I little thought that from his studies of costume and history, the comrade of my Antwerp days would evolve a long and uninterrupted series of masterpieces, resuscitating the Past and presenting it with the erudition of the Student and the genius of the Artist.  Nor did anything foreshadow that my genial Dutch friend, to whom the English language was a dead letter, was destined in a not too distant Future to become a shining light of England’s Royal Academy.

Du Maurier was soon installed in the Painting Class, and made a vigorous start.  Of the things he painted, I particularly recollect a life-size, three-quarter group of an old woman and a boy—­a pen-and-ink drawing of which is in my father’s album—­that showed talent enough and to spare, but his artistic aspirations were soon to meet with a serious check.  His eyesight suddenly gave him trouble, and before long put a stop to his studies at atelier or academy.  He was not to become a painter, as he had fondly hoped, but as we now know, he was to work out his destiny in another direction.  With the simplest of means he was to delineate character, and everyday drops of ink, when filtered through his pen, were to emerge in quaint or graceful shapes, wit, satire, and sentiment taking their turns to prompt and guide that pen.

[Illustration:  From du Maurier’s painting.]

In those days we called all that caricaturing, and caricature he certainly did; mainly me and himself.  From the first he imagined he saw a marked contrast between us.  His nose was supposed to be turned up, and mine down, whereas really neither his nor mine much deviated from the ordinary run of noses; my lower lip certainly does project, but his does not particularly recede, and so on.  But the imaginary contrast inspired him in the earliest days of our acquaintance, and started him on the warpath of pen-and-inking.  He drew us in all conceivable and in some inconceivable situations.  “Moscheles and I,” he says on one page, “had we not been artists, or had we been artistically beautiful; then again, if we were of the fair sex, or soldiers, or, by way of showing our versatility, if we were horses.”  In that page he seems to have focussed the essence of our characteristics, whilst appearing only to delineate our human and equine possibilities.  Poor F., one of our German friends, fares badly, a donkey’s head portraying him “s’il etait cheval.”

[Illustration:  Moscheles et moi si nous AVIONS ETE du Beau SEXE.]

[Illustration:  Si nous AVIONS ETE beaux.]

In consequence of the growing trouble with his eyes, du Maurier left Antwerp for Malines, to place himself under the care of an eminent oculist who resided within easy reach of that city.  That blessed blister—­“ce sacre vesicatoire,” as he calls it, is one of the doctor’s remedies.

[Illustration:  Moscheles et moi si nous N’AVIONS pas ETE ARTISTES.]