Another of his notable cartoons depicted a fanciful videophone conversation in 1879, using a device he called 'Edison's telephonoscope.' In an earlier (1884) cartoon, du Maurier coined the expression 'bedside manner', with which he satirised medical care. 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, as it had appeared in a similar cartoon a few months earlier in Judy, a less widely read competitor to Punch. In it, a bishop addresses a humble curate, whom he has invited to breakfast: 'I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr. His most enduring cartoon, True Humility (1895), popularised the expressions 'good in parts' and 'a curate's egg'. His commonest targets were the affected manners of Victorian society, the bourgeoisie and members of Britain's growing middle class in particular. They had five children: Beatrix (known as Trixy), Guy, Sylvia, Marie Louise (known as May) and Gerald.ĭu Maurier became a member of staff at the British satirical magazine Punch in 1865, drawing two cartoons a week. In 1891, the family is recorded as residing at 2 Porchester Rd in Paddington. 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. He met Emma Wightwick in 1853 and married her a decade later, on 3 January 1863, at St Marylebone, Westminster. He is recorded in the 1861 England Census as a lodger at 85 Newman St in Marylebone. He was reportedly studying chemistry at University College, London, in 1851. He consulted an oculist in Düsseldorf, Germany. In fact, du Maurier's grandfather, Robert-Mathurin Busson, was a tradesman who left Paris in 1789 to avoid charges of fraud and later changed the family name to the grander-sounding du Maurier.ĭu Maurier studied art in Paris in the studio of Charles Gleyre, and moved to Antwerp, Belgium, where he lost the vision in his left eye.

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. George du Maurier was born in Paris, the son of Louis-Mathurin Busson du Maurier and Ellen Clarke, daughter of the Regency courtesan Mary Anne Clarke. He was also the father of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and grandfather of the five boys who inspired J. He was the father of the actor Sir Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier and artist Jeanne du Maurier. 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.

Trilby du maurier