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"the last time Ill ever go there to be squashed like that for any Trilby or her barebum every two minutes tipping me there and looking away" (U18.1042)
The plot of Trilby was of the stuff that Victorian playgoers loved. Trilby O'Ferrall is a beautiful half-Irish girl working in Paris as an artists' model and laundress. A young Englishman, Little Billy, falls in love with her but is forbidden by his mother to marry her. A wicked old mesmerist Svengali has Trilby under his power, and transforms her into a great diva. At last Svengali dies, and Trilby is free from his spell. Billy can ask her again to marry him. It is Christmas time and Trilby is opening her presents. One is a package left for her by a stranger. It contains a portrait of Svengali in all his hideousness. She dies of the shock, in the arms of Little Billy. Fall of curtain to ecstatic applause.
Trilby did not have a bare bum, but she did go barefoot; she also smoked heavily. All London went mad about the play. It became fashionable for ladies to smoke (at home of course). Shops were full of Trilby gifts and trinkets. Toulouse Lautrec named his yacht Trilby. Men wore Trilby hats (Davy Stephens had one). Music hall song writers jumped on the wagon with countless Trilby songs and dance tunes.
