When a publisher asks Daphne to write the preface to the new edition of Wuthering Heights, she seizes the opportunity. In October 1954, she suggests to Flavia and Oriel, who are fourteen years apart in age, that they go with her to visit the Presbyterian “Parsonage” in Haworth, Yorkshire, where the Brontë children grew up. It is a pleasant, studious vacation, in spite of the cold that leaves circles of frost on their windowpanes each morning. Watching her mother take so much pleasure in following the footsteps of her favorite novelists, Flavia suspects that she will one day write a book related to the Brontës. The new preface is written quickly, and Daphne leaves Yorkshire with a feeling of work well done and future inspiration. The Brontë she is most interested in, she admits to the two girls on the train home, is Branwell, the unsung, unfortunate brother, who was nevertheless just as talented as his sisters.
Soon after this literary getaway, Daphne receives a letter from her publishers, Doubleday. The lease on the large apartment on Rue de la Faisanderie will not be renewed after Frank Price’s departure, and it will remain vacant for six months before the next tenant moves in. How would Daphne like to take advantage of this fact, given her love of Paris and France? To move back to the city she so adores, to write in a room overlooking chestnut trees, to go for strolls in the nearby Jardins de Bagatelle … it’s a tempting prospect. But she cannot leave “Mena,” nor Tommy, who comes to see her every weekend. If she lived in Paris until next spring, it would put further strain on their marriage. She has a different idea: Flavia and Oriel could occupy the apartment, one to learn French, the other to write, and that way, Daphne could go to visit them occasionally. Both girls are game: How could anyone turn down an offer like that? They arrive at the Gare du Nord in freezing rain, but even that does not dampen their enthusiasm. The winter of 1954 is one of the harshest since the end of the war, and the girls shiver in the vast apartment, even more so when the building’s boiler breaks down. Flavia enrolls in art courses in Kicky’s former studio on Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, while Oriel starts writing a novel. But after a week, they are so fascinated by Paris that writing and painting are neglected. Daphne goes to visit them several times, and each time she feels her love for France surge up again. When she goes to Rue de la Tour in an attempt to resuscitate Kicky’s old Passy in a now-modern Paris, Daphne feels a frisson of excitement that she has not felt for a long time. Why not explore, once and for all, those famous French roots of hers? Go in search of the Bussons du Maurier, in Sarthe? That’s it, the subject of her next novel: finding the traces of those aristocratic glassblowers from whom she is descended, seeing their châteaux, their houses, visiting their graves. Kicky and Gerald would be so proud. The time has come to lay claim to her French blood.
While she is organizing this trip, Daphne almost chokes as she is leafing through the French translation of Mary Anne, published by Albin Michel in late 1954, a few copies of which she has just received from her agents. The cause is her translator, Denise Van Moppès, alias Mme Butler. Lady Browning writes a long, angry letter to Michel Hoffman in Paris, who in turn hastens to contact her French publishers. I must make you aware of a very serious mistake committed by Mme Butler in her translation of Mary Anne. On the last page of the novel, there is the word “starling,” which of course means “étourneau” or “sansonnet,” and which Mme Butler unfortunately decided to translate as “un million de petites étoiles” [“a million little stars”], presumably confused by the similarity between the words “star” and “starling.” I do wonder how a translator of Mme Butler’s professional reputation could have allowed such a gross error, particularly as the scene in question takes place in broad daylight. As the author wrote to me, her readers must wonder what stars are doing in the sky over London on the morning of the Duke of York’s funeral!41 Daphne was able to spot this error because she speaks fluent French. Now that her novels are published in over thirty languages, however, Daphne knows that she must trust her translators, as she isn’t able to read all those other languages to search for any inaccuracies. She learns through her agent that Mme Butler has translated Hemingway, Thomas Mann, Koestler, and Henry James, that she is highly respected in the profession and also publishes her own novels under her maiden name. Albin Michel hastens to correct Mme Butler’s mistake, but the translator herself does not write an apology to the author.
* * *
Daphne gives advice to Flavia and Oriel, who have become thoroughly Parisian. Dress warmly, even to go to the Louvre. Don’t wear stiletto heels, because they slip on the frozen sidewalks. Don’t walk alone in the Bois de Boulogne (when Daphne did it, twenty-five years ago, she had the terrifying Schüller, Ferdie’s German shepherd, on a leash, to discourage any aggressors). Learn to use the Metro, not easy to begin with. Get in touch with Doodie (Daphne’s childhood friend, an amusing and welcoming woman, now the highly chic Comtesse de Beauregard, who lives on Rue Barbet-de-Jouy).
Daphne is now a grandmother, at the age of forty-eight. Tessa gives birth to little Marie-Thérèse on February 15, 1955. Watching her daughter breast-feed, Daphne cannot help feeling moved. She remembers Tessa’s birth, twenty-one years before, recalling her disappointment because the baby was a girl. Tessa does not seem at all disappointed by the sex of her child, however; on the contrary, she radiates pride. Kits catches measles in April, and Daphne is at his bedside in “Mena” when she learns by telegram that Fernande has been hospitalized in Rambouillet. Poor Ferdie: she demanded that Lady Browning should be personally informed. Daphne can’t do much, from where she is, and her son is her priority. In a letter to Oriel, Daphne gives her the phone number for the house in Mesnil-Saint-Denis and asks her to call to find out more. Yes, this is cowardly. Ferdie will always remain in her heart, but for a while now Daphne has been irritated by her friend’s detailed accounts of the difficulties and rivalries she is facing in the mayor’s office at Mesnil. Flavia and Oriel obediently visit Mlle Yvon during her convalescence in her house in Yvelines, bringing her avocados, which she adores. Ferdie, in her sixties now, weakened and bedridden, would have so loved to see her Daphne again. Thirty years earlier, Daphne would have been at her side, holding her hand. Will she see her again one day soon? In May, Daphne celebrates her forty-ninth birthday quietly at home with her family, and remarks that her daughter Tessa is a wonderful mother to her baby, completely unlike Daphne at that age. Summer passes peacefully. Tommy’s assistant, Maureen, marries a very nice fellow, Baker-Munton, nicknamed Bim, who becomes another close friend of the Brownings. In a letter to Victor, who is impatient to know when her next novel will arrive, Daphne replies frankly: Everything I write comes from some sort of emotional inner life and the ordinary emotions are absolutely stagnant in me these days, so the unconscious has just got to work on its own, I can’t do anything about that.42
Not until September 1955 is Daphne able to start planning her journey. Because she doesn’t drive, the trip is complicated to organize. In the end, it is her sister Jeanne and Jeanne’s partner, Noël, both experienced drivers, who accompany her to France. Daphne possesses a few documents—letters, birth and death certificates—that she used when writing her biography of the du Mauriers in 1936, as well as the famous engraved crystal tumbler, passed on to her by Gerald. Her first task is to find the Angevin forebears of Louis-Mathurin Busson du Maurier, Kicky’s father, born in London in 1797. His father was French, a master glassblower, originally from Sarthe.
Daphne has marked on a map some former glass factories: Coudrecieux and Chérigny, in Sarthe, and Le Plessis-Dorin, in Loir-et-Cher. In the Forest of Vibraye, she finds a place where the soil consists of a very fine powder of ground glass, which she touches with her bare hands. Afire with excitement, on her hands and knees, she calls out to Jeanne and Noël: her ancestors’ former glassworks must have been here! A police van passes by chance in this remote area and stops. Two suspicious gendarmes ask the ladies what they are doing there. Daphne’s perfect French allows them to avoid an unpleasant situation. For a week, they stroll th
rough villages full of stone houses in Sarthe, in search of the ruins of glass factories. In the grounds of the Château de Chérigny, in Chenu, nothing remains of the factory. Intrigued by Daphne and Jeanne’s surname, the owner of the château points out a small farm nearby called Le Maurier—perhaps that is a clue? Not to mention the Château du Maurier, in La Fontaine-Saint-Martin, a few hours by road from there. Following his advice, the three women go to the farm, then to the château. Daphne is puzzled: in Peter Ibbetson, Kicky always talked about a château, but according to his granddaughter’s research, none of their ancestors were born in the Château du Maurier. Later, Daphne makes a major discovery while ferreting through the local registers. A certain Robert-Mathurin Busson du Maurier, master glassblower, was born in September 1749 on the humble farm of Chenu, at the place known as “Le Maurier.” Her great-great-grandfather!
At the Auberge du Bon Laboureur, in Chenonceaux, where they spend a few nights, Daphne announces to Jeanne and Noël that, despite this fascinating news about the forebear born on a farm, rather than in a château (how Kicky would gasp, if he knew!), she does not have the strength, or the desire, to dive into the paperwork, the work she did on Mary Anne being too fresh in her memory. She will have to hire several assistants to do more in-depth research. There is so much still to find out: dates, places, clarifications. It is no longer a question of inspiration, but of documentation, which she finds discouraging. Noël and Jeanne, the poet and the painter, just as dependent as Daphne is on inspiration and their own whims, fully understand and support her.
The beauty of the Angevin landscapes, the autumnal colors, the châteaux and manors, the scenes of daily life in these villages will seep into the pages of a future novel. This arrives sooner than expected. Toward the end of their stay, in an animated market square near Le Mans, Jeanne and Noël notice that Daphne has stopped in her tracks; she seems magnetized by a stranger who is getting out of a car. Jeanne elbows her: Why is she staring at that man like that? Who is he? Daphne comes out of her trance: she was convinced, for a few moments, that it was a man she knew, a friend of Tommy’s. She would have staked her life on it. During dinner, Daphne is strangely silent, with a dreamy look on her face. Jeanne watches her mischievously, and asks if Bing isn’t seriously “brewing”* since seeing that man. Daphne laughs: she hasn’t stopped thinking about it, she has an idea, a starting point, and it feels so good to be inspired at last, to think of nothing but that. Jeanne and Noël press her: What exactly does she have in mind? Daphne looks out of the window, toward the old town of Le Mans, the lights on behind curtains, the darkening sky, the footsteps echoing through medieval alleys. She sips a mouthful of wine and tells them that it will be the story of a man who, one day, by pure chance during a trip, meets his double, a man who looks exactly like him. No one can tell them apart.
At last! Surrendering to the enchantment of a novel that takes over her life, thinking about it day and night, taking notes at any moment, in her bath, with wet fingers, on soaked paper, never mind, a few words scrawled urgently, important, essential, because, as in “Hansel and Gretel,” these scraps of words form a secret path that will lead her to the book she wants to write. And that’s it: she locks herself away in her hut, concentrates on her story, and everything else, as usual, fades away. She imagines an ordinary Englishman, tired of his daily grind, who during a trip to Le Mans meets his doppelganger in a bar: an Angevin count, Jean de Gué. Manipulated by his false twin, who slips a sleeping pill into his glass, John wakes up the next morning in an unknown hotel, dressed in the count’s clothes, with the Frenchman having vanished into thin air. A chauffeur is waiting downstairs to take him to the château that belongs to the de Gué family. John discovers that he is the head of a vast domain and a glassworks on the verge of bankruptcy due to spiraling debts and mismanagement. His personal life is even more complex: an old mother addicted to morphine, a pregnant, sickly wife, a precocious daughter, and two mistresses, his calculating sister-in-law and a highly perceptive beauty who lives in the village below the château. No matter how much John explains the truth of what has happened, no one believes him. And so he is obligated to live the life of Jean de Gué, a cunning, deceitful, and selfish man, with a shady past as a collaborator. When he realizes that he is trapped in the skin of such a reprehensible character, John does his best to improve the man’s image and rescue the family business. But nothing turns out the way he hopes it will.
Daphne is proud of this book, The Scapegoat, finished in June 1956, written in six months with such intensity that she is driven to bouts of fever. In March, she asked Oriel to send her a missal. Someone has to die soon in my book, and I feel I must have a French missal before she does so I can feel myself at her funeral. Don’t go to any expense, any shabby little book will do, actually the shabbier the more I shall like it!43 Publication is not set until March 1957, but Daphne already feels the need to write to Victor, ordering him not to make his usual boasts about Daphne du Maurier’s phenomenal sales figures, because she believes this makes the literary critics hostile or indifferent toward her. In a letter to Oriel, Daphne makes fun of her editor: I’m sure if he said “This book has sold no copies and nobody who has looked at it can understand a word,” the critics would be nice, for once!44 Victor Gollancz’s commercial methods, though responsible for helping build her fame, now annoy her. Daphne would prefer a quieter, subtler approach and plans to send her book to writers she admires. Why not André Maurois, for example (whose Olympio: The Turbulent Life of Victor Hugo she has just read in French), given that the story takes place in France? She senses that, after twenty years as a published author, she needs other ideas to support her novels; she can no longer depend exclusively on the bedrock of her faithful readership.
John, the central character, expresses himself in Eric Avon’s voice to produce a dense, dark, tense, and ultimately pitiless novel written in sober, simple prose. It is a tale about duality, a theme that has fascinated Daphne since her childhood, since she realized her father was capable of playing evil Captain Hook and kind Mr. Darling in the same play. She already touched upon the theme with Maxim’s two wives: the diabolical Rebecca and the angelic second Mrs. de Winter, and in My Cousin Rachel, whose heroine is either a saint or a poisoner. But this time, Daphne adds what she has drawn from her journey across the Channel, a French touch of which she is very proud. She hopes that the complexity of the narrative structure will finally procure her the respect and recognition of those critics who have, up to now, pigeonholed her simply as a popular novelist devoid of literary caliber.
When the book is published in the spring of 1957, Daphne’s hopes are fulfilled. For Kirkus Reviews, it is “faultless.” Nancy Spain, the Daily Express journalist who was so scathing in her review of Daphne’s short story collection five years before, is full of praise, as are the Spectator, the New York Times Book Review, and the Daily Telegraph, who even compare her to Henry James. In France, Albin Michel has the book translated by the inevitable Mme Butler, tasked in writing to review a number of suggestions, as the literal translation of the English title will not work. A letter from Michel Hoffman, Daphne’s agent in Paris, describes Lady Browning’s anger at the French title suggested by Mme Butler. Lady Browning asks me to tell M. Esménard that she is extremely disappointed by his choice, and that she finds John et Jean weak and puerile. It is a title, she says, for a children’s book. Furthermore, Mme Daphne du Maurier believes that, for France, the title is even more important than it is for England.45 Robert Esménard does not wish to risk upsetting the most famous English novelist on his roster, so he chooses the literal translation of The Scapegoat: Le Bouc Emissaire. Daphne is relieved. Another source of happiness: Alec Guinness, one of her favorite actors, has been approached for the role of the Comte du Gué, and the screenwriter Gore Vidal is already at work on the screenplay. The icing on the cake is a letter from André Maurois complimenting her on the novel.
Amid such joy, who could guess that 1957, the year Daphne du Maurier
turns fifty, would turn out to be one of the darkest of her life?
* * *
She didn’t see it coming. Not at all. Except perhaps in those recurring dreams of a sea at high tide, those terrible anxiety dreams where she swims vainly against the water as it floods back and submerges her. In the private clinic of Lord Evans, the queen’s personal doctor, Daphne waits, biting her nails as she did when she was a little girl, her stomach full of butterflies.
Monday, July 1, 1957. Another date engraved in her memory. The telephone had rung late at night. It was Maureen, Tommy’s assistant: Daphne must leave Menabilly, come as quickly as possible to London, Sir Frederick was sick, very sick. In the train, Daphne watched the landscape move too slowly past the window. She had not told anyone: not her children, nor her sisters, nor her aging mother. She is waiting to get a grasp on the nature of the problem. What had Maureen said, exactly? That Daphne’s husband was suffering from nervous exhaustion, that he’d been hospitalized in a clinic near Harley Street.