“Trilby” by George du Maurier (post 6): Did the author pity or envy Trilby for becoming a great singer in the hands of Svengali?

To elaborate on the closing remark of my last post—that multiple personality was the author’s issue—let me begin by recalling a past post:

November 15, 2013

J. M. Barrie (Peter Pan) and George du Maurier (Svengali): Two More Writers With Multiple Personality (Dissociative Identity; Multiple Identity)

J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan is a multiple personality scenario, because it is about Peter and the lost boys who never grow up. In multiple personality, one of the most common types of alternate personality (alter) is the child-aged alter. Child-aged alters are child-aged, because they never grow up.

So I was not surprised to find that Barrie said he had an alternate personality who did his writing, named McConnachie, as reported in the New York Times of May 21, 1922. Google “JM Barrie McConnachie” to find the article. [Also see all my other posts on J. M. Barrie.]

According to Piers Dudgeon’s Neverland: J. M. Barrie, the du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan (New York, Pegasus Books, 2009), George du Maurier—author of Peter Ibbetson and Trilby, two best sellers, the latter with the famous character, Svengali; grandfather of novelist, Daphne du Maurier—“used to feel within himself two persons, the one serious, energetic, full of honest ambition and good purpose; the other a wastrel, reckless and careless, easily driven to the Devil.”

Perhaps related to also having a child-aged alter, George du Maurier had a psychological technique that he called "dreaming true." “ ‘Dreaming true’ was [George du Maurier’s] little secret. My grandpapa George developed the ability to ‘visit’ the past by dreaming true,” wrote Daphne. “He would lie back and in his mind’s eye become the child he once was, and he wrote about this ‘psychic’ ability too, in Peter Ibbetson.” Perhaps Daphne, herself, had been using a similar technique, when she wrote the opening line of her novel, Rebecca, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

“Dreaming true” is not the same as “lucid dreaming.” The latter refers to dreaming in which the dreamer knows he is dreaming and can direct the action of the dream. In contrast, George du Maurier describes dreaming true as being like reality, and not like dreams, in that you can’t fly or jump off cliffs, etc. In Peter Ibbetson, he describes it as a way to visit his true, actual past. Ibbetson could “turn myself into my old self, and thus be touched and caressed by those I had so loved.” Dreaming true sounds like a version of self-hypnotic age-regression. I think it's possible that hypnotic age regression involves switching to a child-age alter.

As literary tidbits, I may mention that J. M. Barrie named Peter Pan after George du Maurier’s Peter Ibbetson. Ibbetson’s “never never land” became Neverland in Peter Pan. Barrie even bought a St. Bernard dog and called him Porthos after Peter Ibbetson’s dog. It is also surprising to learn that an early title for Peter Pan had been “The Boy Who Hated Mothers.” And the character Peter Pan had been originally intended to be “a demon boy, villain of the story.”

In any case, and in short, J. M. Barrie and George du Maurier are two more famous writers with issues of multiple personality and dissociative identity.

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One more biographical note: George du Maurier’s first ambition had been to be an opera-singer, but he didn’t have the voice for it. Perhaps he thought he did have it in him, but nobody could bring it out. So he may have envied Trilby her Svengali.