Fowey, Cornwall

November 2013

It takes nearly four hours by train to get from London to the small town of Fowey, in Cornwall, on the extreme southwest coast of England. This is a maritime region, with a wild, craggy coastline studded with coves and fishing ports. The wind blows hard; the sky is usually cloudy, the emerald sea is controlled by the swell.

Walking through the narrow backstreets of the town, as steep as those in Hampstead and Fleury, I understand why Daphne fell in love with this place. Even in November, the light is glorious. Comparing the current reality with photographs of Fowey dating from 1926, I notice that there are few modern constructions spoiling the beauty of the view. The façades of the old houses are white, pink, yellow, or pale blue, those of stores and pubs red or green. Here, the inhabitants smile, say hello, even to me, the stranger.

At sunset, I walk along the esplanade in the hills, toward St. Catherine’s Point, where there are the ruins of a castle. I pass Whitehouse Beach and the Fowey Hotel. I pass Readymoney Cove, an inlet amid this rocky coastline with its pebble beach. I climb up to the ruins. The sea stretches out into infinity.

I know that Daphne climbed up to this point, too, because she describes it in her memoirs. She stood where I stand now, she put her hands on this same balustrade, she looked out at the bay, where the River Fowey flows into the sea opposite the village of Polruan, which rises up on the hillside, its white and gray cottages standing out against the greenness. The sun disappears amid purple streaks, the seagulls screech above my head, and at the foot of the cliff, the backwash rumbles.

The next morning, under a clear sky, I go to the other side of town, out toward Bodinnick. Down by the estuary there is a white house, looking curiously like a Swiss chalet, with blue timbering. The figurehead of a woman is attached to the wall below the last window on the right, on the second floor. To cross the river, I have to take the little ferry that goes every fifteen minutes. As I approach the house, I make out the large white letters on the façade. Ferryside.

It was in this house that Daphne du Maurier wrote her first novel, at the age of twenty-two. Today, her son lives here.

*   *   *

Since their train left Paddington Station this morning, Daphne has been staring out the window, bored stiff. She doesn’t even feel like reading. Muriel, Angela, and Jeanne are excited by this trip and their mission: to find a house. But nothing seems to rouse Daphne from her torpor. She barely listens to her sisters or her mother, thinking, as always, about Fernande, about that magical summer that seems so far away at this moment, even though it is only two weeks since Daphne left Trébeurden. From time to time, she senses her mother’s eyes on her, examining her, judging her, and she sighs: how tiring they are, her parents, and how little they understand her!

She dozes, barely touches her plate at lunch, refuses to join the others in swooning as the train crosses the impressive iron bridge of Saltash, built by the famous civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, which spans the River Tamar. They are in Cornwall now, her mother announces, and Daphne rolls her eyes, slumped in her seat. She could have stayed in peace at Cannon Hall, trying to write, tinkering with other short stories, other poems, instead of being dragged to the other end of the country against her will. Despite her bad mood, she cannot help noticing that the landscape has changed: luxuriant grass stretches out as far as she can see; the turquoise sea plays hide-and-seek with the train, the sky is streaked with beautiful shafts of light, as if the entire view had been painted with an infinite palette of greens, apart from the pink touches of spiked loosestrife, the scattered red of scarlet pimpernels.

The next morning, Muriel rents a car with a chauffeur to take them west toward St. Austell. The sun shines so warmly, it feels almost like summer. The car takes the seaside road and Daphne’s pulse accelerates. She didn’t sleep well, but she opens her eyes wide now, rendered speechless by the rocky coastline that spreads out to her left, and suddenly, at the top of the hill, as Fowey Bay opens up in all its splendor and she sees the immensity of the water, the jetties, the moored boats, the little houses clinging to the cliff side, her emotion grows so strong that she finds it hard to breathe. She feels as if she is coming home, to a land she loves, a place she belongs.

The car drops them at Bodinnick, at the bottom of the path, by the river. It is lunchtime; why not stop at the Ferry Inn, just next door? They could take the boat across the river after that. Daphne notices a large FOR SALE sign outside a house in poor condition, at the water’s edge, next to the landing stage. They are told by a passerby that yes, it is for sale, its name is Swiss Cottage, it was previously used for boatbuilding, and only the upstairs floor is habitable.

During lunch on the terrace of the Ferry Inn, Daphne and her sisters cannot stop admiring the unusual Swiss Cottage below. It has something, this house, a charm, potential, they are all agreed. After coffee, the girls leave their mother to have a chat with the restaurant manager and go back down the path toward the river, entering the muddy land that surrounds the curious dwelling. There, they discover that the house is a troglodyte, built into the cliff itself, a detail that only serves to increase their love for it. The large, open space at the first floor of the house, through which a little stream flows, was used to build the hulls of boats, while on the second floor they made and stored sails.

Daphne stands by the water and sniffs the air, the odors of tar, rigging, rust, mingled with the saltiness of the tide. Suddenly she understands, shaking her head incredulously: Fowey is just like Trébeurden, that little piece of Brittany where she had felt so happy, so free, far from everything, far from London. Trébeurden and her secret love with Ferdie, writing, inspiration, and, beyond all of this, the incantation of the sea. Fowey and Trébeurden are twin mirrors facing each others in the two countries she loves, the country of her ancestors and the country of her birth, sister towns filled with the same colors, scents, and sounds.

Jeanne stands next to her and, noticing her agitation, slips an arm around her neck. Angela joins her sisters and together they look out at the uninterrupted flow of maritime traffic: fishermen’s boats, sailboats, barges, large ships guided by tugs. The sailors notice the young women and blow their foghorn while waving to them. Later, they take the ferry with Muriel, walk through the streets of Fowey, then end up at the Fowey Hotel, where they stay for three nights, enough time to begin the process of buying the house, because yes, they have decided, all four of them equally enthusiastic, without even consulting Gerald, who gave them carte blanche, that Swiss Cottage will be theirs, that it will belong to the du Maurier family, no matter how much it costs, no matter how much work the place will need, no matter if it isn’t ready before next summer. It will be their house, and they will name it Ferryside.

*   *   *

That autumn, the light of Fowey still glows in Daphne’s eyes and in her heart, and she is uninspired by the dark room above the garage at Cannon Hall where she tries to work. Nevertheless, she sticks to her task and writes a few poems and short stories. The work on Ferryside has been started by the eager, indefatigable Lady Mo, who roams London in search of paintings, furniture, and chintz to her taste, while in Cornwall the roof is remade, staircases are built, ceilings lowered, bathrooms added, under the watchful eye of a contractor. Progress is rapid. Muriel and Gerald learn from J. M. Barrie that one of his dear friends, the novelist Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, son of a Cornish doctor, lives in Fowey, in a large house that overlooks the bay, named The Haven. Barrie organizes a dinner in London so that they can all meet one another. Quiller-Couch and his wife are delighted to discover that the du Mauriers will soon be their neighbors. Their daughter, Foy, is a few years older than Daphne. In spite of this meeting with Arthur Quiller-Couch, nicknamed Q, a famous intellectual whose work she has admired since reading On the Art of Writing, the only thing that cheers Daphne up is a puppy, an adorable golden retriever that she takes for walks on the Heath every day, until she is out of breath. Gerald, as he was with Angela the year before, becomes possessive, watching over Daphne’s walks, her nights out, wanting to know with whom she comes home, with whom she goes out. Daphne finds these interrogations unbearable, and they are even worse—frighteningly aggressive—when he has been drinking. Who does he think he is? Why doesn’t her mother put an end to these accusations? Daphne is not doing anything wrong, just having a little fun. How does he have the nerve to preach to her when she knows he cheats on Muriel with the young actresses from his “stable”? Her vision of love, sex, and marriage grows even darker, and this shows in her writing—short, biting stories that feature manipulative and ridiculed women, spineless and ruthless men, guided by their sole desire.

She has to wait until November before she can see Fernande again. In the meantime, Mlle Yvon has opened her own school in Boulogne-sur-Seine, with two students, her new boarders. She has adopted a dog, a German shepherd named Schüller. Daphne feels at ease in the headmistress’s modest house on Rue des Tilleuls, close to the woods. She would rather stay there than at a hotel, taking advantage of her status as Ferdie’s favorite. Within a few days, she succeeds in winning over the fierce Schüller, and while Fernande gives lessons, Daphne goes out for walks. The two weeks pass quickly.

In Hampstead, faced with Gerald’s interrogations and her mother’s cool indifference, Daphne is relieved to be able to accept an invitation from the great family friend Edgar Wallace to spend the New Year holidays with his family in Caux, Switzerland, at the luxurious Palace Hotel. Angela goes with her. They have never tried winter sports before, and it is a revelation, especially for Daphne, who is naturally more athletic than Angela. Against a snowy fairy-tale backdrop, Daphne discovers the pleasures of skiing, sledding, and ice-skating. In the evenings, there are dances in the ballroom of the Palace Hotel, and the du Maurier sisters, free of the paternal yoke, prove immensely popular, Angela for her sense of humor and her contagious laugh, Daphne for her beauty and her talent as a dancer. They spend their nights at the bar, drinking, laughing, and dancing, along with all the other girls in their golden little world. The champagne flows, their heads spin, the boys flock to them, and kisses are distributed in a frenzy of casual flings. For the first time in her life, at nearly twenty years old, with admiring eyes watching her on the dance floor, Daphne feels beautiful, becomes aware of her seductive charms.

In March 1927, Daphne goes to Berlin with the actress Viola Tree, a close friend of her parents. Viola has professional engagements to attend during her stay: she has to meet a director, visit a few theaters. Though this is almost certainly a diversion deliberately created by her parents, Daphne submits without protest: Viola is a lovely woman, and the young writer is curious to discover Berlin. In her journal, she notes: Complete efficiency. Quiet. Little traffic in the streets. Enormous amount of people everywhere. Complete luxury at the Hotel Adlon, where Viola, excited as a child, turned all the taps on in the bathroom full blast. We dine at a bourgeois café. How the Germans love their food!2 The next day, a walk in the Tiergarten pales beside Daphne’s memories of the Bois de Boulogne: the passersby all look so dour and plain, and while the Kaiser’s former palace in Potsdam is undeniably impressive, as is Frederick the Great’s Sanssouci Palace, it still isn’t Paris. No other city could ever take Paris’s place in her heart. She goes back there in April, to stay with Ferdie for three weeks, and enjoys taking Schüller for walks in the woods, goes for solitary strolls along the Left Bank while Fernande gives classes, sits outside Le Dôme Café with the ghost of Kicky and drinks lemonade. Something has changed, though. Paris and Fernande both retain their appeal, but now Daphne is captivated by another place, a place she thinks about constantly. Fowey. The name of that town is on her lips all the time, Fernande complains, feeling abandoned. Daphne’s mind is elsewhere: she dreams of returning to Fowey, of seeing Ferryside again after eight months of renovation work carried out energetically by her mother, and Ferdie, saddened, can sense it.

A few days before her twentieth birthday—May 9, 1927—Daphne takes a train to join up with Muriel and Angela, who have moved into Ferryside with the help of Viola and dear old Tod, who has gone to visit them. Daphne is stunned by the transformation in their new second home; her mother has performed miracles. On the first floor, Daphne discovers a vast, light-filled, comfortable living room where boats used to be made, and on the second floor, in place of the sail storeroom, she admires several pleasant bedrooms and a modern bathroom. On the top floor are her parents’ bedroom, their bathroom, a large dining room, and a fully fitted kitchen.

The real miracle, though, is that Daphne has been given the green light by her parents to stay at Ferryside alone for a month, after the others leave on May 14. She still can’t quite believe this. Did they give in to her pleas out of weakness? Have they simply accepted her obsession with Fowey? Whatever the reason, it is a demonstration of trust. A woman from the village will come and cook for her and clean the house, but apart from this nice, honest Mrs. Coombs and Biggins the gardener, Daphne will be alone for the first time in her life. The car leaves, with Muriel, Angela, Tod, and Viola inside, and the heavy wooden door closes. Daphne jumps for joy, stroking the rough walls at the back of the living room, formed by the cliff face, caressing their cool crevices, singing at the top of her voice, and going outside through the room on the second floor, which has a door that opens on to the garden. She gambols in the grass, turning her face up to the May sun, and thinks how wonderful life is. She turned twenty yesterday and she is alone in her favorite place in the world. This is the best birthday present her parents could possibly have given her: this freedom, here and now.

Before she does anything else, she must master her new kingdom, get to know every nook and cranny of it. Daphne wakes early to the sound of seagulls and ship horns, eats a quick breakfast, puts on her sea boots and a pair of pants (she can’t stand skirts, which she considers impractical) and a blue-and-white-striped sweater, not forgetting the cap pulled down over her short hair. She looks like a sailor, and this pleases her. She walks, stick in hand, up the slope behind the house, turns right after the ruins of the St. John chapel, climbs the path toward Pont Pill, the peaceful estuary of the River Fowey that winds through the greenness of the ferns. A sign warns that the area is private, but she pays no heed and walks through the copses, intoxicated by the smell of damp earth, crossing through St. Wyllow and heading for Polruan. The sunlight filters through the dense foliage, a stream babbles close by, and behind a bush she discovers a shady, sparkling pond. She passes old quarries, disused lime kilns, barley silos, piles of coal. Down below, on the layers of mud that dry when the tide is low, she spots the framework of a schooner, with a figurehead still fastened to its hull. Fascinated, she rushes down the slope to take a closer look at the remains of this abandoned ship and reads the name still visible on its stern: Jane Slade. What was this ship’s story? Where did it go? How dashing it must have been with this black-haired woman on its bow, her face lifted up in a smile, a bouquet of flowers held to her chest.

At the top of the steep path, in Lanteglos, on the road to Polruan, there is a little stone church that reminds Daphne of the simplicity of Notre-Dame-de-Kergonan, in Trébeurden. She likes to stop here and admire the old gravestones, the names of the dead overrun by a dogged orange lichen. One morning, she manages to decipher the name Jane Slade 1812–1885 on one of the tombs. The same woman the shipwrecked boat was named after? Who was this famous Jane Slade? How could she find out? Daphne pushes the thick oak door, which opens with a creak, and enters the silence of a sacred space she respects, even if she is not a regular churchgoer, feeling nourished by the sense of peace that emanates from these old yellow stone walls, these west-facing stained-glass windows that filter a hopeful light, these sculpted wooden benches worn away by the years. Here, as in Trébeurden, she can sense the fervor left behind by generations of sailing families who came to this church to pray.

When she goes back down to the village, the inhabitants she meets are all welcoming. They have come to recognize her slender, boyish figure, her long athletic stride, and they all wave to her, call her Miss Daphne. And she, in turn, is beginning to learn their names: the Bunnys, the Hunkins, Captain Bate, Miss Roberts … She goes by the dock, observes the boats, noting their names, their shapes, imagining what they might be carrying, where they might be going, where they might stop over on the way. Everything about this maritime world interests her, and she gulps down the details. Sailors come to Fowey from all over the world to fetch cargos of clay and kaolin, down there, at Carne Point, at the modern, fully equipped landing stage. She goes there and watches the operations, becoming covered in white powder. This makes her laugh. She likes nothing more than listening to sailors, feeding on their stories of the sea, of storms, captivated by these men who spend more time on water than on terra firma.

There is one, in particular, whom she could listen to for hours: Harry Adams, a veteran of the Battle of Jutland, a big, strapping fellow, his features craggy with age, who is amused by this well-bred, angelic-looking young lady who dresses just like him. She wants to learn to sail? Perfect—he can teach her. He knows this estuary like the back of his hand. With his help, she learns in the space of a few weeks how to raise a sail, work out the strength and direction of the wind, steer, head out to sea. With him, she goes fishing, even in bad weather, and she doesn’t flinch when she has to pull the hook from the mouth of a wriggling fish, she isn’t afraid of the long eels they drag from the water near the jetties in the evening, after sunset. Sitting face-to-face in the fisherman’s boat, they talk: he tells her about the history of Fowey, about his youth, his love of the sea. Does he, by any chance, know the story of the Jane Slade, the wreck of the schooner that lies at Pont Pill? Know it? Of course he does! He’s married to a Slade, granddaughter of the famous Jane, and his brother-in-law, who runs a naval shipyard in Polruan, undoubtedly has some old letters lying around somewhere. Harry would be happy to find out, if she’s interested.

In the euphoria of these first weeks, Daphne almost forgets what she has come to Ferryside to do: write. She gets down to work, writing a poem inspired by Jane Slade, then a short story, “And Now to God the Father,” about a conceited London priest, every bit as dark and disturbing as her previous tales. In her journal, she writes: I walk back by the loveliest lane imaginable, absolutely filled with peace and beauty. I could cry and laugh with happiness. I walk slowly, taking it in. Tired when I get back, and I read.3 She feels guilty, though: she is behind in her letter writing, she hasn’t written to Fernande since she arrived here, nor to her parents, and the latest letter she receives from Aunt Billy only intensifies her guilt: It’s rather selfish of you, darling, not to write home and tell them what you are doing, when it’s so kind of them to let you be down at Ferryside on your own.4

Thankfully, Daddy isn’t there—he is absorbed by his latest play—because Geoffrey, the dark handsome cousin she hasn’t seen since that summer when she was fourteen, writes to her from Plymouth, where he is staying with his brother. Could he drop by and see her one day? She doesn’t need to be asked twice. She picks him up at the train station, noting that he has aged—he is nearly forty-two now, after all—but the blue sparkle in his eyes is as flirtatious as ever. Immediately they strike up the same kind of naturally complicit relationship they enjoyed before, and which so worried Gerald: they laugh, joke, have fun together, going for a long, exhausting walk around Fowey and then having a drink outside the house as night falls. They don’t touch each other, don’t hold hands, but Daphne knows the old attraction is still there, even if the feeling between them has become more fraternal. Her cousin comes to spend the afternoon with her on several other occasions. When Gerald finds out about this, he phones his daughter, suspicious and inquisitive: What did they do? Where did they go? When is he coming back again? Later, she recounts this conversation to Geoffrey, who has a good laugh: Old Uncle Gerald, on the warpath again, they should make him believe the worst; that would be funny, wouldn’t it? Daphne scolds him: he’s crazy, irresponsible, her father would be furious. Suddenly Geoffrey grows serious: oh come on, she knows he’s always been like that; it’s in his nature, that irresponsibility, that lightheartedness, it’s because of their cursed French blood, and that phrase makes his cousin smile, despite herself.

Her month of solitude comes to an end. In mid-June, Angela arrives from London with her Pekinese dog, Wendy, to take her sister back to Cannon Hall. Daphne is devastated at the idea of leaving Fowey. She must wait until the family vacation in July to sleep at Ferryside again, with her younger sister, Jeanne, when they go down to open the house up for the summer. There is an exciting surprise waiting for her: the gardener, Biggins, gives her a young dog—a cross between a spaniel and a sheepdog—named Bingo, who accompanies Daphne on her daily walks.

Gerald is going to visit Ferryside for the first time. The rest of the family worries about this. Will he love this house as much as his wife and daughters do? Won’t he be bored, far from his club, his “stable,” his theater, his garden? In readiness for the summer, and to please Daphne, Gerald has bought a motorboat, the Cora Ann. While she waits for her father to arrive, Daphne learns to pilot the boat with her new friend, Harry Adams. She manages quite well, he tells her. In fact, his brother-in-law does have a packet of letters and other documents relating to Jane Slade, and he can show them to her if she’s still interested: it all relates to the history of the Slade family and the construction of the ship. Daphne joyfully accepts, but she doesn’t have time to read them because her parents arrive, along with their usual stacks of suitcases, their friend Viola, and their servants. The peacefulness of Ferryside is shattered.

The vacation begins in the worst possible way. It pours with rain. Muriel twists both her ankles and has to stay in bed. Viola slips on the docks outside the house, falling into the water and catching pneumonia. Gerald, who has never piloted a boat in his life, almost crashes the Cora Ann against the rocks. Daphne has the impression that her sanctuary has been invaded; she submits in silence to the permanent flow of elegant visitors who come and go all summer. Every morning, she escapes, going out to sea with Adams, sailing to Polperro with him, living the life of a sailor, in pants and sweater, her hair a mess, her face tanned, to the despair of her mother, who wishes she would wear dresses and keep her skin nice and pale.

In October, when the time comes to leave Ferryside, Daphne writes in her journal, sitting by the window of her second-floor bedroom: I’ve just realized that I think of nothing nowadays but fishing, and ships, and the sea, and a seaman’s life. Adams and I go out and catch mackerel until after seven, and after dark we go up to the jetties and I catch a monster conger-eel, I’m sure it weighs about 30 lb. The river, the harbour, the sea. It’s much more than love for a person. I don’t know how I’m going to exist back in London. It’s heart-breaking. To go away from this, the place that I love. I gaze for a long while at the sea. I tell the garden, the sea, that I shall be back soon. It all belongs to me now.5

*   *   *

Twenty years old, and so impatient. She is dying of boredom in this damned city, London, when she could catch a train and escape to Fowey! How futile it all seems, accompanying her mother to Selfridges, carrying parcels, standing on a crowded Tube, rushing everywhere. Daphne daydreams that she is on the boat with Adams, feeling it sway on the rolling sea, hearing the shrill cry of the seagulls, breathing the salty odor of the breeze, imagining Bingo’s joyous barking when she sets foot onshore again. There is only one way out: she must leave Cannon Hall. Winter arrives, with its gray skies. Ferryside is shut up. But there is still Paris. Yes, there will always be Paris. On an impulse, Daphne spends all her savings—more than thirty-five pounds—on a round-trip train ticket from Victoria to the Gare du Nord. She announces to her parents that she is going to France for a few weeks, and she says it so firmly, good lord, jutting out that bold chin of hers, that they don’t dare say a word. She just packs her bags and goes. Rue des Tilleuls is waiting for her with open arms. How happy she is to see Fernande and Schüller again, and four new students. One unpleasant surprise is the presence of a certain Joan, an elegant, thin-faced brunette, American, a former boarder at Camposenea. Daphne remembers her, one of those snooty members of the “elite” who did not at all appreciate Daphne’s entry into the back room. Now Joan is strutting around, leaving an affectionate hand on Ferdie’s shoulder, whispering languorously into her ear. Daphne’s enjoyment of this getaway is due less to Fernande than to the pleasure of rediscovering France. In her journal, Daphne writes in French, after a walk to Boulogne, on Rue des Menus, describing her freedom, strolling hatless along the streets of the Italian quarter.

The return to Hampstead in mid-December is, as always, painful. Her mother and her sisters have gone to Fowey to prepare Ferryside for the Christmas festivities. What has happened to her father? As soon as he gets up in the morning, his breath reeks of alcohol. He hangs around the house, whining self-pityingly. At a birthday dinner for Gladys Cooper, their actress friend, he gets drunk, and Daphne has to take him back in the car, alone, while he blubbers on her shoulder. She entrusts him to the servants, unable to bear his shamefaced expression when she leaves the room. Why has her mother burdened her with such a responsibility? It isn’t up to her—his daughter—to look after him. Gerald is fifty-four, his hair is thinning, his long face is gaunt, the numberless cigarettes have wizened his skin, yellowed his teeth, and yet he still he thinks he’s Peter Pan. He is a child. He is pitiful, even if the love she feels for him is unaltered. Her father, so vain, so self-centered, and at the same time so endearing and fragile. This complex personality simultaneously fascinates and repulses her.

Daphne takes the train with Gerald to Cornwall on December 21, 1927, to join the rest of the family. He is in a better state, but his blue eyes fill with tears as he watches the landscape speed past, his hands tremble, and he cries during lunch, though she has no idea why. She doesn’t dare ask (does she really want to know the answer, after all?). Shouldn’t he see a doctor? She doesn’t know how to describe these recent days to her mother, how to put words to the crisis that her father is going through, how to disclose the drunken incident at Gladys’s house. How can her mother bear such behavior? What a farce marriage is! How do people manage to spend the rest of their lives together?

Daphne’s anxieties fade in the face of the gaiety that reigns at Ferryside, the house decorated with holly and ivy, piles of presents, the Christmas dinner, all the festivities supplied by Muriel with her habitual expertise. This is the first Christmas at Ferryside, and it is a success. Geoffrey is there, without his wife, sick in hospital, and he seems to feel no remorse at all when he caresses Daphne’s knees under the dining room table, under the very noses of her parents. But she no longer feels the arousal she felt six years before. The truth is that she pities Geoffrey, just as she does her father.

As the year ends, Fowey shivers under a fall of unexpected snow. 1928 begins with a series of domestic troubles: the boiler breaks down, and so does the oven. No more hot water, no more heating. Gerald complains, Muriel grows agitated, and everyone decides to head back to London. Everyone except Daphne. How can she make them understand—all these people who call her selfish—that she doesn’t care about discomfort, that she finds it a thousand times more enticing to brave the cold of Ferryside than to be speared with boredom in Hampstead, that she wants to live without them, that she feels happy when she is alone? Is it really that complicated? Intense relief floods through her at the sight of them leaving on the ferry, headed for the train station. Quick, time for a walk with Bingo! She climbs the road up to Lanteglos, contemplates the silvery beauty of the bay, taking deep breaths, delighting in her solitude, finally at peace.

Back in the calm of the house, she gets down to work, wrapped up in a blanket, a hot water bottle on her knees. She sits facing the view she loves so much: the river, the passing boats, the ballet of seagulls. Here, in her room at Ferryside, the words come effortlessly; she doesn’t have to wait for them as she does at Cannon Hall, in the room above the garage where nothing ever happened. Words fill the pages. Never before has she written with so much energy. Time passes, and she doesn’t even realize. She is working on a new short story, so extreme in its darkness that she wonders if it’s not a bit too much, perverted even, then decides not to worry about it. She keeps writing. Her heroine is a young girl who keeps a secret. She must find her a name, this beautiful brunette with her swan neck, her crazy eyes. A powerful, captivating name, the kind of name a man might scream or moan. She scrawls a few at the top of the blank page. Jane. No. Olga. Not that either. Lola … Perhaps. May … Suddenly her pen traces the letters of Rebecca. Yes, that’s it: Rebecca! She will call her Rebecca. It sounds right, strong, the shivering r, the b forcing upper and lower lip together like a kiss, the two c’s stuck together, hard as a k. And that final a, a complaint, a groan. Rebecca lives in Bloomsbury, on the top floor of a tall building. What will we discover through our narrator, a young man dangerously attracted to her? What lurks behind the door of her attic apartment, in a round room, the walls covered in velvet, with thick curtains that muffle every sound? A disturbing truth. Rebecca prefers making love with a life-sized robot that she names Julio; this is her drug, her obsession, the only way she can feel pleasure. The title of her story? “The Doll.” Daphne smiles as she imagines the look on her parents’ faces. Maybe she shouldn’t show this to her mother: What could she take from this cruel tale, after all, other than that men are just toys, replaceable at will?

The next day, Daphne is invited to tea by the Quiller-Couches, the friends of J. M. Barrie, in their house on the Esplanade. She wears a dress instead of her customary pants, makes an effort with her hair. The atmosphere is cheerful and welcoming. Lady Quiller-Couch is charming, elegantly dressed in lilac satin. Daphne gets on wonderfully well with Foy, the writer’s daughter. It is Foy who introduces her to Lady Clara Vyvyan, an eccentric author and indefatigable traveler who lives in the manor house of Trelowarren, near Helford. Foy and Daphne share the same passion for the sea and for boats. What’s that, Daphne doesn’t have a sailboat? But she absolutely must, now she lives in Fowey. This is now all Daphne can think about. The Cora Ann is a motorboat, fine for the river or for a calm sea, but really, there’s no comparison. She talks about it with Adams and convinces her parents by showing so much enthusiasm that they can’t help but be charmed. She has won: she will have her boat. But, in the meantime, she must return to London, to the damp February cold.

Daphne has polished up her dozen short stories and she is quite proud of them, despite the often sordid and chilling subjects, the texts marked by a cynical vision of sexuality that does not reflect her own life at all. In her stories, all is adultery, vanity, manipulation, madness. Her writing is biting, lively, incredibly caustic for someone so young. What do Gerald and Muriel think of it? Daphne couldn’t care less. She wrote all the stories with passion, and that is what counts, not her parents’ opinion. Her aunt Billy types them, then the stories are submitted to a literary agent, an acquaintance of Viola Tree, for an opinion.

The presence of Geoffrey, who has come to Cannon Hall to spend a few days before undertaking the long journey to Australia, lights up Daphne’s winter. His wife is still convalescing in Brighton. Late at night, when everyone is asleep, Daphne meets her cousin in the living room, on the first floor, creeping downstairs on tiptoes. She is in pajamas, and so is he, waiting for her in the dark. He draws her toward him and kisses her. A real kiss. Then another. A lover’s kisses. Night after night, they meet in secret. She writes in her journal: I suppose I oughtn’t to let him, but it was nice and pleasant. I wish he could have been more light-hearted about it, though, and then I would have no compunction. But men are so odd. The strange thing is, it’s so like kissing Daddy. Perhaps this family is the same as the Borgias! Daddy is Pope Alexander, Geoffrey is Cesare, and I am Lucretia. A sort of incest.6

Despite the pleasantness of their kisses, Daphne warns her cousin in a long letter that he should pull himself together, stop lying—to his wife, to himself—and face facts. The day before his departure, Geoffrey thanks Daphne for her frankness; she is right, and he will conquer his own inconstancy, his weakness, but he has one last thing to tell her. Gerald came to speak to him last night, a scowl on his face, and asked him out of the blue, Are you in love with Daph? And Geoffrey replied, I’ve been in love with her for seven years. A bitter grin from Gerald: Nothing can come of it, you realize that? Geoffrey’s reply: I know, uncle, I know.7

After saying good-bye to Geoffrey, Daphne stands by for a response from the literary agent regarding her short stories. The wait seems interminable. What if she went to see Fernande again? It is snowing when she boards the ship at Dover, but she doesn’t care about the weather: Paris welcomes her, as always. In her journal, in French, she describes the smell of tobacco and beer that float by in the dusty streets, mingling with the odor of freshly baked bread. She longs to go back in time, to keep these moments forever. Sitting at Montparnasse café terraces in the early springtime, she amuses herself by detailing the faces of customers and passersby, reading Colette, Duhamel, D’Annunzio. One morning, Fernande hands Daphne an envelope with an English stamp, forwarded by Aunt Billy. The agent enjoyed her stories, he wants to see more; he is certain he will be able to find her a publisher.

*   *   *

Daphne goes back to London for her parents’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, celebrated in great pomp at the Savoy Hotel on April 11, 1928. She notices that her father does not like the portrait of Muriel his wife gives him—it’s written all over his face—and when he tries to attach his gift for her, a bracelet, to her wrist, it turns out to be too small. Oh dear, it was so pathetic,8 Daphne writes in her journal. Only her return to Fowey and the splendors of spring give her back her joie de vivre. She will be twenty-one soon, and a wonderful gift awaits her. Adams let it slip: his brother-in-law, Ernie Slade, who runs the shipyard at Polruan, is taking care of it in tandem with her parents: the du Mauriers will have a sailboat, but it will belong, above all, to Daphne. The most exciting thing is that she will be able to oversee the boat’s manufacture from the beginning. She must start by choosing the wood that will form its keel. Daphne asks him if Ernie is from the same family as Jane Slade. The very same, laughs Adams, the same family who have been building ships in Polruan as long as anyone remembers. And what about that box full of letters? Isn’t it time she took a look at that?

In the exhilaration of these moments, Daphne puts aside the stories she is supposed to write for the literary agent. The boat is the only thing on her mind, and she doesn’t miss a single stage of its construction. She knows its dimensions already, meets with Adams every morning at the shipyard, watches the men as they saw, cut, sand the wood. Ernie Slade answers every question she poses, charmed by her fervor. Jane Slade was his grandmother, a hell of a woman; the ship was named in her honor. Would Miss Daphne like to keep the figurehead as a souvenir? Daphne obtains her parents’ permission to have the wooden figure repainted and attached to the wall just below her bedroom window.

That same week, Adams knocks at the door of Ferryside while Daphne is drinking a cup of tea in the kitchen. He is holding a large box, which he hands to her with a smile: It’s for you, Miss Daphne. The box is stuffed full of old papers—letters, documents, notes. All about Jane Slade. Alone, filled with wonder, she leans over these yellowed pages with their old-fashioned handwriting; her tea goes cold as she is transported to another age. She takes the box up to her bedroom, grabs a notebook, a pencil, and hastily draws a family tree for the Slades going back to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Chewing the end of her pencil, then her fingernails, she dives back into her reading of the letters, only pausing to scrawl notes, and something begins to take shape. The colorful character of Jane Slade seems to dominate the entire family, leaving its imprint on her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and the ship that bore her name continued to sail for a long time after her death.

Daphne gets to her feet and begins pacing her room. Isn’t there enough material here for a novel? And it’s all there, within easy reach. Of course, she’ll have to work it, imagine the rest. Will she have enough energy to write a whole novel, she who hasn’t even managed to complete any more short stories for the literary agent? As she sits down again and leafs through the letters, intoxicated by their dusty, damp smell, ideas come to her, effortlessly. She sees the path of the narrative open up before her. Jane Slade’s son, the captain of the schooner, could also be a central character in the novel, connected to his mother by a timeless love.

The next morning, at the shipyard, Ernie Slade asks Daphne if she has thought about a name for the family boat. She talked about it on the phone with her father yesterday; he is as enthusiastic about it as his daughter, and they agreed that the boat should have a French name in honor of their French blood. Isn’t that a good idea? It will be the Marie-Louise. The schooner will not be ready for weeks, though, as construction is behind schedule. Daphne is disappointed. As a birthday consolation, on May 13, 1928, her parents give her a flat-bottomed rowing boat, painted black, with a little red sail, just for her: the Annabelle Lee. This eases her irritability, and she celebrates her twenty-first birthday at sea with Adams, who admires the dexterity of her oarsmanship. Despite her fine bone structure, Miss Daphne rows like a real sailor. It seems strange to celebrate her birthday without her family, but she finds that she likes it. How many girls of her age would prefer to be out at sea rather than dancing in a bar? She opens a few presents: a pretty notebook from Viola, a red scarf sent by Fernande that matches the Annabelle Lee’s sails. And a card from Geoffrey, posted from Melbourne. Those Borgiaesque kisses in the darkness of Cannon Hall seem so distant now. In her journal, she writes, in French: I no longer recognize my former actions.

Summer comes to Fowey and with it the rest of the du Maurier family. There is a long parade of guests, and as the sun shines down, Gerald seems to reconcile himself to Fowey. On July 2, 1928, British women are given the right to vote, but this news has little impact on Daphne, who is growing impatient because the Marie-Louise still isn’t ready. She wonders if Jane Slade suffered similar frustrations while waiting for her own ship to be built.

On September 13, the big day finally arrives. A bottle of champagne is ritually smashed against the bow of the Marie-Louise by Daphne. The sun shines and the east wind blows. Daphne’s knees tremble: she has been anticipating this moment for months! The Slade family is there, and the du Mauriers too, all gathered on the pontoon in the Polruan shipyard. Everyone walks aboard: a solemn, precious moment. The schooner slowly leaves the port; then suddenly the wind fills the sail with a sound like a whip and Daphne’s heart swells with joy. She takes the helm with a sure hand, feels the boat rear up, playing with the wind, and maintains her course under the watchful, protective eye of Adams. They leave the bay behind, and now they are out at sea, rushing over the waves, and she smiles, euphoric, the captain of the Marie-Louise.

A few weeks of sunlight and sailing, and then the fall is here with its cold weather, and they must store the Marie-Louise in a depot in Polruan for the winter. They scrub its hull, clean out its interior, and cover it with a tarpaulin to keep out ice, salt, mold. Daphne oversees the operations for the first time, saddened at the idea of having to wait for spring before she can see her beloved boat again. Ferryside becomes calm again; only Angela, Daphne, and the dogs remain, and they must close the house up soon. Has she made any progress with her stories? She can’t bear her parents asking her that question. Thankfully, they have left. No, she hasn’t made any progress, and she feels guilty about it. Why has she grown so lazy? She dreams of independence, of being able to live at Ferryside without financial help, and she’s not even capable of knuckling down to work. She has to get started again. Other girls of her age long to be married, to start a family. One day she might, too, perhaps, but for now writing is her priority: writing and earning a living from it, not having to depend on anyone else, whether it’s a husband or her parents.

It is a pleasure to spend time with her older sister, an impulsive character, as dark as Daphne is blond. Angela is always in a good mood, she laughs easily, never complains. But who is she really? Daphne wonders sometimes. Does it bother her to be the least pretty one, the sister no one notices? There is a lack of finesse to her features, she has a chubby face; her eyes are brown, not an intense blue like Daphne’s. Angela’s curves are no longer fashionable; in the 1920s, the style is for girls with slender, boyish figures. At twenty-four, she does not seem ready to find a husband any more than Daphne does, but in contrast to her sister, she enjoys going out, having fun. There is nothing timid about her; she is at ease in her parents’ theatrical set, all those elegant, exuberant people who love to dance, smoke, drink, and laugh. The very people Daphne avoids. One evening, as they are walking along the Esplanade with their dogs, Angela admits that she too would like to write novels, like Kicky. This confession amuses her sister: Why not, after all? They have the same genes—Angela is a du Maurier, just like her, descended from the same artistic French lineage, and it is surely no coincidence that Jeanne paints and plays the piano.

One October night, while Angela is reading in her room, Daphne quietly leaves the house and crosses the river on the Annabelle Lee, her faithful dog Bingo by her side. She strolls through Fowey’s silent streets toward St. Catherine’s Point and climbs up to the ruins of the castle. The moon is shining on the black rocks, the dancing sea. Daphne can hear nothing but the lapping of the waves below. She thinks about the novel that is taking shape in her head, this book born of her passion for the sea and for Fowey. A shiver runs through her. Her novel will span four generations of a family, beginning with a powerful woman and her son, connected by a love that nothing can destroy. She can feel the book at her fingertips, but she must wait a while longer before she has the will and the perseverance necessary to write it. For the moment, it inhabits her. It is an imaginary land where she likes to wander, to lose herself, like Kicky’s beloved “dreaming true” that provided so much inspiration for his own books.

Before going back to London at the end of the week, the du Maurier sisters have tea one last time with the Quiller-Couches. How lucky they are to live here all year round! Like Daphne, Angela has fallen in love with Fowey, and she tells her hosts, with her customary volubility, how much she finds pleasure in walking with her sister around town, especially up to Gribbin Head, above Sandy Cove, where the blue of the sea and the green of the countryside meet in perfect harmony. Daphne nods—a beautiful place, and as it happens she noticed, during one of their most recent walks, the gray roof of a distant house, just visible above the trees, inland. Lady Quiller-Couch pours her another cup of Darjeeling with a smile and says, Oh, that’s Menabilly.

Daphne hears the name for the first time. She pronounces it herself, as a question. Arthur Quiller-Couch replies in his calm, deep voice that Menabilly belongs to an old Cornish family who have lived in Fowey since the eighteenth century. That manor house was built during the reign of the Virgin Queen; it’s a very old house, its walls soaked with history. If those walls could speak … Daphne sits up suddenly in her chair, almost knocking over her cup of tea as her sister watches her, affectionate and amused. Couldn’t they say a bit more? It sounds fascinating. What exactly happened at Menabilly? Q stands up and walks over to the large window, facing out to sea, takes a sip of his tea, and begins to tell the story. One has to go back, way back to the bloody Civil War between the Cavaliers and the Roundheads that raged from 1642 to 1645. Menabilly was sacked by the parliamentary soldiers; it was carnage. Daphne listens, spellbound. For a long time, it’s been rumored that Menabilly is haunted, Q goes on, because when a new wing was constructed in the last century the skeleton of a Cavalier was discovered in a secret walled-up room. Lady Quiller-Couch reminds her husband about the ghost of the lady in blue, who can be seen in the same window of one of the house’s rooms. Daphne is restless with excitement: she wants to know who lives there now, how to reach the house. She is told that Dr. Rashleigh is the owner, but he doesn’t go there anymore; he lives in Devonshire and has no descendants. He had a troubled childhood in Menabilly, his parents are dead, and the house hasn’t been lived in for years. It must be in a terrible state by now. She wants to go there? It’s a few miles from the bay, quite easy to find from the Four Turnings crossroads, but she has to cross through thick, overgrown woods, because nobody looks after the property.

Back at Ferryside, Daphne can still hear Q’s voice resonating within her, explaining that, at its zenith, thirty years ago, Menabilly was a splendor—they used to go there for garden parties—but all that is over now; it’s like the house in Sleeping Beauty. While Angela talks in the kitchen with Mrs. Coombs, who is making their dinner, Daphne examines a map of the surrounding area in a guidebook bought by Muriel. She locates the spot, marks it with an X, and triumphantly announces during the meal that, tomorrow, they will go to Menabilly, they will find the famous house. Angela strokes her cheek, teasing her: What is her obsession with Menabilly? Why is she so interested in it? Daphne, wolfing down her food, shrugs: she doesn’t know how to explain it; all she knows is that she is attracted to the idea of this abandoned house. Later, when she goes to bed, her last thought is of that mysterious dwelling, buried deep in the woods.

The next day, in mid-afternoon, the sisters set out, with their dogs on leashes. It’s a sunny day—no rain or wind—and Daphne admires the autumnal colors, the golden leaves, the still-blue hydrangeas. At the Four Turnings crossroads, they have to pass a lodge to open a huge rusted gate. They hesitate. What if the guard comes out and asks what they’re doing? Daphne looks through the windows of the lodge. No one lives there anymore: the place is deserted. They are free to go on. Watched by the anxious Angela, Daphne manages to open the creaking gate. They enter a private driveway, pushing through thick undergrowth. As they advance, wide-eyed, the trees grow taller and the sky disappears behind their interlacing branches, like the vaulted ceiling of a cathedral. The sisters talk only in whispers now, even the dogs remain silent. The driveway meanders through deep greenery, and Daphne starts to daydream: she can almost hear the clatter of a horse’s hooves, the squeaking wheels of a horse-drawn carriage, can imagine the costumes of another age: doublets, capes, three-cornered hats, and powdered wigs.

They walk for a long time—the dogs’ tongues hang from their mouths; Angela’s feet ache—but still no manor house. Have they become lost in this labyrinth of brambles? They feel as if they are going around in circles, tripping in the same potholes, struggling past the same claw-like branches. Angela hates this ghostly atmosphere; when darkness falls, she firmly declares that she’s had enough, she wants to go back, she doesn’t care about finding the house. The owls hoot, and other birds make frightening cries. A fox noses around somewhere close and the dogs growl. A clinging damp rises from the mossy ground. It’s cold. Angela shivers. Finally, Daphne accepts defeat, for tonight. Reluctantly, she agrees to go home.

But how can they find their way back? A pale moon barely illuminates the shadowy path where evil-looking shapes seem to lurk, crouching in the blackness. Angela holds tight to her sister’s hand, and it is the brave Eric Avon who, step by step, guides her toward the safety and warmth of home. The forest grows lighter at last, and they find themselves on a hill that slopes gently down toward the sea and a cove. No manor house anywhere to be seen. They try to orient themselves: they are in Pridmouth, at least two miles from home. How could they have walked so far? It’s a long way to Bodinnick, and it’s the middle of the night. When they finally arrive at Ferryside, they are worn-out and the dogs are panting with thirst. Mrs. Coombs says she was beginning to worry. But a fine meal is waiting for them. Angela asks her sister if she really wants to go back there; Daphne, eating her soup, answers with a frown: Of course, what does she think? They will leave nice and early tomorrow morning, without the dogs. She spotted a road on the map that does not go through the forest. Angela sighs, rubbing her aching feet and wondering what on earth has gotten into her sister.

This time, they take Muriel’s car, driving on another road that goes around the forest, toward Par, and park outside West Lodge and another gate, just as rusted as the one they saw the day before. Daphne pushes it open without difficulty. They walk through woods, anxious at the thought of meeting a guard or watchdogs, but they don’t see a soul. Nor do they see a house. Have they gone the wrong way again? Perhaps Menabilly has no wish to be disturbed, perhaps she wants to remain a house of secrets,9 Daphne whispers, and her sister points out to her that she is speaking about this house as if it were alive.

They come out on a wide lawn overgrown by weeds and bordered by trees, and Angela sees her sister’s face light up. Who can she be looking at with such fervor, such love? Curious, Angela follows Daphne’s gaze, and there is the manor house rising up in front of them: Menabilly, a large, two-story building, its shutters closed, its gray façade covered by thick ivy. They stand at a distance, listening out for any signs of life, but it is utterly silent, so they move toward it. One of the first-floor shutters is open, they notice. Through the dusty windows, they make out paintings on the walls, furniture covered with sheets, an old rocking horse with peeling paint. Angela finds the place gloomy, filled with sadness and solitude, but Daphne doesn’t feel that way at all. That evening, she writes in her journal until late at night. Menabilly has taken hold of me.10

*   *   *

Daphne’s short stories have not found a publisher. She is bitterly disappointed. To console her, Aunt Billy gives them to her brother to read: Willie Beaumont is the editor of The Bystander, a popular magazine with a large readership. Uncle Willie is enchanted by “And Now to God the Father,” a cruel tale featuring an odious parson, the Reverend James Hollaway, the heartthrob of London, but the story needs a little work, a prospect that does not enthuse Daphne. She prefers to leave for Caux in early 1929 with her friend Pat Wallace, Edgar’s daughter. She wants snow, sunlight, pure air. To leave behind her parents and their social whirl. To leave behind her literary disappointments. Daphne is intoxicated by skiing and by the flings she enjoys in the evenings. In a letter to Ferdie, she confides: I was kissed by two young men at the same time, and another man, married, kissed me outside in the snow.11 Dismayed, and certainly jealous, Fernande sends her in reply an angry, reproachful letter that makes her smile. Dear Fernande, so quick-tempered. But what Daphne doesn’t know is that Fernande has warned Aunt Billy (whom she met in London, two years before) about her niece’s “misconduct,” and when Daphne returns to Cannon Hall a few weeks later, she is greeted by a stern-faced welcoming committee, including a father who is more suspicious than ever and a disapproving mother.

There is one pleasant surprise, however, amid this oppressive atmosphere: one of the young men she met in Caux (but not one of those she kissed) gets back in touch with her. His name is Carol Reed, he is Daphne’s age, and she likes him. He is the illegitimate son of the actor Herbert Beerbohm Tree, the father of their friend Viola. Tall, dark, and slim, Carol is an actor and works at Edgar Wallace’s movie studio. With the movies causing devastation to the popularity of the theater, even the great Gerald du Maurier eventually finds himself obligated to move from the boards to the silver screen, a painful transition that is not particularly successful. Gerald is going through a rough time: his manager, Tom Vaughan, has just died, and the supervision of Wyndham’s Theatre is complex, as is the thorny issue of income tax, which Gerald has never dealt with, leaving all the paperwork to Tom. Gerald’s glory days are behind him, he has mountains of back tax to pay, no play to stage, fewer roles, and even the movies are giving him the cold shoulder. And he’s not getting any younger: what hurts most is seeing that face in the mirror each morning, bereft of its former charms. He becomes depressed, and that drives him to drink.

Two or three times a week, under Gerald’s glowering eyes, Carol comes to Hampstead to pick Daphne up in his dilapidated Morris. They spend hours in cafés, smoking and talking. They go out to dinner, go to the movie theater, then drive at top speed through London, kissing at every stoplight. They walk the streets, arms around each other’s necks, and laugh as they climb scaffolding, enjoying the danger, then kiss again. When Carol takes her back, late, to Cannon Hall, Daphne looks up at the third floor, and behind the twitching curtain she perceives the severe face of her father, cigarette drooping from his lips as he watches them. As soon as she crosses the threshold, the rebukes begin. The pages of her journal are filled with her protests: Honestly! They might have been born centuries ago. They treat me like a Victorian miss of 16, instead of being nearly 22.12 Angela agrees with her: you’d think their father wanted them to be nuns, locked up in a convent!

Gerald Borgia is back. The Sunday chats between father and daughter in the dining room are tense now. Are you in love with Carol? Daphne’s reply: He’s a dear, I’m fond of him. Gerald pours himself a glass. Bad idea. Is he serious? Daphne: I don’t know what you mean by “serious.” Gerald downs his glass in a single gulp, pours himself another. Daphne looks away. Where do you go when the restaurants have closed? She sighs. We sort of drive around.13 How can she explain to him their walks by the Thames, all the way to Limehouse, the stories Carol tells, their complicity, their jokes, their kisses and caresses? Gerald wouldn’t understand any of it. And the next morning at breakfast, it’s Muriel’s turn, her voice cold, her gaze contemptuous. This coming home at one o’clock in the morning has got to stop. In future, you must be home by midnight. Really, it’s the thin end of the wedge.14 Why such drama? They should be happy to know that a young man is in love with her, given their deep suspicion of her relationship with Mlle Yvon. Will they never be content? Clearly, she can do nothing right in their eyes. How can she ever become a writer with parents like these on her back? It’s hardly surprising, she thinks, sniggering to herself as she strides determinedly over the Heath, that there is something diabolic about her stories born in such an atmosphere, sordid, disturbing, so far from the image of the pampered heiress. And yet that is exactly how she looks, on the front page of her uncle’s magazine, The Bystander, when it finally publishes “And Now to God the Father,” slightly changed and shortened, in the spring of 1929. For this she receives a fee of ten pounds, a decent start. Uncle Willie insisted that she pose for the cover, and she played along: went to the hairdresser, wore an elegant beige pantsuit, a gold necklace.

The magazine comes out while Daphne is alone in Fowey for a week. She makes a discreet visit to the local news vendor to buy a copy, somewhat embarrassed, her cap pulled down over her eyes, and can’t get over the experience of seeing her words in print for the first time. She thinks about all the people who will read her story. Her first readers. The cover itself has little effect on her: that sophisticated image has nothing to do with her, with the real Daphne, dressed like a sailor, but she is aware that her name is a springboard, understands why her pedigree is mentioned, her illustrious grandfather, her famous father … to her, this seems normal, even if she must now make a name for herself.

That evening, Carol calls her from London: how proud he was to see his “darling Daph” on the cover of a magazine. He offers her his warmest congratulations. Daphne smiles: he’s so sweet, this boy, she treasures their closeness, their giggling fits, the way they can tell each other everything or, equally, can stay silent but understand each other all the same. She adores his caresses, even if they do not possess the same forbidden passion as her secret affair with Ferdie. Carol’s absence weighs on Daphne—she won’t see him again for several weeks—but she has to face the truth: when she is here, she doesn’t really miss anyone or anything. She is at peace with herself, in her domain.

One morning, Daphne gets up at five o’ clock, crosses the river on her rowing boat, runs through the still-sleeping streets, and goes down to the beach at Pridmouth. The sun is rising; the sea is calm. The only other human being she sees is an old fisherman who waves to her from afar. The air is cool, colored with a milky mist that slowly dissipates as she walks up the long road to the peak of the hill, to the house that awaits her. She finds herself on a grassy footpath, lined with wild hyacinths. At the top of the hill, she turns around, her face caressed by the breeze and the rays of the rising sun, and looks out over the bay spread out below her, the point of Gribbin Head straight ahead. She is welcomed now not by owls but by the songs of thrushes and robins. Daphne walks to the end of the lawn, and the house appears, mysterious, surrounded by giant rhododendrons: she has never seen them grow so huge, so red. Daphne turns to the house of secrets and stares at it like a lover. She sits in the dew-wet grass and keeps staring and staring, enthralled. How much time does she stay there? Finally she gets up, her legs numb, and approaches the house, flattening her hands against its gray wall, under the ivy near the front door. A shiver runs down her spine and she closes her eyes, abandoning herself to this dizziness, more powerful than love, stronger than anything.

*   *   *

In late June 1929, as she prepares to spend the summer in Fowey, Daphne receives an unusual request from Rudolf Kommer, Viola Tree’s impresario friend, whom Daphne met in Berlin two years earlier. He is contacting her on behalf of the famous American investment banker Otto Kahn, who wishes to invite a group of favored people on a three-week cruise in the Norwegian fjords aboard his luxury steam yacht. The financier saw the cover of The Bystander and enjoyed reading Daphne’s story, and he would like her to be part of the voyage. Daphne’s first reaction is to refuse: she doesn’t know anyone on the ship apart from Kommer, she would undoubtedly be the youngest person on board and would probably be bored stiff, and besides, what about her clothes? She has no outfits chic enough for this kind of occasion. Her family is amazed: How can she turn down such an opportunity, she who adores the sea, ships, travel? And surely this trip would prove a great source of inspiration: it might make a novel one day. As for her wardrobe, all it would take is a few trips with Angela to Lillywhites in Piccadilly, and Muriel’s dressmaker could quickly make her several evening dresses. Daphne is not convinced.

She meets Carol that evening at the Café Anglais in Leicester Square. She tells him she has no desire at all to bow and scrape to a bunch of toothless old farts, stuck on a boat. Carol listens, laughing: she’s so funny, his “Daph,” when she imitates other people, sarcastic and scathing, more than slightly provocative. Well, then, she should stay, he says, kissing the back of her hand, her palm. She should spend the summer with him in London and leave the old farts to their cruise. On the red backseat in the Café Anglais, while the band plays “You Were Meant for Me”—their favorite song—Daphne kisses her lover and doesn’t notice the time passing … My God, it’s one in the morning, what a nightmare; her parents must be waiting for her now, wild with rage, on the doorstep. She can already see Gerald’s “Borgia” face. They must go now, drive at full throttle to Hampstead, prepare for the worst. Strangely, not a single light shines at Cannon Hall. All is silence. Daphne stealthily emerges from the Morris, blows a few kisses to Carol, slips inside the house, and rushes up to her bedroom, relieved.

The next morning, war is declared in the du Maurier family. Muriel’s face is cold as stone. As she wrote to Carol this morning, this is the last warning she will give them: if the rules are not respected, if Daphne is not back before midnight, they will not be allowed to see each other again. Daphne is speechless. The crisis is unexpectedly diverted by poor Angela, who is suffering from acute appendicitis. Carol scrawls a letter of apology to Sir Gerald and Lady du Maurier. But the harm is done, on both sides. There is no way Daphne can endure the coming weeks in the company of her parents. So, what if she decided to accept Otto Kahn’s invitation?

On the platform at Victoria Station, in early July, Daphne gets to know her travel companions, not such old farts after all, even if she is the youngest person in the group. There’s Lieutenant Colonel George, with his pretty wife. Two married ladies, without their husbands. A big, strapping, funny man and a tall, shy, bearded man, both single. Their host, Otto Kahn, is waiting for them in Hamburg with his friend Rudolf Kommer to set sail on the Albion. They are accompanied by a ravishing blonde, Irene. But which one is her lover, Daphne wonders mischievously, Otto or Rudolf? Or maybe both? The steam yacht is incredibly luxurious: each cabin has its own bathroom, the living room and dining room are decorated with great pomp, and all the meals are prepared by a chef.

Destination Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Oslo. The farther north the yacht moves, the longer the opaline sun stays in the sky: here, in high summer, the sun never sets. During meals on board the ship, Daphne gets to know Otto Kahn better. He is an affable and distinguished man, in his sixties, with silver hair and moustache. She is flattered that this rich, world-famous financier, a great art collector and patron, is so interested in her and seems to enjoy their philosophical discussions. She, in turn, asks him about the construction of the immense Oheka Castle, his property on Long Island. He eagerly describes the building, which is every bit as grand as any French château, with more than a hundred bedrooms, its name a contraction of his own (Otto Hermann Kahn). He is the richest person she has ever met. His wealth does not impress her all that much, but her natural curiosity gets the better of her: she wants to know more about the spectacular rise of this Jewish millionaire, born in Germany.

The cruise continues and during the white nights on the bridge, as the guests sip champagne, Kahn seems to neglect Irene, the pretty blonde, and show more interest in Daphne. He is old enough to be her grandfather; she is not amused. How to discourage the gallant Mr. Kahn? She coaxes the shy, bearded man from his shell, and he in turn is besotted. Even the lieutenant colonel knocks on her door while his wife is napping to “have a chat”; Daphne gently sends him packing. The only one not to fall under her spell is Ralph, the big, burly man, whose nose is buried in a book with the surprising title The Sexual Life of Savages. In her journal, she describes the stopovers: Oslo made no great impression on me. The fjords were another matter. This beauty is too much. It’s defeating, utterly bewildering. Beauty most exquisite. Blue and ice-white, mountains high and aloof with green, thick trees, yet utterly desolate, no humanity. Somehow, profoundly unhappy. I thought of the boy who would run away to sea in the white twilight in the book I must write one day, but he wouldn’t be in a steam-yacht, he’d be sailing before the mast.15 Though she relates her onboard conquests in great detail in the journal, she takes care not to mention them in letters to her family, or to Carol.

One sunny morning, Daphne is sitting on the edge of a fjord with Otto Kahn. The others have stayed on the yacht. A worrying situation. Facing the magnificent view, he tries to kiss her, once, twice. How can she reject him firmly, but with grace? There is no question of letting him get what he wants. She stands up suddenly, removes her dress and her underwear, watched by her stupefied host, and dives naked into the cool waters of the fjord. A risky maneuver, but it works. Kahn does not move, watching her swim with a bitter little smile on his face, then hands her the towel when she comes out, shivering. That is as far as he will go. The forty years’ difference between them put an end to his hopes of any funny business. During a later stopover, he offers to buy her a mink coat. She declines, replying impishly that fur is for old women, then points toward a silver dagger: That is the kind of thing she would like more if he insists on buying her a gift, and who knows, maybe it would come in useful one day?

The yacht is now heading south. The weather is changeable, the sea less calm, the ambience on board no longer quite so pleasant. Rudolf is sulking, and so are the two ladies; the lieutenant colonel’s wife avoids Daphne’s eyes. Irene drinks too much at lunch and has to be escorted, reeling, to her cabin. When she returns from the cruise, Daphne does not tell anyone much about what happened, but the whole story is recorded in the pages of her journal. From time to time, she looks at the dagger given to her by Otto Kahn, dreamily caresses its handle, and smiles.

*   *   *

London, in the heat of late July, and Daphne has an important meeting (thanks to Uncle Willie) with Michael Joseph of the prestigious literary agency Curtis Brown. Their offices are on Henrietta Street, in Covent Garden. He has read all her short stories and enjoyed them, but he feels certain that she is ready to write a novel. Doesn’t she already have an idea for a novel in mind? Daphne admits she does, an idea that has been brewing inside her for the past year. So what is she waiting for? Hesitation. Then she decides to trust this man, even though she doesn’t know him at all, and to explain, blushing darkly, that what is preventing her from writing is her family and that the only solution would be to shut herself up in the house in Cornwall after summer so she can work in peace. To her surprise, Michael Joseph takes her seriously. He suggests she continue to write short stories if she wishes and afterward they will see.

Ever keen to distance herself from Cannon Hall, Daphne spends a few weeks in Boulogne with Fernande. Her finishing school has grown in size and will move in time for the new academic year to a building in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Laid low by a cold caught at the end of the Scandinavian cruise (about which she will reveal no details to the oversensitive Ferdie), Daphne evades her questions. So, when is she going to write this novel of hers? She is just like her cousin Geoffrey, soft and weak! Despite the quinine that deadens her mind, Daphne defends herself spiritedly: She is nothing like him: how dare Ferdie compare her to him? She’s not just some piece of driftwood, at the mercy of the current. She will write her novel, very soon, and one day Ferdie will be proud of her—she’ll see!

To console Daphne and to calm her down, her friend promises to take her to Fontainebleau, to see Katherine Mansfield’s grave. As soon as she is over her cold, the two women set out. In the verdant little cemetery in Avon, Daphne and Fernande find the tomb, covered by a simple white slab marked with the dates 1888–1923. The caretaker tells them that the famous novelist, who died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-four, was originally buried in a mass grave due to the family’s financial problems but was transferred here later after the intervention of her brother-in-law. Touched, Daphne leaves a bouquet of roses, squeezes Fernande’s arm, and whispers that she wishes Katherine Mansfield could know how much she owes her, how much she is inspired by her work. To write as well as her: Is that even possible? Fernande tenderly pats Daphne’s cheek: perhaps Katherine Mansfield is looking down on her, encouraging her from above, who knows?…

The pilgrimage to the author’s graveside stimulates Daphne’s imagination. Armed with a new fountain pen, she starts writing in Fernande’s living room in Boulogne, and suddenly the words come easily; she is able to slip inside her characters’ minds; an entire story is told in a single sentence. The themes are a bit depressing, she writes in her journal, but I just can’t get rid of that. Ideas for stories crowd thick and fast, like people waiting for a train.16

Daphne arrives in Fowey at the end of summer, 1929, with her parents, her sisters, and various guests. What a joy it is to be back in her boat, on the sea, with her fishermen friends. And back near Menabilly, which still captivates her. She wants to show the secret house to Jeanne and one of her friends, Elaine, as well as their cousin Ursula, Uncle Willie’s daughter. The four young women take the forest path from Four Turnings: the very track where Angela and Daphne got lost. They walk for hours through the dense undergrowth, almost give up, then finally manage to locate the house and reach it from behind, coming first to the most recently built wing. They notice a half-open skylight; what if they tried to get inside? Daphne cannot resist the idea of seeing the house’s interior, and she is the one who leads the way, goes in first. The four girls advance amid sepulchral silence, finding walls covered with spiders’ webs, patches of brownish fungus in every corner, dusty floors littered with debris, and endless dark corridors. They eventually reach the oldest, noblest part of the house, and Daphne recognizes the large living room she had seen through the window with Angela.

She is finally here, in this long room decorated with family portraits, with furniture protected by dustcovers, with the old rocking horse that has not moved in years. Next to this room is a large dining room, and beyond that a library containing hundreds of books. What happened between these walls? What secrets is Menabilly hiding? Why does all this stir her feelings so? The other young ladies do not like the feeling of abandonment, the silence, the shadows, whereas Daphne wishes she could stay here longer, climb the grand wooden staircase, touch the remains of the peeling scarlet wallpaper that reminds her of the rhododendrons. They leave through the little window, which Daphne carefully closes behind her. While she catches up to the others, a huge white owl flies out of an upstairs window, startling her.

All evening, Daphne cannot rid her mind of images of the house. Why is she so possessed by a past that is not even hers, haunted by the memories of an abandoned manor house?

*   *   *

October 3, 1929: a cool, gray day. Daphne unlocks the door of Ferryside, with Bingo at her heels. The house smells stale and damp. She goes straight up to her bedroom and looks out the window, at the estuary and the sea, as she does every time she arrives here. The day has come. It will be today, she knows it; she has waited so long for this moment. Today, she is going to begin her novel. Nothing else matters. She is leaving behind her father’s growing financial worries, which have forced him to sell their famous surname to a brand of cigarettes. The transition from theater to movies seems as painful as ever, especially as he has to wake at dawn to be ready for the start of each day’s filming. Gerald would rather play his old roles onstage—Dear Brutus, Peter Pan—but the audience demand is no longer there. And Carol, who wants to marry her: he’s a sweet boy, but really, what an idea! How would she be able to write if she became his wife? He understands: he is kind, patient; she’s right, he’ll wait, she must go to Fowey to work, alone, he knows how much she needs that. Mo and Gerald agreed that she could go to Cornwall for two and a half months on condition that she stayed with Bingo at Miss Roberts’s house, across the road, so that the old lady can take care of her meals and keep the house clean. She will be able to write only in her bedroom at Ferryside; the rest of the house will remain shut up. Daphne accepts this deal without objection, even though Miss Roberts’s little house has no bathroom and only an outside toilet. At least Daphne knows that the housekeeper will never cast a contemptuous look at her muddy boots or her perpetual pair of pants.

The rain starts to pour down; the wind picks up; the sky grows dark. Daphne sits at her desk, wraps a wool blanket around her thighs, fills her pen with ink. On a blank page, she writes the date, and the title of the novel, which came to her just like that—The Loving Spirit—then a few lines from a poem by Emily Brontë:

Alas, the countless links are strong,

That bind us to our clay,

The loving spirit lingers long,

And would not pass away.

She begins. Jane Slade becomes Janet Coombe. Fowey is renamed Plyn. While the storm howls outside, Daphne writes in a rush, unhesitatingly. Janet is a tall, stocky brunette with powerful hands and a moody, melancholic nature, in love with the sea; she dreams of escape, freedom, wishes she had been a man. She is engaged to Thomas, her cousin, and even though she does genuinely love him, even though she is happy to start a family with him, she cannot help imagining another life as a sailor, without attachments, aboard a ship sailing around the world. When night falls, Daphne puts down her pen, wraps herself up in her oilskin, locks the house, and walks back to Miss Roberts’s house. The next day, she is back again. A ritual begins. After lunch, made by her landlady, she goes for a walk with Bingo before returning to her desk.

She is possessed by her novel; it is all she sees. She smiles tenderly as she reads through Carol’s letters, then forgets them completely. She has eyes only for Janet and her nocturnal walks in the hills of Plyn; she lives only for her freedom-starved heroine, with whom she secretly identifies; she follows her up to where the wind whips her long black hair, where Janet has a vision that turns her life upside down, the vision of a man who looks just like her: he has her eyes, her hair, and one night he comes to talk to her at the cliff’s edge.

Lost in her book, Daphne is unaware when the world of finance collapses on October 24, 1929, in Wall Street. She has no idea that her devoted admirer Otto Kahn and other stock-market big hitters are suffering a black week that will mark their lives forever. She writes in a frenzy, six or seven hours per day, holding her pen so tightly that a callus forms on her middle finger. After the birth of her second son, Janet realizes that little Joseph is the incarnation of the vision she had on the cliff, that he represents that loving spirit, the son who is almost a bodily part of herself, her double. Daphne has no doubt that the connection she is describing between mother and son is excessively close, almost incestuous, but she accepts this. Within a month, she has finished the first two parts, which tell Janet’s story, then Joseph’s, and the construction of the ship that bears her heroine’s name. Without pausing to rest, she throws herself into the next part, about Christopher, the grandson, third generation of the Coombe family. He does not get along with his father, Joseph, does not share his passion for the sea. There are conflicts, and Daphne writes even more passionately, inhabited by her characters. Her only form of recreation is the weekly Sunday dinner at the Quiller-Couches’ house, with Lady Vyvyan, as lively as ever. On November 17, she finishes her third chapter. In a few days, she must return to London, as agreed with her parents, and she will not come back to Fowey until the New Year. Her novel must wait. Her only source of happiness is seeing Carol again. During the Christmas holidays, she thinks constantly about the unfinished manuscript that waits for her at Ferryside. She is racked by doubts: Isn’t it too long, too boring? Has she worked at it enough? Will the book find a publisher? Will she find readers?

Daphne returns to Cornwall in early January 1930 and is reunited with her dog (who stayed with the gardener while she was gone), Miss Roberts, and her book. It is impossible to write in Ferryside now, because of the cold and the snowstorms, so she works in her landlady’s cramped living room. The final part of her text causes her a few difficulties. The fourth generation of the Coombe family is symbolized by Jennifer—the daughter of Christopher and great-granddaughter of Janet—who is only six when her father dies at sea. Daphne is not entirely convinced by this character. How can she make her more captivating? What if she has lost the plot of her story? While the snowflakes cover the roof of the little house, Daphne daydreams, pen in hand. Miss Roberts is humming in the kitchen, presumably unaware that she is preventing her lodger from concentrating. What would Katherine Mansfield do in her place? On January 16, during another storm, Miss Roberts and Daphne are startled by the explosion of a distress flare. The woman next door announces excitedly that a ship has crashed into Cannis Rock, not far from Menabilly, the house Daphne loves so much. The next day, Daphne goes to the cliff top in Pridmouth and looks down at the three-mast ship, a hundred feet long, its iron hull damaged, run aground on the rocks at the mercy of the waves. Its name: the Romanie. She knows she will never forget this vision of a shipwreck.

She finishes the novel in late February. Ten weeks of work: Daphne is drained, exhausted. Doubts prey on her, as always. She has to admit that the final chapter was longer and harder to write than the previous three. Jennifer is not her favorite character; she feels closer to the wildly romantic figures of Janet and Joseph. The sea is less present in the final chapter, the ship too, and she was not as inspired by describing London in 1880. She fears her readers will sense all this. To celebrate the completion of her book, Daphne walks up to the little church in Lanteglos and prays in silence by Jane Slade’s grave. The Quiller-Couches know a secretary who can type up the manuscript, and Daphne hands over her precious pages to this Mrs. Smith. Two weeks later, Mrs. Smith brings her the first two parts. The sweet, rotund lady is her first reader. What will she think of it? On the doorstep, Mrs. Smith smiles. She tells Daphne she found the book fascinating and can hardly wait to type up the rest! Hope is reborn. When Mrs. Smith has finished, she mails the typescript to Hampstead, where Daphne is once again staying. The packet is enormous—my God, did she really write all that? Her family is proud. Angela manages a slightly forced smile, admitting that she too is trying to write a novel, but it is nothing like Daphne’s.

Now she must drop off the heavy parcel with Michael Joseph, on Henrietta Street. But there is no way she’s going to pace the floors of Cannon Hall, waiting for her agent’s response. Daphne takes refuge with Fernande. Her former headmistress is now in Neuilly-sur-Seine, at 44 Rue de Chézy, a much bigger house (named Les Chimères) than the last one, with a large garden, a tennis court, and a dozen boarders from various parts of the world—England, America, Norway, South Africa—plus a team of teachers. Fernande works constantly, giving classes, recruiting students; she seems happy but tired. Their relationship has changed, the passion and affection giving way to a serene, deep friendship.

A postcard from Michael Joseph is awaiting Daphne when she returns from her Parisian outing. He very much liked The Loving Spirit and is submitting it immediately to a few publishers. He will keep her informed as and when he hears anything. Daphne becomes ever more anxious. She seems to see every fault in the book in unforgiving close-up, its longueurs, its weaknesses. She goes back to Montparnasse and spends her afternoons reading at Le Dôme Café. The wait feels endless. Daphne conceals her impatience by walking along Avenue de Neuilly and visiting the market, breathing in the powerful smells of cheese, buying a still-warm baguette and nibbling it as she crosses the Seine toward Puteaux.

At breakfast on March 30, 1930, Fernande hands out the mail to her boarders, as she does every morning. Daphne receives a letter with the logo of the Curtis Brown Agency on the back. She opens it feverishly and reads it, hand on mouth. Fernande, impatient, asks her what’s going on. Daphne shrieks, jumps to her feet, almost knocking over the coffeemaker and spilling it on the two South African sisters, Dagmar and Lucila. Fernande asks her again, and Daphne hops around the dining room table, shouting with joy and making Schüller bark. Janet, Kitty, Iris, Honoria, Millie, and Mary all sit in silence, taken aback, and the other professors stare wide-eyed; then Daphne pirouettes toward Fernande, brandishing the letter: Can she believe it? Her novel is going to be published by Heinemann, first in England, and then with Doubleday in the United States! Isn’t that extraordinary?

*   *   *

No more procrastination. Those days of no one taking her seriously … they’re over. On May 13, 1930, Daphne turns twenty-three. She no longer thinks of herself as a dilettante; she is a writer on the verge of being published. She begins revising her novel, under the shrewd supervision of Michael Joseph. The publisher, Heinemann, thinks it too long. Daphne learns to cut her own words efficiently, unsentimentally, resigned to the loss of whole passages that she had so enjoyed writing. Infuriatingly, the book will not be published until the following year. The world of publishing is full of delays of which, for the moment, she has no comprehension; she knows nothing about how books are manufactured, marketed, distributed to bookstores, launched, and publicized. All of this she will learn soon.

The machine has been set in motion. Nothing now can prevent Daphne from writing. Nothing and no one. Certainly not her parents. Are they proud of her? Probably. Do they realize the scale of her ambitions? Possibly not. Ideas are forming in her head, like blossoms on tree branches in springtime. While she waits for the still far-off appearance of The Loving Spirit Daphne throws herself into a new novel. What, already? her family exclaim. She smiles, a little mockingly: Yes, already, that’s what her life is now, she’s a writer, she writes, haven’t they understood yet? This time, there is no need to isolate herself in Fowey. Aunt Billy lends her a secretary’s office on Orange Street. Each morning, early, before her parents or sisters are awake, she goes there, and works all day, stopping only for a brief lunch with Carol.

She is not talking to anyone about this book, not yet. She is letting it come out of her, giving it free rein. It has a different voice from the last one, a man’s voice, and it’s written in the first person. The narrator is Richard, twenty-three years old. Is it strange, identifying with a male hero? Not really. She is guided by Eric Avon, as she has been ever since she was ten. She has absolute trust in this secret boy who lives inside her, unknown to everyone else. Dick—as Richard is generally known—is a young man of good family who is disowned by his father, a famous writer, apalled by his son’s pornographic poems. Dick attempts suicide in the opening pages and is saved at the last moment by an older man, Jake, a strange fellow with a shady past, who takes him on board the Romanie, a merchant ship headed north.

In the dusty office on Orange Street, while spring is blossoming in London, Daphne meticulously re-creates the blue-and-green landscapes of her cruise with Otto Kahn, describing those Nordic cities bathed in white light. And, to her great pleasure, she becomes what she has always dreamed of being: a boy. It is the first time she has written as “I.” She realizes that this book—modern, impertinent, audacious—risks shocking people. Oh well. She would rather have an impact than leave readers indifferent. One of the book’s central themes is love: not love with a capital L, but the sex, disgust, and doubts it arouses. In Montparnasse, Dick meets Hesta, a young music student, of American origin. How Daphne enjoys describing Paris, which she considers hers; it is the French part of her that narrates Dick’s wanderings through those places she knows so well, the bars, the restaurants, where she has so often sat to observe passersby. Despite his money worries, Dick leads an idle life, postponing the idea of marriage and finding a small apartment on Boulevard Raspail where he spends his days in bed with Hesta, feeling sure that he will become a famous writer, and becoming mired in his own laziness. He cannot escape his need for paternal approval, and his manuscript is rejected by a publisher: a crushing moment. Having left Hesta and regained a little common sense, Dick will become a boring office employee, his turbulent youth now consigned to the past.

Daphne hides skillfully behind Dick—her screen, her protection—and who can doubt, reading this book, that the young female author knows all about the mechanics of carnal love, that she has tasted pleasure in the arms of an experienced older woman, then with an enamored young man, that she now understands the full powers of the secret and the forbidden? Only her sisters know almost everything about her clandestine life, and when she speaks to them about it, it is always under the cover of the code they have developed together: “wax,”* “spinning,”* “Cairo.”*

In two months, the novel is completed. On July 18, 1930, Daphne scrawls The End and takes the Tube home. She doesn’t feel like talking, shuts herself up in her room, seeking rest. In silence, lying on her back, she smokes a cigarette and stares at the ceiling. She likes this solitude, this exhaustion, that no one else could ever understand.

In late July, Daphne sends the novel to her agent, along with a short note. The book is titled I’ll Never Be Young Again. She grows nervous. How can she prepare herself for another person’s reactions? No member of her family has yet read the first book; they are patiently waiting for its publication, set for February 1931. And here she is, already having “bashed out” another one, radically different. As has become her custom, Daphne leaves Hampstead and goes to meet Fernande for a few weeks in Brittany—in the town of Quimper—taking with her a photograph of herself taken by Cecil Beaton, the famous photographer and a family friend. At the bottom of the glazed paper, on the right, she has written the words: For Fernande, August 1930. It is not until later, in Fowey, that she will receive the phone call she has been expecting from her agent. He likes this new book, very surprising, it won’t be so easy to promote, because the main character is so lacking in charisma, it’s hard to identify with him, he’s a selfish and sometimes vain young man, and the book’s themes are resolutely modern, which might trouble certain readers. Listening, Daphne grimaces, imagining Q’s face when he reads the book; she already feels sure he won’t like it. Anyway, better not to think about that for the moment, particularly as the book won’t be published until 1932. What did her agent like best? The descriptions of Scandinavia and of Paris. The latter were especially masterful. He understands that she can change style, genre, that she is not the type of writer who will always remain faithful to one subject. He is astonished by her eclecticism, at only twenty-three years old, and wonders what on earth she might come up with next. Swept away by Michael Joseph’s enthusiasm, Daphne feels liberated, euphoric. But she will have to learn to dismiss other people’s views and judgments. As she heads out with Bingo toward Readymoney Cove, it strikes her that writers should never be afraid of anyone, or anything, except the fear they may no longer be able to write.

While she waits for the publication of The Loving Spirit, Daphne spends several months in Fowey, becoming closer to Foy Quiller-Couch, a treasured friend, and to Clara Vyvyan, despite the latter being twenty-five years older than her. Carol has gone to the United States to shoot a movie. She doesn’t miss him. Or not much, anyway. He is slowly fading from her life. Q suggested to Daphne that she write to Dr. Rashleigh to ask his permission to roam around the grounds of Menabilly. To her surprise, he agrees, and she goes there regularly, still stirred by the same passion for the large, empty house.

One day in November 1930, Foy and Daphne go for a horse ride on the rocky, deserted moors of Bodmin, located to the north, near Launceston. They stop at a granite hostelry with the exotic name of Jamaica Inn, which makes Daphne laugh. The wild moors around Bodmin take root in her fertile imagination. There are no trees or grass for miles around, no roads or villages, no signs of life at all. The two young women get lost, wandering across an endless arid landscape, the wind buffeting them, overlooked by huge blocks of craggy rocks. There is no way of finding their path again, and when a storm suddenly breaks above them, the rain pouring torrentially down on them, they panic. Numb with cold and soaked to the bones, they try to take shelter in the ruins of an abandoned farm. Time passes. Night falls. They are alone in this vast, lunar, inhospitable space. Exhausted, Foy suggests letting the horses guide them by instinct. In the small hours of the night, when they are starving and on their last legs, no longer believing they will find their way, the tall chimneys of Jamaica Inn rear up before them, illuminated by flashlights. The hostelry’s managers had begun to worry and had sent out men to search for them on the moors. They are welcomed with a hearty supper of eggs and bacon. While they warm up by the peat fire, Foy elbows her friend in the ribs: And what if Daphne wrote a novel about their disastrous outing?

*   *   *

One December morning in Fowey, Daphne receives a check from her publisher for The Loving Spirit: sixty-seven pounds sterling. It’s not a huge sum, but it is money she has earned herself, alone, with her pen. She also receives her author copies of the book and is surprised by the emotion she feels at holding her first published novel in her hands. Daphne signs one for her father and mails it to Hampstead, still under the spell of this unexpected emotion. A few days later, Gerald calls to tell her how much he liked it. This is a relief. The other members of her family—Aunt Billy, Uncle Willie—plus Tod and Q, write her complimentary letters about the novel. Will the critics be this favorable, too? Daphne doubts it. But she doesn’t let these negative thoughts affect her. She looks ahead: she still has such a long way to go, so many stories to imagine. The Loving Spirit, even if Daphne is not ashamed of it, already seems part of the distant past, written at a different point in her life.

She uses her first earnings to return to France in the New Year, to stay with Fernande on Rue de Chézy, in Neuilly. In early January 1931, a third novel demands forcefully to be written. This is not the story of her misadventures on the moors with Foy—she puts that aside for later. This is a new direction, far from the romantic melodrama of The Loving Spirit and further still from the narcissism of young Dick, lost in his frantic pursuit of pleasure. The hero forming in her mind is named Julius Lévy, born in Puteaux, France, in 1860, the son of a Jewish Algerian immigrant and a Christian peasant girl.

On the first floor of the house on Rue de Chézy, Daphne sits down at Fernande’s desk, in the living room with a window overlooking the garden. In this large room filled with books and flowers, she is able to write undisturbed, barely even hearing the classes being taught in the adjoining rooms, the whispers, the footsteps of the students on the stairs. Sometimes, Fernande pokes her head through the door, impressed by her young friend’s concentration. Daphne raises her eyebrows mischievously: and to think that not so long ago, Ferdie was comparing her to her poor, sluggish cousin Geoffrey, accusing her of lacking energy and motivation! How times have changed. Her first novel will come out in a month, the second the following year, and here she is already at work on the third, which will see the light of day in 1933. Fernande smiles and tenderly strokes the pale forehead leaning over the pile of pages: she never doubted it; she always knew that Daphne would be a great novelist.

The book that is taking shape is volcanic, brutal, disturbing. There is nothing sympathetic about Julius Lévy. Even as a child, he is capable of throwing his kitten into the Seine, of coldly watching as his father murders his adulterous mother. Where does he come from, this cruel being, consumed with ambition, cunning and fearsome? He has none of the golden sophistication of Otto Kahn, who made such an impression on Daphne. In her journal, the young woman writes: No ships, no wrecks, no boys running away to sea. Julius, I see him as child, an old man. I must follow him throughout his life, from the 1870 war between France and Prussia. I must look up all the history of the siege of Paris. I must work like a fury.17 But it is rather the book itself that is a fury, overflowing with shocking, macabre images, like young Julius’s liaison with a twelve-year-old prostitute, like the apocalyptic childbirth suffered by Rachel, Julius’s wife, a rich heiress who will give him a child.

Daphne puts the vile and fascinating Julius aside and goes back to London to celebrate the publication of her first novel, on February 23, 1931. Armed with the famous du Maurier name, her publisher has arranged a few advertisements and articles to support the book’s release. In the excitement of these weeks, Daphne does not know that Angela too has written a book, A Little Less, a love story between two women, which she has not shown to her family and for which she has attempted to find a publisher, secretly and without success. Angela flits from party to party, hiding her sadness and disappointment behind her evening dresses, and warmly congratulates her younger sister on the publication of The Loving Spirit. The critics are generally positive toward this family saga, influenced by the Brontë sisters. The Times of March 10, 1931, hopes that Miss du Maurier will, with time and experience, be able to follow in the footsteps of her illustrious grandfather. The Spectator encourages her to distance herself from her artistic emotions. The Observer and the Times Literary Supplement are emphatically enthusiastic. The Saturday Review is less so, complaining of an overabundance of pathos and an incomprehensible dialect, while nonetheless saluting the young novelist’s promise. The New York Herald Tribune is warmly encouraging. When her publisher tells her that they are ordering a second print run of the book, Daphne is delighted, but she keeps her feet on the ground. She is thinking about the next one and has only one desire: to get back to the ruthless Julius and his meteoric rise. She accepts an invitation to the American embassy from her New York editor, the famous Nelson Doubleday, but feels out of place; she is by far the youngest person there. Even so, she is enchanted by the friendly, welcoming Doubleday, with his kind smile and his impressive moustache.

Back in Fowey, Daphne breathes easier, as always, dividing her time between walks, outings on the Marie-Louise, a weekly dinner with the Quiller-Couches, and the writing of her book. She has no wish to return to London. Her days and nights are haunted by Julius Lévy, with his sharp eyes, his appetites, his dizzying ascent. He moves to London and becomes a powerful, feared, respected businessman. Nothing can stop him. He only loves one person other than himself: his daughter, Gabriel, a slender girl with blond hair and blue eyes. She is his obsession, his adoration. A hint of incest. Daphne worries that she is overdoing this aspect of the story. Will Gerald recognize himself in this image of the monstrously jealous father who cannot bear his daughter going out at night, who cannot accept the idea that she might have lovers, who waits at the top of the stairs to reprimand her? How will he react? Ultimately, though, that doesn’t really matter to Daphne. The essential thing is that she has freed herself from her father’s influence by fictionalizing him in these (admittedly shocking) pages. She is not afraid anymore. There is a tangible distance between them. She knows now that, in order to write, she must not fear anything at all. Otherwise, there is no point in writing.

One day in mid-July 1931, Daphne is woken at dawn by the telephone. Her parents are sleeping upstairs in Ferryside. She rushes to answer it. The call is from a nurse in the hospital in Ripon, a small town in Yorkshire. Angela has had a car accident, but everything’s fine; she is not seriously injured. She will need about a week of treatment there before rejoining her family. Angela arrives seven days later, her face covered in bruises and her neck bandaged. When their parents return to London in mid-August, the sisters remain in Fowey, one to write and the other to rest.

In September, Daphne is in her room, pen in hand, still lost in the world of Julius, when her sister calls her, sounding agitated. There’s a most attractive man going up and down the harbour in a white motor-boat [sic]. Do come and look.18 Intrigued, Daphne goes upstairs to join her sister, who is standing by the window. Angela hands her Gerald’s binoculars, the ones he uses to watch birds. The man in question is just her type: tall, dark, handsome, muscular, and elegantly dressed. The next day, this magnificent man in his thirties is back again, this time accompanied by a friend (less attractive, as Angela notes) and they begin speeding back and forth past the house in the white motorboat with the curious name of Ygdrasil. So who is this handsome helmsman? They find out the answer from their neighbors: He is Major Browning, a young soldier with a brilliant career, educated at Eton and Sandhurst, recipient of the Distinguished Service Order and the French War Cross, obtained in 1917, when he was only nineteen years old. He is currently attached to the 2nd Battalion of the Grenadier Guards in Pirbright.

Daphne forgets him quite quickly: she is close to finishing her novel and does not allow herself any distractions. In November 1931, The Progress of Julius is completed, and in January 1932 she sends it to Michael Joseph, who does not seem overly perturbed by its darkness or its terrifying end. Daphne says the unsayable, daring to describe the vile act Julius performs on his daughter, and if the reader is left stunned, that is precisely what the author wants. The book will be published in the spring of 1933. I’ll Never Be Young Again is set for May 1932, and preparations are under way for its publication. She already has to pose for a few photographs, something Daphne endures rather than enjoys. Her agent sends a well-known photographer, Miss Compton Collier, who specializes in taking portraits of famous people, to capture a series of pictures. Daphne warns her agent: she is not going to change, she will wear her usual sweater and pants. Her only compromise is to put on bit of lipstick. Miss Collier accepts these demands without complaint, and Daphne poses in the living room at Ferryside, looking a little rebellious with her raised chin, her defiant gaze, hands wrapped round her knees, a cigarette drooping from her red lips. A curious portrait, both masculine and feminine, and one that amuses Daphne, who feels as if Eric Avon is making an unexpected first public appearance.

*   *   *

In April 1932, while she is convalescing at Fowey after an appendectomy, Daphne is told by the managers of the Ferry Inn that handsome Major Browning is back in town again. He arrived on the Ygdrasil and has admitted to George Hunkin, a friend who works at the shipyard in Bodinnick, that he would very much like to meet Miss du Maurier. Daphne is secretly flattered. The next day, she receives a short note at Ferryside.

Dear Miss du Maurier, I believe my late father, Freddie Browning, used to know yours, as fellow members of the Garrick Club. The Hunkins tell me you have had your appendix out and can’t do much rowing yet, so I wondered if you would care to come out in my boat? How about tomorrow afternoon?

 

Boy Browning19

Daphne replies by return of post that she would be delighted.

April 8, 1932: a sunny day in Fowey, with a cool breeze, the perfect combination as far as Daphne is concerned. Major Browning comes to fetch her outside Ferryside, hatless and magnificent. He holds out his hand to help her aboard the Ygdrasil. She suspects Jeanne is spying on her from the window above. She and the major have to sit very close to hear each other over the roar of the wind. He explains that his first name is Frederick, but that everyone calls him Tommy and he would be happy if Daphne would do the same. Daphne already knows his nickname—Boy—because she read it in the papers. She knows he earned it by being awarded the prestigious War Cross when still very young. “Boy,” that word so idolized by Daphne, by Barrie, by the whole du Maurier clan.She asks him what “Ygdrasil” means and Tommy’s response is that the name comes from ancient Nordic mythology and means “the tree of destiny.” But the boat too has a nickname, Yggy. She watches Tommy’s hands on the helm, manly hands, supple and tanned. Up close, she notices that his eyes are green, his smile radiant. Tommy: she used that name in her childhood story The Searchers. Never in her life has Daphne felt so attracted to a man. Carol pales in comparison: a charming fellow, of course, but one for whom she feels a sort of brotherly affection. Boy Browning is not afraid of the gusting wind, nor the waves, and he steers his boat with strength and skill. Daphne laughs with him as the two of them are soon soaked by the spray. She can hardly believe how easily they get along, the pure happiness she feels in his company, as if they have known each other for years. After their outing, she shows him the Marie-Louise. He loves boats as much as she does, loves the sea, salt, wind, just like her.

In Ferryside, Tommy and Daphne sit in front of the fireplace and talk about everything, while Jeanne discreetly remains upstairs. Conversation is effortless and pleasurable. He has something he must confess to her. The reason he came to Fowey for his leave was because he wanted to meet her. She is amazed. He goes on, telling her how much he enjoyed The Loving Spirit, with its evocation of the sea and sailing, his two passions, then he came across a magazine article about Miss du Maurier in Fowey, at Ferryside, and there was a photograph of her … He doesn’t say any more, just smiles. On the doorstep, he asks her if she is free tomorrow. He has another two days in Fowey before he must return to his unit. She nods, waves good-bye, watches him ride away on the water, then closes the door with a sigh of ecstasy. Jeanne comes hurtling downstairs and the two of them stand by the window to watch the handsome major at the helm of his boat. Jeanne pinches her cheek, teases her, what a lovely “menace”*! And Daphne replies that she has never felt so “menaced” in all her life!

Two days together, sailing, walking in the hills of Fowey, sitting by the fire and talking. They discuss the book that brought them together, the books yet to be published, which might surprise him. They talk about their families: Tommy about his mother and his sister, Daphne about her whole clan. When he has to go, Tommy kisses her for the first time, and she shivers at this masculine contact. One week later, he turns up early in the morning while she is sawing firewood in the garden; he drove all night to be with her. With a teasing smile, Daphne remarks that the army seems to be very generous with its leave at the moment. He shrugs, equally mischievous: not much is going on at the moment, and an officer friend of his agreed to do his job for him, so—if she’ll put down that saw—the Yggy is ready to go! Daphne looks forward excitedly to each of the major’s visits. He is there for her birthday and meets Mo and Gerald, who end up inviting him to dinner. He makes a good impression on them. How could he do otherwise?

Amid this whirlwind of romance that fills her mind, Daphne is confronted with a less pleasant aspect of life as a writer: the first mixed reviews, bad reviews, or simply the absence of any review at all, with merely a brief résumé of the book’s plot. I’ll Never Be Young Again has just been published, and it perplexes journalists and readers alike, surprised by the absence of the romance they found in her first novel, disturbed by the crudeness of Dick’s adventures. But her agent reassures her that the novel is selling well despite all this and she will soon be receiving checks for much bigger sums. Daphne realizes that she will be able to plan on a future of financial independence. However, she must face up to the unfavorable opinions of people she respects, such as Tod or Q, who is severe in his criticisms of the book, denouncing its vulgarity and its cynicism. Aunt Billy echoes these sentiments. The members of the Garrick Club in London are outraged: How can a young lady of their rank permit herself to be so knowledgeable and brutally honest about sexuality? Only Gerald and Angela offer her any succor, her father whispering a few well-chosen words of encouragement and her sister genuinely adoring the book and comparing it to Hemingway. Daphne does not let the negativity grind her down; she believes a novelist must be free, must not write for other people, and must learn not to fear their reactions. In truth, what most interests her in this early summer of 1932 is Major Browning, who makes regular trips to see her.

During an outing on the Yggy on June 29, Daphne lets Tommy know just how attracted she is to him; she is the one who makes the move—there is nothing shy about her—but Tommy has his principles. This will not be some casual fling, like the one between Dick and Hesta in her second novel. They are serious, and now they talk about marriage for the first time. Daphne is simultaneously thrilled and panic-stricken. Marriage? It’s so quick, a little crazy, but at the same time she likes that, the speed, the craziness. She is in love with this man, who attracts her as no man ever has before. The feelings she has for him are much more powerful than any she had for Geoffrey or Carol, and they have so much in common. Yes, she wants to become this man’s wife, in spite of her desire for independence, of her secret former passion for Fernande, of everything she has ever said about marriage in the past. She draws a line under what she has experienced with Ferdie: that’s in the past, it’s behind her, and she has never considered herself one of those women with “Venetian”* tendencies. In fact, she shares her father’s oft-expressed repugnance for homosexuals. The boy in her accepts defeat; she begins to leave him behind, and Eric Avon curls up in his box somewhere deep inside her, nestled in the shadows.

Will Tommy give her the freedom to write? Does he expect a devoted, attentive officer’s wife? Daphne can hardly boil an egg, never mind make a bed. But who cares! She sweeps away her doubts and succumbs to the joy of being loved by this brilliant, funny, charming man who is madly in love with her. And by becoming Mrs. Browning she will free herself forever from her father’s grip. The first thing to do is write to her mother, to Carol, and to Fernande and tell them everything. How will they take the news? No time to think about that: she writes the three letters in a rush and mails them straightaway. Next, she heads for Pirbright, in Surrey. At Tommy’s army camp, she is shocked and proud to see him in his uniform. Then she travels to Rousham, Oxfordshire, to meet his mother, Nancy, and his sister, Grace. Sweet and kind, she notes in her journal. It’s all like a dream, and sometimes I feel I am a ghost, with a path laid out before me, and a picture of every moment.20

When Muriel reads Daphne’s letter out loud at Cannon Hall, Gerald breaks down in sobs. According to Mo, he cried out, It isn’t fair!21 But he changed his mind, she tells her daughter, because his dear brother Guy was a soldier and would have approved of this nephew with all his medals. Gerald and Mo are expecting a London wedding at the Guards Chapel, an expensive white dress, flowers, a sumptuous garden party. Daphne cuts them short. Oh, no, nothing big, she writes to them. Just yourselves, as Angela and Jeanne are away. Down at Fowey, at Lanteglos church, where Jane Slade was buried. Early in the morning, July 19th, and the Hunkins as witnesses.22

Muriel is disappointed—she would have so liked to mark the occasion properly for this first of her daughters’ weddings—but Daphne has made her decision: it will be quick and without any “fuss.” She is twenty-five, after all; she’s not a child anymore! The press, of course, takes note of this union between the young novelist with the famous name and a distinguished major ten years her senior. On July 8, 1932, an article in the Daily Telegraph gushes: “Miss du Maurier, who is slim, with curly fair hair and bright blue eyes, was the unconscious starter of the ‘hatless movement’ which the younger set have taken up so enthusiastically. She speaks French without an accent and spends two months of the year in Paris. Major Browning is one of the youngest majors in the British army and an all-round athlete.”

The evening before the ceremony, Muriel irons the blue cotton twill outfit that her daughter will wear; Daphne didn’t want to get married in white either, nor to have a sophisticated hairdo. Gerald complains about a wedding at eight o’clock in the morning, he has always hated getting up early. Daphne’s cousin Geoffrey gate-crashes the wedding, and no one dares ask him to go. Daphne, Gerald, Muriel, and Geoffrey leave Ferryside on the Cora Anne, heading toward Pont Bridge in the golden silence of early morning, followed by Tommy and the Hunkins on the Ygdrasil.

Daphne, nervous, does not utter another word, climbing the steep path up to the church with her long, determined stride, face serious, watched closely by her parents. She admires the beauty of the surroundings, the little church isolated amid the splendors of nature, its sculpted wooden benches. She wanted a quick ceremony, a simple registry wedding, but when Tommy whispers his consent in a shaky voice, staring straight into her eyes, in this stunningly romantic setting, she feels herself submerged by a wave of emotion. Later, after a brief breakfast at Ferryside—no speeches, no flowers, no celebrations—the newlyweds put on their favorite sailing outfits and, aboard the Ygdrasil, leave with the tide, toward the bay. It is Daphne who has chosen the site for their honeymoon: Frenchman’s Creek, near the Helford River, a calm, secret place, where the boat berths amid scented greenery, sheltered from any prying eyes. We couldn’t have chosen anything more beautiful,23 she writes in her journal.

These are the last lines that Daphne writes in those pages. Her journal, which she has kept scrupulously since the age of twelve, stops dead.

*   *   *

Becoming Mrs. Browning is not an easy task, despite the love she feels for her husband. Marriage deals a blow to her precious freedom. How will she manage to write? The newlyweds move into a cottage at the back of the garden in Cannon Hall, on Well Road. One night, Tommy wakes up screaming, soaked with sweat and terrified. Daphne tries to comfort him and succeeds in calming him down, but the nightmare recurs the next night and then again the following week. She doesn’t dare ask him about it, imagining that it is connected to the horrors of war, experienced fifteen years earlier. Tommy has still not spoken to her about the Battle of Cambrai in November 1917, in Gauche Wood, where he fought for several days in woodlands strewn with eviscerated corpses.

Watching him leave for the army base every morning, handsome and proud in his medal-covered uniform, she is the only one who knows that her husband, the leader of a hundred men, sobs in the middle of the night like a little boy. And then there are those stomachaches that have plagued him since childhood and that mystify the doctors. There is a fragility to Tommy that she never suspected, and that makes a big impression on her. Even his collection of teddy bears, his “Boys,” which he takes everywhere with him, and which amused Daphne at first, now seem to betray a secret weakness.

For the first time, Daphne confides in her mother. When Tommy leaves, she walks over to Cannon Hall, sits with Muriel in her boudoir, shares her morning tea, and asks her advice about domestic, feminine matters. Mo is only too happy to respond, delighted by this new closeness with her daughter. What Daphne fears most, her mother quickly realizes, is the role of military spouse that she must now adopt. How boring it all is, having to greet all those women, share those tiresome dinners, those insipid conversations, uphold her position.

At Christmas, Daphne discovers she is pregnant and joyfully announces the fact to her husband, her parents, her sisters. It will be a boy, she feels sure. No one dares to contradict her. In anticipation of the birth—due for July 1933—a nanny named Margaret is hired. The nanny is shown the nursery, already painted blue, and shyly points out to Mrs. Browning that the child might turn out to be a girl. Frowning, Daphne replies firmly that it will be a boy.

The Progress of Julius is published in May 1933, when Daphne is seven months pregnant. Fully occupied by her impending motherhood, she only distantly follows the appearance of reviews. The ones in the Times and the Observer are quite positive, those in Punch and the Saturday Review more mixed, the former criticizing her novel for “materialism at its ugliest.” Graham Greene judges her prose to be “bookish,” but for him the novel is “saved by its energy” and “admirable vigor.” One of Daphne’s friends and neighbors, the novelist and biologist Leo Walmsley, is horrified by the book and admits it. Unperturbed, Daphne writes to him on May 26, 1933: Yes, of course it’s overwritten, but then in a sense it was deliberately done. I wanted to ooze blood and diarrhoea all over it. Yes, I suppose romantic stuff is happier to write and to read, but perhaps it’s the old French blood that make me want to dig under the surface to find the creepy, crawly slugs, and cut out the sentiment!24

Her family is not especially thrilled either, and they tell her so, very honestly. Only her father keeps his thoughts to himself. What does he really think of this harsh, sordid novel and the pitiless light it shines on father-daughter relationships, largely inspired by his own Borgiaesque excesses? He prefers not to say. He is not feeling well anyway and has to take things easily. From the garden, where she reads a book, Daphne sees him smoking a cigarette at his second-floor bedroom window, staring out at the view of his beloved London. What is he thinking about? His lost youth? His waning career? His financial worries? Is he proud of her? Probably, because she is still aware of the fervor and power of his love for her. But for now, he is still the most famous member of their family. Daphne has not overshadowed him; her three novels have not made a huge impact, they are nowhere near the bestseller lists. Is it possible that his own fame will one day be eclipsed by his daughter’s?

For Daphne, this book is better than her first, and in spite of some less than favorable reactions (Q, for example, has banned the novel from his library), she is unfazed. Michael Joseph confirms to her that the book is selling just as well as the previous two, despite the paucity of good reviews, and that he is confident that she has a great future. Daphne listens to him, saying nothing, but is impatient for the moment when people will no longer cite her name alongside references to her father and grandfather.

At home, on July 15, 1933, Daphne gives birth to a baby girl. When the child’s sex is announced to her, she instantly feels disappointed, barely even glancing at the sweet infant who is handed to her. She was so sure she would have a son. Later, she writes to Tod, giving her details of the agony of childbirth: Of all the hellish performances, so beastly degrading, too, lying on a bed with legs spread-eagled and feeling exactly as though one’s entire inside plus intestines and bowels are being torn from one! Pheugh! The child is flourishing. Exactly like Tommy, but fair hair and blue eyes. Nice skin, never red or pasty. Name of Tessa.25 Little by little, Daphne grows closer to her baby, even if Margaret does most of the hard work, spending the whole of each day with Tessa. Will she be able to find time to write? It’s possible, but it isn’t easy, getting used to this new life. The Brownings leave their cottage on Well Road and move to Surrey. Tommy has just been named second in command of the 2nd Battalion Grenadier Guards. Daphne organized the move, without enthusiasm. For two years, their address will be the Old Rectory, on Portsmouth Road. Will she finally be able to write now, in this pleasant redbrick house, surrounded by grounds? No, because Gerald has health problems. Already, at Christmas, he seemed uncomfortable and complained of pains. Growing thin and shriveled, he looks older than his sixty-one years. In late March 1934, the doctor diagnoses cancer of the colon and informs him that an operation is unavoidable. Gerald must be hospitalized, a prospect that throws him into a panic; he can’t bear hospitals. The operation goes well and the tumor is removed, but Gerald is very weak when he returns to Cannon Hall.

Ten days later, when Daphne comes back from a walk with little Tessa, Margaret is waiting for her on the doorstep of the Old Rectory, looking tense and pale. Daphne understands immediately, not even listening to the nanny’s few stammered words. When she reaches Hampstead, Daphne knows that she will remember this day—April 11, 1934—for the rest of her life. It is, ironically, her parents’ wedding anniversary—their thirty-first. Her mother, so elegant, so perfect in all circumstances, is a broken woman, her face disfigured by tears. Daphne holds her tight, comforting her as if she were the mother and Muriel her daughter, surprised, in spite of herself, by this strange moment, because the two of them have never been physically close. Muriel pronounces a few words in a broken voice. Gerald loved Daphne so much. Daphne knows. She was her Peter Pan of a father’s favorite, loved with an intensity so powerful it felt suffocating at times, all-consuming. Jeanne and Angela, both devastated, join the grieving huddle.

Gerald’s death is front-page news. The articles about him all sing his praises, acclaiming his career, emphasizing his unique charm. Even George V sends a letter of condolence to Lady du Maurier. Muriel wants a private ceremony, for family only, and she has to fight to keep the press and curious onlookers at a distance. The day of his funeral, Daphne does not go to the little church in Hampstead with her mother and her sisters. She walks over the Heath, alone, with two pigeons in a cage, to the place where their father took them when they were little girls, when he told them about his walks with Kicky, and she frees the birds. Watching them fly away, high into the springtime sky, she thinks of her father.

She knows, now, that her next book will not be a novel. It will be the first biography of Sir Gerald du Maurier, written by the one person who knew him best in the whole world—his daughter.

*   *   *

When her agent, Michael Joseph, reads the opening pages of Daphne’s biography of her father, he discovers an astonishingly frank portrait, devoid of all deference. In the hope of advancing Daphne’s career, he suggests she sign a contract with a new editor, a certain Victor Gollancz, a dynamic, ambitious man who successfully launched his own publishing firm, Victor Gollancz Ltd, in 1927. Gollancz’s author list includes the likes of Isadora Duncan, Ford Madox Ford, and George Orwell, and he is renowned for his eagerness in using advertising to sell books, capable of buying a whole page of a daily newspaper to announce his latest publication. His black logo (the bold letters VG) and the yellow and bright orange color scheme of his covers are instantly recognizable.

When she meets him for the first time in his office on Henrietta Street, a stone’s throw from the offices of Curtis Brown, Daphne is captivated by this sparkling man, who seems so thrilled to be publishing her and who speaks about her biography with great passion. Suddenly, rather hastily, she forgets all about Heinemann and everything they have done for her and her first three novels. She likes Gollancz’s fervent enthusiasm and believes that if she is ever going to be successful, it will probably be due to a man like him. She doesn’t care if some people find his use of hype somewhat vulgar.

Victor Gollancz takes Daphne and her agent out for a drink at Claridge’s to celebrate the contract they sign in May 1934. This is the first time Daphne has spent time in the presence of a publisher, apart from her brief meeting with her American editor, Nelson Doubleday. She knows that it is not out of vanity or a lust for fame that she wants her books on the bestseller lists, but purely to preserve her independence, so she can live by her pen. Victor rubs his hands, certain that he has found his flagship author: she has everything she needs to appeal to a wide readership, her name, her beauty, her youth, those first three novels, the latter two with their whiff of sulfur, and of course the highly promising biography on the life of her celebrated father. In the hushed surroundings of Claridge’s, while they toast their agreement, Daphne wonders if this portly editor, with his little glasses and his shaven head, who looks at her both greedily and respectfully, will be the architect of her first major success. She wants to trust him. After all, isn’t Victor a charmed name, the herald of future greatness?

Daphne writes this book in four months, at home in the Old Rectory, while Margaret looks after Tessa and Tommy devotes himself to his battalion. It is not a classic biography, with dates and a chronology of events and a catalog of places. In her words, Gerald comes back to life, along with his unique sense of humor, his prowess as an actor, his imitations, and his sometimes infantile jokes. It is all described clear-sightedly: his pampered childhood, his first loves, his meeting with Muriel Beaumont, his famous “stable” of actress-fillies, his peculiar relationships with his daughters, his unhappiness when they turned from children to women. With great empathy, Daphne exposes her father’s faults and contradictions, his selfishness, his most intimate doubts, his fear of germs, even a simple cold.

Gerald: A Portrait is published in October 1934 by Victor Gollancz. Gerald’s actor friends and members of the Garrick Club are, once again, shocked by Daphne’s frankness. How can a girl depict her own father with such realism? Daphne’s friends and family fully approve the book, however, and congratulate her. The Morning Post expresses a few reservations but praises the young writer’s “staggeringly candid” approach, while the Times salutes this “portrait seeing deeply into his nature, written without a trace of malice.” The book sells well as soon as it comes out, and the royalty checks start to mount up. Daphne received an advance of a thousand pounds and will receive 20 percent on the first ten thousand copies sold. But the absence of Gerald, and the first Christmas without him, diminish her feelings of happiness. Cannon Hall has been put up for sale, and her mother and sisters have moved into the cottage on Well Road where she lived until Tessa’s birth.

It is painful, bidding farewell to this childhood home. She remembers hurtling down the stairs with Jeanne, recalls the games of cricket with Gerald on the lawn. She even finds herself missing his “Borgia” face. Her youth is fading. She is the wife of a highly respected soldier, mother of a little girl who will soon be two years old. Sadness overwhelms her. It is the end of an era, a new path in her life, which she embarks upon with a feeling of bitterness.

She must start writing again. What else can she do? In the summer of 1935, the tireless Victor encourages her, asking her to think about a novel; she should strike while the iron is hot from the success of her biography. Daphne divides her time between Surrey and Fowey, escaping the tedious small talk of army life whenever she can, to her husband’s displeasure. Her mother needs her, too, because she is suffering without Gerald. How can Daphne make them all understand, without hurting them, without creating conflict, that her priority is not her child or her marriage or her mother or her sisters, but her writing?

*   *   *

Gone is the time when Daphne could just dash off to France and spend a week with Ferdie in Paris or shut herself away in Ferryside. She no longer has any freedom in her daily life, but she preserves it in her head. Victor is curious to learn more about her new novel: Couldn’t she tell him a little more? Daphne reveals that her heroine is Mary Yellan, twenty-three years old, and that the story takes place at the beginning of the nineteenth century, in Cornwall, at Bodmin Moor. Daphne is inspired to write this book by memories of her childhood reading, the fantastic atmosphere of novels that held her spellbound such as Treasure Island, but also by that disastrous outing with Foy Quiller-Couch, five years earlier, when the two of them got lost on the moors. Victor asks excitedly what the title is. Daphne’s reply: Jamaica Inn. That is all she will tell her editor.

Daphne writes on a typewriter, an Oliver No. 11 that she learns to use two fingered. The household becomes accustomed to the clattering noise that goes on for several hours a day. Tessa soon understands that her mother must not be disturbed when she can hear this noise. The first draft is completed within a few months, and Victor is the first to read it. From the opening pages, read in his office on Henrietta Street, he knows he has a hit on his hands. There is a captivating dramatic tension to the story, and a cast of characters some of whom are appealing, like Mary and her poor aunt Patience, and others terrifying, such as Joss Merlyn, Mary’s brutal, drunken uncle, and the disturbing vicar Davey, with his ivory mane and his white irises. Victor knows that readers will be fascinated by the poignant story of a young woman whose mother has just died, and who goes to live with her uncle and aunt, owners of an inn located on windswept marshland. From the moment she arrives at this sinister tavern, the young girl suspects the worst: that her relatives are involved with pirates, that ships are being deliberately wrecked in order to pillage their cargoes, and that her aunt and uncle are part of a shady trafficking operation to dispose of these stolen goods. Victor is aware that it’s not a light, simple novel: some scenes are difficult. Reading it again, however, he realizes that Daphne has forced herself not to sugarcoat the story. He congratulates his new author on her wild, fertile imagination. And to think she is only twenty-nine! He is convinced that moviemakers will show a keen interest in the rights and organizes an impressive publicity campaign.

The novel is published in January 1936, and Daphne receives the same advance and the same royalty percentage as for the biography of her father. The book is an instant hit, even before the first reviews appear, and within a few months Jamaica Inn has already sold more copies than Daphne’s first three novels put together. Despite the death of George V on January 20, 1936, which dominates the news agenda, the reviews salute the power of the young author’s prose and the descriptions of Cornwall. And yet—and this bothers her—almost all of them emphasize the debt she owes to the Brontë sisters: a house filled with mystery and dread, a Gothic atmosphere, heroes inspired by Heathcliff or Rochester. As if she hadn’t created anything new at all! Thankfully, the reviewer for the Spectator of January 24, 1936, writes: “I do not believe R.L. Stevenson would have been ashamed to have written Jamaica Inn,” praise that delights Daphne. It is her first bestseller, but despite her excitement, she senses that she can do even better, and Victor encourages her in this belief, persuaded as he is that the rise of Daphne du Maurier has only just begun. For the moment, she protects herself, refusing all interviews, all events where she might have to meet her readers. But the fan letters soon pile up, forwarded by her publishers, and she is astonished by these letters sent from all over the country—and then from the United States, too, when Doubleday publishes the novel. She replies conscientiously to all of them, using her typewriter.

Victor was right: a film production company wishes to buy the screen rights for the novel. The company in question is Mayflower Pictures, run by Erich Pommer, a German producer who has worked with Marlene Dietrich, and the British actor Charles Laughton. The director they have in mind is Alfred Hitchcock, who knew Gerald du Maurier well, having produced the 1930 film Lord Camber’s Ladies, directed by Ben Levy and starring the beautiful Gertrude Lawrence opposite Daphne’s father.

Rather than enjoying her newfound fame, Daphne concentrates on the next book; she explains to Victor that she does not yet have an idea for a new novel, but she would like to write a history of the du Maurier family, going back to her great-grandfather’s time and ending with the births of Kicky’s five children. Her editor would have preferred another juicy novel in the same vein as Jamaica Inn, but he has no desire to clash with his young protégée.

While Daphne begins the book, using her father’s family archives, which Mo has kept, and researching birth and marriage certificates, she receives the news she has been dreading. One evening in March 1936, Tommy enters the Old Rectory with a strange expression on his face, and she guesses what he is about to tell her. For three years now, she has been able to merely play at being an army wife without really investing herself in the role. But now Tommy’s regiment has been sent to Egypt for an indefinite period, and he has been put in command. Daphne’s duty is to follow her husband.

*   *   *

How will she be able to survive in this dusty, despised city of Alexandria, in this appalling heat, with these deadly dull people, these interminable expat dinners where the other guests look her up and down like some curious beast, where she can read on their lips: Mrs. Browning, that’s the writer Daphne du Maurier, didn’t you know? They must think her very shy, because she always keeps her distance. The house is pleasant, though: located at 13 Rue Jessop, it overlooks the beach at Ramleh, where Tessa and Margaret frolick. Tommy is gone all day with his troops in the desert. Daphne tries to make progress on her family biography but is bereft of energy and inspiration. Why did she ever start this book? She should have waited for an idea for a novel to come to her. From her window, she looks out at the smooth sea and feels sorry for herself. Her only pleasure is swimming. It had been easy to write the biography of her father, because she was simply remembering a man she had known closely all her life; she knew how to shine a light on his virtues, his faults, his obsessions. Her task on this new book is much harder, because she knows nothing about her ancestors, apart from what can be gleaned from their letters. She has to breathe life into them, add flesh and blood to the dates and places, treat them like characters from one of her novels. But this is not a novel, she reminds herself, as she sweats inside a sticky bedroom, behind closed shutters, in the slow, hot afternoon hours. She begins her account in 1810, in London, with little Ellen, who will later marry Louis-Mathurin Busson du Maurier, the son of emigrants from Angers, Kicky’s father. In September 1936, Daphne finally manages to finish the book, but she is not proud of it: Done about 100000 words, she writes to her editor, sending him the typescript via friends who are returning to London (lucky so-and-sos!). I feel it is something of a tour de force to have written it in an Egyptian summer.26 She suspects that her dialog is contrived, artificial, that her characters seem lifeless and unsympathetic. How she missed the freedom allowed by a novel as she wrote these pages.

Margaret, the nanny, is worried by Mrs. Browning’s paleness and weight loss, which she finds alarming. She remarks that her employer is eating less and less, that she spends her days locked up in her room, lying on her bed with a cool, damp cloth on her forehead. Even her deadpan sense of humor seems to have been dented. Tessa, who is nearly three, is growing ever livelier, despite the oppressive heat. She is an amusing, outgoing little girl, but her energy exhausts her mother. One morning, Margaret is so concerned by Mrs. Browning’s state of health that she calls the doctor.

She is expecting a child. Upon hearing these words, Daphne, overwhelmed, bursts into tears. But after the initial shock, she feels hopeful again, because she knows that she will finally be able to return to England, even if only for the birth of the child, due in the spring of 1937. She misses her homeland, her mother and sisters, and her faithful Tod, too, whom she has never lost touch with since 1922, and Foy Quiller-Couch. Nearly a year without all those people: it’s a long time. On December 11, 1936, Daphne listens attentively to the abdication speech of Edward VIII, who announces from Windsor Castle that he is giving up the crown to marry the woman he loves, the divorcée Wallis Simpson. How Daphne would have liked to listen to this speech in the company of Mo, Angela, and Jeanne, to share this historic moment with them. In the meantime, she finally receives a letter from her editor. Victor’s verdict is positive; he finds The Du Mauriers extremely well written and interesting, he believes in it. Daphne is reassured but already feels quite distant from the book. Alfred Hitchcock, meanwhile, has bought the movie rights to Jamaica Inn, and a screenplay is being written. She wonders if the film will be true to her book, if her characters will appear on-screen the way she imagined them.

Daphne leaves for England, at last, on January 16, 1937, aboard the Otranto, with her daughter and Margaret. As soon as she breathes the sea air of “her” Cornwall, she feels alive again. Her mother and her sisters now live in Ferryside, and she is overjoyed to see them again. She has to return to Alexandria after she gives birth, however; she cannot abandon Tommy, who will be there for a long time yet. But for now, she can look forward to a few months in England, and she is determined to enjoy them. She spends several weeks in Fowey, following the publication of The Du Mauriers from afar. The reviews are generally favorable—the Observer talks of the book’s “sheer entertainment value”—but sales are sluggish. Daphne was expecting this and is unfazed by this half failure. Q is highly appreciative of the book, as are Tod and Ferdie, and their compliments are significant to Daphne. So, what about a new novel? Yes, she has a vague idea in mind, something quite dark, macabre, but it’s too early to talk about it.

As her pregnancy nears its end, she resigns herself to having a second daughter, and her instinct is proved right this time: on April 2, 1937, a baby girl is born in the apartment of Queen Anne’s Mansions that the Brownings have rented in Westminster, not far from St. James’s Park. That very morning, Angela had taken her younger sister out for a ride in her new car, a Morris Eight, with minimal suspension. This must have had an effect on Daphne, because the baby was born two weeks early. The child literally whizzed out! she writes to Tod. And Aunt Angela says that the baby resembles a little red radish.27 Daphne so wanted a son, but she consoles herself with the thought of “third time lucky.” Tommy is back in England for a three-month leave, and it is he who chooses the name of their second daughter, Flavia.

The new king, George VI, the brother of Edward VIII, is crowned on May 12, 1937. The country is in a state of jubilation, and the next day Daphne’s thirtieth birthday is celebrated by her family. The young mother smiles, laughs, opens her presents, eats her cake, but secretly she is thinking about the novel that awaits her. She daydreams about it constantly. The ideas come together, slowly but surely. The crucial thing is finding the time to write. Not easy, with a husband and two children, even if she does have permanent help. How can she rediscover the solitude she so badly needs? Angela says she has made progress on her own novel, but clearly she does not need the same kind of isolation that Daphne does. Angela is thirty-three, still plump, still unmarried, but she doesn’t care; her joviality is infectious, and she clearly prefers the company of women, making endless trips all over Europe with her lady friends. Her greatest pleasure is a long train journey. She has the same love of extravagance as her father, always traveling first class, always staying in the most luxurious hotels, to Daphne’s amusement. Angela’s novel is centered on Verona, the disgraced heroine, who makes the wrong choice and pays the consequences. Daphne listens, nodding. She is not worried by having a novelist for a sister, she is proud of her, just as she is proud of Jeanne, who wants to go to art school and to make her living as a painter. Even though Daphne is married and has children, the bonds between her and her sisters are as strong as ever. Little Flavia seems more fragile than her sibling, so Daphne decides to leave the two children under the supervision of their grandmothers—Nancy Browning and Muriel du Maurier—as well as their nanny, Margaret. Daphne has no intention of taking a newborn and a three-year-old to the furnace of Alexandria, where Tommy must return from July to mid-December 1937.

Five months to get through. Resigned, Daphne follows her husband. But on the ship that takes them back to Egypt, while she stares out through the porthole at the sea, she is not thinking of the two children she has left behind, nor of her mother or sisters, and she forgets everything that surrounds her on board: her husband, the other passengers, their conversations. She goes to her cabin to retrieve her notebook and begins taking notes. Later, in the stifling humidity of her room on Rue Jessop, Daphne paces the floor and bites her fingernails as she did when she was young. There are ripped-up pages strewn over the floor. She has thrown away a whole first draft because she wasn’t satisfied; she is going to start again at the beginning. Over and over, she sits down, opens her notebook, rereads her words, stands up again. There is, ironically, a shrub named the daphne that flowers all year round and needs a little sunlight but must, above all, have its roots well planted in damp, fertile soil. Is it the heat that is making it so difficult for her to write? She has been here for more than a month now, and she is not getting anywhere. Daphne has the impression that her brain is turning soft. When she tries to type, her fingertips stick to the keys. She has been sleeping badly ever since Flavia’s birth and swallows a sleeping pill each night. Consequently, her slumber seems heavy and she is drained when she wakes up. She is still as uninterested as ever by the army-wife parties she is obligated to attend. Why does she feel so ill at ease in society, so desperate to escape other people’s eyes, just like she was as a child at Cannon Hall, hiding behind the flower beds during those hated Sunday lunches?

How she would love to be elsewhere, anywhere but here, close to the desert, how she would love to be under the rain; how divine it would be to stand in the light, scented drizzle in Fowey, now, to be cold, to shiver, to snuggle inside a thick coat, to walk in the wet, green grass, to breathe the pure air, to stroke the rough bark of a tree, the velvety, dew-speckled petals, to stare out to sea as the waves crash against the cliffs. To walk in the grounds of Menabilly, to put her hands on its gray walls, to feel again that shiver of intense pleasure.

She picks up her notebook. A beautiful home … A first wife … A wreck, perhaps at sea … A terrible secret … Jealousy … 28

Daphne concentrates, closes her eyes, forgets Egypt, projects herself into the misty coolness of Fowey, and she thinks of Milton, the immense house that had so enchanted her as a child, with its impressive balcony, the servants lined up in front of the majestic staircase, the housekeeper, Mrs. Parker. She should use that tall, black silhouette. She should use the shipwreck she saw, and which left such an impression on her, in Pridmouth, in January 1930, that smashed ship, the Romanie, at the mercy of the waves. She sees herself again, rummaging through the drawers in the Old Rectory, finding those love letters that Tommy had received from his previous fiancée, Jeannette Ricardo, whom he was supposed to marry on March 25, 1929. The engagement had been broken off. Why? Daphne didn’t know. The feminine handwriting, sloping and determined, traced in black ink, haunts her still. Why did Tommy keep those letters? Perhaps he had never been able to forget the woman who signed those letters Jan, with an outsized capital J that eclipsed all the other letters. Daphne had found a few photographs of the young woman, a sophisticated beauty with black hair, looking sublime in her sheath dress. She must have been a perfect hostess, one of those women who know how to receive guests, arrange flowers, make conversation with anyone, be elegant and composed in all circumstances. Daphne had tidied away those letters and photographs, with jealousy pinching her heart. She should use that jealousy, now, excavate it, fictionalize it, exploit it. Find a name for this sumptuous mansion … M like “Milton,” M like “Menabilly” … Manderley, the name comes to her, Manderley, an immense old building, its noble splendor slightly worn away by the years, the twin of Milton Hall, with clock towers and parapets, like the Villa Camposenea.

In the silence of her stuffy room, Daphne repeats the name out loud—Manderley, Manderley—and a sentence fills her mind with a sort of sober grace, the feeling, or rather the instinct, that she is not mistaken, that she has found, unhesitatingly, the right words, like a bolt of cloth that falls perfectly. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. The novel’s title, she already knows, will be Rebecca. The same name she used for her evil heroine in the strange short story “The Doll,” written ten years earlier and never published. Rebecca, the first wife … Dark haired, stunningly beautiful, talented. A perfect creature with a boyish figure, capable of taming a stallion and raising a sail in a raging storm, who writes in an elegant, sloping hand and signs her name with a huge capital R. Dead in tragic circumstances, at sea. That same roaring sea that can be heard from the large house hidden behind trees, up on a hill, sheltered from prying eyes. The high gates, the long, winding driveway, the rhododendrons, the azaleas, the hyacinths, the little granite cottage on the beach at Pridmouth, all the magic, all the mystery, of Menabilly … Daphne sucks it all up greedily and breathes it out onto her imaginary Manderley.

She abandons her typewriter for the moment, writing directly into the black notebook. Chapter after chapter, she builds the novel. It will begin with an epilogue, something new for her, a way of accentuating the tension: the suspense that already existed in Jamaica Inn, and which she wants to emphasize even more here, so that the reader is compelled to continue reading, unable to put the book down. Rebecca’s husband, a widower, is Henry de Winter. Daphne is not sure that Henry is the right name for him, it’s a little dull for her tastes, but she keeps it for the moment. He’s in his fifties, an attractive but gloomy-looking man, very reserved. It is de Winter whom the female narrator meets in Monte Carlo, when she is merely a traveling companion to the vile, rich American lady Mrs. Van Hopper. The narrator has no name: Daphne can’t think of one for her and decides she doesn’t need one, because she likes the idea of this very young woman—a shy orphan, badly dressed, with her bitten-down nails, lank hair, and flat feet—remaining in the shadows. And yet she becomes the second Mrs. de Winter, to the stupefaction of Mrs. Van Hopper, who makes it clear to her, with a loathsome laugh, that she will never be able to replace Rebecca, that she will never be the true mistress of Manderley. As soon as she arrives in this vast house, described by Daphne as a character in its own right, the young Mrs. de Winter realizes, with a sinking heart, that the old American lady was right. At the foot of the great staircase, the servants stand motionless, awaiting the new wife of Henry de Winter. A tall, black figure stands out, with a horrifyingly white face, unsmiling, unwelcoming. This is Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, with her ever-clinking bunch of keys. She it is who looks after Manderley. She it was who looked after the first Mrs. de Winter. She has never gotten over the death of Rebecca. Rebecca. The novel resonates with those three ghostly syllables, signifier of the first Mrs. de Winter, who died a year ago and has left behind a vertiginous void filled with secrets, doubts, dread, and nightmares.

When Daphne leaves Alexandria in mid-December 1937, she has already written a third of the book. The family reunion worries her, in spite of her joy at seeing her daughters again. She fears that little Tessa will demand her presence, as will the eight-month-old baby. When Daphne informs her mother that she plans to meet her in Cornwall, so she can write, leaving her daughters for a few weeks longer with their nanny at her mother-in-law’s house, Mo is shocked and does not flinch from telling Daphne so. How can she make her mother, and all the others, understand that the book is more important than anything, that she lives only for Manderley, that place in her psyche that haunts her night and day? Like Peter Pan, she has created her own Neverland, and no one else can enter it. It upsets her, that her mother can think her cruel, so she attempts, rather clumsily, to explain herself and her feelings in a letter. I should get no work done. What a strain.29 Muriel gives in, and Daphne leaves for Ferryside, to work relentlessly on her novel.

At the beginning of 1938, the Brownings move again: Tommy is transferred to Hampshire, near Fleet. Daphne thinks herself lucky: She attaches so much importance to houses, and she takes an instant liking to the one they are to inhabit, Greyfriars, with its gabled roof and its large garden bordered with a forest. It is there, in the green-walled living room (because her bedroom is too small), that she makes progress on the book, sitting in front of the window with her typewriter, and whenever she looks up she can see the trees and little Tessa playing on the lawn, wrapped up against the cold. Never has she invested so much of herself in a novel; never has the writing of a book taken such possession of her. Her previous characters—Janet Coombe, Dick, Julius Lévy, Mary Yellan—were never given this psychological depth, this sensitivity to even the faintest emotion. Through the evocation of the innermost thoughts of her heroine, and a narrative that fluctuates between daydreams, past and present, Daphne knows just how much she owes to her grandfather Kicky and his “dreaming true.” The magnetic darkness of Svengali leaves its imprint on the pale features of Mrs. Danvers, who nurtured “Venetian”* feelings toward Rebecca. As for Manderley, the luxurious manor house could no longer be visited again, except in dreams.

Three months later, Daphne types the final period of the story. Now she must reread it, armed with the blue pencil she uses to remove long-winded sentences, repetitions. Her spelling is not the best—a childhood weakness that she never grew out of—but she knows that the text will be corrected before its publication by Norman Collins, one of the young editors at Victor Gollancz Ltd. She sits on the couch with her pen and reads every word of the thick manuscript out loud. This takes her several days. Henry de Winter … no, that name doesn’t suit him at all. This central character, so enigmatic and attractive and yet so cold, needs another first name. George? Paul? Maxim … Yes, that’s it, Maximilian de Winter. Elegant, cosmopolitan. His friends call him Maxim. There was only one person who called him Max, and that was Rebecca.

Before sending the corrected manuscript to Victor, Daphne hesitates. She dreads those uncomfortable moments, when the book no longer exists, lost in a no-man’s-land of waiting for her editor’s opinion, between the final corrections and publication. The ending is left ambiguous: What will her readers think? Is there a risk they will feel lost? And that dull, nameless heroine, who exists in Rebecca’s shadow: Isn’t she just a bit too clumsy, too self-effacing? What will Daphne do if Victor thinks the book too sinister and macabre, or simply overdone, sliding into melodrama? In April 1938, Daphne finally writes to her editor: Here is the book. I’ve tried to get an atmosphere of suspense. It’s a bit on the gloomy side. The ending is a bit brief and a bit grim.30

Norman Collins is the first to read it, and he devours it in two days, then bursts ecstatically into Victor’s office. Victor reads it next, and when he calls Daphne his voice is excited, jubilant; she can hear it right away. At Victor Gollancz Ltd, they rush to prepare the ground for the novel’s publication in the first week of August. Victor has set an initial print run of twenty thousand copies, but he has a feeling he will need to reprint it very soon, certain that the book will double its sales within a month. He also feels sure that he will be able to sell foreign translation rights; up to now, Daphne has not been published in any other language. As for the cinema, he has no doubts: the movie rights will be snapped up in no time. Hitchcock has had a few problems with the shooting of Jamaica Inn, which is due for release the following year, 1939. Michael Joseph has already informed Daphne that her story has been radically transformed, and not in a good way. She expects the worst. But, for now, her mind is fully occupied by Rebecca.

While she waits, Daphne spends several summer weeks in Hampshire, touched by the enthusiastic responses of booksellers who have read advance copies of the book. Sunbathing in a deck chair, she encourages Flavia, who is taking her first steps on the lawn while Tessa plays with her father. The sweetness of light-filled afternoons, evenings enjoyed as a family. From time to time, Daphne gets up to put a new record on the gramophone. The rousing voice of Charles Trenet, a young French singer she adores, rings out in the garden: Y a d’la joie!* She sings along with him, in her almost perfect French accent:

C’est l’amour qui vient avec je ne sais quoi

C’est l’amour bonjour bonjour les demoiselles§

Daphne closes her eyes, sips a vodka gimlet, sings some more, thinks about Paris, about Fernande, about Kicky, about Montparnasse, about that French blood she’s so proud of. She has the strange feeling that this is the calm before the storm. Could this novel change her life?

*   *   *

It is a hurricane. Hurricane Rebecca, sweeping everything before it. In a single month, the book sells forty thousand copies. The publishers order a reprint. And that is only the start. Daphne du Maurier is the name on everyone’s lips. Who is this woman, only thirty-one years old? For the first time, Victor pressures Daphne: she must agree to do interviews, events; she must speak on the radio. She is fiercely opposed to the idea, but Victor insists. Reluctantly, she gives in. Her first interview takes place in her own home, at Greyfriars, with the journalist Tom Driberg, an effeminate man in his thirties with slicked-back hair, a rising star at the Daily Express. With typical humor, she admits to him that she hates London, loves gardening, is uninterested in cooking, drinks very little, is utterly indifferent to fashion, adores her quiet life in the countryside, and loathes public speaking. What does she read? Nothing very contemporary: the Brontë sisters, Anthony Trollope, and the poems of William Somerville. Her working day? From 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, then from 3:00 pm to 5:00 pm, every day except Sunday. The journalist asks Colonel Browning, who is present during the interview, if he ever knew a “Rebecca.” The colonel’s reply is succinct. No. When the article is published, Daphne is described as “a successful novelist, wife of a colonel and daughter of an actor.” Further on, Driberg makes a misogynistic barb: “In her conventionally comfortable drawing room, Daphne du Maurier looks more like a subaltern’s pretty little wife than a colonel’s wife.”

In late August 1938, the important bookstore Foyles, on Charing Cross Road in London, invites Daphne to a prestigious literary lunch organized by Christina Foyles. Two other, less famous novelists will be present. Daphne is dragged there by her editor. She warned Victor beforehand: she will not speak; she has nothing to say. All those eyes on her, all those people wanting to ask her questions, shake her hand, get their books signed … it’s torture. Later, she writes angrily to Foy: Writers should be read, but neither seen nor heard.31 Daphne has no desire to be part of any literary circle, to meet other authors. All this to sell more books? It’s a waste of time. Victor takes all this on the chin. But the growing and spectacular success of Rebecca is more than enough consolation. It has sold one hundred thousand copies in Britain before the American edition, published by Doubleday, appears in late September 1938, with every sign that the book will replicate its UK success. The offers pour in for translation rights. The French rights are bought by the publishing house Albin Michel.

The British public falls for Daphne’s harmonious face, her intensely blue eyes, her elegance. She goes on the radio, for the BBC, and her voice seems made for the airwaves, soft but powerful, feminine. The spotlight is hers, just as Victor predicted. And the more she refuses interviews and media appearances, the more eager the press and public are to find out more about this young novelist. The more she hides, the harder they seek.

By the year’s end, Victor has been proved right. The American edition has sold two hundred thousand copies. Nelson Doubleday is exultant. These figures make Daphne’s head spin—she finds them hard to believe—but the royalty checks that start flooding in make her proud. This is the independence she always dreamed of, as a teenager. The other side of the coin is the press reaction, which is often pitiless. The Times scornfully declares: “There is nothing in this book beyond the novelette.” The Christian Science Monitor judges the book “morbid” and predicts its author will be “here today, gone tomorrow.” The Canadian Forum deplores the novel’s “mediocrity” and labels its heroine “impossibly inept.”

It is painful to read these articles, like being stabbed in the chest. Daphne learns to put on her armor, to protect herself; she thinks of Kicky, who in difficult moments would repeat softly to his children, A quoi bon?* She takes great pleasure in the good reviews, though, and thankfully there is no shortage of them. The New York Times Book Review writes: “Daphne du Maurier’s gift is telling a story studded with shimmering truth.” The New York Herald Tribune is eulogistic: “Intense, dazzling … a credible and endearing heroine.” The Saturday Review salutes “a touching and moving story.” And the book continues to sell. And to sell.

During the 1938 family Christmas in Fowey, Daphne sees her old friend Arthur Quiller-Couch. He congratulates her on her success and seems sincere. But he utters a little phrase that will haunt her for a long time afterward: The critics will never forgive you for writing Rebecca.32 In early 1939, Daphne begins to sense that Q is right. Even while the sales figures mount, she feels her book is being misunderstood. No, it is not a Gothic romance; no, it is not a corny little love story; it is the tale of an all-consuming jealousy and its murderous consequences. Is it her publisher’s fault? Victor has hyped the novel up as something very romantic and commercial. Behind the story of a house, a man, and two women lurks a much darker and more disturbing truth, that of a psychological war disguised by muted violence and suppressed sexuality. The critics did not think it necessary to explore Maxim de Winter either: a complex personality, gnawed at from within, at once reserved and irascible, full of words left unsaid, whose very surname suggests cold, sterility, a burial under snow that has stunted the growth of everything. Why is Rebecca so quickly categorized as “mass-market fiction” intended for starry-eyed girls and romance-starved women? Why is the legacy of the Brontë sisters always raised, to the detriment of Daphne’s work, considered inferior and popular? Victor deplores this reaction but manages to console his author with the phenomenal sales that show no signs of abating, even amid the growing political tensions rocking Europe. Tommy warns his wife and their friends: war will be declared in a matter of months. It’s inevitable.

Despite these gloomy predictions, Angela’s first novel, The Perplexed Heart, is published in February 1939 by agent and editor Michael Joseph, and the du Mauriers toast the event together. For press and public, the novel may as well not exist, swallowed up in the path of Hurricane Rebecca. The few reviews it receives are negative, repeatedly comparing Angela to her sister. With guts and humor, Angela insists she will not change her name: she is proud of being a du Maurier, and she has just as much right to the moniker as her famous sister. And she continues to write. As does Daphne. Not a novel this time—she still doesn’t have an idea in mind—but she would like to bask a little longer in the ambience of Manderley, so she thinks about the possibility of adapting Rebecca for the stage. The idea excites her. After all, she is the daughter of actors; she has grown up in a theatrical atmosphere. Daphne sets to work with a pleasure she has never known before. How strange and enchanting it is to return to the imaginary world she created, one year later. First, she must construct a single setting: Manderley’s immense entrance hall, with a view over the magnificent garden. No descriptions here, of the kind that usually enliven her novels; she must limit herself to dialogs, give life to her characters purely through their voices, their mannerisms. Although Margaret, the nanny, is absent with a migraine, Daphne somehow manages to finish her adaptation while at the same time taking care of Tessa (six) and Flavia (nearly two), an achievement that leaves her exhausted. I must say, she admits wearily to Tod in a letter, I’m not one of those mothers who live for having their brats with them all the time.33 The play does not end in the same way as the novel; it is much more positive, a real happy ending. The curtain falls as Mr. and Mrs. de Winter embrace, at peace and in love. The ghost of Rebecca has been exorcised. Manderley is transformed from a temple of death into a bastion of love. Why? Because war is approaching, because Daphne has suffered so many reproaches for the ending of her novel, because she has the power to make that change, because writers can do whatever they like, because she is free.

The Brownings leave their pretty Greyfriars home in the summer of 1939 and move to Hythe, in Kent, so that Tommy can be closer to headquarters. The house is less charming, the garden not so pleasant. Fernande comes to visit the family for a week. This is the first time she has seen Daphne’s children. Although still plump and nearly forty-six, Fernande is as lively and vivacious as ever. Tommy does not find her interesting, this Mlle Yvon; in truth, he seems increasingly preoccupied as he rises through the ranks of the army. Consequently, Daphne must put up with a constant parade of colonels and generals in her new house.

Hitchcock’s movie adaptation of Jamaica Inn is a disappointment. The screenplay bears almost no resemblance to the novel at all, with the darkness of the original abandoned in favor of an unsubtle comedy. Her fears are realized: she recognizes neither her own characters nor her own plot. Don’t go and see it, it is a wretched affair,34 she writes to Victor. The reviews are merciless. When the famous producer David Selznick, flush with the success of Gone with the Wind, adapted from Margaret Mitchell’s novel, decides to buy the film rights to Rebecca for ten thousand pounds and assigns Alfred Hitchcock to direct it, Daphne is distraught. What will he do to her Rebecca, that bald, thick-lipped, and frankly unfriendly little man, with whom she feels no connection at all? He has already made a travesty of Mary Yellan and Joss Merlyn. How can she trust him after that? She writes to David Selznick, begging him not to resurrect the first Mrs. de Winter on the screen: Rebecca must remain draped in mystery. Selznick reassures her: he is keeping a close eye on Hitchcock, making sure the screenplay is reworked until it respects the arc and ambience of the book. Irritated, Hitchcock uses a secret pseudonym in his screenplay for the second Mrs. de Winter—Daphne de Winter, a nickname that causes much amusement in the Hollywood studios. Daphne is apprehensive; she fears that her work is slipping away from her. Laurence Olivier, the biggest English movie star of the moment—who played the dark, tormented Heathcliff in the adaptation of Emily Brontë’s classic, Wuthering Heights—is cast as Maxim de Winter. Daphne is thrilled by this. But he would like his wife, Vivien Leigh—Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind—to be the second Mrs. de Winter. With her green eyes and ebony hair, Vivien is far too beautiful to be Maxim’s shy second wife, Daphne protests; she looks more like the bewitching Rebecca! Thankfully, it is the more prosaic-looking Joan Fontaine, sister of Olivia de Havilland, who is finally chosen.

In early September, Hitchcock begins shooting in California. At the same time, Germany invades Poland, and a few days later, on September 3, 1939, the United Kingdom and France declare war on Germany. Daphne is aware that her little world is crumbling. She writes to Angela: We are still here (Hythe) hanging on, and I rush to the lav whenever the post arrives in case there is a letter from the War Office ordering Tommy off. I can’t bear to think of it.35 She tries to make her sister laugh by describing the exercises organized by first-aid centers to combat gas attacks: Last week, a maniac came to lecture us, and with a face devoid of any humour, went into fearful details of gas possibilities. She then whipped out lots of little phials from her attaché case all filled with gas and rammed them under our noses, muttering savagely with a wild gleam in her eye. At the end of the same letter, Daphne adds soberly: How is the “Muse”? I don’t feel like “musing” myself. I don’t think I could lose myself in a fictitious story whilst living in such uncertainty.36

Here it is again, that short, hard word that she hated so much as a little girl: “war.” It is everywhere. But now she is a mother, she is the one who must protect her daughters, her mother, her sisters. In January 1940, Tommy is appointed commander of the 128th Infantry Brigade—aka the Hampshire Brigade—and goes off to Hertfordshire with his men, while Daphne and the children take refuge in Fowey, with Muriel, Angela, and Jeanne. Even Fowey, her sanctuary, is transformed by the war. There are soldiers on every street corner, and the feeling of peacefulness is gone. In the mornings, they read the newspapers, with their announcements of the first bombardments, the first deaths. And yet she can still be overjoyed by the good reception accorded to the play version of Rebecca, which is performed for the first time in London, at the Queen’s Theatre in March 1940.

But even this is nothing compared to the huge success of Hitchcock’s movie, which reaches theaters in the spring of 1940, while the war rages in Europe. The Olivier-Fontaine double act causes a sensation. Mrs. Danvers is masterfully interpreted by Judith Anderson. Daphne adores the film, a genuine success, with its somber black-and-white images perfectly reflecting the atmosphere of her fictional world. And the copies of her novel are flying off the shelves once again, while translators all over the world rework her words in other languages. In April 1940, Daphne receives a letter from her French editor Robert Esménard, from the publishers Albin Michel. As you know, after publishing your admirable Rebecca in France, I have now acquired the French language rights for Jamaica Inn, as I am extremely eager to ensure that I have exclusive rights over all your works in France.37

Unperturbed by the deadly Luftwaffe raids, the ominous advances of the Nazi army in Scandinavia and Holland, Hurricane Rebecca continues to blow mightily. Muriel, Angela, and Jeanne have to get used to it. This proves all the harder for Angela, who has just published her second novel, Weep No More, dismissed as “ridiculous” by Kirkus Reviews. No one talks to them about Gerald anymore. No one talks to them about anyone except her, the world-famous Daphne du Maurier.

*   *   *

Her greatest joy is the knowledge that she is pregnant again. Even if, as Daphne feels sure, it will be another lumping daughter,38 as she writes with weary irony to Tod, she is wildly happy to be carrying new life inside her during these troubled times, while the country fears invasion. In July 1940, Tommy is posted to Hertfordshire. As it is impossible to find a house in the current climate, the Brownings move in with a distinguished couple of the same age: Christopher Puxley, a gentleman farmer, and his wife, Paddy, are childless, and they welcome paying guests to Langley End, their tastefully decorated Lutyens-style house. Daphne writes to Angela, who has gone to Scotland for nine months: We are still most happy and comfortable with the P’s, who are heavenly. I’m rather worried about Mummy and the children in Fowey. On Tessa’s birthday, bombs dropped in the garden beyond ours, and in the harbour. I do feel we should all be together. I’m quite prepared to see us all interned because of our name! Specially if the Pétain government turn nasty and madly ally with Germany!39

She misses writing. To fill this gap in her life, Daphne agrees to write a short book of patriotic fables on the suggestion of a friend, the tennis player Bunny Austin, who is involved in the organization Moral Re-Armament, in order to give courage to the British people. She entrusts publication of the book to her former publisher, Heinemann, as she doesn’t think Victor Gollancz will be interested. It is not easy, writing optimistic short stories, for someone who has always preferred to explore darker ideas. Not without difficulty, Daphne produces ten short stories. Royalties will go to military charities and families in need. To her surprise, Come Wind, Come Weather. which she expected to quietly sink into obscurity, quickly sells 250,000 copies. The Rebecca effect, undoubtedly, because the quality of the writing, Daphne is well aware, leaves something to be desired. Mo and Tommy like these simple stories, which feature ordinary people confronted with the very real fears of the war. The only person who is less than delighted by the book is Victor. No matter how much Daphne protests that she didn’t think he would be interested in such propaganda, he makes clear his displeasure and warns her that she must never publish anything with anyone else again. Message received, loud and clear.

Even in the midst of war and pregnancy, Daphne does not lose her characteristic deadpan sense of humor. In this peaceful corner of Hertfordshire, north of London, she and her daughters feel safe. To Angela, she writes: I’m feeling pretty fat, with two months still to go, but thank heaven am not fat all over, or square, and don’t lurch. More seriously, she admits that sirens and air-raid warnings are not part of their daily life. All goes well here and no alarms of great magnitude. We seem to be getting off pretty lightly. Think this bit of Herts must be in a quiet pocket. Actually, about twenty Nazi planes flew over us on their way to Luton, eight miles away, the other afternoon. It really was rather an exquisite sight, so remote and unreal, those silvery creatures like birds humming above us.40

Not long before the birth of the baby, in October 1940, the Brownings move to a neighboring house, Cloud’s Hill, for a few months, so they can await the new arrival in more serene surroundings, despite the worries caused by the war. Tessa (seven) and Flavia (three) are finally reunited with their parents. Daphne is haunted by a single fear: that her husband will be sent to France. In Fowey, Muriel and Jeanne have had to leave Ferryside, which has been requisitioned by the navy. They are staying on the Esplanade, in town, while Angela prolongs her stay in Scotland. Jeanne puts aside music and painting to enroll in the Women’s Land Army, a paramilitary agricultural organization, dating from the First World War, that sends women to the fields to take over the roles of men sent to the front, with its members devoting themselves to farming activities to produce and sell vegetables at the local markets. The work is arduous, but Jeanne performs it very willingly.

Daphne gives birth to a boy on November 3, 1940. At last, her dream comes true. Tongue-in-cheek, she describes the agonies of childbirth to Angela: Suddenly those violent pains started, and luckily Sister had everything ready. She shoved a gas and oxygen contraption into my hands, which needless to say was useless, and the doctor was sent for and barely approached the bedside before I felt the most violent explosion and the baby shot out of me like someone taking a header, and yelling as it did so! And then I heard Sister say “Oh, good, won’t they be thrilled” and I realised it was a boy. “One’s son” at last! Christian Frederick du Maurier Browning.41 She is deliriously happy. Tommy gets to hold the newborn in his arms during a quick visit between two secret missions on the south coast. Tessa and Flavia realize, to their amazement, that their mother is no longer the same person since the birth of little “Kits.” She is the one who bathes him, not Nanny. She kisses and cuddles him for hours, rocking him in her arms and staring rapturously into his eyes. The little girls walk around on tiptoes, feeling unwanted. Never have they received such affection, such love, from their mother.

In early 1941, the Brownings move back in with the Puxleys. The girls like sweet Paddy and the white living room where “Uncle” Christopher plays the piano, melancholy airs that echo through the large house. The war seems far off, hardly real, yet the truth is that the conflict is now in its third year and Germany’s thirst for conquest shows no signs of diminishing as its army invades Bulgaria, then Yugoslavia, then Greece.

*   *   *

Daphne has not written a novel in three years. Her time has been taken up entirely by Mrs. de Winter, Kits, and the war. For the new book that Victor is demanding, she does not want to do something in the same vein as Rebecca: she would prefer to create a plot that will soothe and console her readers. The world is at war, after all, and she senses that her writing has been changed by this fact: it is less dark, less macabre. Witness the change she made to the ending of Rebecca when she adapted it for the stage; witness, too, the optimistic stories of Come Wind, Come Weather. She feels like writing a story set in the past, a tale of the sea and adventure along the same lines as Jamaica Inn, but without its horrors. She feels like writing about love, passion, sensuality. A handsome, gray-walled house like Menabilly, a secret cove like the one she and Tommy went to for their honeymoon, on the River Helford. A heroine in her thirties, beautiful and rebellious, who is wilting in London with her dreary husband. Brown, curly hair … white skin … A French pirate, from Brittany … who might bear some slight resemblance to Christopher Puxley, with his calm movements, his slow smile.

Daphne has to face up to the aggravations of life as a mother. The nanny falls seriously ill; Tessa catches measles, and then so does Flavia. The baby is exhausted by his first bad cold. Dona St. Columb, her heroine, who wishes she had been born a boy so she could live freely, and Jean-Benoit Aubéry, the Breton pirate, must wait. Flavia (four) is the most affected by her illness. Daphne anxiously watches over her, day and night. It is the first time she has felt this close to her second daughter, and throughout her long convalescence, Daphne sits on the edge of Flavia’s bed with the typewriter on her knees. From time to time, the little girl opens an eye, surprised and happy to have her mother all to herself. She is not in the least disturbed by the clatter of the typewriter keys.

In the spring of 1941, it is Daphne’s turn to be sick, as she comes down with pneumonia. The doctor orders complete rest. She sleeps, and she reads. Angela publishes a third novel, A Little Less, with Michael Joseph: this is the infamous “Venetian”* novel that she wrote in secret twelve years before and was roundly rejected. The book’s publication gives rise to much gossip in London society, but the reviews are both rare and severe: “cheap … lush mush … a literary failure,” proclaims the Saturday Review of Books. From her bed, Daphne writes encouragingly to her sister, congratulating her for her boldness and suggesting that she try writing comic short stories rather than novels. It is not easy to be Daphne du Maurier’s elder sister and to want to be a novelist, but Angela refuses to give up. She already has the idea for her next novel in mind; it will take place in Cornwall. For now, she joins her mother and sister in Fowey, in the little house on the Esplanade. And, following Jeanne’s example, she enrolls in the Women’s Land Army.

When Daphne is finally able to get out of bed again, her family realizes how thin she has gotten, how pale and weak she appears. She cannot go up or down stairs. Christopher Puxley has to carry her. A delightful man, the very opposite of Tommy, who comes back home during every leave with the weight of the war on his shoulders, his face ravaged by anxiety, stomach twisted by some unexplained pain. Christopher smokes his pipe in the evenings and says barely a word, contemplating her with a gentle smile. Daphne likes to lounge on the sofa and listen to him play, admire his beautiful hands. Her favorite tune is Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” which Christopher plays with such sensitivity. Little by little, she regains her strength and starts writing again, imagining herself back in the seventeenth century and the ambience of Navron Hall, the St. Columbs’ seaside home, an old house, long uninhabited, where Dona flees one night on an impulse, with children and nanny in tow, infuriated by the superficiality of society life in London. The bold, mischievous Dona is capable of dressing up as a highwayman with her accomplices and robbing terrified old aristocrats. A romance with a big R,42 Daphne tells Victor in a letter, knowing full well that the critics will, once again, ridicule her for choosing to exploit a popular genre. But what does it matter? People are being killed by bombs and the newspapers are full of the horrors of war; in this climate, she does not have the heart to write something sad. She takes the subversive attraction between a Breton pirate and an English lady and throws herself yearningly into her tale, describing the slow and delicious temptation, the looks, the silences, just like those between her and Christopher Puxley, the voiceless connection that must not be mentioned, that must never be confessed, but which unlocks the secret door of her writing.

The French pirate is tall, dark, and silent, with passionate eyes and the pleasant fragrance of pipe tobacco floating around him. His hands are long and beautifully shaped, and she imagines them playing a piano or caressing a woman; yet these are hands capable of taming a sea storm, of pillaging a ship, of cutting a man’s throat. His ship, like Rebecca’s Je Reviens,* like Daphne’s own boat, has a French name: La Mouette.† The liaison between the pirate and the lady remains as secret as the silent creek hidden at the end of the large garden. Each evening, as darkness falls, the lady disguises herself as a cabin boy and goes sailing with the captain of La Mouette. But her husband, Lord St. Columb, begins to question his wife’s long absence. He arrives at Navron without warning, along with greedy Lord Rockingham, a former suitor of Dona’s. The secret of the creek is revealed. The life of the charming pirate is in danger.…

The novel Frenchman’s Creek is published in September 1941, and, as Daphne expected, the reviews are not kind. The Times Literary Supplement even compares the book to “dope,” labeling it facile. Not that Victor cares: the readers vote with their hard-earned pounds, and the book is another bestseller. As for Rebecca’s sales figures, they are now approaching a million copies. Paramount Pictures snaps up the movie rights to Frenchman’s Creek; the film will be directed by Mitchell Leisen, and already there are rumors that Joan Fontaine, fresh from her success in Rebecca, will play the willful Lady Dona.

Tommy is promoted to Major General in November 1941 and is given the onerous task of shaping thousands of men into an airborne fighting unit, in collaboration with the Royal Air Force. Daphne’s husband is now an authority in the army. Have they really been married for ten years? Daphne can hardly believe it. It seems to her only yesterday that they first went out together on the Yggy. Ten years of marriage, and a husband who is now never there, sucked into the eye of the storm. And yet she is in danger. Not the same kind of danger as her husband. Here she is, in a beautiful house, safe from enemy bombardments. In a sweet bubble of peacefulness, with an attractive host. Too attractive, probably. And who is himself somewhat dazzled by this witty, pretty, world-famous novelist. How could he not succumb to the charms of Daphne du Maurier? Particularly when he sees her every day for two years, her slender figure, her grace, the delightful sound of her laughter. The servants whisper, troubled. Aren’t Mrs. Browning and Mr. Puxley spending too much time together? And poor Mrs. Puxley, who seems blind to it all … Daphne tries to reason with herself. This is not love; it is just a fling, a crush, that’s all, a few embraces, a few caresses, a close friendship, not an all-consuming passion, nothing too serious. But the danger is there, all the same. It lurks, it prowls, as it does around La Mouette, which waits for Dona every night at the foot of Navron’s garden, as it does in the sensual smile of the French pirate, in the jealousy of Lord Rockingham. The danger of the forbidden, always so captivating.

One morning, Paddy Puxley looks at her with eyes that are no longer warm or welcoming, and Daphne finally understands, with pain and shame, that the time has come, in the spring of 1942, to leave Langley End.

There is only one place she can possibly go.

Fowey.

*   *   *

Readymoney Cove, that little creek she has always loved. Facing out to sea, a white, square cottage with a gray roof, and a garden filled with yellow roses, opening directly on to the beach. Daphne takes care of renting it and settles the children and the nanny there. The rooms seem cramped and dark after Langley End, and the kitchen is tiny. Daphne arranges her office in a long, almost corridor-like room. The girls protest that their new bedroom is regularly invaded by black beetles; apparently, it’s because the house used to be a stable.

Daphne adopts her usual defense to life’s vicissitudes: she writes, submerges herself in a new novel. No time for anything else; Daphne is like a workhorse wearing blinkers. Tessa, now almost nine, goes to school on the Esplanade, close to the house where Mo, Jeanne, and Angela are staying. That makes only two children in the house during the day, but it feels like more because of Kits’s fiery temperament. At eighteen months old, her son is an irresistibly impish little blond boy, idolized by his mother, and every bit as spoiled by her as Gerald was by Big Granny, which makes Muriel smile. It is Kits who, day after day, is covered with kisses, endlessly hugged, in a way that Daphne’s daughters never were. In her novels, the heroines love only their sons, passionately. Real life is no different.

The novel she is writing now is a family saga, Hungry Hill, a sprawling historical novel in the same vein as The Loving Spirit, which tells the story of five generations of an Irish family, the Brodricks. Enough of romance, of ladies and pirates, Daphne is moving up a gear; she wants to be taken seriously, wants the literary critics to finally show an interest in her. She delegates all domestic tasks to Margaret and the cook, Mrs. Hancock. She remains deaf to Kits’s screaming and does not leave her office before lunch. At teatime, the children are allowed to enter her lair and she reads to them the adventures of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Even Kits falls silent then, bewitched by the melodious voice of his mother and the voyages of those men in armor.

Daphne discovers that one of her childhood friends, Mary Fox, their former neighbor in Hampstead, has just moved to a house nearby, providing her with the ideal companion for her daily walks. During the fall and winter of 1942, Daphne works hard. She will not admit to anyone that the idea for this novel was inspired by Christopher Puxley: he often talked to her about his Irish ancestors, even showed her a few letters, enough to embellish the narrative structure and preserve a secret link with him. There is the distinct impression, during this time, that Daphne is rushing headlong to escape her everyday life, losing herself in the meanders of a dense story in order not to have to think about the sad letters her husband sends, weighed down with his military responsibilities, a man approaching his fifties who feels too old for this war and misses his family. She fears for Tommy’s life, now he is the Major General of the Airborne Forces Division and has been sent to North Africa for several weeks to help out with preparations for the Desert War.

With Ferryside having been vacated by the navy, Muriel, Jeanne, and Angela do all they can to organize a festive Christmas in spite of the wartime restrictions. They toast the publication of Angela’s fourth novel, Treveryan, “dedicated with much love to my sister Daphne,” the dark tale of siblings under a family curse, set in an elegant manor house by the sea. Kirkus Reviews judges the book better than its predecessors, even if the author “tends to overwrite her dialogue and overplay her hand.” Sales remain modest, but this does not worry Angela, who has already found the inspiration for her next novel.

Daphne’s morale is at its lowest point. Outside, it rains constantly. The final corrections of Hungry Hill seem to drag on forever. In February 1943, she is woken by the arrival of a telegram. Tommy, not long back from North Africa, has had a glider accident. In a panic, she rushes to his bedside at the air force base in Netheravon, Wiltshire, 125 miles from Fowey. Her husband’s knee injury is sufficiently serious that he is sent to Readymoney Cove for two weeks to recuperate.

The children had almost forgotten that their father smelled like a combination of lavender water and Woodbines, his favorite brand of cigarettes. When their mother brings him home, he is grouchy, agreeing only grudgingly to stay in his bed with his leg bandaged. When he is finally able to walk again, with the aid of a stick, Daphne and the children accompany him along the Esplanade and Tommy insists on saluting every G.I. who emerges from the huge American army base recently set up in the wooded hills behind Readymoney. The little port of Fowey is invaded by the American fleet, and civilians are no longer allowed to sail there. Tommy tells the children that, when the war ends, he will build a new boat and take the whole family out to sea. Listening to him, observing his gaunt face, Daphne realizes what a terrible mark the war has left on their lives: things will never be the same again. Even if Daphne’s life does not appear so very different from the way it used to be—visits with the children to see her mother at Ferryside, lunches with the Quiller-Couches, high teas with Clara Vyvyan in Trelowarren, walks with Mary Fox, writing, and proofreading—she has a husband who chose armed conflict as a career. Fearfully, she watches him leave again, stiff-backed in his uniform, his shoulders already burdened by the weight of the battles to come.

Hungry Hill is published on May 5, 1943. Daphne is annoyed by the book’s appearance: the paper is of poor quality, thin and transparent, like the pages of a telephone directory, and the letters are tiny. But Victor had no choice: the printers, too, are suffering from wartime restrictions. She waits eagerly for the reviews, allowing herself to hope that she will finally be accorded the eulogistic articles she so desperately yearns for, that she will be congratulated on the seriousness of her work, that she will at last read that Miss du Maurier does not write mere mass-market mush for lovesick girls. But not one journalist champions the book. Its structure is judged to be clumsy, unsubtle, its prose stiff and convoluted, the characters unappealing and lifeless. The Observer wonders a little maliciously if Miss du Maurier had intended to write her story directly as a screenplay, without any attempt to make it literary or novel-like. Even though the movie rights are bought by a production company, Daphne is cruelly disappointed. She remembers Q’s little warning: The critics will never forgive you for writing Rebecca. Her disenchantment is intensified by the dangerous nature of the missions Tommy is given in North Africa, by this war that seems never-ending. When Tessa and Flavia’s school is requisitioned by the American army, Daphne transforms her office into a classroom to educate her daughters. Helping Tessa (nearly ten) with her multiplication tables and Flavia (six) with her alphabet seems to her the best way of diminishing her own anxiety and disillusionment. The girls are thrilled by these unexpected lessons given by their mother, who goes from talking about the death of Joan of Arc (her favorite tomboy) to the devastation of the plague. She encourages them to turn some of Chaucer’s tales into theatrical productions. They are fascinated by her geography classes, which she embellishes with bizarre drawings on cards, and beg her for more.

One day in the spring of 1943, Daphne takes Tessa and Flavia for a walk with their aunt Angela and whispers to them that she is going to show them her house of secrets, her favorite place in the whole world, the mansion that inspired Manderley, in Rebecca. She leads them patiently along an endless, overgrown driveway and, just when the girls can’t bear it anymore, when they are hungry and thirsty, she finally points out the large gray house emerging from a red cloud of rhododendrons. The place is silent. The grass is waist-high. Confused, they watch their mother walk up to the house, her eyes shining, and caress the ivy-clad walls, touching her lips and her cheeks to the stone façade as if she were kissing it. This house is called Menabilly, she tells them, and no one has lived here for twenty years. It is the first time her daughters have heard this name. Their mother pronounces it with the reverence of one in love, her voice soft and dreamy. For a long time, she sits in front of Menabilly, her face transformed by happiness. Tessa gets bored—she’s not interested in this house, she wants to go home—but Flavia watches her mother speaking in a low voice to Angela. Daphne seems filled with an intense joy.

Finally, it is time to leave. Daphne takes her daughters by the hand, turns around one last time, and offers a secretive smile to that abandoned house enveloped in silence. As they walk away through the undergrowth, escorted by the singing of doves, she is still smiling, because she knows, now, who the new mistress of Menabilly is going to be.