters and at the plot of the book. For instance there is plenty of filler and then comes the wait to find out who the great new singer taking Europe by storm is. And then the line. "It was Trilby!" If only they could see themselves. It was so obvious to the reader for pages and pages of filler.

The characters are a bit flat. Little Billee is some type of enamoured artist and Svengali is a demonic master of music, a simple sort of lovably dumb love interest, there's a disapproving worrying mother worried about social rank and you plug them in to the formula and you get a classic novel.

Sometimes I wonder where the art is in a book like this. In this instance it's mostly in the balance of the plot and the timing of suspense and the way the truth all unfolds at the end.

Like I said Svengali and Little Billee are a little one dimensional and at that their images are basically used as a plot device, and for the most part the author just tells you what the characters are like more than showing. So my main complaint is that Svengali wasn't as wicked or as mesmeric as I anticipated, basically he's just cheap and spits on Little Billee. Take it up another level of vagueness (hard to call it abstraction) and you've got a guy with a messed up face, a mask, and a protege calling himself the phantom of the opera.

These are the shortcomings of the book as I see them, but I can see why it's a classic the story/plot is well done, and the filler is well written, and occasionally entertaining, and occasionally you or I sort of laughed and identified with the the character-introspective passages, but I rarely felt for the characters genuinely.

Reading "Trilby" is like listening to a lively, friendly raconteur taking you into his confidence. All the characters are interesting and lovable despite their faults. Ultimately, du Maurier even has a soft spot for Svengali. Sentimental, yes...but effervescent and with a broad tolerance for life and human weaknesses. It's a fun, memorable read and easy to see why it was a huge hit of the 1890's.

Trilby is a story based on the life and times of the mystical Svengali. This particular edition, published in 1894 is magical. The cloth bound hardcover is etched with an intricate green spider web design. The spine on many of the volumes is darkened which gives the book a beautiful contrast to the cover. My fascination with this story began when I read that Dr. H.H. Holmes, aka Mudgett, the serial killer who ravaged Chicago in the late 1890's, during the Chicago Worlds Fair, read this book in prison while awaiting his hanging for the horrific, slayings of innocent people during that time. I wanted to read the words that a depraved sociopath would find interesting. This well read killer was documented to have also been seen reading Melville while imprisoned. His hanging ended an era of killings, of maybe upwards of 200 people or more. He was well known to have dissected, and incinerate many of the victims, so the true number was never known. For more on H.H.Holmes, read "Depraved", and or, "The Devil in the White City." This was a fascinating era, one in which the Mysterious Svengali played a bizarre role in.

I was assigned this book for a class on Aesthetic and Decadant movements in Victorian British literature, and had never heard of it before then. However, I did enjoy it. It has a sardonic but good-natured tone that is winning, and it's not surprising that Du Maurier was greatly influenced by Thackeray; they share the same subtle sting in their prose.
Unfortunately, contrasting with the entertainment value in the novel, there is little of substance, unless one wishes to dig back into the social mileau of the time, which included many anxieties expressed in this book. It is interesting in this context, but I don't know if I would have done the work on my own without the class to guide me.
So, if you want some light entertainment of the Victorian variety, I definitely recommend this book to you--otherwise, look elsewhere.