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"Life's Monthly Calendar offers a series of cash prizes for the best sets of replies to the following questions on 'Trilby':

1. What does the author claim as the king of all instruments? Who does he claim was the greatest violinist of his time? What does he call the most bourgeois piece of music he knows?

2. What was Svengali's real name?

3. Where does the author state that he is a social lion? Where does he deny that he is a snob?

4. Where does he bring Little Billee in contact with Punch?

5. What did the Laird call M. le général Comte de la Tour-aux-Loups?

6. In what places does the author compare Gecko to a dog?

7. How old was Trilby when she died?

8. What was Little Billee's physical explanation of his inability to love?

9. What verbal description of one of the heroes contradicts almost every one of the author's drawings of him?

10. What incident of the story is inconsistent with the author's own argument in behalf of the nude in art?

—

"Dear Sir: The above questions are covered by our copyright, but in view of the popular interest in 'Trilby,' you may wish to reproduce them. We should be more than pleased to have you do so, if you will give us credit.

Yours very truly,

James S. Metcalfe,

Editor and Manager Life's Monthly Calendar."

The Songs in "Trilby"

Dr. Thomas Dunn English wrote the words of "Ben Bolt" in New York, in 1842, when he was a young man of three-and-twenty. Mr. N. P. Willis had asked him to write a sea-song for The New Mirror, and so he wound up the last stanza with an allusion to "the salt-sea gale!" As a sea-song, "Ben Bolt" is not a success; but it has been sung on every sea and in every land where the English tongue is spoken. At Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1848, an English journalist named Hunt quoted the words (from a defective memory) to Nelson Kneass, who was attached to the local theatre; and, adapted by Kneass to a German melody, the song, in a somewhat garbled version, was introduced in a play called "The Battle of Buena Vista." In Helen Kendrick Johnson's "Our Familiar Songs, and Those Who Made Them" (Henry Holt & Co., 1881), the story of its vogue in England as well as in America is told effectively. Not only were ships and steam-boats named in its honor, but a play was built upon its suggestions, and as recently as in 1877 an English novelist made the memories evoked by the singing of the song a factor in the development of his catastrophe. Its revival at the hand of Mr. du Maurier is the latest and perhaps the most striking tribute to its hold upon the popular heart. To the author himself – in his ripe old age a member of the LIIId Congress – its fame is seemingly a bore, for he is quoted as saying: – "I am feeling very well and enjoying life as well as an old man can, but this eternal 'Ben Bolt' business makes me so infernally weary at times that existence becomes a burden. The other night, at a meeting of a medical association at my home in Newark, some one proposed that all hands join in singing 'Ben Bolt,' whereupon I made a rush for the door, and came very near forgetting the proprieties by straightway leaving home. However, I recovered my equilibrium and rejoined my friends. I don't think that General Sherman ever grew half so tired of 'Marching Through Georgia' as I have of that creation of mine, and it will be a blessed relief to me when the public shall conclude to let it rest."

Apropos of the use made of the song in "Trilby," Harper's Bazar published the words and music; whereupon the author sent this letter to the editor: —

"It is very pleasing to an old man like myself to have the literary work of a half-century since dragged to light and commended, as has been the case with 'Ben Bolt' of late. I was flattered by seeing my likeness – or, rather, the likeness of a younger man than myself – in your pages; but I must protest against some errors which, in spite of careful editing, enter into your transcription of the song. The words of the original were: —

 
'Don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt,
With the master so cruel and grim,
And the shaded nook in the running brook,
Where the children went to swim?'
 

"This has been changed in the song, as usually sung, to read: —

 
'With the master so kind and so true.
And the little nook by the clear-running brook,
Where we gathered the flowers as they grew?'
 

"You have copied this, but in a better shape, with the exception of changing the rhythm. I must protest against this change, because the school-masters of between sixty and seventy years since were, to my memory, 'cruel and grim'; they were neither kind nor true. They seemed to think the only way to get learning into a boy's head was by the use of the rod. There may have been exceptions, but I never met them. At all events, 'what I have written I have written.'"

Ben Bolt

I

 
Oh, don't you remember, Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?
Sweet Alice, whose hair was so brown,
Who wept with delight when you gave her a smile,
And trembled with fear at your frown!
In the old churchyard, in the valley, Ben Bolt,
In a corner obscure and alone,
They have fitted a slab of the granite so gray.
And Alice lies under the stone!
 

II

 
Under the hickory tree, Ben Bolt,
Which stood at the foot of the hill,
Together we've lain in the noon-day shade,
And listened to Appleton's mill.
The mill-wheel has fallen to pieces, Ben Bolt,
The rafters have tumbled in,
And a quiet that crawls round the walls as you gaze,
Has followed the olden din.
 

III

 
Do you mind the cabin of logs, Ben Bolt,
At the edge of the pathless wood,
And the button-ball tree with its motley limbs,
Which nigh by the door-step stood?
The cabin to ruin has gone, Ben Bolt,
The tree you would seek in vain;
And where once the lords of the forest waved,
Grows grass and the golden grain.
 

IV

 
And don't you remember the school, Ben Bolt,
With the master so cruel and grim,
And the shaded nook in the running brook,
Where the children went to swim?
Grass grows on the master's grave, Ben Bolt,
The spring of the brook is dry,
And of all the boys who were schoolmates then,
There are only you and I.
 

V

 
There is change in the things I loved, Ben Bolt,
They have changed from the old to the new;
But I feel in the depths of my spirit the truth,
There never was change in you.
Twelve-months twenty have past, Ben Bolt,
Since first we were friends – yet I hail
Thy presence a blessing, thy friendship a truth,
Ben Bolt, of the salt-sea gale!
 

—

To the Editors of The Critic: —

In your columns of "Trilbyana" I have seen no mention of the fact that George W. Cable, in his "Dr. Sevier" – a thousand times better novel and better work, in every way, than "Trilby," – has introduced the old song "Ben Bolt" with wonderful effect. It is strange that the old melody should have appealed to the two men, so widely apart, and it is but fair that the American's first, and most skilful, use of it should have due recognition.

Philadelphia. John Patterson.

* * *

To the Editors of The Critic: —

Du Maurier says that there is but one verse of the little French song, which Trilby sings with so much effect – "Au clair de la lune." He mistakes; there is another, running thus: —

The two missing lines have escaped the memory of the writer.

Auburn, N. Y. S. M. Cox.

—

Your correspondent, S. M. Cox, offers some more verses of "Mon Ami Pierrot." They do not quite agree with those taught me, shortly after the Revolution of 1848, by an old French gentleman. You will notice that the French of the last verse is quite "eighteenth-century" in style and diction.

—

Mr. du Maurier was correct in saying that there is only one verse of "Au Clair de la Lune"; yet there are possibly, and probably, a thousand made in imitation of it, which go to the same air. We quote from the San Francisco Argonaut: —

"It is to be observed that these amateurs de Trilby do not go the length of singing 'Au Clair de la Lune,' even repeating the first stanza twice, as Trilby did. But perhaps they are as ignorant concerning the song as is Mr. du Maurier, who declares there is but one verse. There are four. The first is given in 'Trilby' thus: —

The second runs: —

The third stanza contains the point of the song: —

The fourth stanza continues in the same strain, and it goes farther."

—

"Malbrouck s'en va't en Guerre"

Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre —

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Malbrouck s'en va-t'en guerre…

Ne sais quand reviendra!

Ne sais quand reviendra!

Ne sais quand reviendra!

Il reviendra-z-à Pâques —

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Il reviendra-z-à Pâques…

Ou … à la Trinit!

La Trinité se passe —

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

La Trinité se passe…

Malbrouck ne revient pas!

Madame à sa tour monte —

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Madame à sa tour monte,

Si haut qu'elle peut monter!

Elle voit de loin son page —

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Elle voit de loin son page,

Tout de noire habillé!

"Mon page – mon beau page! —

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Mon page – mon beau page!

Quelles nouvelles apportez?"

"Aux nouvelles que j'apporte —

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Aux nouvelles que j'apporte,

Vos beaux yeux vont pleurer!"

"Quittez vos habits roses —

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Quittez vos habits roses,

Et vos satins brochés!"

"Le Sieur Malbrouck est mort —

Mironton, mironton, mirontaine!

Le Sieur – Malbrouck – est – mort!

Est mort – et enterré!"

—

There is no more eloquent description of the effect of music on an impressionable nature than du Maurier gives of the impression made upon Little Billee by the singing of Adam's "Cantique de Noël" at the Madeleine on Christmas Eve.

Cantique de Noël

 
Minuit, Chrétiens, c'est l'heure solennelle,
Où l'homme Dieu descendit jusqu'à nous,
Pour effacer la tache originelle
Et de son Père arrêter le courroux.
Le monde entier tressaille d'espérance
A cette nuit qui lui donne un sauveur.
Peuple à genoux! attends la délivrance!
Noël, Noël, voici le Rédempteur!
 

A Search for Sources

To the Editors of The Critic: —

The liquid name, "Trilby," of du Maurier's heroine having been duly run down to its source, will a slight excursus be amiss as to the origin of the affectionate title applied by the novelist on his charming little hero – "Little Billee"? Evidently the name, together with certain descriptive touches, has been taken from Thackeray's ballad, "Little Billee." This racy skit, as many doubtless know, is in the best vein of the great humorist's inimitable burlesque. It narrates the tragic cruise of

 
"Three sailors of Bristol city
Who took a boat and went to sea,"
 

the second stanza running thus: —

 
"There was gorging Jack, and guzzling Jimmy
And the youngest, he was Little Billee.
Now when they got as far as the Equator
They'd nothing left, but one split pea."
 

And the unpleasant ultimatum being arrived at, that "We've nothing left, us must eat we," the poem continues: —

 
"Says gorging Jack to guzzling Jimmy,
With one another we shouldn't agree,
There's little Bill, he's young and tender,
We're old and tough, so let's eat he."
 

Here, I say, we have the origin of the novelist's "Little Billee," while, in the italicized phrases, we have also du Maurier's, "the third, he was little Billee" (page 6), and "he was young and tender, was little Billee."

It would be sheer nonsense, of course, to urge against the famous novelist any charge of unacknowledged borrowing in matters so entirely trivial. The point is merely a curious one of origins; a little siccatine botanizing, so to speak, on the folia disjecta that have been wonderfully spun by du Maurier's genius into a fabric of grace and beauty so rare as is this "Trilby." Nor, indeed, should the further fact be a detraction from the gifted author of "Trilby," that his indebtedness to Thackeray is obviously greater than in the minutiæ under consideration – that, in fact, he has caught from the great immortal the note of much that is best in his book. In his limpid, graceful simplicity of words, and their easy, natural flow – in his delicate, playful humor, and tender but not overwrought pathos, we discover a careful study of found only a few general remarks about fairies, their habits and habitations, nothing in the least resembling the story of Jeannie's lover. Perhaps Nodier was mistaken about his source. As he travelled in the Highlands, he may possibly have "collected" the tale at first hand, and, there being no folk-lore societies in those early days of romanticism, he was not aware of the honor that thus accrued to him. It cannot have evolved itself from a mere hint. We appeal to Mr. Lang to take up and follow the chase farther. He might be worse occupied than in tracing out the original John Trilby MacFarlane, and whence he got his English-sounding name, his fairy powers and his connection with Saint Columba – the last probably from Nodier himself, who may have been reading Montalembert's "Monks of the West" before setting out upon his pilgrimage. Mr. Dole, by the way, irreverently converts the Dove of the Churches into a "Saint Columbine," unknown to any respectable hagiographer. Think, Mr. Lang, what a delightful coil this romancing Frenchman, let loose among your Hielan' men, fairies, monks and Scotch novels, has made for you to straighten out, and how many strange discoveries may be made while you are about the job!

Miss Smith (2) has prepared another translation of Nodier's story, and, though there is little choice between her version and Mr. Dole's, we prefer it. It seems a trifle less exact, but it is more idiomatic; and, if anything, she perhaps intensifies the local color a little, which does not do the tale any harm. Her book is got up in tartan cover; Mr. Dole's has a design adapted from Paul Konewka.

* * *

Mr. Richard Mansfield has secured from Estes & Lauriat the right to dramatize and produce Mr. Dole's translation of Nodier's "Trilby, le Lutin d'Argail."