Ill-Considered Utterances. From English Society. Sketched by George Du Maurier. Click on image to enlarge it.
Well-Preserved Elderly Coquette.—“Ah! Admiral, what a good time we had there, junketing and dancing and flirting! It all seems like yesterday! Do you remember the Carew girls, and your old flame Lucy Masters, and that poor boy Jack Lushington, who was so desperately in love with me?"
The Admiral.—“Indeed I do, dear Lady Maria! And to think of their all dying . . . years ago! . . . And of old age, too!"
Du Maurier, who draws so many extraordinarily handsome young men and well-dressed women at the apex of their beauty, here juxtaposes a young couple to the elderly one in the foreground. The posture of the man sitting behind the elderly couple in the corner suggests he is engaged in exactly the kind of intimate, possibly flirting, conversation about which Lady Maria reminisces. The craggy balding head of the retired admiral goes perfectly with his response to her.
Selected Du Maurier Cartoons on Courtship & Marriage
- Daylight Wisdom
- What Induced Him to Marry Her?
- Neighbourly Compliments
- Unconscious Cynicism
- Nous Avons Changé Tout Cela
- Things One Would Have Expressed Differently
- Love's Labour Lost
- Nemesis
- Feminine Perversity
- Caution
- The Mother of Invention
- Perils of Aesthetic Culture
Scanned image and text by George P. Landow [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the person who scanned the image and (2) link your document to this URL in a web document or cite the Victorian Web in a print one.]
Bibliography
English Society. Sketched by George Du Maurier. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1897.
Created 1 July 2001
Last modified 28 April 2020