He is famous as the manager of his beautiful wife, “la Svengali,” said to have the most ravishing voice in the world. They’re surprised to learn that their old acquaintance Svengali is now the talk of Europe. But his talent has now been recognized, and when he recovers, back in England, he is a famous and sought-after man.įive years later, he, Taffy, and the Laird have a reunion in Paris. Billee then suffers a breakdown which marks the end of his time in Paris. Soon after, Billee’s mother and sister come to visit, and his mother has a talk with Trilby, who agrees to break the engagement and disappears. Although she reciprocates his love, she understands their social differences would doom their marriage.

When he hears Trilby’s voice, he’s intrigued, but he soon learns that, though the sound itself is magnificent, she is utterly tone-deaf.Įventually Billee overcomes his scruples and proposes marriage to Trilby.

Svengali can play any instrument beautifully, except for his own voice. In spite of his religious freethinking (much is made of that), he’s basically an upper middle-class boy.Īnother member of their circle, though generally unwelcome, is Svengali, a Polish Jew and a brilliant musician. This is where our phrase “in the altogether” originates), and is not chaste. However, he can’t handle the fact that she does nude modeling (“for the altogether,” as she puts it. They all fall in love with her to some extent, but Little Billee does most of all. She’s beautiful, unaffected, uninhibited, and charming. She works as an artist’s model and a washer woman. There they meet a charming young woman, Trilby O’Ferrall, who is of Irish/Scottish parentage but has spent all her life in Paris. Three British painters – the big war veteran Taffy, the jolly Laird, and the young, innocent Little Billee, share an atelier. This novel’s extreme popularity established that time and place forever in the public mind as a colorful, freethinking milieu. I have several objections to the thing.Īs you may (or may not) be aware, Trilby is a story mostly about the lives of artists in Paris’ Latin Quarter in the 1850s. Most oddly of all, though Trilby fascinated me, I can’t really recommend it to our readers. My shame is great at being taken in like this by a Victorian bestseller, and not even a mystery or an adventure tale! A love melodrama, of all things.

It was one of those “hard to put it down” reading experiences. I went ahead and followed my instinct to download George du Maurier’s novel Trilby, based on my weird fascination with the old John Barrymore movie, “Svengali.” I wasn’t prepared for the degree to which the book would grab me.

Trilby by george du maurier