Peter Ibbetson by George du Maurier

First published: 1891

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical

Time of plot: Mid-nineteenth century

Locale: France and England

Principal characters

• Peter Ibbetson,
• Colonel Ibbetson, his guardian
• Mimsy Seraskier, his dearest friend and later the duchess of Towers
• Mr. Lintot, his employer
• Mrs. Deane, a widow

The Story:

Peter Pasquier moves from England to Paris, where he is called Pierre, at the age of five years. His father is a dreamy-eyed inventor, his mother a soft-spoken woman devoted to her family. Peter has many childhood friends, but the dearest are Mimsy Seraskier and her beautiful mother, who live nearby. Mimsy is a delicate, shy child. She and Peter are inseparable friends, making up their own code language so that no one can intrude on their secret talks.

Now twelve years old, Peter faces the death of his father, who had been killed in an explosion, and less than one week later his mother dies giving birth to a stillborn fetus. His mother’s cousin, Colonel Ibbetson, arrives from England to take Peter home with him. Peter weeps when he is forced to leave his friends, and Mimsy is so ill from her grief that she cannot even tell him good-bye. Colonel Ibbetson gives Peter his name, and he becomes Peter Ibbetson. The colonel sends him to school, where he spends six years. Events at the school touch him very little, and he spends most of his time dreaming of his old life in Paris.

When he leaves school, Peter spends some time with Colonel Ibbetson. The colonel’s only request is that Peter become a gentleman, but Peter begins to doubt that the colonel himself fits the description, for he has a very poor reputation among his acquaintances. His most recent victim is Mrs. Deane, a woman he had ruined with malicious lies. The colonel seems to derive great pleasure from telling scandalous tales about everyone he knows, and Peter grows to hate him for this habit. After a time, he runs away to London and joins the cavalry for a year. Following his term in the army, he is apprenticed to Mr. Lintot, an architect he had met through Colonel Ibbetson. He takes rooms in Pentonville and begins a new chapter in his life there.

Peter works industriously for Mr. Lintot and achieves some success, but his outer life is lonely and dull. The only real joy he finds is in music, which moves him deeply. He saves money carefully to attend a concert occasionally. His nightly dreams are still of his childhood in Paris and of Mimsy, but these dreams are becoming blurred.

Peter views the belief in a creator and life after death with skepticism, believing instead that humans would have to work back to the very beginning of time before they could understand anything about a deity. He believes it is possible to go back, if only he knows the way. His ideas on sin are unorthodox; to Peter, the only real sin is cruelty to the mind or body of any living thing. During this period of his life, his only acquaintances are the friends of Mr. and Mrs. Lintot, for Peter is a shy young man, too much concerned with his speculations and dreams for social gaiety. At one party, however, he sees a great lady who is to be his guiding star for the rest of his life. He is told she is the duchess of Towers, and although he is not introduced to her, he notices her look at him in a strange manner, almost as if she finds his face to be familiar.

Sometime after his first sight of the duchess of Towers, Peter revisits Paris, where he finds his old home and those of his friends replaced with modern bungalows. The only news he has of his old friends is that Madame Seraskier had died and that Mimsy and her father had left Paris many years ago. He returns to his hotel, emotionally exhausted from the disappointments of the day.

Peter’s real and true inner life begins that night, for he learns how to dream true. When he falls asleep, the events of the day pass before him in distorted fashion. He finds himself surrounded by demon dwarfs. As he tries to escape them, he looks up and sees the duchess of Towers standing before him. She takes his hand and tells him he is not dreaming true, and then he is transported back to the happy days of his childhood and sees himself as he was then. At the same time, he retains his adult identity. He exists as two people at the same time, his adult self looking at his child self. The duchess tells him he can transport himself into any scene he has already experienced, but only if he dreams true. To do this, he must lie on his back with his arms over his head, and as he goes to sleep, he must think ceaselessly of the place he wants to be in his dreams. He must, however, never forget in his dream who and where he is when awake; in this way, his dream will be tied to reality. The duchess had learned the trick from her father.

When Peter wakes up, he realizes that at last one of his greatest desires has come true; he had looked into the mind of the duchess. Nevertheless, the matter puzzles him, for he had always thought such a fusion is possible only between two people who know and love each other. The duchess is a stranger to him.

Peter returns to Pentonville and outwardly resumes his normal life. His inner self, however, becomes his real life, and he masters the art of dreaming true and reliving any experience he wishes. He visits with his mother and Mimsy frequently in his dreams, and his life is no longer bleak and lonely. One day, he again meets the duchess of Towers in his outer life. Then he discovers why she had been in his true dream. She is Mimsy, grown now and married to a famous duke. She had had the same dream as he when she had rescued him from the dwarfs, and she, too, had been unable to understand why a stranger had invaded her dreams.

Although he does not meet again the grown Mimsy in his dreams, Peter sees the child Mimsy almost every night. His life continues without interruption until he meets Mrs. Gregory, formerly Mrs. Deane, whom Colonel Ibbetson had tried to ruin with slander. She tells him that Colonel Ibbetson had told her and many others that he is Peter’s real father. The recorded marriage and birth dates prove he is lying; the story is another product of the colonel’s cruel mind. Peter is so enraged that he goes to the colonel’s house to force an apology. The two men fight; in his fury, Peter strikes at Colonel Ibbetson and kills him.

Peter is tried and sentenced to be hanged for the murder of his uncle. While he is in prison, the grown Mimsy appears in his dream again and tells him his sentence has been changed to life imprisonment because of the circumstances under which the murder had been committed. She promises Peter that she will continue to come to him in his dreams, allowing them to spend the rest of their lives together.

In his prison cell, Peter is the happiest man in England. Attendants are kind to him during the day, and he is with Mimsy at night. At last, they learn that they are distant cousins, and then they discover that they can project themselves into the past through the character of any of their direct ancestors. Either of them, not both at once, can become any ancestor he or she chooses, and thus they relive scenes in history that had occurred hundreds of years before. They go back to the days when monsters roam the earth and might have gone back to the beginning of time, but Mimsy dies.

Mimsy returns to Peter seven times, urging him to continue his search for the beginning of time. She can come to him now only because he is the other half of her soul. She asks him to write down his method and to urge others to follow him, and she gives him some books in their secret code, telling him of things she learned. Before he begins to write the secrets, he dies in his cell. His cousin, Madge Plunket, who later arranges for the publication of the manuscript, feels that she will remember until her own death the look of happiness and peace upon his face.

Bibliography

Auerbach, Nina. Daphne du Maurier, Haunted Heiress. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. This biography of George du Maurier’s granddaughter, novelist Daphne du Maurier, includes discussion of her grandfather and other strong men in her life, characters reflected in her fiction. Also examines Peter Ibbetson.

James, Henry. “George du Maurier.” Harper’s Weekly Magazine, April 14, 1894, 341-342. A dated but perceptive discussion of Peter Ibbetson. As a personal friend of George du Maurier and as a great novelist himself, James offers highly instructive commentary on du Maurier’s fiction.

Kelly, Richard Michael. The Art of George du Maurier. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1996. Examines the connections between du Maurier the artist-illustrator and du Maurier the writer of fiction.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. George du Maurier. Boston: Twayne, 1983. A comprehensive discussion and analysis of du Maurier’s life, art, and written work. Contains a lengthy analysis of Peter Ibbetson that explores the psychodynamics of the novel.

Ormond, Leonée. George du Maurier. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969. The definitive biography of du Maurier, profusely illustrated. Ormond relates many elements of du Maurier’s life directly to the subjects and themes of Peter Ibbetson.

Stevenson, Lionel. “George du Maurier and the Romantic Novel.” In Essays by Divers Hands, Being the Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature, edited by N. Hardy Wallis. London: Oxford University Press, 1960. Argues persuasively that du Maurier’s three novels are “masterpieces of romantic fiction.”

Wood, T. Martin. George du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians: A Review of His Art and Personality. London: Chatto & Windus, 1913. This dated but still useful book contains an appreciative commentary on Peter Ibbetson, concluding, “It is by this book I like to think du Maurier will be remembered as a writer.”