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, wrap
s 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.