In the spring of 1952, most of the reviews of Daphne’s short story collection are virulent. Victor had predicted it; many people consider Daphne du Maurier a “romantic” author and are horrified by the violence and the sordid nature of her stories, particularly the journalist Nancy Spain, of the Daily Express, who claims that these nauseating tales draw their inspiration from “malformation, hatred, blackmail, cruelty and murder.” She expresses her repugnance with such bile that Victor picks up his pen for the second time to defend Daphne. These unfavorable reactions have no effect on the novelist, who long ago became immune to them. Her readers devour the collection, and Hitchcock, once again, buys the movie rights, to “The Birds.” Her family and friends are also disconcerted by the book’s tone. Daphne finds herself in the same state of mind as when The Progress of Julius caused so much offense, twenty years before. No, she certainly isn’t a romantic author—what claptrap! Good God, don’t these journalists understand how important it is for a writer to experiment, to explore dark avenues in order to reinvent herself? Daphne has just turned forty-five, she’s not a kid anymore; her hair is gray, her childlike face is lined … it’s time they gave her a break from that image of a writer of old-fashioned melodramas! While Daphne is being critically damned and commercially successful, Angela publishes her seventh novel, Shallow Waters. Again, there is not a single newspaper review of her book, an ode to her youth and the world of the theater, the story of an actress who will abandon all artistic leanings in order to concentrate on being a mother. Angela consoles herself by remembering the warm welcome that greeted her autobiography the year before.
In Paris, it is Albin Michel’s turn to publish these dark short stories. Daphne’s translator, the all-powerful Mme Butler, has her say once again, making clear her reservations about “The Old Man” and “Monte Verità,” which she finds “not very credible” and “boring.”32 In her opinion, it would not be “very desirable” that these stories should form part of the collection. So Daphne must accept that they won’t be published in France! Michel Hoffman, her agent, suggests replacing them with two other stories, “No Motive” and “Split Second.”
In another reverse for Daphne, Henry Koster’s movie version of My Cousin Rachel has just been released and it is a disappointment, even though she enjoys the acting work of young Richard Burton, playing the impetuous Philip Ashley to a T, and is very glad that some of the scenes were shot in Cornwall rather than Hollywood. The unctuous, irritating Olivia de Havilland bears no relation to her conception of the enigmatic Rachel. With her convoluted bun and her middle parting, she looks like the Duchess of Windsor. When Flavia enthusiastically declares that the actress reminds her of Ellen Doubleday, however, Daphne falls silent, momentarily troubled.
Tommy is busy building a new boat; he has to replace old Yggy, which has come to the end of its seaworthy life and now rests in the garden at Menabilly. The Ygdrasil II is also a motorboat, but bigger and faster than its predecessor. It is only out on the water that Daphne and Tommy rekindle their old closeness. Tommy now sets to work on his latest project—designing a sailboat, to be named the Jeanne d’Arc. It will be pricey, but Daphne doesn’t have the heart to refuse him.
With the return of the good weather, Daphne accepts an invitation from her great friend Clara Vyvyan to go hiking with her, first in Switzerland and then in the Rhône Valley. A robust walker in spite of her sixty-two years, Clara fascinates Daphne with her Gypsy-like appearance, her dry, copper-hued skin, her sparkling eyes, and her endless memories. Lady Vyvyan has been around the world, alone with her backpack, from Greece to Alaska, from Montenegro to Canada. Daphne has read and enjoyed her travel books, published by Peter Owen Publishers.
During the summer of 1952, Daphne’s letters to Oriel retain their mischievous spirit, recounting her excursion with Clara, who does not share Daphne’s ideas of comfort: Lady Vyvyan is capable of sleeping in a haystack, while Daphne needs her awful ritual of creaming my face, and my hair in pins, and breakfast in bed! Another panic arrives when she gets her period while climbing in Switzerland. Lady Vyvyan will despise me if I don’t walk up a mountain because of Robert.* What shall I do with the Robert* things? I see myself furtively changing behind a glacier.33 The house has not emptied after the summer. Tod is recovering from an operation on her varicose veins and Maureen from the removal of her tonsils. Tommy is out on the boat from dawn till dusk. Fowey Regatta, which takes place every year at the end of August, has been a great success, and the famous dancer Margot Fonteyn, a friend of Tommy’s, comes to spend the weekend at “Mena.” Tommy is rather menaced* by her, awfully nice and easy, and reminded me of a Red Indian,34 she tells her young friend. The weather has been glorious; Daphne goes swimming every day and has never been more tanned. Tessa, nineteen and gorgeous, has invited a young man home. Tommy and I went for a short cruise in the boat to the Helford River, I did this on purpose so as not to be there to make conversation!35 The only sad lines in this summer correspondence concern Gertie. Daphne confesses to Oriel that the lawyer Fanny Holzman, a close friend of Gertie’s, wrote to warn her: Gertie is seriously ill. She fainted onstage and had to be replaced at the last second by her understudy, Constance Carpenter, and it may take her a long time to recover.
Three days later, when Daphne gets back from a walk along the shore, she is handed a telegram. Her heart contracts as she opens the little envelope, and she has to concentrate to decipher the few words it contains. Gertrude Lawrence died of cancer on September 6, 1952, in New York. Daphne stands in the entrance hall, suddenly numb. She can’t hear anything—not Tommy, asking her if she’s all right, because she looks so pale, nor the voices of her children as they play outside on the lawn, nor the barking of Mouse, her Westie. Maureen gently takes her by the arm and offers her a cup of tea. Tod leads her toward the couch. Still Daphne says nothing. Her face is white and the telegram a crumpled ball in her hand. The telephone starts to ring: it’s Oriel Malet for Lady Browning. Daphne struggles to her feet and puts the receiver to her ear. Oriel was shelling peas in her kitchen when she heard the news on the radio; she immediately thought of Bing. Daphne nods, stammers something about being shattered, thanks Oriel, and hangs up.
Daphne won’t say much for several days. Her family and friends watch in astonishment as she withdraws into a catatonic sadness. So Cinders was really that important to Daphne? And yet they had only been friends for a few years. The truth is that no one guesses at the depth of Daphne’s feelings for Gertie; no one knows about their closeness, their secrets, their frolics. From her bedroom, Daphne follows reports of the funeral, learning that her Cinders was buried in her pink crinoline and that the lights on Broadway were dimmed for three minutes in tribute to the actress with the Cockney accent. How can she explain to her loved ones that she feels as if she has lost Gerald again, eighteen years after his death? Daphne recalls her grief on the Heath, watching the two pigeons she’d released from their cage fly away, the day of her father’s funeral. Gertie and Gerald, fanciful and capricious, impish and beguiling, are gone forever.
* * *
The only way to survive this bereavement is to write. But try as she might to find inspiration—shutting herself away in her hut, going for walks with her dog on the Gribbin—nothing “brews.”* The coming winter horrifies her. Flavia has just gone away to boarding school and, for the first time, “Mena” seems too empty to her. She misses Kits, of course, but also her daughters—and that is new. She is united by a deep tenderness to Tessa and Flavia, even if her son remains her favorite. Daphne takes an interest in Tessa’s love life and likes her first boyfriend, Ken, but there is another “menacing”* young man in the picture. She enjoys her long philosophical discussions with Flavia, in whom she recognizes her own sensitivity and inclination toward daydreaming. Now there is only Tod and herself in the house, and her old governess often gets on her nerves.
In desperation, Daphne suggests to Victor that she write a nonfiction book about Mary Anne Clarke, her ancestor, Kicky??
?s maternal grandmother, in the style of her biography on the du Mauriers. She had wanted, a while back, to write a play based on the life of her famous eighteenth-century forebear, convinced that Gertie would be ideal in the role of such a dazzling character. Then Gertie passed away. So why not return to this germ of an idea by writing a novel dedicated to Cinders? But first of all, Daphne must do some research, because she doesn’t know very much about the tumultuous life of her great-great-great-grandmother, the bawdy effigies of whom, inherited from Gerald, show a buxom lady in low-cut dresses pursued by vicars and kings. There is no question now of going to London to visit the British Library; she is too fond of her reclusive life at “Mena.” She could ask Oriel Malet, who lives in the capital, to help her, and she could call on the services of young Derek Whiteley, an assistant at her publishers.
Her heart isn’t in it. Writing becomes a chore. In spite of the ample documentation gleaned by Oriel and Derek in libraries, Daphne’s progress is laborious. She admits to Victor and Sheila, her editors, that this is a novel written with the head, not the heart.36 And yet the life of Mary Anne Clarke, who quickly climbs the ladder of high society despite her humble origins, is not lacking in spice. Like Daphne, she laments being born a girl. Clever, ambitious, and attractive, Mary Anne is not content to be the submissive wife of a lazy, drunken husband or to raise his four children in the slums of London. A feisty heroine in the style of Dona St. Columb or Honor Harris, Mary Anne decides to exploit the most advantageous part of her resources: herself. Becoming the Duke of York’s mistress, she makes use of information gleaned between the sheets, indiscreet pillow talk.
Daphne is bedridden by a bad case of flu for several weeks in March 1953, and when she starts work again, in April, her prose seems to her watered down, insipid, bereft of its usual vigor. What is happening to her? She doesn’t recognize her own sentences. Will this book be as much of a struggle to read as it has been to write? Won’t her readers be bored to death? And then an even darker apprehension grips her: Once she is finished with this novel, what will she do with her time? She is capable of spending hours in the sun whenever it appears, sitting on the lawn, with her back to the hut. She writes to Oriel: I wish I knew what it meant to love the sun so much.37 She also tells her young friend about what she is reading and how she is finding a certain comfort in the works of Carl G. Jung, whom she finds “nicer” than Freud or Adler: He does say that the ordinary life of an artist or writer can never be satisfactory, because of this awful creating thing that goes on inside them all the time, making them Gondal.38* “Gondal,” a new code word between Daphne and Oriel, borrowed from the Brontë sisters, means “the world of the imaginary.”
In the fall, thirteen-year-old Kits goes off to Eton, where his father went before him. It is Tommy who goes with him for his first day. Daphne feels enormously proud, watching him leave, so handsome in his black morning coat.
September 1953 brings a new obligation: a stay at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, the royal family’s summer residence. There is no way to get out of it: Tommy has already postponed the trip once before, the previous year, when he was slightly injured in a boating accident. The young queen has just been crowned, and the Brownings’ presence is fully expected. As always, Daphne is thrown into a panic by the need to pack suitcases, wear long dresses and jewelry, inhabit the role of Lady Browning, and forget the writer. Even the place’s beauty has no effect on her, so ill at ease does she feel. She is plunged back into the crippling shyness that used to overcome her on Sundays at Cannon Hall; she does her best to smile, to keep up with the conversations, but she is counting the days until she can go home again. The constant curtseying and the formal clothing leave her exhausted. The only moment of joy is when the Queen Mother, a great lover of her books, asks her about the novel she is working on now. Daphne tells her about the life of her amoral ancestor and explains that she has not yet decided what she should censor, or not, for the book. The Queen Mother responds enthusiastically by begging her to not leave anything out.
Upon their return to Menabilly, a sizable surprise awaits the Brownings. Tessa announces to them that she wishes to become engaged to the young man she has been dating for a while now, a soldier named Peter de Zulueta. She is only twenty! Daphne likes the young man in question—good family, elegant—but she is not completely convinced. Tommy feels the same reservations. But their daughter is so fervent that they end up agreeing. The wedding will take place the next year, in March. For now, Daphne concentrates on the final pages of Mary Anne, which she finishes, with difficulty, in the fall of 1953. She sends it to her publishers with a note addressed to Victor: You’ll have to be ruthless, don’t pass what is doubtful.39 And, in fact, the book will require considerable rewriting, carried out by Sheila. This does not bother Daphne, who feels no real attachment to the novel. She finds it dull and thinks it reads like journalism. Her only consolation is that it does not contain even a hint of romance. I’m done with romance forever,40 she writes ironically to Sheila.
* * *
The big event in March 1954 is the wedding of Tessa Browning to Captain Peter de Zulueta of the Welsh Guards. It is the kind of wedding that Muriel would have loved Daphne to have, a church ceremony at St. James, in London, followed by a party for several hundred people at the Savoy, as Tommy has recently joined the hotel’s management committee. Tessa’s robe is silk brocade, and her veil has a train several yards long. Her maid of honor, seventeen-year-old Flavia, wears gold satin. The young couple emerges from the church under a guard of honor formed by the raised swords of the groom’s officer friends. The newlyweds will honeymoon in Switzerland.
Her daughter, married! Carrying the young bride’s lily, Daphne feels her heart melt as she looks at her, so pretty, so fresh-faced. At her age, all Daphne’s dreams were of independence. She observes her husband, who has traded his Moper melancholy for a more affable expression. He looks very elegant in his impeccably tailored morning coat and an immaculate silk shirt, a white carnation in his buttonhole. Everyone seems to know him, greeting him as “Boy,” and Daphne notices the admiring glances he receives from other women, their gazes lingering on his tall frame, his distinguished face. Even now, at fifty-eight, Boy Browning still has the same effect on women. Is she completely crazy, leaving this man alone all week in London, insisting on having separate rooms in Menabilly for the last eight years? They talk on the phone every morning, but is that enough to keep a marriage alive? Tommy has made new friends, has become passionate about the ballet, which leaves Daphne cold. He has become a committee member of the Royal Academy of Dancing and in his spare time is writing the script of a ballet, based on Tchaikovsky’s opera The Maid of Orleans. In London, Tommy goes out, accepts invitations, never misses a musical comedy or a show, and when he arrives at “Mena” on Friday evenings, he tends to sink into a torpid apathy, a glass of gin always at hand. Has Daphne pushed herself too hard, locking herself away for selfish reasons, in the name of writing and creativity? And in the end, what has it gotten her, all that ambition—a novel that will come out in a few months’ time, for which she feels nothing but shame? During the reception, Daphne listens to these alarm bells going off inside her, but she quickly silences them. She will think about this tomorrow.
Her first priority is to get away: to take a trip with her beloved Clara, this time in Greece, a country she has never been to before. Under a burning sun, the two women visit the islands in boats, on buses, and on donkeys, climbing hills and sleeping under the stars. Daphne gets her fill of savage nature, flowers, little hillside churches, Greek blue skies, accumulating as much energy and vitality as she can in order to deal with her return to England and the much-dreaded publication of Mary Anne in June 1954. Victor has ordered a print run of 125,000: Too optimistic? The Daily Herald goes first, with this ambiguous line: “A book which will bring delight to the hearts of circulating libraries and acute nausea to critics.” The West Morning News warns its readers that the novel is “a disappointment.” One of the boo
k’s few champions, the New York Herald Book Review, finds Mary Anne “a lively lady.” Catholic World does not hold back, calling it “a slipshod and thoroughly unpleasant book” with a “nasty and immoral” heroine. Kirkus Reviews is a little more positive: “not top drawer du Maurier, but a sure best-seller.” Her friend the historian Alfred Leslie Rowse, though not generally fond of historical novels, at least appreciates the acuity of her research, which is some comfort to her.
Victor takes her out to lunch at the Criterion in Piccadilly to celebrate the book’s publication, but Daphne is filled with ennui. What happened to the pleasure of writing? At twenty years old, she used to line books up one after another, insatiable for more. Is the death of Gertie responsible for this scarcity of inspiration? Or is it the inexorable approach of that dreaded passage in a woman’s life? Daphne will be fifty in three years’ time, after all. Next year, she will certainly be a grandmother. She has no right to complain, she reminds herself, sipping her champagne: she has a husband, three children, a magnificent house, and her books are bestsellers. So where, she wonders, looking at the neo-Byzantine décor of the restaurant as Victor orders dessert, does this feeling of emptiness come from? It is as if a long black ribbon were slipping between her fingers: her father held it, Kicky too … perhaps the du Mauriers have this sadness in their blood, and Daphne has handed this ribbon on to dreamy, sensitive Flavia. Angela, though unsuccessful as a novelist, seems untouched by this hereditary gloominess; she continues to flirt with women, to travel, and has never married. Does her solitude pain her? No, she loves her Pekinese dogs as if they were her children. In the drawer of her bedside table, Angela keeps the timetable for the Orient Express, and just looking at it is enough to inspire her. As for Jeanne, the youngest, the artist, she perhaps held this black ribbon in her hands for a while, but she has met her soul mate in the person of the young poet Noël Welch. Jeanne and Noël have chosen to live in the heart of Dartmoor, north of Plymouth, in a setting of hills, streams, and waterfalls. Daphne envies them their cottage, with its novelistic name Half Moon, where Jeanne paints, far from her sisters and her mother and Fowey. Over coffee, while Victor lights his cigar, Daphne thinks bitterly that her two sisters enjoy a freedom that she does not possess. She is no longer free because she has run out of ideas.