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 f
rantic 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.