(An
Ode to the Dear Girl at the Eleventh Hour)
I.
Who
is the maid I love so well?
Trilby,
darling Trilby;
Who
holds me ‘neath her magic spell?
Trilby,
darling Trilby.
No
pearl fished from the deep blue sea
Could
be one half so fair as she;
Far
more than all the world to me,
Is
Trilby, darling Trilby.
Chorus
Trilby, Trilby, barefooted maid;
Trilby, Trilby, beauty displayed
Poor but divine,
Queen you are mine,
Whatever
the girlish mistakes you have made.
II.
Who
haunts my dreams by day and night?
Trilby,
darling Trilby;
Who
owns the feet, the world’s delight?
Trilby,
darling Trilby.
Whose
form by masters was so prized,
Whose
voice was heavenly, when disguised;
Who
is not “det bud hybno-dized”?
Trilby,
darling Trilby.
Chorus
Trilby, Trilby, barefooted maid;
Trilby, Trilby, beauty displayed
Poor but divine,
Queen you are mine,
Whatever
the girlish mistakes you have made.
Oct.
9, 1895
N.Y.
Dramatic
News,
Oct. 26,
1895
Trilby is a novel by George du
Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time. Published serially
in Harper's Monthly in 1894, it was published in book form in 1895
and sold 200,000 copies in the United States alone. Trilby is set in
the 1850s in an idyllic bohemian Paris. Though it features the
stories of two English artists and a Scottish artist, one of the most memorable
characters is Svengali, a Jewish rogue, masterful musician and hypnotist.
Trilby O'Ferrall, the novel's heroine, is a
half-Irish girl working in Paris as an artists' model and laundress; all the
men in the novel are in love with her. The relationship between Trilby and
Svengali forms only a small, though crucial, portion of the novel, which is
mainly an evocation of a milieu.
The novel has been
adapted to the stage several times; one of these featured the lead actress
wearing a distinctive short-brimmed hat with a sharp snap to the back of the
brim. The hat became known as the trilby and went on to become a
popular men's clothing item in the United Kingdom throughout various parts of
the 20th century, before enjoying a revival as a unisex clothing item in the
United States in the 2000s.
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