George du Maurier

George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier was a Franco-British cartoonist and writer known for work in Punch and the Gothic novel Trilby, featuring the character Svengali. His son was the actor Sir Gerald du Maurier. The writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier and the artist Jeanne du Maurier were all granddaughters of George. 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, France, the son of Louis-Mathurin Busson du Maurier and his wife Ellen Clarke, daughter of the Regency courtesan Mary Anne Clarke. He was brought up to believe his aristocratic grandparents had fled from France during the Revolution, leaving vast estates behind, to live in England as émigrés. In fact, du Maurier's grandfather, Robert-Mathurin Busson, was a tradesman who left Paris, France, in 1789 to avoid charges of fraud and later changed the family name to the grander-sounding du Maurier.

Du Maurier studied art in Paris, France, in the studio of Charles Gleyre and moved to Antwerp, Belgium, where he lost the vision in his left eye. He consulted an oculist in Düsseldorf, Rhineland, Prussia, German Confederation. He was reportedly studying chemistry at University College, London, in 1851. He is recorded in the 1861 England Census as a lodger at 85 Newman St in Marylebone.

He met Emma Wightwick in 1853 and married her a decade later, on 3 January 1863, at St Marylebone, Westminster. Moving frequently over the course of their marriage, the couple first settled in Hampstead in 1869, initially at Gang Moor near the Whitestone Pond for three years, before moving to 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 (known as Trixy), Guy, Sylvia, Marie Louise (known as May), and Gerald.

Du Maurier became a member of staff at the British satirical magazine Punch in 1865, drawing two cartoons a week. His commonest 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 (1895), popularised 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!" However, the gag was not original to du Maurier, as it had appeared in a similar cartoon a few months earlier in Judy, a less widely read competitor to Punch. In an earlier (1884) cartoon, du Maurier coined the expression "bedside manner," with which he satirized medical care. Another of his notable cartoons depicted a fanciful videophone conversation in 1879, using a device he called "Edison's telephonoscope."

While 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 often seen as 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.