George du Maurier, cartoonist and writer : autograph note, signed, to fellow “Punch” artist Phil May. March, 1896.

1 page manuscript in ink, 175 x 100 mm, on du Maurier’s personalised notepaper with his embossed address 17, Oxford Square, W., dated Sunday, March 29, 1896; to Phil May (1864-1903), English caricaturist. Du Maurier writes: ‘My Dear May, I’m in for another cold with this hearty weather – so I don’t feel up to tomorrow night’s spree. Sorry. Yours ever, George du Maurier’; some light foxing and marginal staining, laid down recto of a leaf removed from a late nineteenth-century commonplace album (300 x 170 mm), with the owner’s manuscript caption and note on provenance beneath: ‘This was sent to Me by the Celebrated Artist Phil May Esq. in April 1896; vide his letter. J. E. Westley’; on the verso Westley has mounted a clipping from Punch with Du Maurier’s last drawing for that magazine (26 September 1896), along with another clipping from The Argosy, Demerara (British Guiana!) 2 January 1897, which refers to theillustration in question.

George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier (1834-1896) was a Franco-British cartoonist and writer best known for his work in Punch and for a Gothic novel Trilby, featuring the character Svengali, which was first published serially in Harper’s Monthly in 1894. Du Maurier died “somewhat suddenly” on 8 October 1896, only six months after this note was written, in which he expressed a fear of catching another cold.

Philip William “Phil” May (1864-1903) was an English caricaturist whose style of illustration was an immediate precursor to the modern humorous cartoon.